Disney movies are known for their kid-friendly plots and happy endings, but it's not all
rainbows, mermaids, and 24-hour engagements in the land of Cinderella and Snow White.
In fact, even those most starry-eyed of Disney classics contain a few references and even
outright confrontations of weirder, often darker realities.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame has some well-known issues with its extremely inconsistent tone,
but there's one thing you have to give it: "Hellfire" is undoubtedly one of the greatest
Disney villain songs of all time. In a tirade against Esmeralda, God, and his own sinful
urges, Frollo veers wildly between desperate desire, pitiful fear, and towering rage. He
reaches the height of his considerable cruelty in this sequence, with his pitiful lust curdling
into a twisted hatred for the innocent woman who caused it. Between the haunting lyrics
and the terrifyingly infernal animation, it is a stone-cold masterpiece of the animated
canon.
It's also somehow even creepier than you realized. The faceless priests chanting beneath Frollo's
impassioned pleas for mercy and vengeance, are, in fact, begging God for absolution.
The song opens with a selection from the Catholic Penitential Rite, and continues as Frollo
descends further into his figurative hell. The latter half of the song finds the monks
chanting "mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" repeatedly, directly translated into "through my fault,
through my most grievous fault." They end with a plea for mercy: Frollo begs for divine
kindness as the monks sing "Kyrie eleison," or, "Lord, have mercy." Unfortunately, he
has no such kindness in his heart for Esmeralda, demanding that she "taste the fires of Hell."
Pretty intense, especially for Disney.
Like most of the Disney classics, Aladdin is rooted in classic stories. The specific
source material here is, of course, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, a Middle Eastern folktale
brought to European audiences as part of One Thousand and One Nights. But that's the easy
stuff. What's a little more difficult to spot is that it's not the only influence brought
to bear on Disney's version of this ancient story.
No, we're not talking about the Genie and his many fourth wall shattering references
to pop culture.
"No substitutions, exchanges, or refunds.”
"Now I KNOW I'm dreaming."
We're talking about that other famous singing thief, the man who suffered for years, Jean
Valjean from Victor Hugo's immortal Les Misérables. If you're familiar with Les Miz, you already
know that Aladdin owes a lot to that lovable rogue, who was imprisoned for stealing a single
baguette. You don't have to read into things, though: it's explicitly acknowledged in the
quip he lets loose before launching into "One Jump Ahead":
"I'll have your head for a trophy, street rat!”
"All this for a loaf of bread?"
At least Aladdin didn't have to contend with Inspector Javert. Then again, he had plenty
of problems of his own.
Tangled is another entry in the Disney roster that serves as a gentler version of brutal
folktale, passed down through generations that did not know the comforts of penicillin
and electricity. Well, relatively gentle, anyway. The harsh lessons of the original
were softened a bit by the Mouse House, which is usually much more focused on entertainment
than they are on moral instruction. Every now and then, however, the folks at Disney
let a little bit of the blood 'n' guts brutality of the original fairy tales peek through before
they get to their happy ending. You can see examples in the way they've adapted other
stories, too. Don't forget about Maleficent summoning "all the powers of Hell" against
Prince Phillip in Sleeping Beauty, or the fact that the Evil Queen literally wants to
have Snow White's heart carved out and delivered to her in a box.
“You want me to be the bad guy?”
One of the best examples of that darkness comes from Mother Gothel and the way that
she's cheerfully cruel to her adopted daughter. In the song "Mother Knows Best," her chillingly
cheery musical demand to Rapunzel to do as she says or suffer the consequences, she sings
a line about how Rapunzel has been gaining weight as she prods at the skin beneath the
young lady's chin. This is a cruel, controlling jab at her faux-daughter's body image, but
it's also a reference to the original tale.
After Rapunzel has been meeting with the prince in secret for some time, Gothel discovers
her daughter outgrowing her gowns. It's not because they've been overindulging on their
picnic lunches, though. Rapunzel and the prince have been doing more than singing songs together,
and she has become pregnant. Calamity ensues, Rapunzel's hair is cut off, the prince is
blinded, and eventually she gives birth to twins. Good thing Flynn Rider only had to
contend with a mild concussion from being bonked with a frying pan. The alternative
is pretty grim.
In the midst of the snow-covered conflict at the heart of the smash hit Frozen, we see
a much smaller drama playing out as the temperatures plummet. As Arendelle reckons with Elsa's
winter, we see a pair of men in passing who are having a heated argument — or not so
heated, given the circumstances — about bark. Yes, bark. Like from trees.
"No no, you've got the bark facing down. The bark needs to be face up!”
“But down is dryer!"
After they tussle, these two are quickly forgotten in the scope of the wider story as yet another
problem that Elsa inadvertently created that's in dire need of fixing. Alas, poor Arendelle,
rent asunder by tensions large and small!
While you might've been caught up with all the more pressing concerns of the main characters,
there's a little more to this one than it seems. It's actually a nod to a real world
debate. In 2013, Norway was divided by a fierce battle over — you guessed it — the best
way to stack firewood. The whole thing was sparked by a TV broadcast starring Lars Mytting,
the author of a bestselling book on how to properly chop and stack wood.
Twenty percent of the Scandinavian nation tuned in to the 12-hour broadcast, which featured
a full 8 hours of nothing but a burning fireplace. That might not be the place that you'd expect
to find a national controversy, but in Norway, it did. When Mytting said that firewood should
be stored with the bark facing down, a debate sprung up, dividing the country like an axe
taken to a log and making international headlines. If only the denizens of Arendelle could have
tuned in — perhaps a lively debate could have helped them relax as they waited for
our heroes to save the day.
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