Villains

"Who's your favorite Disney villain?" is a question I have been asked many times, and in some ways, it is kind of an ironic question. Are we supposed to like the bad guy? A ton of times, yes, we do like the bad guy more than the "good guy." I think this can be for many reasons, as a lot of times the bad guy seems "cooler" and more "unrelatable." However, what exactly makes the bad guy? Because as we discussed in class, sometimes it is not as black and white as it would seem.

In class we discussed what sets apart Disney villains. Usually the color (they are darker), and some kind of "other" quality to them (be it they are super fat or skinny). However, I think the thing that distinguishes the bad guy from the good guy more than anything is perspective. Whoever's  perspective the narrative is told from tends to be the good guy to us. Like, for example, in the television show Arrow, the main guy is a vigilante, killing people. However, we see him as the good guy because the show is told from his perspective. Famously, the musical Wicked turned around the perspective of the Wizard of Oz and told it from the Wicked Witch of the West's point of view.

I watch a lot of the reality television show Survivor, and every season they have to frame the people as "characters", people to root for and people to root against. The ones that are on top, in a power position, tend to be seen by the audience as "evil" whereas the people on the bottom, fighting everyday to stay in the game, tend to be seen as "heroic." I think a lot of times, people that we relate to are the ones that we justify as being good. We see ourselves as hardworking and scrappy (even if we're not) so that is why we relate to these "heroes." In every Disney movie, the good guy has to fight and work hard to defeat the bad guy, and we relate to that scrappiness, and want to see ourselves in that light.

Introductory

I signed up for Decoding Disney for a reason that I'm sure most people did: it is a status symbol amongst the freshman class. The class is so highly recommended and so many people want to say that they took it, that in order to register I had to pull up the military clock on my computer, wait until the seconds on the clock turned to 7:00 AM, and then immediately click "enroll" in order to secure a spot in the class. But other than the shallowness of wanting other people to envy me, I also have a particular fondness for entertainment writing. Throughout high school, when asked what my dream job was, I would tell people it was the Chief Editor of Entertainment Weekly. I figured this class might be the best way I could explore and improve that passion of mine as it consists of writing and a niche media topic.

My personal history with Disney is relatively vast but not insurmountable. We own (that's present tense, they are still collecting dust in an upstairs closet in my house) almost every classic Walt Disney animation studios film on VHS tape, and I remember watching all of them growing up. Both my parents also worked, so I spent my formative years locked in a pre-school where the teachers would turn on Disney at the point in the day when they couldn't handle kids screaming over Barbies anymore, so even the ones we didn't own, the more "underground" ones, I have seen (like the Rescuers!). I went to Disney World several times growing up and my dad and I had a Christmas tradition where we would watch Mickey's Christmas Carols together every year. So I would describe myself as knowledgeable on the subject of Disney and happy it contributed to my childhood, but not a fanatic (I am much less educated on modern Disney).

One of the issues I am perhaps interested in exploring this semester is the "plight of the underdog" and how Disney psychologically uses that trope to get the audience to root for specific characters. I am also very interested in the issues presented in films that little kids seem to not understand but that become apparent when you grow up.