This is a suggestion from PureCreativity and it gives me an excuse to talk about The Hunchback of Notre Dame which has one of my favorite villains in it, Judge Claude Frollo. Frollo is of the best villains to come out of Disney in my opinion. So without anymore wait, here is the first installment of:
The Logical Way to Look at Disney Villains
Disclaimer: I own nothing!
Chapter One: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
What can one say about Frollo? He is in his sixties from the looks of it, he might have a child fetish, he is blind to his own bias, and is even a murderer. His story within this story starts when he kills a gypsy carrying a deformed child on the steps of Notre Dame. He looks at the deformed child and thinks that the child is a monster. This whole sequence of events shows his blind bias and his murderous tendencies. He is stopped by a priest and some creepy statues that are adorning Notre Dame just as he is about the kill the child. The creepy statues already make the suggestion that Notre Dame its self is alive. Frollo is told that if he wants to repent for what he has done, that he should raise the child instead of killing it. Frollo agrees to it with the condition that the child stays in the bell tower of Notre Dame. That child grows up to be a bell ringer with a really good personality while Frollo never changes. He lies to the child saying that he is a monster and that his mother left him but he also educates the child well. While doing this, Frollo continues to hunt gypsies and try to kill them.
Frollo goes to see the fest of fools when he sees the child out of the tower. The child becomes the king of fools for his deformity while Frollo is upset that he is out of the tower. A guard does a stupid thing and gets the otherwise kind crowd rallied up in a lets tie him up and throw produce at him for fun and Frollo does nothing, again showing his character. A gypsy comes to the king of fools aid and the crowd stops throwing and roping. Frollo is yelling at her to stop freeing the deformed child when she makes a chant about justice. This chant gets Frollo to call the guard to have her arrested and she uses parlor tricks to defeat them. Frollo assumes this is actual witch craft and wants her arrested even more. He looks for her and finds her in the church with the captain of the guard. The captain claims that she had claimed sanctuary. Historically when sanctuary is called within a church, no enforcer of the law can arrest or charge the person who called it with anything. The way the people acted shows that the people in Paris around the time period this is happening are figuratively sheep. The child and Frollos' actions during the fest of fools, back up the personalities that had already been established. Esmeralda, or Emeralda as she is named in the book, is established to everybody else other then the caption of the guard to be clever.
Frollo makes some last words to her before he leaves in a way that makes the watchers of this movie thing that he is a rapist who rapes people who would have been children when he was thirty. This shows his rapist was well as child rapist tendencies right there. It is a very unique rape face and style to show it. He goes on to sing about how she should love him or die to further back up his rape tendencies and the guards come busting in saying that she is gone. He freaks out and tries to burn down Paris to find her, even going as far as to arrest and kill people. The captain of the guard is deemed a trader as he refuses to kill innocents and is sentenced to die. He escapes do to Esmeraldas help.
Frollo goes back to the church realizing that the child he raised helped her escape. Frollo tells the child that he knows where the gypsies are and will attack at dawn. Frollo uses this as a way for the child to lead him to the court of miracles. Frollo thanks the child in his own strange twisted way that leaves the child felling guilty then has the child chained up to the bell tower. Frollo goes to burn Esmeralda but offers her life if she chose to love him. To this, Esmeralda spits in Frollos face. This tells the viewers that she would rather die burn then love him without actually saying it. Frollo covers this up by saying she refuses to repent for her witch craft. Frollo starts to burn her but is saved by the child who is strong enough to break iron chains apparently. The child beings her back up to the bell tower and claims sanctuary for Esmeralda. Frollo declares war on the church in order to kill both the child and Esmeralda. The child and his stone friends know as gargoyles fight back to make sure Frollo does not get into the church. Frollo gets into the church anyway as the child thinks Esmeralda is dead. Frollo tries to stab the child in the back to kill him when the child stops him and disarms him. When Esmeralda wakes up, a chase seen happens that ends in a very literal interpretation of the biblical line Frollo used. This interpretation being Frollo being the one in smites, like the wicked, and falling into a literal fiery pit of molting melted iron below.
That is all there is to Frollos actual story as he is not in the book. The book tells a completely different story with little to no similarities to the way Disney tells it.
The story revolves around a woman named Emeralda who was taken away from her mother as a baby by gypsies. While this is a fact, the story starts out with her temporary husband slash play write putting on a bad play for gypsies at the fest of fools. This causes him to either die for the bad play or throw a gar to determine how long he is to be married to a gypsy lady. The gypsy lady happens to be Emeralda. Needless to say, it is a loveless marriage and she is trying to catch the eye of the captain of the guard who is promised to marry a noble lady. He does not really love the noble lady; he just wants her daddy's money from that marriage dowrie that I mentioned in one of the installments of the logical way to look at Disney princesses. He does not love Emeralda either, as he just attempts to use her for sex. Meanwhile, Emeraldas husband tries to make the temporary marriage work by basically treating her like a queen and even going as far as to try to save her and her pet goat when she is sentenced to be lynched. The act of lynching is hanging a person from a high place in order to kill that person. The priest and the hunch back are the ones who fall in love with her. The priest acts a bit like a cross between Frollo and the captain of the guards promised. When somebody is promised, it is an arranged selling of one's daughter for marriage for a dowrie, in this context. This practice is still done in India today. The hunch back has not changed in character at all when it comes to Disney and the books interpretations of him. He falls in love easily, what's to make Emeralda happy, and even goes as far as to bury himself a live in her grave so he can hug her corpus while dying of lack of air to breathe. The promised noble lady is the one that turned her in for witch craft. This was off the bases that the goat that Emeralda owned was more intelligent than the noble lady herself. Emeraldas mother is an old lady who hates all gypsies until she discovers her daughter is still alive and even has the other baby shoe to prove it. The shoe is an emerald color, giving Emeralda her name. Emeralda is the old ladies daughter and neither find out until it is too late. There is no real villain, but the story is scary and well written anyway.
That is practically the story, though it is out of order and leaving out a great many details that would make this set of installments go into rated M territory. It would be rated M for really twisted gruesome stuff that a Christian parent would complain to the government about their child reading. It is not like it is any worse then what the bible has to offer though and they let the children read that. I do not see the problem, but I do not want people yelling at me about it in reviews or the government calling me telling me to take it down.
Both the book and the Disney movie back up the philosophy that people are born with their own unique personality. The gargles are not realistic, but a lot of the story from both the book and the movie are realistic, though the Disney movie brings more fiction then the book. Sometimes a villain who was written to do and act in what would happen in real life, sometimes make the best fictional villains.
Life lesson of the day: The ignorant outweigh the intelligent. This goes hand in hand with the majority are sheep and a person is smart but people are stupid. This is a personal life lesson and other views and takes on this lesson are varied from person to person.
Next: Sleeping Beauty. Yes I am revisiting it for the villain.
