Top Disney Villain Songs

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 11 and the topic is “Favorite Villain Song”.

            Much like yesterday I was confronted by a strange issue when looking for the best villain song: that most are quite good and should be looked at as such.  While I still have a favorite there exists something else to talk about, the mix of emotions that go into each song.  What does a monster feel so passionate about to drive them to sing?  Ego wins in a landslide, but there are a few others. the nature of their powers, encouraging the darker impulses in others

Ego

            Let’s just go ahead and start out with the category that is most prevalent and exists on some level within all others.  Almost every Disney villain song is about how they are awesome on some level, but this one is explicitly about how awesome the bad guy is.

            “World’s Greatest Criminal Mind” from “The Great Mouse Detective” is a camp musical sing along that just lists accomplishments and sings the praises of the bad guy.  Chanting his name is the chorus.  Not to say there isn’t a better known example of this, Gaston has a song sung to him about his greatness just to cheer him up.  Ratigan’s song beats Gaston for one simple reason, he’s the one that starts the music, that is more egotistical.

What’s My Plan?

            The most obvious one of these has got to be “The Mob Song (Kill the Beast)” from “Beauty and the Beast”.  Up until this point in the story the character of Gaston has already had another villain song about how awesome he is, but at this point in the story he has not actually had any sort of plan or goal beyond schemes of having sex with Belle.

            This is when the story turns completely.  All at once Gaston is shown that there is a monster, that the target of his bravado has affection for the creature, and that can’t be allowed.  In an instant he fear mongers, gathers resources, and then takes off to murder what he doesn’t understand.  His whole plan and the thrust of the song is, “Kill the BEAST!”

My Methods

The key to a good villain is making them effective, by granting them legal, physical, or intellectual power you make them a potential threat.  Singing about the armies they have or how many eggs they eat to maintain their musculature makes sense for those who have mundane power, but for those who have magic at the core of their abilities you need something flashier.

“Friends on the Other Side” from “The Princess and the Frog” explains completely how Shadow Man manages to do what he does but also explains his desperation for getting his goals to come thru, he doesn’t want to upset his friends, they are the sources of his powers and his drive to attain his goal in one package.  His plan though, that is not revealed in a song, that comes later thru dialogue.

Tempting Others

“I’m not a bad person, I am doing what is necessary and right, it just looks evil because getting rid of you is part of doing right.”  I am sure lots of villains have this sort of justification rattling around their deluded minds, but there is a different way to go about things.

“Sure I am a greedy and traitorous individual, but I do it because it is fun, you should do it too.”  Offering help to someone’s worst impulses is a great way to be a bad guy, in the Christian mythos that is Satan’s whole thing.  So who is the Satan of the Disney mythos, Ursula who sings “Poor Unfortunate Souls” in “The Little Mermaid”.

She is taking a stupid child, offering her all the poorly thought out dreams and desires her stupid child mind could want, and all for a price she only has to pay if she fails.  And she won’t fail, says Ursula, she’s got body language.  It is not often you see a Disney villain encouraging a teenager to be explicitly sexual to get what she wants, but here you are.

Fire up the Troops

Sometimes it is not enough to talk up your own ego, or to demonize your enemies, sometimes you have to blend them to get your troops in line and go to war.  This element is present in “The Mob Song (Kill the Beast)” above.  But that effort is more about a clear statement of goals that are rushed, rather than getting existing resources together to finally institute a plan that has been in the works for a good long while.  I will admit, it is a fine distinction that most people wouldn’t bother to make.

“Be Prepared” from “The Lion King” is a call to arms.  I have the plan, I have the talent, and you all will give me the troops necessary to get and hold onto the prize I seek.  Yes, this is very much about Scar’s ego, but that is an element of getting people to follow your leadership, no one wants to follow a mastermind who is cringing and timid.  It is a blend.  A purer example of this (and worse song) would be “Savages” from “Pocahontas” but that is a step closer to “The Mob Song” in content and execution.

This is My Drama

Last type of villain song is the one that tells the audience about the inner turmoil of the bad guy.  Not all bad guys believe they are bad, and they often feel conflicted about what they are doing, especially when they are smart enough to see the contradictions between what they are saying and what they are doing.

“Hellfire” from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is the best villain song in this regard… Mostly because it’s the only one that does this.  Frollo wants to be a pious person, he wants to destroy those who he sees as impure, but he lusts for an “impure” woman from a culture he wishes to destroy.  He is conflicted.  Ursula isn’t, Gaston isn’t, Shadow Man isn’t.  Scar isn’t.  Ratigan isn’t.  Frollo is.  This is my favorite villain song, both because it sounds great and because of that distinction.

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry.  Did I miss talking about something?  Was there a song I left out?  Do you see any contradictions?

I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

My Favorite Disney Protagonist (Male)

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 4 and the topic is “Favorite Male Protagonist”.

            Unlike with the female protagonists I do not have any sort of hesitation in this selection.  While there are plenty of characters I enjoy one has been going thru a visitation by me (prior to my starting this blog series) in regards to an ongoing cultural shift.  My favorite (currently) is Basil of Baker Street from “The Great Mouse Detective”.

 

Ironically the deerstalker hat was not part of the original Sherlock stuff.
It was in a film adaptation and became part of the pop culture image.

The Plot

            After a little girl sees her father taken by a menacing figure with a peg leg she is taken by a kindly doctor to the home of a genius detective.  After displaying his penchant for being a dangerous and moody—but high functioning—psychopath, the detective is on the case.

            While chasing down clues and leads they are led to the menacing camp gay villain and arch-nemesis of the detective who is out to take over the nation thru the use of a steam punk doppelganger of the queen.  One death trap and a dramatic confrontation later the heroes return home to find the promise of future adventures—adventures Disney apparently will never deliver on.

My Thoughts

Basil is a mouse version of Sherlock Holmes, it is not hard to see and it is nothing to lament.  Sherlock is a character that has such appeal that he has been undergoing a renaissance since the 90’s because of the growth of forensic investigation in network television—thanks “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” for helping people to think crawling around on the floor with a flashlight looking for blood stains was fun.

And people say the Marvel Cinematic Universe is too expansive.
This thing doesn't even show all the NCIS stuff.

The growth of forensics is a positive cultural force in that it focuses on actual evidence and thinking rather than BS and racism, but bad in that a lot of these shows give the general public a stupidly high bar for forensic proof when they are on juries—guys you don’t need to match fibers or DNA for 99% of cases—and it has made criminals much more conscious of all the shit they leave behind, meaning they leave fewer clues to find—till they get home and post evidence of their robberies on facebook.

The bigger factor in Sherlock being such a monumental cultural force right now: the character moving into the public domain.  This greater access to for people to create their own stories with the character has allowed several programs and films starring him in many different interpretations.

As an aside, I would like to point out that Disney is the primary proponent of extending copyrights, wanting to keep characters created by Walt in the House of Mouse and part of their merchandising empire—ironic when you consider that modern interpretations of public domain material is unquestionably their most profitable creative outlet, and had they not been making copyrights tougher and tougher, Superman and Batman would be public domain now, meaning Disney could make movies out of their rival studios’ most profitable and iconic characters.

Back to Basil and Sherlock, characters based around intelligence hold great appeal to me.  And Basil is another instance of highly educated person using their exceptional intelligence to make the world a better place, but also finding it hard to connect with the people around him who just can’t see the world the same way he does.  Which makes them both aspirational and identifiable, it is the central appeal of these characters—some others would be Ender from “Ender’s Game” or the popular image of historical figures like Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin.

Basil encapsulates this perfectly and I am shocked that in this era of Sherlock, Disney has made no attempt to bring the character back in some way.  I think an animated series would be perfect, as we all know police procedurals lend themselves to episodic installments as the 10,000 episodes of “Law and Order” can attest.  Kids’ television is as sophisticated as it has ever been, and the steam punk elements of the story that tie into the mouse society mean that there can be plenty of adventures with cool set pieces, like was the case with “Rescue Rangers” back in the 90’s.

(They name check Holmes in the song.)

            To go back a second I would like to once again emphasize how much I appreciate the use of harder science in police work and that being an expectation.  Unfortunately, there was a trend in the 90’s to glorify BS in the form of Profilers.  People who used a lot of pop-psychology and guessing to find criminals thru a romanticized trick of, “seeing it thru the eyes of the killer,”—see the Hannibal Lecture series of films, “Profiler” TV show, and even “The X-Files” had Mulder working as a profiler prior to being assigned to the supernatural—now all that stupid crap is in the past as the Thrilling aspect of modern crime drama tends to be finding or manipulating evidence rather than bullshit head tricks (though those still show up to the sound of my eyes rolling).

Where once the psychological profile was the key to catching dangerous serial killers… Now it is actual science being used to gather evidence and seek convictions that are conclusive rather than being based on, “He fits the profile”.  This article by Malcolm Gladwell gives a better explanation for why that shit doesn’t work, and I want more people to take time to understand why it doesn’t work.

Conversely, the growth of forensics has resulted in wrongful convictions being thrown out and reversed, saving many innocent people from life in prison or a death sentence.  And maybe all of those factors are why I am looking on Basil so fondly.  He was my first exposure to this sort of thinking and as I see science vindicated in the popular sphere I look back more and more positively on “The Great Mouse Detective”.

 

A cartoonish and over the top version of what science is.
But, the IDEA of experimentation and seeking truth is still front and center.

The Beg for Attention

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry, I spent most of it talking about the character this character is based on, cultural trends, the nature of public domain characters, and how psychologically profiling people is stupid.  None of that is very Disney.

I picked this stuff for a 31-day blog challenge because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.  Or your opinion on the idea of the Public Domain.  Whatever.

 

Keep in mind that Public Domain has allowed for the creation of lots of new and interesting things.
You could rename this book "Public Domain Action Force".

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.