Blog Conclusion

As the semester comes to a conclusion, so will my writing class. It is now time to reflect back on what I have learned throughout the journey.

First, I learned that some villains are able to draw sympathy from the audience. This is one of the reasons why the villains of films tend to have a following just like the heroes (if not larger sometimes). This occurs a lot when the audience is able to relate to the villain. Almost everybody is able to relate to wanting status, wealth, and having so much jealousy that people will go to crazy conditions to get them. Although people in real life most likely will not murder, kidnap, or steal to get these desires, people are able to understand villains when they do just that. Take, for instance, Jafar from Aladdin (1992). Jafar has been stuck taking orders from the Sultan for years, and he is tired of having to follow orders from him. The audience is sympathetic because most of them would rather have the status and power of being sultan than holding Jafar’s position. As a result of this and Jafar’s cool sorcerer powers, Jafar has a large following of fans.

Next, I learned that there is not always one clear villain in every film. Often, the villains in films are simply the face of a larger, overarching theme of a movie. For example, in WALL-E (2008), AUTO is displayed as the villain of the film because he tries to keep everyone from returning back to Earth; however, AUTO is just following his programming that man made so that there would be no return. Earth was believed to be uninhabitable forever. In this film, AUTO is not truly the main villain, but man is. Man has made Earth unfit to live on through production and manufacturing. Man has become obese and relies on technology too heavily for every day functions. Man programmed AUTO not to allow the ship to return to Earth. AUTO is simply the face of man as a villain throughout this movie.

In this course, I learned that evil and villainy are not always associated with those portrayed as “bad guys.” Different groups of people often see characters throughout the film as evil. For example, feminists see the new wave of Disney princesses as villains. Although the princesses have more freedom, power, and have a stronger voice, the feminists see these as useless if the ultimate goal of the princess is to find love and get married, because the princesses lose all of the power they once had in order to become bound to their princes. The illustration of these characters as reliant on men causes the feminist leaders to see these princesses as villains.

Perhaps the most important message that I have taken from this course is the impact that villains and Disney can have on young children through developing assumptions in young minds that are able to be imprinted on. I have constantly talked about this in my posts throughout the semester, so I will not make you read all of that again.

All in all, I believe that I have gained much knowledge about evil and villainy throughout this course. As I have stated before, coming into this course, I had limited knowledge about Disney or any of their villains. Now, my knowledge of Disney improved as well as my understanding of evil.