The Prolongation of Work

Finding Ideology

Tristan Colaizzi

Have you ever seen Finding Nemo? Were you ecstatic to hear that Finding Dory was hitting theaters? Do you have more lines memorized from The Emperor’s New Groove than you do of To kill a Mockingbird? So does our entire generation. When I was a kid Finding Nemo was the first movie that I saw in theaters, and after that I watched countless Disney movies from Lelo and Stitch, to Ratatouille, to The Jungle Book. From those movies I could quote countless lines, sing songs by heart, and reenact many scenes without a second thought, but if you told me to quote To Kill a Mockingbird I would be at a loss for words. So my question is, what shaped me more? What has molded my generation into who we are today?

To answer that question we must look at what actually shapes a child. In a study done in 1962 by Albert Bandura, it was found that a child is significantly more likely to change their moral judgment if presented with a model that displayed a different moral judgment from their own. In other words children are shaped by seeing other individuals act and react with the world. But how does that relate to Finding nemo? It does in one very important way: Disney is the model that children grow up seeing. It is the model that has shaped an entire generation almost every day of our lives through movies like Finding Nemo. One might say, yes we did watch those movies as children, but we also went to school and spent time with our parents, and I can’t refute that. What I can say is that in all the time you spent in school, were you ever exposed to as many stories, with as many conflicts and as many solutions as you were with Disney? In an article released in 2015 from BBC it was found that children spend on average six and a half hours in front of a screen every day. School is usually seven hours a day, five days a week, so from a purely mathematical perspective children really do spend more time on screens. I understand that this time is not all spent watching Disney movies, but they still are a big part of a child’s experience. Disney simply gave us as children more examples of how people interact in the world than we could have ever received from sitting in school reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and the stories that we saw from Disney were far more memorable than those from school. All this is to say that, Disney has created an ideology that we all follow, and that ideology screams throughout Finding Nemo.

The first question that we must answer in order to understand the Disney Ideology is who is the audience in Finding Nemo? Now this may seem like an easy question to answer, that it is simply whomever is watching the movie, and that is true, in the sense of the physical person sitting on the other side of the screen, but the audience is actually created by Disney. Finding Nemo for those who are not familiar follows Marlin, a clownfish, on his quest across the ocean to find his son Nemo. Not to spoil the movie, but Marlin with some help from his new amnesic friend, Dory, ends up Finding Nemo. In the opening scene, Marlin is enamored by the beautiful middle class country style home, or rather anemone, he has obtained for his wife Coral, so much so that he exclaims “a fish can breathe out here.”  By exclaiming “breathe” Disney does two things: first it asserts small coral fish as humans, and second, it names Marlin’s family as a middle class suburban family living a comfortable lifestyle. Not convinced? Well Coral then points out how nice the neighborhood is, as we see adolescent fish swimming around playing joyfully together. If you still don’t get it, watch the movie, or at least the opening scene) From this opening scene we know, and any child watching would know, that Marlin is the “good guy”, the fish whose eyes we will watch the movie through, and whose emotions we will side with. The thing is, Marlin is the white middle class American, and that is the audience that Disney has created, regardless of who is literally watching the movie. Now some of you I’m sure are thinking, Hell no, you can’t assume that he is white. That’s a fair point until you look at how other fish are portrayed.

The first fish we see that is not from the coral reef is a barracuda. He is menacing, much bigger and much darker than the bright clown fish. He approaches from the ocean with a growling noise and a sharp set of teeth that snap in Marlin’s face, before he kills Coral and all but one of Marlin’s children, Nemo. Hold on to the snapping teeth, we will come back to it. Now it might seem counterintuitive, but I am going to suggest that the open ocean is representative of the ghetto in a city. When I hear the word ghetto the first thing that comes to mind is a poorly lit street, with one light flickering on and off on a dirty block of close quartered dilapidated townhouses. The ocean is obviously the opposite in its grand size, but it fits the bill everywhere else. It is much darker and clearly dirtier in the clarity of water as depicted by Disney. Perhaps the most key thing to note is where it is geographically compared to the coral reef. There exists a clear separation between the two, and a physical barrier called the “drop off” separates the unknown dangerous ocean from the safe coral reef. The ocean, or ghetto, is literally a drop off in quality of life compared to the coral reef, or suburbia. It is where the “other” lives. Just like in real life the individuals that stereotypically live in the ghetto are physically darker and perceived as bigger and more dangerous.

So what did Finding Nemo teach you and me to think, or rather what political agenda is Disney pushing? I’m not going to answer that yet because we must first further our understanding of the “other” beyond the fish on the other side of the “drop off.” This may seem to contradict itself at first but bear with me. The second type of “other” in Finding Nemo are humans. Their foreignness is all in the subtleties in how they are presented. The first human we see rises from below, wearing full scuba diving gear. His face is unrecognizable, looking more like a green and black monster than a person at all. There is even ominous music to accompany his entrance and therefore perception as evil and powerful. The Humans come in and take whatever they want from the reef, including Nemo, by overpowering all of the fish. The question therefore is what do they represent? To answer that I’ll turn our attention to the next time humans enter the movie, a dentist office. I don’t know about you but pretty much everyone I have met hates the dentist office, if you disagree then you’re either insane or have never been to the dentist, in which case, Go! Dentist offices are simply a horrible place to be, they don’t make you healthy like a doctor, but they go in and drill your gums to pieces, what a perfect profession for Disney to choose for their villain to turn humans from siding with our own species, to siding with a clownfish. In short, we hate this powerful evil massive monster that takes what he wants from the coral reef fish, the middle class, but that is not a political agenda Disney is pushing, because it’s not really a political agenda. What Disney is pushing is a Marxist revolution. That may be a big jump from us not liking the dentist, but let me fill in the gap. To do so I will take us to the end of the movie, once Nemo has been found by Marlin and they are all ready to go home. At this moment a fishing boat, trawling with a massive net to catch a school of grouper, scoops up Dory, Marlin and Nemo. Nemo is able to unite all the fish in the net, who are approaching death to all swim down and break free of the net by snapping it. To me that sounds like a revolution, but what makes it a Marxist revolution? Well if you think about what the humans represent, a powerful machine that takes from the middle class, then you can see how revolting against their industry by releasing fish, food, back into the ocean is really a massive redistribution of wealth, or in this case life. If that doesn’t scream Marxist revolution, I don’t know what does. Look, I know someone is thinking that it’s just a commentary on the environmental harm caused by trawling, and maybe it is, but you cannot deny that there is a political agenda being pushed here, to revolt against the big powerful monsters that take everything from the middle class American.

I told you we would come back to the snapping teeth so here we go. There are three different categories of living creatures in Finding Nemo: Good fish like Marlin, who we categorized as middle class, menacing snapping fish, the first “other,” which I think we can call minorities, and humans, who we just classified as the government or second “other.” Let me clarify the first “other” with two additional instances on why we can call this group minorities, and what political agenda Finding Nemo is trying to push about them. The first instance is a convoluted interaction when Marlin runs into Bruce the shark. Just like the barracuda Bruce introduces himself with an aggressive snap of his teeth after coming onto the screen with a big bloody smile. Bruce fills every stereotype of a minority from the ghetto in his first few seconds on the screen. He is physically darker, clearly dirtier and so on, but then he says ”fish are friends not food.” Bruce befriends Marlin and Dory, which would argue that there is hope in the minority class. That there are good individuals, who break their stereotypes. I urge you not to jump too quickly to that conclusion, because if you continue to watch this scene play out, Bruce smells Dory’s blood and reverts back to his stereotypical behavior of killing. The setting of the phrase “fish are friends not food” is as important as the phrase itself. The sharks are in an Alcoholics Anonymous type meeting, which is quite interesting because it suggests that they are trying to get over an addiction to killing fish. By framing the sharks this way Disney is suggesting that the actions of minorities are a twisted addiction they should try to get over. The dimensions of this addiction doesn’t stop there. If the sharks don’t kill fish, then they are killing nothing, meaning they are eating nothing. If the sharks are not eating anything then they are dying. So if Disney is pushing any agenda it is that minorities are fed by harming the middle class.

The second place where Disney’s agenda becomes clearer is in the following scene. If the Sharks weren’t bad enough Marlin and Dory must dive deep into the darkness of a trench, where they confront a light. The light is like a flickering streetlight in the ghetto. It lights up part of the unknown darkness that Marlin and Dory have found themselves in, but it doesn’t do enough to show the whole picture. In fact the light is the antenna like appendage sticking out of an angler fish, who uses it to draw fish in and then kill them with one bite from their even more menacing set of teeth. Now just apply that image to the ghetto and I think you get the point that I am trying to make, this movie is not about a dad trying to rescue his son. It’s about Disney pushing a political agenda for the middle class white American to continue to fear minorities.

To explain how all of this translates to Finding Nemo and Disney at large creating the ideology of our generation I really don’t think I need to do that much. On the surface Finding Nemo really is just a fun family movie, it has some nice morals and a little bit of bathroom humor, who wouldn’t want to watch it. But Finding Nemo really is a piece of political propaganda under a seemingly unpolitical family movie façade, and that’s why it is successful. No child watches this movie and thinks, huh now I know to be afraid of minorities and revolt against the government. But it is the ideology that they are infused with.  It is the generation who grew up watching Finding Nemo and Disney who might elect Donald Trump as President, a racist bigot who constantly preys on minorities. It is our generation who almost gave Bernie Sanders the nomination so he could radically redistribute wealth away from the rich and into the hands of us, the middle class. It is not a stretch, all you have to do is look up to see that we internalized the political agenda that Disney gave us. We accepted their ideology.

Althusser, Louis. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards and Investigation)     (La Pensée, 1970. English Translation: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, Monthly    Review Press 1971)

Bandura, Albert. Social Learning through Imitation. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press,            1962)

Wakefield, Jane. Children spend six hours or more a day on screens (BBC News, March 27^th         2015) http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32067158

Disney. Finding Nemo (Disney, Pixar. 2003) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266543/

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have something important to say – something that might be somewhat difficult and uncomfortable to come to terms with. Something that throws a wrench into a certain line of thought that claims to devote itself to the fair treatment and well-being of all people. That is to say, a movement that might be called “Political Correctness,” or “PC,” has the ability to be morphed from a well-intended attempt at inclusivity into something with sinister undertones. In the minds of Parker and Stone, PC commodifies and hurts the very people it aims to help and deprives those who partake in it of autonomy and free thought.

This point reveals itself in the 19^th season of the animated series, South Park, in the way that the show makes vivid a real social crises and then proposes an imagined (and flawed) solution to that crisis. Season 19 tells of South Park’s attempt to reshape its image from a vulgar and intolerant town to one that is inclusive and, in the show’s own words, PC.

South Park season 19 DVD cover

Perhaps the show presents Political Correctness as the solution to the issue of social injustice. PC Principal is ushered in as the new principal of South Park Elementary to reform it into a more tolerant school after someone made a rape joke (the show would later reveal that it was Mackie, the counselor, who made the joke). Kyle, one of the central characters, is excited for these changes, saying he looks forward to South Park becoming a place “where people can begin to have a dialogue.” While Political Correctness is displayed as having its faults – its most ardent followers are college-aged white males who live in a fraternity house together and are prone to prioritize women and alcohol over social justice – these faults are mostly worked through by the end of the season, and South Park is a happy town that embraces PC ideals.

The idea that PC is the imagined solution to the real problem of social injustice, however, is a red herring. If one looks deeper, PC culture itself is presented as the real social crisis in need of a solution. It all starts with the demographic of those partaking in PC culture. It is very curious that none of the people partaking in this PC culture are a part of any of the marginalized groups that they claim to defend. This leads to an interesting issue when PC Principal tries to indoctrinate Jimmy, a physically handicapped student, in the ways of Political Correctness. This is problematic, since there is no way PC Principal knows more about being handicapped than Jimmy does, having not actually had this experience himself. It becomes evident through this exchange that PC Principal cares more about his own smug sense of satisfaction that he gets from pointing others’ transgressions out to them than he cares about actually achieving positive social change. The relationship between PC and marginalized groups then, is not that of a protector and the protected, like it might seem to be at first glance, but something else.

The PC frat house  during a party. All the members are straight white males (Source: southpark.wikia.com/wiki/PC_Delta)

But what, then, is the relationship between PC culture and those it claims to defend? Parker and Stone use several instances throughout the season to suggest that this relationship that of a consumer to a product. Take for example the episode “The City Part of Town,” in which the people of South Park try to get a Whole Foods (which is used here as a symbol of PC culture and of gentrification). The grocery chain sends a representative who asks to visit a classroom. In the classroom, a handicapped child and an African-American child – who is by no coincidence named Token – are conspicuously displayed in the middle of the front row. If one pays attention to other depictions of the class without the Whole Foods representative, one sees that this is not the normal seating arrangement. So we have two people who are part of the marginalized groups that PC culture claims to defend being used as commodities or bargaining chips to push PC’s own agenda to get a Whole Foods, an agenda which is harmful to one marginalized group – the poor – in particular, for reasons that will be discussed later.

This consumer/product relationship is further fleshed out in the episode “Tweek x Craig.” When rumors start of a gay relationship between Tweek and Craig start, the entire town wants to show its support. The way that the people of South Park do this is by giving the two supposed lovers money. When the two face disciplinary trouble for fighting, PC Principal refuses to punish them because they are gay, and instead sends them home with $100 each. This puts a price tag on the identities of Tweek and Craig, showing how those who are PC act as consumers and commodify marginalized groups. Viewed this way, PC culture is more about the fulfillment of the egos of those who practice it than it is about social change, since giving money to gay couples does little more than make the donors feel good about themselves.

Another way that PC is depicted as a social crisis is that it brings with it gentrification. Early in the season, the run-down part of South Park is renovated as a revitalized arts and foods district called Sodosopa (this includes the aforementioned Whole Foods). This district is built up around Kenny’s old, derelict house, which is left standing with Kenny and his family still living in it. This is an example of further commodification by PC culture of those it claims to defend, since Kenny’s house is advertised as a novelty, a remnant of the past – to bring more consumers to Sodosopa. Any contentment that Kenny and his family had with their small, private home was lost as they were forcefully thrust into the heart of the busiest part of town as something not unlike a carnival attraction. Kenny represents one of the groups that PC culture claims to defend: the poor. In the case of Kenny, the wants and needs of the poor are ignored in favor of PC’s own selfish wants.

Sodosopa, South Parks gentrified arts and foods district, with Kenny’s house, center (Source: http://wiki.southpark.cc.com/wiki/Sodosopa)

Related to gentrification is perhaps the most significant way in which PC is a social crisis: it leads to a loss of autonomy and free thought. While hints of this phenomenon are evident throughout the season – PC Principal turns to physical violence to repress people who say politically incorrect things more often than he has a dialogue with them – its most notable instance is in the development of a conflict between PC culture and sentient advertisements. These advertisements look and talk like people, and ultimately have an agenda to gentrify the human race to extinction by making necessities too expensive to afford.

Before looking into what this conflict means, it is important to realize the function of advertisements in our day-to-day lives. The job of advertisers is to make you, the consumer, buy their product. Through methods like catchy jingles or marketing to impressionable young children, advertisements deprive consumers of autonomy.  More often than not, the products you decide to buy are based more on the quality of the ads you’ve seen than the quality of the product itself.

So it should say a lot about what Parker and Stone think of PC when the ads manage to push their agenda on the back of PC culture by taking advantage of the fact that the two are nearly indistinguishable. One character, Nathan, explicitly states the similarities between ads and PC: “what is PC but verbal form of gentrification? You spruce everything up, get rid of the ugly in order to create a false sense of paradise. Only one thing could live in that world — ads.”  Ads and PC function in the same way and have the same agenda: they both deprive people of autonomy and seek to do away with the ugly and leave the pretty.

So Parker and Stone depict Political Correctness as a social crisis. What, then, is the imagined solution to this crisis? The solution starts with Mr. Garrison, a proxy for Donald Trump. Garrison gets angry at the influx of illegal immigrants from Canada in South Park early in the season, and he kicks off a political campaign based on the idea that the illegal immigrants should be “rounded up and f*cked to death.”

Mr. Garrison on the campaign trail. Garrison’s hat and the “Make America Great Again” poster, right, are meant to draw a comparison to Donald Trump (Source: southpark.cc.com)

It might be tempting to call Mr. Garrison anti-PC, but this is not quite the case. When one considers that his running mate is Caitlyn Jenner, whom the Politically Correct consider to be “stunning and brave,” the question of why Parker and Stone made the decision to pair these two arises.

The answer to this question lies in the show’s depiction of Jenner. The viewer is not allowed to forget about the time she committed a hit and run – she runs a person over (and presumably kills them) with a car in every episode that she appears in. This shows that despite being the object of PC culture’s affection, she is still a bad person. Furthermore, there exists for Garrison and Jenner a physical removal from PC culture, since the two leave South Park to campaign for most of the season, helping to put them outside the sphere of PC culture altogether.

Caitlyn Jenner hits a pedestrian every time she takes the wheel in season 19 (source: dailymail.co.uk)

When Garrison and Jenner return near the end of the season to help fight the advertisements, the two take on the role of protagonists, by virtue of the fact that they help to save the human race from extinction. In the very end of the season, Jenner and Garrison team up with those who are PC, and all the people of South Park decide to shun gentrification and pursue a continuing fight against the ads emphasizing human unity.

Parker and Stone are caught in a moment of fantasy here. They made the viewer cheer for a rapist and murderer, then implied that the solution to PC culture’s flaws is to be inclusive of them. This solution is problematic: The fact that no action was taken against Garrison and Jenner, both of whom committed murders, is disappointing. The implication is that criminals should be allowed amnesty without any consideration – that everybody deserves inclusion. Furthermore, recalling that Garrison is a proxy for Donald Trump, this might be seen as an implicit endorsement of Trump (recall that season 19 was created during the primaries). This is an noteworthy if for no other reason than that South Park is often seen as dismantling ideology rather than displaying it.

Despite Parker and Stone’s unsatisfying solution to the problem of PC culture, there is a hint of a better solution that exists in the South Park school newspaper, for which Jimmy is the editor. Jimmy refuses any sponsored content (i.e. ads), and the paper seems to be a place of legitimate discourse, providing a place for the dialogue that PC culture promotes but does not provide. There is little censorship, which runs contrary to the deprivation of autonomy by PC culture. The South Park school newspaper is a much better alternative to PC than that proposed by Parker and Stone. Perhaps the real answer to PC culture lies in having a no-holds-barred civil discord about the very real social problems that are faced by groups of people.

“We got both kinds. We got country and western” (The Blue Brothers). A classic line from a classic movie. The joke of course is that country and western are almost one genre. If not almost one genre, they just flat out are one. The movie from which this quote comes was made in 1980, a long time ago for popular culture. By the time of the movie The Blues Brothers, country and western music had fully transformed from separate, regional entities into one conglomerate. Who is to blame for this merger? Hollywood of course. Producers wanted to promote the dying image of a cowboy using music that sounded to them close enough, so they combined musical styles from the western US with Appalachian styles in the “singing-cowboy” genre. Country-western was born. But enough already about the glory of the olden times, of actors who are long dead or significantly overweight. (Yes, that was the fate of the Blues Brothers.) Those times are long gone. The eighties are over. Before leaving the olden days, however, one question remains? Could a similar event happen again? The world is a different place now. Hollywood’s cowboys of the silver screen endured a mass extinction around the year 2000, and even their deaths were well after their heydays. The southwest is now, one would at least hope, no longer an empty patch of desert administered by the mafia. The question still remains: can history repeat itself? Will the events that befell the regional styles of country and western music happen again? Will two different styles come together to form a conglomerate genre? The responses to these questions would have to account for modern twists.

First for a brief history of country music. Country music originated in Tennessee in the 1920s. Over the years it merged with other sounds including western and rock to form a new style called country but with original country having a minority influence, much like how United and Continental Airlines merged to form a new entity called United even though Continental management retained a controlling stake. After starting to come closer to pop in the 1980s, country became a sensation in the 1990s before leaving the Appalachian mountains in the early 2000s. Country began to make its way to big producers on the West Coast. This merge allowed country stars to transition to pop stars. Think Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift. Cyrus even acknowledge it herself with her single “Party in the USA,” claiming that her life in Los Angeles was “definitely not a Nashville party.” She was right, and country music as a packaged industry was born.
Now to change styles and discuss what many people consider to be one of the most sophisticated and artsy forms of music: rap. Rap as a movement began in the 1980s as a style created mostly by artists trying to be different or independent. Even well into the 1990s, rap producers were generally regional and outside of mainstream music production. Rap and its creation were off the grid. Rap was a style that could not be emulated by Hollywood, by big companies. Many rappers were furious when the first major executives began working with rap. O’Shea Jackson, commonly known by his stage name Ice Cube, wrote “No Vaseline,” a song deploring rappers who worked with large production companies. By the end of the decade, however, rap began to undergo major changes. The 2000s ushered in an era of rap produced by large recording studios offering lucrative contracts. Unlike country music, rap did not move far physically, but socially it changed enormously. Rap as an industry was born.
At this point it is time to zone in on one artist. One from a place that is not the birthplace of either country or rap. One from the metropolis of St. Louis, Missouri, home of the famous St. Louis Arch. Cornell Haynes, or Nelly, began his career as a musician around the turn of the millennium. His debut album Country Grammar included the song “Ride Wit Me,” which was later released as a single. “Ride Wit Me” is a little bit more laid back sounding than most rap songs before it. There is less anger, less anxiety, less haste. It still has a noticeable beat and a definite rhyme scheme, but the hard edge is gone. The slow guitar in the back, it almost sounds like… country. Somehow rap and country music wove themselves together. Unlike country-western, country-rap is not considered to be one genre, but country and rap can, as demonstrated by Nelly, come together. Somehow, in this song by this artist, country and rap became the same.
Looking back at the histories of country and rap, the timing makes sense. Both styles became mainstream around the same time. Close to the year 2000, country and rap moved from the status of local style to that of global, mass-marketed phenomenon. With similar timing come similar environments and similar people. Executives saw both genres at the same time and were willing to combine them. The blur of the line between country and rap happened the instant someone with money, power, and the willingness to mass-produce became involved.

Mass-production caused the merger. Mass-production created the sameness. Mass-production is by its very nature hegemony. The concept of mass-production is that everything will be the same. All items that come off the assembly line will be identical. This concept works on two levels. First all copies of a single type of object will be the same. All iPads, all ethernet cables are exactly the same. Second, everything is made in a factory, either metaphorical in the case of music or literal in the case of objects, which means everything is created using the same methods of production. Items created using the same methods of production tend to be similar. A motorcycle and a car have similar types of engines because they both use the type of engine that is best mass-produced. The company Achates Power recently tried to fundamentally change the design of the car engine because it would have been more fuel efficient and less likely to break. The idea never caught on because the new engine design was non-trivially harder to produce cheaply in a factory. Music functions the same way. The type of music needs to be able to be created on a mass scale. Because the methods of production of country and rap music became the same, the styles did as well.
In combining country and rap, Nelly may have been a visionary. He took two styles and out of them created one the world had never before heard. The merge of country and rap was an invention, it was an epiphany. “Ride Wit Me” added to cultural growth in making a new form of music, one that included elements from geographically and socially diverse areas. The combination of country and rap was ingenious. It required creativity to be able to blend both style in a way that sounded cohesive and appealing. “Ride Wit Me” was a work of genius. A new style and a new sound are not everyday occurrences, and the harbinger of this new genre truly encapsulated the ability of new culture to be born.
Except that “Ride Wit Me” may not have been the new culture it was promised to be. The merge of country and rap did not take genius or creativity. The major producers can turn anything into a new style in their sleep. If their own talents fail, producers have computer programs to determine for them which new styles to create and explore. Skill and talent are not involved in the creation of a new genre such as country rap. The two styles are not from geographically diverse areas. Nelly’s music was not a combination of Compton and Tennessee, it was a combination of mass-market production and other mass-market production. Two sounds can combine by being played at the same speed at the same time. “Ride Wit Me” is an example not of a new style but of one that was destined to be created from the day that rap and country both became nationally marketed commodities. New culture was not born. Culture shrank. Two formerly separate, local entities merged into a nationally-marketed conglomerate, reducing cultural and musical variety. What had formerly been two became one as samess took hold.
What happened to country and rap music with the rise of Nelly and his single “Ride Wit Me” leads to one basic conclusion. When culture is mass produced, all art is in danger of becoming the same. Rap and country music became commodities and therefore became the same as each other. The mass-marketers are smart; they know what sell and what does not. They know how to make a product people are willing to buy. They know what is required for their products to be successful. Most importantly they know that if something works, repeat it. Fit what you are given into a certain form and reproduce that form “over and over again.” (Pun alert!) After hearing “Ride Wit Me” and the rest of Country Grammar, producers decided to have Nelly collaborate with country singer Tim McGraw on “Over and Over Again.” Producers and marketers use this approach for all kinds of culture from songs to visual art to fiction novels to movies. Mass produced culture becomes an identical mush devoid of any differences.
Mass culture produces sameness. That sentence sums up what happened to Nelly and so many other artists whose work became mass-produced. Even though, new developments can sometimes crop up on the fringes of society. Most dissipate quickly, but some, such as rap, gain a following. They grow and grow until the culture giants take them and transform them into mass-marketed commodities. This pattern almost feels like a chase. New developments attempting to outrun industrialized culture producers. As shown by The Blues Brothers, the chase, while a long process, can be destructive and often end up bringing about the end of an era for the people even tangentially involved.

By Ashley Zhou

Our relationship with nature has always been an uneasy one once we learned how to manipulate our surroundings to fit our needs. In a time when 150 to 200 species go extinct every day and just five countries produce half of the world’s 32 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, now may be too late to start panicking. We are scrambling to stop and reverse the deleterious consequences of the Industrial Revolution, but at the same time, many of us are loath to relinquish our luxuries and exorbitant consumerism that continue to harm the environment. While blindly trying to find a solution, we support oil industries that spill millions of gallons of oil into the oceans and businesses that clear forests to provide more pasture land. What is it that allows us to make these choices that go against our moral obligations? Comfort, greed, and ignorance? Culture tells us to take a side, either with nature or against it, and to stick with it. But the path to understanding the problem starts with recognizing that there is no side to pick, an opposition to the dualist ideology we are constantly being fed.

In recent decades, the issue of sustainability and our relationship with nature has edged more and more into the public eye. Up until not so long ago, perhaps a few centuries in the 6,000-year history of civilization, we have shamelessly decimated natural resources, indifferently altered the Earth’s physiology, and killed those who refused to embrace “modernization”—all in the name of mechanical progress. As cities grew and everything else died, we began to pay more attention to our indelible footprints in the natural world. The media did not waste any time broadcasting the frightful crises of pollution, global warming, or depletion of vital resources, often spinning the issues into full-blown apocalyptic imaginations. Blockbusters like Dances with Wolves (1990), WALL-E (2008), and Avatar (2009) entranced audiences with depictions of the cataclysmic consequences that arise from the struggle between industrialization and the environment, all of which show a clear winner and loser.

Princess Mononoke is a 1997 Japanese animated film, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, that defies this binary solution. As the Forest Spirit restores life to the land, the opposing sides, Irontown and the forest gods, return to their respective realms after incurring heavy losses. Many forest gods have died to protect their forests, their bones and flesh consumed by the poison of the iron bullet. The resemblance of the metal stone in their bodies to the bezoar eerily represents the death of the gods as an antidote to technological barriers. On the other hand, although winning skirmishes, the entire village is destroyed as a result of decapitating the Deer god (also the Forest Spirit), whose manifestation oozes throughout the lands like melted iron ore. Both parties have lost, and Deer god or no Deer god, Mononoke’s world is split between industrial capitalism and militant environmentalism.

The extinction of the boar clan

The headless Deer god destroys the land while looking for his head

It is no big surprise that many militant environmentalists are anti-capitalist. Capitalism runs on maximized profits. If Lady Eboshi, the leader of Irontown, has to kill every god in every forest to ensure the survival and prosperity of Irontown, you better bet she will. She is admired as a one who is not afraid of gods, for the drive for iron far outweighs the costs of destroying nature. Her people are a hodgepodge of workmen, prostitutes, and lepers, all taken under her wing for the sole purpose of producing iron for a profit. Every person is working for the continuation of Irontown, from the men collecting the ironsand, to the prostitutes working the bellows to the melt the iron, to the lepers inventing stronger, lighter rifles. The assembly line transcends and incorporates all the social groups. Just as Irontown’s singular purpose is to salvage all the iron in the forests no matter the cost, the forest inhabitants are pretty set on destroying the humans. The boar clan knowingly commits suicide when it charges at the town across a field planted with mines, and the ape tribe has resorted to eating human flesh, supposedly to gain human strength and fight back. Each is trying to survive by destroying the other. Looking at the film from today’s perspective, it is easy to blame Eboshi for being so uncaring towards the environment, but in the movie’s world, she is trying to support her town the only way she could, and her people’s adoration and trust in her reflect this.

So which side are you supposed to root for? It is ambiguous because both are just trying to ensure their own survival. (An evil that the film does warn against is pure greed and excessive consumerism that the emperor embodies when he demands the Deer god’s head in order to gain immortality. The emperor’s motivation differs from the town’s in that he wants more than he needs, perhaps lending a vision of what the capitalist Irontown will become in the future.) However, the movie did have to have an ending, and as in all stories, Mononoke attempts to coax the audience into believing that the movie’s resolution provides a viable solution to the crisis. The only problem is that it doesn’t do a very convincing job.

Let me first give a few examples of ideology’s workings in films so it may be easier to see how Mononoke differs. Terminator 3 (2003) is a generic killer robot movie about the rise of artificial intelligence who are the reason for the human apocalypse. The plot involves two robots from the future: one is outdated and male, the other is “smart” and female. Throughout the entire movie, the audience cheered as the Terminator bashed away at the surprisingly hardy Terminatrix’s head; after all, the male robot is good and the female robot is evil. Viewers breathed a sigh of relief as the Terminator finally obliterated the Terminatrix, which concluded the film. It was then easy to forget that, while the direct threat was gone, the protagonists actually failed to stop the apocalypse. Saving the world was the main issue and the movie glides over the abortive mission with a victorious Terminator blowing up the Terminatrix by sticking a fuel cell down her throat…which exemplifies the underlying ideology that the movies actually focuses on: the patriarchy must be kept alive and well even when obsolete. If this notion of putting women back in their place through rape were clear in the film, it would have had a hard time getting greenlighted. The ideological plot that the movie stresses with scene after scene of the two robots fighting has a solution, but it is one that no one in the right mind would endorse in the real world, only through the fictitious characters and events in the movie.

Avatar (2009), unlike Princess Mononoke, portrays humans as ruthless militants with no compassion for nature. Set in the year 2154, humans have even more advanced guns, tanks, and dreams, and it seems like a pitiful joke for the Na’vi tribe to be expected to defend themselves. But the Na’vi don’t just defend themselves, they expel a whole establishment of leaders, soldiers, and scientists off their planet. This ending runs counter to the entire history of colonization and basically every White encounter with indigenous people. So how do the Na’vi do it? The indigenous animals suddenly decide to fight the humans in a collective effort, as if understanding the direness that humans impose, giving the indigenous people a fantastical boost. Hammerhead Titanothere herds stampede through the forest like tanks and airborne predators serve as airpower for the Na’vi. The movie significantly amplifies the strength of the bow and arrow just enough to overcome gun and steel. Avatar achieves a happy ending by giving the indigenous people an imaginary advantage to rival the White people’s technology, but the pretense that indigenous tribes can win is, well, just that—imaginary.

Dragons to the rescue!

Terminator 3 and Avatar affirm that stories work by providing imaginary solutions to real crises, but Mononoke specifies that the lack of a political fantasy reveals the true nature of environmental ideology of the real world. The town and the forest’s goals exactly align with the destruction of each other, and that is where the plot fails to offer a believable solution. In the end, idyllic greenery miraculously returns to the land, the protagonist’s curse is lifted, and everyone is optimistic that things will be different after a near-apocalypse. The land has undergone a dramatic transformation of death and rebirth, marked by the reappearance of kodama, spirits that signify a healthy forest. The casual viewer (as I was when I first watched the movie a few years ago), at best, might turn off the TV with a sense of emotional satisfaction and confidence in the industrial world’s peace treaty with nature. But upon deeper analysis, it does not take much to realize the plot is not offering a solution at all—fantastical or not. After the ultimate battle, both sides are diminished, and now they are supposed to coexist agreeably. Miyazaki seemed to recognize that this ideal was a fantasy, ending the film with Lady Eboshi, simply declaring: “We’ll start over again. We’ll build a good village.” But what does “a good village” mean? Surely a Muromachi-era town dependent on ironsand and thus deforestation isn’t supposed to suddenly start innovating ways to survive and grow without exploiting nature. In human history, nature’s loss was imperative to technological advancement in the first place, so only after we reach the point of sustainability can we retroactively try to fix the damage that we caused to get there. In the movie’s own terms, it is inevitable that Irontown and the forest inhabitants will clash again, but that is left open-ended.

The Deer god instantly revives the land

Whereas Terminator 3 and Avatar offer emotional release, Princess Mononoke refuses to resolve the environmental issue with a cop-out such as killing Eboshi. Instead, the false hope that closes the film offers viewers an illusory view. At the same time, the naïve easiness of it all and cursory wrap-up indicate a deeper discovery which allows the viewers to realize the fiction in the ideology. Even the imaginary world does not provide a solution. Miyazaki’s unsatisfactory ending reflects the political messiness of the real world and even the hopelessness that accompanies it. Our catastrophic relationship with the environment throughout history is not explicitly shown in Mononoke’s “happy ending,” but it is hidden beneath such a superficial optimism that people understand the film provides a fantasy which is at odds with the circumstances of the real world. Through the viewpoint of an ambivalent protagonist, whose undertaking is to journey to the west and “see with eyes unclouded,” Miyazaki portrays a crisis that cannot be solved by simply creating a winner or loser. Even though the film criticizes excessive consumerism, a large portion of the world does not participate in this kind of lifestyle; if anything, they are not getting enough to consume. It is not possible to condemn these people who live much like the Irontown folks do. Unlike other environmentally-focused films, Mononoke is not supposed to justify industrialism’s dominance over nature or inspire penitence for all the cruelty against our environment, but to delineate the current situation through the loss and destruction of both parties.

Note: Some ideas in this essay come from a conversation I had with Professor Christian Thorne on October 13, 2016.

Images:

Mononoke images were screenshot from movie.

Avatar image: http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Scorpion_Gunship

By Dew Panalee Maskati

Pop culture was in it’s prime during ‘80s America, with the release of popular classics such as “Karate Kid” and “The A-Team”, and the advent of synthesisers and digital recording in music. It was the age of self-reinvention and rising consumerism — glamour, now on sale at your nearest mall — laced with political turmoil, increasing unemployment rates, rising inflation, and xenophobia.  It was in this spirit of dissatisfaction and idealism that “The Breakfast Club” was made. Five high school tropes —“athlete” Andrew, delinquent Bender, Brian the “brain”, “basket case” Allison, and “princess” Claire— overcome their initial aversion to each other to unite in friendship and defy the disciplinarian, Mr. Vernon; they are armed, of course, by the teen rebel’s trustiest weapons: drugs and rock and roll. From its opening title, ‘The Breakfast Club’ establishes itself as a patron of rebellion by paying homage to David Bowie, the nullifier of category and God of self-reinvention, with an excerpt from “Changes”:

“And these children

that you spit on

as they try to change their worlds

are immune to your consolation

they are quite aware

of what they are going through”.

These lines highlight how the movie corroborates the image of the defiant and heroic teen rebel — the counter-culture revolutionary yet untainted by the adult world — and in consequence, is full of vicarious appeal to the teenager’s angst-filled heart. But the movie’s premise and resolution is entirely a fabrication, a fact made visually apparent in the opening sequence, as the camera zooms in beyond the shattering black television screen, and draws us into a realm beyond reality. This heartwarming tale is, in effect, a mask for an underlying, sinister ideology, one gets the viewer to think more favourably of conformity by marketing it as unity. Tropes aren’t transcended; rather, certain accepted stereotypes are subliminally reinforced over others.

The opening title sequence

These stereotypes are so pervasive that the students do not formally learn each other’s names until half-way through the movie. As soon as they do, further labelling is generated: “Claire” is a “fat girl’s name”. Bender as a human being “may as well not even exist in this school”, as Andrew says, because in the eyes of others he is but the stereotype of a criminal. Certain issues remain unaddressed, and are subsequently reinforced, such as male chauvinism: Bender, looking to “impregnate” Claire, does have his wish granted – they fall in love – Claire “couldn’t ignore [him] if [she] tried”. The movie is unsuccessful even in its self-proclaimed mission — abolishing high school stereotypes — because in their final moments of detention, the teenagers each dance in a style that parodies their tropes. Some might interpret this as a euphoric moment of acceptance, but really, it soberingly demonstrates a lack of change — these teenagers still conform.

However, the movie goes beyond this: it seeks to favourably portray the elimination of diversity — more specifically, to see stereotypes deigned unacceptable by society abolished. Let’s take, for example, the outcasts Allison and Bender: due to social conditioning that encourages wariness when confronted by nonconformists, their crude, sexual language and atypical manner, initially gave them the most disdain from other characters and viewer alike.  Claire’s response to Bender’s graphic description of sex is to ask “do you want me to puke?”.  Allison, on the other hand, embodies the uncivilised: feral behaviour; wild appearance; her endorsement of the “mountains”, “Afghanistan or Israel” over the Chicago “streets”. Yet, they are the most perceptive of all the characters. It is the distance between them and society that cultivates comments such as Allison’s iconic “it’s unavoidable, it just happens… when you grow up your heart dies”, or the critical eye on social convention that leads to Bender’s rejection of Claire’s ability to apply lipstick with her breasts — a bourgie talent that highlights her superficiality and privilege. The others reject their discomforting comments: Andrew has been socially conditioned to interpret Bender’s insight as “insult” when Bender is really just “being honest, asshole!”.

Allison presciently realises that there is no escape from being labelled, by pointing out that once Claire reveals the truth behind her enigmatic sex-life, she will be skewered by a triple-pronged sword: categorised as either a “prude”, “slut” or a “tease”. And indeed, rather than a movement towards acceptance of their quirks, the movie sees Allison and Bender normalised into socially acceptable stereotypes. Allison is given a makeover that turns her into a cookie-cutter doll — note the aggressive way in which she is made to conform through makeup — “don’t stick that in my eye”. She only truly receives Andrew’s approval — “it’s good” — after the transformation. If she had outwardly remained a “basket case”, would Andrew have kissed her? Bender’s indoctrination is less explicit: he puts on Claire’s earring, a trinket from the upper classes. So yes, “The Breakfast Club” does champion acceptance — but only at the price of individuality. Mr. Vernon’s obviously devilish character masks the true evil in the movie: Andrew and Claire, instruments of a cultural ideology that instills “sameness”.

Allison’s makeover

Let’s explore this dichotomy a bit further: students are good and adults, evil. Mr. Vernon’s character actualises the quasi-dictator that haunts every student’s educational experience; more importantly, he embodies Althusser’s “educational state apparatus” and elements of the “repressive state apparatuses” — instruments within a system of oppression (society) that seek to excise individuality and maintain the existing social order by doing so.  He shares in their dehumanising methods when he snaps his fingers and repeats commands at Andrew as if to a dog, and exercises their repressive violence through language that goads and humiliates. To the other students: “look at [Bender], he’s a bum”.  “What’s the matter, John? You gonna cry?”. The other prominent adult, Carl the janitor, has a characteristic that, at first glance, seems to spare him from the general criticism: he understands.  Although an incongruously angelic figure in the prison-like school, what he says bears a disconcerting semblance to totalitarian propaganda from the likes of George Orwell’s “1984”: “I listen to your conversations — you don’t know that but I do”; “I am the eyes and ears of the institution”. Add to this his identification with the lower classes — “you guys think I’m some untouchable peasant… serf” — and he has, in effect, become the voice of Adorno’s “culture industry”. Therefore, the audience is disinclined to sympathise with them.

Since the audience directs its sympathy according to human-object interaction, the objects in the movie reinforce the contest between vessels of a repressive culture (adults) and adolescent resistance. Objects antagonise Mr. Vernon multiple times: to the students’ and the viewer’s amusement, he is proved wrong (and importantly, Bender proved right) when the chair meant to hold open the door springs out of position, thereby granting the teenagers their privacy. Other slapstick instances include coffee spilling over his table, and, unbeknownst to him, toilet paper dangling out of his pants. On the other hand, objects function harmoniously with the students; they reinforce the viewer’s support for the teenagers’ cause. The viewer too, feels victorious when Bender scales the mountain of school supplies to escape solitary confinement. But beyond this, the objects are implementing an equally important task on the viewer’s subconscious: the cues that polarise teenagers against adults have created a battlefield of the school building — a stomachable replica of the ‘Nam, bringing to mind public fear during the Cold War. The students utilise tactics of guerrilla warfare to combat Mr. Vernon — stealth when avoiding him, and “fire and movement” strategy when Bender distracts for the others’ safety.

Dominant during the 1980s was general disgruntlement with the shortcomings of liberal government (the old order) and a favourable view of modern conservatism. National industries faced losses, increased layoffs; Japanese technology and products outstripped the West’s. The Cold War reached its apex, and the generally displeased public agreed with Reagan’s claim that Carter’s liberal government should have chosen to, but did not, “stay the course” in regards to Vietnam. This political divide pervades the movie: the teenagers and adults represent two existing orders, the new and the old, which are at war; its battle ground, the classroom. Mr. Vernon says as much: “these kids have turned on me”. Ultimately, the teenagers emerge victorious: free to do what they please from the second half of detention onwards, Mr. Vernon’s authority ultimately overturned, and stronger in their unity. Andrew gives a strikingly industrial description of his dad as “this mindless machine” programmed to “Win! Win! Win!” that he proceeds to reject; here again, is the dismissal of an archaic, ineffective order. Therefore, the movie’s heartwarming ending insinuates triumph of a new, conservative order over the old — conforming to public sentiment that perceived a weak, ineffective, liberal government. By guiding the audience firmly onto the teenagers’ faction, the movie succeeds in indoctrinating Reagan’s political propaganda.

What’s more, the implications go beyond America’s borders, creating an ideological conflict of international proportions— but with America, of course, as its heroic centre. During the 1980s, Japan and America were in contest for technological superiority, and it was obvious as to which country was emerging as the dominant force. This was a time in which the American public felt alienated by the imported commodities around them — dissatisfaction that culminated in demonstrative destruction of Japanese cars. The movie overturns this dynamic; it provides the average american with an illusory resolution that appeases fear of their country’s growing global impotence against Japan’s booming economy. The teenagers, symbolic of Reagan’s America and therefore vessels of an ideology along the lines of “Let’s Make America Great Again”, operate in harmony with objects. Meanwhile, the enemy, Mr. Vernon, is obstructed and humiliated by the products around him. An alternate picture is painted: within this constructed conflict, America emerges victorious and the ultimate commander of products. So, through cues that align the viewer’s sympathy with the teenagers’ cause, the movie sentimentalises American patriotism and xenophobic distrust of the foreign — effective even on a present-day audience. The teenagers impress acceptance of Reagan’s politics, as well as illusory American supremacy over the Japanese, on the viewer’s mind.

By Amanda Reisman

Is all love the same? No! Bear with me, and I will explain how love varies in depth and meaning. I don’t mean that our love of Harry Potter differs from our love of food. I’m talking about people. We all love in different ways. Some people love more, and some love less. Some try to hide their love, and some love too much. How do we learn to control the love that seems to consume and conquer us? We become subjects to whatever our hearts desire. Who we love and what we love becomes a part of who we are. We perceive this love in its many different forms. There is forbidden love, idolized love, fake love, and real love. Where do we draw the line? Is the love we see in media real? Can we tell if our love is true?

The culture we consume has generally portrayed love as the ultimate goal. This creates a real world desire among people to find their “soulmates.” I put the word soulmates in quotation marks to emphasize how the idea of finding our one true love has been produced and implemented into our culture through media. The belief that we each have a soulmate, a person who we are designed to be with, is quite controversial. How can we know who that is? What if we haven’t met that person? Regardless, media has instilled a concept of finding our own Prince Charming. Children watch movies where princes and princesses fall in love and live happily ever after. The prince is idolized and made out to be the ideal soulmate. The princesses sing song after song about finding their prince. They become entranced by just the thought of seeing their lover again. The practicality of these movies is absurd. Frozen, the first break in the seemingly never-ending stream of Disney princess movies, has stemmed away from this culturally produced notion of love.

Frozen (2013) is centered around a princess named Anna whose sister, Elsa, has ice powers. Her sister accidentally freezes Anna’s heart, and only an “act of true love to thaw her frozen heart.”

Elsa accidentally freezes Anna’s heart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqDE95-gP6M

The movie initially revolves around Anna’s mission to find Hans, a prince who she met and immediately fell in love with. She was so focused on finding “the one” that she declares Hans to be her soulmate immediately after she meets him. Needing love to save her, Anna journeys to find him for an act of true love. This act of true love is immediately perceived as a true love’s kiss. A true love’s kiss immediately references another Disney movie: Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty waits for Prince Phillip’s kiss to save her from her deep sleep. The idea of a true love’s kiss solidifies Disney’s focus on how only real, romantic love can save us from evil. This love is seemingly the only form of protection from evil. The beginning of Frozen seems to fall right in line with Sleeping Beauty. The search for love as the savior from death is common in both of these movies. True love’s kiss wakes up Sleeping Beauty; however, Anna, of Frozen, realizes she has been blinded and tricked by her desires.

You are now probably wondering why I explained the similarities between an old classic Disney princess movie and Frozen. Disney, by creating Frozen, is ironically mocking their previous movies. Now before you immediately disregard my assertion, just listen to what I have to say. After Anna finally finds Hans, she is dying and in need of an act of true love. Believing Hans is her knight in shining armor, Anna asks for a true love’s kiss. He rejects her attempt and reveals how he only pretended to fall in love with her to become the next King of Arendelle. Her obsession with finding her one true love resulted in her thinking that Hans was the one. What she thought was true love couldn’t save her. Her infatuation deceived her. There was seemingly no happily ever after.

Hans reveals his true intentions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqDE95-gP6M

Anna has been tricked! What? Disney, who? The prince and princess are supposed to fall in love and live happily ever after. What happened? This unprecedented twist of events is unlike any Disney princess movie ever made. The man has deceived the woman for power! Now that definitely couldn’t be Disney!

To continue my thoughts on the divide between Frozen and previous Disney movies, I would like to compare the opposing plots from Frozen and Cinderella (1950). In the movie Cinderella, Prince Charming, after dancing with Cinderella at the ball, needs to find her again. He believes he has found his true love and is relentless in finding her. Eventually, they reconnect and live happily ever after. On the other hand, Frozen’s Anna is fighting to find Hans! This is the first Disney movie where the girl is desperately trying to find the boy. She feels that she “needs” to find him to survive. Despite proving that Disney is mocking their previous work with this idea of needing a man to “survive,” the beginning of Frozen draws attention to this role reversal, which is just one difference between these two movies. Cinderella follows right along Disney’s classic princess movie mold. The girl meets the boy, and they fall in love. Some evil thing happens that attempts to separate them, but they find each other again and live happily ever after. This structure is mocked by Frozen. The girl meets the boy, and the girl thinks she found true love. Some evil thing happens, and the boy leaves the girl to die in order to take over her kingdom. The change in plot makes a joke out of every classic Disney princess movie by showing how completely unrealistic and farfetched those movies actually are. Love at first sight is actually not a realistic notion! Not everyone is who they say they are or who we want them to be!

After Hans abandons Anna, she manages to find her sister. Hans, in order to become King, needs both Anna and Elsa to die. However, Anna steps in front of Hans’s sword to save Elsa and freezes there. By sacrificing herself, she performs an act of true love and suddenly unfreezes and returns to her normal health.

Anna sacrificing herself for her sister

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2xn0jDmiTw

Their sisterly love saves them. Anna is cured, and Elsa learns to control her powers through love. Family is the most important part of our lives! The love we feel for our family is insurmountable. This unbreakable bond will protect us from everything! Frozen broke away from mainstream Disney princess movies by changing its view on powerful love. Previously, the love between a prince and a princess was enough to stop evil. In Frozen, the love between two sisters is stronger than any relationship or any impending danger. Only “love can thaw a frozen heart.” The notion that “love thaws” is crucial to the ideals present in Frozen. Love defrosts; it unfreezes; it warms. Love removes the cold. Only true love can save us! Real love can be found, where Disney has never before represented it, within our families.

This stress on familial love instead of romantic love was a significant change for Disney to make. Their target audience being children is vital to how they construct their movies. Kids watch these movies and immediately associate with/desire to be the princesses. Previous Disney princess movies have instilled ideas of soulmates, “Prince Charmings,” and true love into the minds of 5 year-olds. That’s ridiculous! We should be teaching kids about family, loving your family, and putting your family above all else. Frozen is the perfect demonstration of familial values, and Anna is the greatest example of bravery and selflessness in all of the Disney princess movies.

Frozen is an unprecedented creation where love triumphs all and combats evil. There are some movie critics who would disagree with the facts I have stated about Frozen. Elizabeth Weitzman, of the New York Daily News, claims that there is still something missing from Frozen. “What’s crucially missing, however, is a hissable villain” (Weitzman, Elizabeth, Frozen, Movie Review). I’m sorry…what? A “hissable villain!” Why would we create movies geared for kids where powerful villains are the enemy? These kids learn to hate the Evil Queen or Maleficent without truly understanding why these characters are seemingly inherently evil. The classic Disney movies provide no solutions to help cure these villains of their evil intentions. The prince and princess simple defeat their villains. However, Frozen has no specific villain. Hans is definitely a despicable character, but as a viewer, I can understand why he was so evil. He wanted to become King! He is ultimately defeated by Elsa and Anna’s realization that love thaws! No matter what evil comes about, their unwavering love for each other will win at all costs. In classic Disney princess movies, there is no such revelation. There is only romantic love defeating evil!

Other critics have stated that Frozen is just another Disney love story. On http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2294629/reviews,  a critic under the username rford191 had a particularly interesting and astonishing review of Frozen. This reviewer said one con of Frozen was “plot idiocy…If fear is the enemy, why do you seclude/terrorize the princess with insecurities? How/why does “love” recall winter? Didn’t Elsa love her family all along? Wasn’t there “love” present all this time? There was zero explanation for how this worked. Just “love”” (rford191, “An Astonishing Disappointment” IMDb Reviews and Ratings for Frozen). This critic may be right to some extent, but, until the end of Frozen, there was never a direct declaration of love or any act displaying sisterly love. Anna, despite her sister’s neglect, sacrificed herself. This act of pure love cannot be surpassed by anything else. The ultimate declaration of love is putting someone else’s life ahead of your own; sacrifice. In the video clip that I added, Anna clearly chose to save her sister over herself by running away from Kristoff to stop Hans’s sword. Additionally, Anna’s growth as a character is crucial to the plot. Her flaws are transformed into bravery. She overcomes her past with her sister’s neglect and the loss of her parents to realize what she truly wants and who she wants to be with. She discovers who the important people in life are and who she can trust and count on. Anna does have many weaknesses. She is tricked and deceived because of her willingness and hopefulness in the world of love. She is the only Disney character who has these prevalent insecurities. Anna is not perfect, which separates her from all the idolized princesses of previous movies. Ultimately, she overcomes these imperfections through courage and sisterly love. The love she feels for her sister was always there, but she needed to be brave in order to save Elsa (thus displaying her love). Love, a warm feeling, is ultimately what recalls the eternal winter. This is a slightly abstract idea, but that’s just Disney! It’s the underlying messages sent by the presence of warmth and sisterly love that are important in differentiating Frozen from previous Disney princess movies.

Many critics have claimed that Anna is just another princess who falls in love and lives happily ever after. I will admit that part of that statement is true. She finds love with Kristoff, and we are expected to believe that they will live happily ever after. However, she doesn’t end up with the prince, the first boy she meets! Kristoff, the ice man, is from a different world.

He comes from no wealth or power, and she actually takes the time to get to know him. She fell in love over a period of time rather than just instantly! This also distances her from almost every other Disney princess who falls in love with the prince who saves her. Additionally, Kristoff doesn’t save Ana! She actually saves herself her willingness to protect her sister. It is important to note that Anna is the hero of her own story. This is the first time the princess has ever been the hero in any Disney princess movie! Anna overcomes her previous family issues, her internal struggles, and her obstacles with love in order to save Elsa and help recall the eternal winter.

Do you see it now? Frozen has provided us with a deviation from the never-ending stream of perfect princesses and princes riding off into the sunset. We have struggles of love, power, and trickery! The main character is flawed, but she surmounts her imperfections in order to survive. Frozen’s value of sisterly love in order to stop evil differs from previous classics in which romantic love is the ultimate goal.

These plot twists are new for Disney. They have thrown the cookie-cutter model out the window, thus proving why this movie was so successful. Everything about this movie was unexpected from Hans’s duplicity to how sisterly love saves Anna. It provides the viewers with a new take on love, deception, and family! Disney has diverged from its previous mold of romantic love, idolized princesses, and heroic princes.

To finally solidify all of my points, the break between Frozen and classic Disney movies are a perfect example of distinction within a similar realm of culture. Disney has been producing these princess movies for decades, but “for the first time in forever” they have provided a counterculture. This counterculture outright rejects the uniformity of mass produced culture. Adorno is a critic of cultural theory, and he believes that when culture is mass-produced (for example, Disney movies are mass produced) it is in danger of becoming the same. Adorno’s word of choice (“sameness”) is a very close-minded view of culture and is a very ambiguous description. I have spent this essay explaining to you the visible break between classic Disney princess movies and Frozen. This division is clearly not “sameness.” It is a totally different new realm of culture that has stemmed from a mass produced system. Adorno claims that despite appearing different, culture all lands in the same place. To counter Adorno’s view on the sameness of mass produced culture, Frozen is the perfect break from previous Disney movies by exemplifying sisterly love, strong female characters who overcome their flaws, and women becoming the unexpected heroines of their own stories.

Images from Google, and Video clips from Youtube.

A fragile, gentle princess cries endlessly for help from a distance in hope that someone will save her from the villain keeping her hostage. News then travels to the princess’ hometown informing residents that she’s been caught; and as they get ready to attack the villain head-on, in swoops a robust, tall prince to save the day. Through clever tact and superhuman strength, the prince rescues the princess and wins her love. They get married and live happily ever after.

This simplistic mold has been the primary archetypal plot for Disney animated films since the debut of Snow White in 1937. Disney “princess films” have always followed the same model: a beautiful, yet helpless princess saved by the manly, chiseled-face prince. Children and adults alike have seen this classic plot repeated through countless movies such as Snow White and Cinderella. But are audience members aware of the model’s effect and relayed message? It’s seemingly obvious that these films emphasize gender norms and traditional patriarchal beliefs, and, although Disney has recently drawn female main characters as autonomous and strong, in films such as Tangled and Frozen, the stereotypes seen in the classics remain concealed in other forms. And if we know how these movies carry out their plots, why do we keep watching them?

Though it all began with Snow White and Cinderella, the latent sexism and hegemonic masculinity in the company’s films were all-encompassing in Beauty and the Beast (Disney’s fifth princess film). The male main character in this film is a man turned beast, and the destined princess lived to care for her father in a town where she is expected to aspire to marriage. Aside from the beast, Disney also presents us to the male figure Gaston, an egotistical hunter who’s in love with Belle, the “housewife” turned princess. And despite his goal to win her love, Gaston assumes that he already has her heart for there is no other man like him in town.    

Through characters like Gaston, Beauty and the Beast slaps you in the face with its almost overwhelming display of hegemonic masculinity. Gaston’s character is sketched to ensure that he seems as “manly” as possible–his biceps are huge, his shirt is stretched by his immense muscles, and he has sharp, chiseled facial features that compliment his menacing and patronizing smirk, the constant reminder to others of his ultimate superiority. Furthermore, Disney artists made sure Gatson would appear significantly larger than the other characters in the film. Simply put, everything about Gaston says, “I’ll always be better than you.” As if his physical appearance was not enough to emphasize his superiority and intimidating influence in the small town, Disney gives Gaston an entire musical number in which the villagers around him gleefully sing, “No one’s slick as Gaston. No one’s quick as Gaston. No one’s neck’s as incredibly thick as Gaston. For there’s no man in town half as manly. Perfect, a pure paragon. You can ask any Tom, Dick or Stanley. And they’ll tell you whose team they’d prefer to be on” (Beauty and the Beast). Glorification for his strength and looks is a common occurrence. Disney even gives him, what seems like, superhuman strength. In one scene he bullies the short, ugly men in a bar to remind both the townsmen and the audience that he is a force to be reckoned with. Further still, in this same scene, background women admire Gaston and deem him attractive. Finally, having already demonstrated narcissism and an enormous ego in the tavern scene, Gaston also proves to be sexist, displaying the traditional belief that women should consider neither autonomy nor education important. His attitudes are made clear when he throws Belle’s book to the mud,  and tells her to focus on the more significant things in life, such as himself. If nothing else, Gaston performs one role perfectly with his exaggerated physical strength, narcissism, aggression, impulsivity, and brash sexism –the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity.

The large inability to sight the subtle hyper-masculine qualities present in these types of characters has grown out of their normalization in both film and society. The details are clouded by other cinematographic aspects of the film, especially so in animated media — where bright colors and voices divert attention away from the underlying parallels between the values of the movie and of actual society. This is where Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is unique. The movie is their first real instance where the role of the male “hero” is called into question, and where Disney provides us with not just two views of what it means to be a man, but two severely different views, forcing his audience to identify the archetype and its complexities right alongside an alternative male ideal and model.

Another especially important element distinguishing Beauty and the Beast from its surrounding films is the form taken by the main male character and eventual hero: that of a Beast. When comparing this film to its sister films, it takes no expert to notice that the princes and saviors of the other stories are almost always human. Not only that, but those heros are presented as near “perfect” males, with characteristics that mirror Gaston’s — tall, handsome, and distinctly attractive to the point of standing out from the rest of the characters in the film. Disney, however, introduces us to a new type of hero in this film, a Beast — a former human who is unable to love. A hero with a flaw so grave, it masks his role as hero. Beast’s animalistic transformation, stripping him of his human form, was the result of a witch’s curse who deemed the former prince incapable of expressing and feeling compassion, thus unworthy of being human. Disney artists made sure to strip him of human-like characteristics, and estrange the Beast with a massive stature, making him the biggest character in the movie, not to mention the scariest. Disney didn’t even make Beast into a specific animal, but a conglomerate of creatures, commonly known as a chimera — a Greek mythological being with the head of a buffalo, the body of a bear, the jaws and mane of a lion, and the legs and tail of a wolf. Consequently, Beast’s form makes his former self-unrecognizable, and makes anyone who sees him too afraid to try and comprehend his situation or person. This resulting alienation and loss of former status as a prince ultimately leave Beast alone to develop great insecurities in his ability to be humane and empathetic.

Furious encounter between Beast and Belle.

Beast lamenting about the curse placed upon him

Beast, however, eventually has to face and conquer his inner conflict : to overcome his shame over his monstrosity and show empathy towards others despite the risk of being misunderstood, feared, and rejected; After all, part of the curse is that Beast becomes the object of the very attitudes that once spurred him to act cruelly towards others when he was human. In order to reclaim his humanity, Beast must learn compassion, and leave behind his learned indifference to human emotion  from his days  as a prince. Because of his upbringing,  Beast’s  cold and inconsiderate personality keeps him from  understanding his own capability to express love and hospitality. These new and deeply-rooted sources of shame for Beast, though, are the very elements that make his transformation into a better man all the more admirable and meaningful. Through observing and adopting Belle’s compassion and accepting his own emotional vulnerability, Beast eventually discovers his capability to feel empathy and in effect reclaims his humanity. Disney’s rewarding of this new and improved image of Beast with his former human form suggest a better and improved image of man.

In danger, Belle is saved by Beast.

After finally learning to emphasize and love, Beast returns back to his former, human self.

So what does Beauty and the Beast have to do with anything? If you think about all the sexism and the poor portrayal of female characters and the exaggerated portrayal of men in the movie, it seems odd Disney would want kids to be entertained by it. In other words, to restate the question presented in the beginning of this essay: why keep watching? It’s blatantly obvious that Disney has done a lot over the years to continually emphasize the dominance men have over women, and we have seen this since 1931. They, however, have only mirrored the social values of each era. Aside from being blinded by the slight variations in character and plot of each movie, we are pre-exposed to a society that continues to uphold values of sexism and masculinity. So it’s no surprise that we are so used to seeing skewed portrayals and assignment of labels based on social expectations and norms, especially in the Disney animated films of today.

Not only the adults, but the children who continue watching these movies know about the ongoing sexism that’s omnipresent in the world we live in. Though they don’t go around talking about it or fully understanding it, they do comprehend that they have to act and live a certain way depending on their gender. Even before birth, children are expected to accept predetermined identities that follow them throughout their lives and shape their daily interactions and behaviors. Boys specifically are expected to be strong and self-reliant, as communicated by “tough” characters in film and other media. They do not question where this stereotype originated nor do they question if it’s right. After all, children  look up to their elders and imitate their exact moves in order to feel a sense of belonging, and eventually a sense of “maturity.” For girls, these Disney films reinforce to their audiences the importance of physical appearance and the belief that a girl’s worth is determined by the degree to which she is thin, gentle, and beautiful. And the female characters in these movies hardly get active roles, as the films enforce traditional and sexist images of women limited to skills of housekeeping and subsequently having no business in performing any strenuous work that could ruin their appearance.

These beliefs on what women and men should do are extremely relevant examples of ideologies – beliefs that, although usually unquestioned, are widely accepted, spread, and viewed as legitimate. They are illusions created by social structures to define certain roles in society. These ideologies unite people through their misinterpretation of the real world, giving them a false sense of security and enabling them to develop a “relationship” with the real world. The real problem though is not the illusion, but its omnipresence and enslavement of those in its grasp; there’s no escaping the influence of ideology, especially when supported and hyped by media we are exposed to on the daily. Our dependence on communication with one another traps us all in a bubble that repeatedly and constantly reinforces the implementation of ideologies, and as these beliefs change and evolve, so do our perceptions of “reality.”

When looking at the movie through a critical standpoint, Beauty and the Beast demonstrates how society has become desensitized to gender-related stereotypes. Thus, the films’ audiences are inherently influenced by these messages and consequently spurred to act the way their gender is presented on screen. Because children tend to naively imitate what they see without question, their social lives are forever governed by these ideologies enforced upon them in media. With no history to back the ideals and without having a creator, audiences -composed of both children and adults- mindlessly follow these beliefs, allowing media to govern their lives by  ideologies, simple claims and beliefs unsupported by history and unquestioned with respect to their creators.

Image from http://www.ebay.com/bhp/lion-king-poster

Disney children’s movies epitomize the embedded ideology that drives all forms of entertainment. All Disney movies have a central message that they’re trying to teach young children about being “good” citizens. As we get older and our entertainment becomes more “complex” the ideology presented doesn’t change, but just continues to reinforce the ideas instilled in us since childhood, but with a more complicated façade. The core messages of most movies, television shows, and songs are the same regardless of their intended audience. The audience only determines whether it’s packaged as rap or pop, cartoon or real life, modern or conservative, but the underlying messages never change. Entertainment functions as a Xanax to help stave off the depression that takes root when you begin to realize how powerless you are as an individual. We, as people, are inherently greedy and self interested, but somehow we manage to coexist and function in an ordered, hierarchical society where a lot of our rules aren’t actually written law just unspoken expectations. How do we convince people to go against their instincts and buy into a society where they may or may not be prioritized? The answer lies in our social conditioning that occurs from the moment our parents plop us in front of a television to watch a Disney movie (that we’ll eventually see at least 20 times) to keep us from annoying them. Everyday we are assaulted with ideology taking on countless forms and molding us into people that ultimately are willing to play the role that society deems is crucial for the system to keep functioning. The Lion King, a popular, benign children’s movie, is the perfect example of entertainment shaping how we look at our role in the world from an early age.

The Lion King on the surface functions as an excellent way to keep the kids I’m babysitting occupied, but if we look at it a little bit deeper it functions as a teaching tool for what is right and what is wrong or more specifically what society deems is right and wrong. And if we look even deeper into this children’s movie, the message is clear that every person (or in this case animal) has a specified role that is unavoidable and necessary for the good to win out. The plot is centered on Simba running away from his home because he thinks that his community will ostracize him for his father’s death, but essentially he is running away from his duty to rule as king. Simba ends up reluctantly returning to his home years later after he realizes he can’t shirk his responsibility to the other member’s of his pride. The movie emphasizes his responsibility to everyone else, and how it’s crucial not to be selfish. When he finally comes back, prosperity returns to the land and the movie ends just how it began with the birth of a new lion symbolizing the unavoidable, cyclical nature of life and death. This theme of the hero trying to deny his destiny and then realizing that it’s his duty to fulfill what he was born to do is so commonplace it’s on the verge of boring (i.e. Terminator 3). And to drive home the point the good guys always have to win because that’s how it is in real life. This dominant ideology that your role in life is predestined and no matter how hard you work it won’t change your situation leads people to be more accepting of social mobility barriers and lead life in an unquestioning attitude.

As someone who has recently joined Air force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC), which overtly emphasizes complete standardization and compliance with your chain of command, it has become apparent how similar our military training is with the social conditioning we’ve been receiving all of our lives. One of the Air Force core values is service before self, which I’ve had to stand at attention and repeat at least 50 times in my short six weeks with the program, and although I’m not claiming that watching Disney movies is that intense, their function is essentially the same. The Lion King makes the same assertion about service before self in the scene where Nala and Simba reunite. During this scene Nala and Simba argue about his responsibility to well-being of the other creatures inhabiting the Pride Land. The movie makes it clear that “right” choice for Simba is to return in the interest of putting other people’s needs at the forefront of his responsibilities. Now if we look for this ideology in other areas of our lives, it’s scary how often the same message is repeated to us. At school what we learn both academically and socially is centered on praising the concept of service before self. Good behavior is civic-minded behavior that favors the whole over the individual. This is apparent because even the know-it-alls, who may meet every standard academically, but are looked down upon collectively because they’re viewed as selfish. At Church the idea of being a good citizen is taken to the extreme, as it is considered godly to completely put others above yourself and following the life set out in front of you without challenge. The Church even offers you the prize of paradise in the afterlife for your acceptance of the belief that putting other people first makes you a better person. And while the concept of looking out for your common man and helping other people inherently is a good thing and seems like a necessary ideology to instill in a population of people trying to live and work together, it is just one small part of a larger message being forced on us.

On one side we can look at The Lion King as a way to push us to be better community members, on the other we can look at it as sacrificing our excellence, creativity, and individuality for comfortable mediocrity. I know I sound like a terrible person saying this, but if we truly want to produce an excellent culture should we really put others before ourselves, is it really a necessary part of being a member of a community or is it a way to keep the social hierarchy intact? When does be a good person and help others turn into be the person we want you to be and do what you’re told to do. I have a hard time being okay with finding similarities between military training, which largely centers on making the cadets all the same and being comfortable with following your chain of command, and social shaping. It makes sense that in order to function cohesively in a large unit rapidly and efficiently that not everyone can be entitled to think about their own safety in the face of a threat larger than the individual, but what enemy is society mobilizing us against? What threat is so great that we need to sacrifice our individuality for the greater good? In my opinion, the “threat” we’re guarding, as a society, so preciously against is change. There’s nothing that we fear more than the unknown and ideological reinforcements keep the status quo and the different classes sated about their position in society.

The Lion King emphasizes the necessity for the keeping of the status quo at every turn, but perhaps the most pointed example of this ideology is in the focus on the circle of life. The “Circle of Life” lyrics explicitly state that we’re all on the same conveyer belt from the moment we’re born until the moment we die. One chorus of the song reads:

“Keeps great and small on the endless round

It’s the circle of life

And it moves us all

Through despair and hope

Through faith and love

Till we find our place

On the path unwinding

In the circle

The circle of life”

The ideology behind this song supports the belief that we’re not all equal, and subtly suggests to the viewer that inequality is normal. If we see this idea enough and from an early age, it becomes commonplace and slowly alters our perception of what is “fair”. This constructed version of fairness reduces us to sheep because it blinds us from recognizing the agency we possess over how the system is constructed, and leads us to unknowingly replicate the culture that created this ideology in the first place.   So do we stop watching The Lion King? As it is my favorite movie, I’d vote no. This ideology is so embedded in who we are already, that if we even attempt to arm ourselves against all that we consume we’d be fighting a losing battle. Not only is it everywhere, in everything from art to music to television shows, the ideology is embedded in every individual with very few exceptions for those who truly isolate themselves from society as a whole.

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While my commentary may read as slightly pessimistic and perhaps verging on paranoid, I truly believe that The Lion King epitomizes the manipulation of people’s perception that occurs in our culture. But while some lack of control over our belief systems, may just be a necessary evil in order to coexist with other people, modern culture seems to have gone too far in its attempt to shape the people that we are. Ultimately, we as individuals are insignificantly apart of the play the world is putting on and have no power to change something so embedded in our culture, that I say sit back, grab some popcorn, switch on The Lion King, and “Hakuna Matata”!