ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Cruella de Ville wanted to turn her Dalmatian puppy into a fur coat.
But wait, maybe these Disney villains were just misunderstood? It is the premise of Walt Disney World’s new music show, and some people have wondered.
The live show “Disney Villain: Unfair Ever After” will debut on May 27th at Disney’s Hollywood Studios Park in Orlando, Florida. On the show, the three villains of the old-fashioned Disney film beg in front of the audience to be the most misunderstood villains of them.
“We wanted to tell a story that was a little different to what was told before. Which of these has been treated the most unfairly?” Mark Renflo, the show’s creative director, said in a promotional video.
A sympathetic light
That hook – the story type, not the captain – hurts some Disney observers the wrong way.
“They’re also known as Benjamin Murphy, a professor of philosophy and religion at Florida State University’s campus in Panama. “When the villains enjoy their evil, it’s funny and satisfying.”
Disney has precedents to put the villains in a sympathetic light, or at least explain how they became so evil. For example, the 2021 film Cruella presents the backstory of a dog-hate guy played by actor Emma Stone.
Other pop culture pulses have rethinked the villain. Perhaps it’s not as famous as theatrical music and film versions of “Wicked,” a reinterpretation of the evil witches of the Western character of “The Great Wizard of Oz.”
The success of Wicked’s blockbuster, based on the 1995 novel Wicked: The life and age of the evil witch of the West, caused a tendency to rethink villains in popular entertainment, Murphy said.
“Because of that tendency, the formula is repeated and repeated until it’s very predictable. I’ll bring the villain and make it sympathetic,” he said.
Emphasise acceptance
Fairy tales from centuries, where some Disney films are based historically, were intended to teach children lessons, whether they were not approaching a wolf (Little Red Riding Hood, three little pigs) or a strange old lady in the woods (Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel).
But they often turned people alienated by villains – older women, people of color, or of lower socioeconomic sizes, said Rebecca Lowe, assistant professor of children’s literature at Texas A&M University Commerce.
The trend to make villains more empathetic began in the late 1980s and 1990s as child media began. She said there was an overall cultural push to emphasize acceptance, and she had a desire to present the villain in a more complicated, less black and white way.
“The problem is, everyone was swinging around so violently at that message and we lost the villainous villain,” Lowe said. “There’s value in villains. There’s someone who just does evil. Sometimes there’s a reason, but sometimes it’s not. Just because there’s a reason doesn’t mean it denys harm.”
Whether it’s good to identify with a child with a villain is complicated. If that is what they are identifying, they could adopt the villain character, but later, some scholars believe it’s not a bad thing for children to empathize with characters that are often part of marginalized communities, Lowe said.
Also, Disney villains tend to appeal to adults more than children, and some members of the LGBTQ+ community have felt alienated in the past. They also thanked villain Campines, and some “Disney Princesses” are happy to graduate to “Evil Queen.”
Orlando resident Eric Paul, who has been making a year-round pass to Disney World for the past decade, hasn’t particularly liked the villains, but he understands why Disney wants to frame them in a more sympathetic light on the show dedicated to them.
“I know a friend who goes to Hollywood Studios to see activities mainly related to villains,” Paul said. “Maybe it’s because they feel that the villains are misunderstood and feel that they have relatives in the villains.”
