This shit.
So Hunchback is far and away my favorite movie from Disney’s Renaissance, and it always makes me so happy that yes, people seem to appreciate it, people seem to love it, but I’mma go into exactly WHY it’s my favorite, and WHY I think it’s so crucial, and WHY I think it should be required viewing for young boys specifically.
We all know that a huge bulk of the media we’ve grown up with consistently has that one frustrating message: Being the hero means you’ll get the girl. Many boys let this mentality bleed into reality. We have “nice guys,” who feel that their niceness entitles them to romance, when obviously that discredits a female’s personal choice. We all get this, we all know this, and a lot of us get that it’s a toxic message.
So check out our hero.
He’s an incredibly good person who isn’t conventionally attractive.
Check out our lady.
Super good person, conventionally attractive.
The movie so deliberately builds up Quasi’s hopes. There’s a whole fucking song about it.
But Esmeralda, who is her own person with her own motivations and preferences, chooses another man, who is also good and also attractive.
A lot of people criticize this aspect of the movie, the fact that Quasi doesn’t get the girl BECAUSE of his appearance. But my argument? This is the best damn message a movie could ever send.
Because when things get dicey, when Esmeralda’s life in in danger, when Quasi would be putting his own life on the line, he knows that romance is no longer within the realm of possibility. He knows he won’t be “getting the girl.” He knows this, and he allows himself a moment of bitterness, he risks falling prey to the “nice guy” trope, and he almost succumbs.
“She already has her knight in shining armor, and it’s not me.”
BUT THEN HE DOES THE RIGHT THING.
He has NO ulterior motive for saving her life. NO ulterior motive for opposing the man who raised him. And he doesn’t know that he’ll get any reward, he knows he could straight up get killed for his actions, and yet he still acts.
And there’s no bitterness. There’s still so, so much love between him and Esmeralda, pure awesome platonic love, and love between him and Phoebus, and just fucking love all around, it’s amazing.
I’ve heard so many people express distaste at Quasi not ending up with Esmerelda. Like he was cheated out of some kind of reward. But have they watched the ending?
Does that look like a man cheated of his reward? Does he look like he “lost” to Phoebus? No dude, that’s a man who has everything he ever wanted, and that’s also a man who didn’t “get the girl.”
If that’s not an essential message for young boys to hear, I don’t know what is.
Chibi: E Woo - Miiverse is a service that lets you communicate with other players from around the world. It is accessible via Wii U and systems in the Nintendo 3DS family.
i wish real life had savestates
Storm clouds are grey
we joke about procrastination but nothing is worse than the nauseating feeling of having every intention of doing something but physically not being capable of doing it and then feeling like you want to throw up because the deadline is just getting closer and closer.
whenever i see a baby in public i wish i were like a powerful faerie god mother character who could give the baby a gift like “you’ll never get a cold” or “math will always make sense to you” or something like bein’ great with string instruments but I don’t have any powers that I know of but it doesn’t stop me from trying so every time I see a baby in public I tell the adult with it “what a beautiful baby” and it makes them smile and then I pretend I can take the goodness of their smile and I look at the baby and I think very hard “you will have a good life, even if it’s hard, you will end up happy” and I’m just hopin’ the magic kicks in at some point
there’s a ton of shit you can get in life if you’re willing to submit yourself to the mortifying horror of asking for it.
a fourth fist saying armor class
petition to ban “slideshow” as an article format on the internet
this was a coded transmission concealing information about the positions of american nuclear submarines
Stuff I like that I reblog, and stuff that I post .... Luke
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