The Hunchback of Mamma Mia! · 7:54am Nov 2nd, 2015
Yesterday, I re-watched The Hunchback of Notre Dame, for the first time in... what, twenty years? Almost twenty years, yeah. We went to see the movie in the cinema when it was released, in 1996, and I'd never seen it again since then.
There's actually a rather funny anecdote that led me to re-watching the movie. In The Daily Unlife, in one of the later chapters, I wrote a song built on the melody of Aladdin's "Arabian Nights". This led me to notice, once again, that the soundtrack version of that song has some difference compared to the actual movie version. Namely, this line was changed:
Oh I come from a land, from a far away place
Where the caravan camels roam
Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face
It's barbaric, but hey, it's home!
So, somewhere on youtube, someone commented on "how offensive" that line was, and a little discussion got going on why it was "offensive". To which came the obvious reply: it was a less-than-flattering middle-eastern stereotype. Now, then, during that discussion, someone said that, yes, it was indeed offensive, because «In stories taking place in Western Europe, they didn't say that "they will burn you if you're a Jew or a redhead".»
Well now. At that point, I thought it was my duty to remind that gentleperson that there was a Disney movie that was all about burning a Gypsy at a stake.
Sorry about the image quality; I just googled the pics.
As I said, I'd never seen The Hunchback of Notre Dame again since 1996. Usually, this is just because of a lack of opportunity, and I recently picked up "Oliver & Company" again, which I vaguely remember absolutely loving as a kid, and I immensely enjoyed watching it again. But, with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, there was another little reason.
I distinctly remember not liking it.
Now, since then, I've heard Frollo lauded as being one of Disney's best villains, and I've seen "Hellfire" on youtube a couple of times, but back then, I didn't get it. It didn't "click". And now I've seen the whole movie again, I realize all too well why it didn't click.
So, let's talk about love.
Love is a very universal concept. Anyone who either isn't a psychopath, or didn't have a horrible, horrible childhood, knows what it means. Affection, the instinct to protect those dear to you, yadda yadda. A billion poets have wasted fucktons of paper, ink, bytes and, face it, air, yakking on about love, so I won't add anything more to that. Point is, even if it's about this mysterious one-to-one love so often shown in such stories, kids get that. Even kids can imagine more or less what that means.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, neither the original nor the Disney movie adaptation, is about love. At all.
Can you feel the love tonight? Yeah, me neither.
It's about lust, and for prepubescent twelve-year old me, that was a decidedly hard concept to grasp. Sure, in Aladdin, Jafar lusted after Jasmine, but that was different; that was about power and greed. Jafar just wanted everything, and the girl was simply a logical part of that. And don't forget, in Aladdin, the point was never about her body; he wanted her mind. He wanted her to fall in love with her, and even eleven-year-old me could appreciate the wonderful Chekhov's Gun that was laid out for that purpose earlier in the movie. But this movie? This villain driven to madness by lust? Nope. Didn't click.
So, that was the past. 1996. Now, let me tell you about my thoughts when re-watching the movie.
The first thing I noticed when re-watching it was the absolutely disproportional number of groin attacks. Any slightly comical scene involving chases, especially in the Festival of Fools, is just stuffed with men clutching their babymakers. My goodness. It doesn't even discriminate between soldiers and performers; everybody equal, everybody nutpunched. Even Esmeralda tried to whack Phoebus in the junk, with a metal pole, and the guy was lucky he was in armour, because she actually got a hit in, and I can't imagine her pulling her punches. Wow, Disney Studios! But it didn't end there! Oh, no. It was only getting started. The movie is so filled with flirting, horning, lusting and very thinly veiled references to sex, that I can only come to one conclusion:
This was never a movie for kids.
This is not a song about love. This is a song about getting the girl. Subtle but vital difference.
That is the reason it didn't click, for me. I was too young for this movie. I'm actually surprised they ever got their G rating. Seriously. Dialogue like "Give her some slack, then reel her in. Then give her some slack, then reel her in. Then give her some slack..." That sound sexual to anyone else? 'S not just me? Right. Thought so. And then they drop any pretence of subtlety with a song which goes exactly "When she wants the ohh-la-la, she will come to you-la-la", and makes references to, of all things, croissants. Seriously. I'm not sure if these MPAA people were drunk or just laughing as hard as I was, but... yeah. Wow.
So... apparently this movie was a huge commercial success. You just have to wonder how many parents dragged their kids to the theater a second time just because they liked the movie 
There's a lot of Disney movies I've rewatched as an adult, and jokes I missed completely as a kid get me to bust up laughing now. I have a terrible mind.
Then there are the non-comedy references (Simba and Nala's "Can you feel the love tonight?" scene, anyone?) that I didn't realize exactly what they entailed until I rewatched them. Quite frankly, I'm amazed that Disney gets away with the ratings on any of their "kids" movies.
3515376
Well, that Lion King scene obviously had some come-hither bedroom eyes going on, yes, but it fit the whole romantic atmosphere at least.
Once, I wrote a nasty little cyberpunk story that had reasonable shock value, going on the responses I got. Where did it come from? A scene in Aladdin was where it came from. http://otherunicorn.deviantart.com/art/TFTS1-The-Hand-that-Offends-49501357
A few years ago, somebody tried to convince me and a few other people that there was a whole song in The Hunchback of Notre Dame about the villain lusting over Esmeralda while a nearly naked image of her danced in the fires.
We didn't believe him. He sure proved us wrong when he pulled up Hellfire on youtube...
I can't remember the last time I watched the whole movie because, like you, I remember not enjoying it, but the last time it was started while I was in the room was in a classroom full of 3 and 4 year olds. It seems the theme of that movie can go above the heads of adults as well because the other teachers didn't notice anything wrong...
3515416
Yeah, I think there must be a lot of that, even in older Disney movies. I remember when I was in college that a bunch of my dormmates and I went to the 2 dollar movie theatre in town to watch "The Jungle Book", mostly on whim. I remembered enjoying it when I saw it as a kid, in that generic way I enjoyed pretty much anything cartoon. And, for the most part, I think all of us were enjoying it again (excepting a few cringe worthy moments involving the monkeys and certain.. ahem.. stereotypes). Then we reached the end of the movie, where Mowgli sees the village girl and follows her home, in spite of the efforts of his animal friends to dissuade him.
I remember during that scene we all started to look at each other, our eyes widening in a slow but inevitable epiphany. We were realizing, as adults, all the ... subtext of that scene our prepubescent selves had quite thoroughly missed. It was a revelation, and I've never regarded Disney movies, old or new, with the same innocence since.
3515437
Hee. I gotta check that out
3515860
Man, showing this movie to kids should be a crime. I mean, seriously
3515889
Yeeah... I think I'm going to have to re-watch all Disney movies now, just to see what I missed