What I Learned in Disney School Is

I have always rooted for the "bad guys." I was Lady Macbeth's number one fan in English class. I watch Batman movies just for the Joker. I thought that the Avengers, an entire series based on super heroes, would be the lamest thing ever. However, I never rooted for Disney villains. Somehow, I separated Lady Macbeth from Lady Tremaine. Disney villains were evil, they had black hearts and bad hair dos, but the other "bad guys" they just made some mistakes, they were just understood.



I think what I learned about evil is that if we look to Disney to teach children the differences between good and evil it'll fail every time. Disney movies are barely an hour and thirty minutes long, targeted at children from ages 2 to 22. It's kind of hard to teach kids who can't walk down the street without being distracted by a pretty rock anything besides "men with bushy mustaches are bad" and "bad ladies look different from pretty princesses." But if we're looking to teach young children villainy in one movie, we're going to fail every time too. Mostly because we’re still defining it ourselves.



One of the hardest questions anyone has ever asked me is “What does bad mean?” It was my three-year-old sister. I said that it’s when you do something wrong to somebody else. I think that’s a pretty good definition when you’re talking to someone who wants to eat grape jelly and goldfish crackers for breakfast. But my definition of evil changes all the time, it comes with all these conditions and caveats; there are blank spaces because I haven’t finished defining it yet. And I think we have to understand that when we point fingers at Disney, Pixar, capitalism, or parents. We have to remember that the Imagineers aren’t the only people on this planet who write a child’s definition of evil. They’re just going to give them a template for it, a rough draft if you will, but that little mind is going to erase somethings, cross some parts out, and write new ones as long as they live.



So in Writing 101-74 Decoding Disney I learned that evil is a whole lot more complex than I thought it was, and simple words that I used to use to describe it like “intent” and “wrong” are not enough. It may have something to do with what we think evil looks like, or maybe there’s just certain faces we’ve been conditioned to associate with the word. It may have something to do with someone’s backstory, character, intent or maybe we should just stick to basing it off of your actions.

           

I’m going to keep rooting for the bad guys, and I’m going to keep picking on the good guys. I’m going to keep writing and rewriting my definition of evil, and I’m going to help my little sister redefine hers. She knows that all vampires aren’t bad, because she watched Hotel Transylvania. She knows that witches can do good things, she was one for Halloween. She can’t seem to figure out “Why are bad guys bad?” And so, I guess that’s what I’ll try to answer next.