Disney Challenge Day 7 and 8

Sidekicks and Villains

Day #7: Favorite Sidekick

So many choices. So many classics. So much comic relief. Nearly impossible to narrow it down. So now it's a tie:

Choice #1: Tantor from Tarzan.
He's big. He's red. He's supportive...but he's just so anxious and comical that you can't help but just want to snuggle him. What other child is aware of piranhas and bacteria in the water? He's incredibly intelligent and his little child voice is just too darn cute for me to handle. Terk was a bit too obnoxious for me to fully love, but Tantor was perfection.


Choice #2: Grumpy from Snow White

Maybe it's because my family insists that I'm Grumpy and therefore buys me all Grumpy merchandise, but I think he's fantastic! He's determined to have a bad time regardless of anything that happens to him. Snow tries her very best to get him to soften and be happier, but he is so gosh darn stubborn.

I have a canvas bag with Grumpy on it that, I discovered last summer, was the perfect size to take to the river when I went swimming after classes (woot woot college life!). It fit my water bottle, towel, sunscreen, and assorted snacks without becoming too big and bulky. There was one week last spring where we went swimming 5 days in a row. When there's no AC and you're stuck in rural Idaho with minimal amounts of homework, you go swimming a lot.

But anyways, there was one day that I was hastily packing my things and I turned to my roommate frantically: "Hey have you seen my Grumpy bag?"

My dear guyfriend (name withheld to protect his dignity) was sitting right there and got the strangest look on his face,  "Ohhhhhhhhhhh, I get it. Say no more, Syd. I understand".

My roommate and I exchanged looks. We weren't talking in code (though to be fair, we spoke in code quite frequently around him) and had no idea what he was talking about.

"Well...you know... your grumpy bag. Don't worry, I have sisters. I get it. Your monthly circumstances come with being a girl. Don't feel embarrassed," he said, giving me a hug in some weird attempt so I wouldn't feel awkward.

At this point, I busted into laughter and had to explain that my bag literally just had Grumpy the dwarf on it and was not my secret codename for a bag that stored my tampons. He was blushing pretty hardcore every time we brought it up for the rest of the day.

Day #8: Favorite Villain

I think I've mentioned this before, but I feel like Tangled was a bit overrated. This might be because I had to wait until it came out on DVD before I saw it for the first time so after months and months of literally everyone I knew ranting and raving about its excellence...it didn't live up to the hype.

Beautifully yet subtly manipulative

Don't get me wrong: I'm not a hater by any means. I adore it. But I'm not as diehard as some of my friends are. The one character above all others that I loved (and I have a bit fatty crush on Flynn Ryder), was Mother Gothel.

Most villains are out and out evil with no redeeming qualities. Princess are good. Villains are bad. Black and white. Cut and dry. Having a mother figure turn out to be so dark and twisted presented a level of ambiguity that I enjoyed. Granted, I still don't think that the movie pursued that layer of storyline as well as they could have--but it is a children's movie and kids want to focus on Rapunzel cutting off her hair to save Eugene Fitzherbert (hats off to whichever writer came up with that doozy of a name!) rather than Rapunzel's moral dilemma about her pseudo-mom falling off a tower into a cloud of ash.

So even though the complexities weren't nearly as nuanced as I would have preferred, I enjoyed the fact that they were there. The stepmother in Cinderella doesn't have nearly as many complexities. I felt that the writers took that archetypal mold and refined it just even more so. Mother Gothel is every bit as manipulative and cruel as Cinderella's stepmother is, but she does it in such a sly way that Rapunzel still loves her. I believe that deep down, Mother Gothel really grew to love Rapunzel. Heck, she's so darn lovable you'd have to be heartless to not adore her just a little bit. We're shown that side of her when Mother Gothel agrees to travel three freakin' days or something to get shells to make paint for her daughter. How the heck you make paint out of some shells, I'll never understand--but she willingly made the journey anyways.

 Again, my nerdy side enjoys character development and complexities. I felt that Rapunzel went from 0--60 when she found out that she was the lost princess and that Mother Gothel had kidnapped her. There wasn't as much explanation or build-up to explain that anger. She had every right to be angry--she's a freakin' princess for crying out loud and she was reduced to spend her entire life stuck in a tower painting every surface she could find just to cure her boredom. But I felt like she went from "Mother knows best" to "Sucks that Mommy fell off a tower, but my boyfriend is here dying in my arms" a little too quickly for my liking.

 None of the other Disney princesses mourned the loss of their villains much, but they didn't have reason to. Gaston was a brute, the Queen had fed her stepdaughter a poisoned apple, Gaston had tried to have her thrown in an insane asylum with her dad, Jafar left her to suffocate to death inside of a humongous hourglass...etc. They had gone so far past the point of no return that I'd imagine there would be more relief than anything else upon their death. So while I appreciated Mother Gothel's demise, I felt like Rapunzel skimmed over it. I absolutely understand it though. Let's focus on the magic healing tears rather than mourning the loss of the woman who raised her. We miss out on those nuances of storytelling, but hey the movie is aimed at 4 year old girls so suck it up Sydney.