My garden of musings

Well, I suppose it depends on whether her mother was already pregnant when she made her wish for a child as white as snow, or whether she became pregnant afterwards. If Snow White was born exactly nine months after her mother made her wish in winter, then she would have been an autumn baby. But if the queen was already far along in her pregnancy when she made her wish, then Snow White could have been born in the spring, and she could have been born the following winter if the queen became pregnant several months after her wish.

Well, the Grimms' hazel tree on the mother's grave, and the white bird that perches in it and throws gowns and slippers down to Aschenputtel, is a beautiful image, with the implication that her mother's spirit helps her even long after her death.

The animal companion who is killed, but who helps the heroine from beyond the grave much like the mother in Aschenputtel, is also an especially poignant and touching variation. For example, the fish in Ye Xian, the red calf in Rushen Coatie, or the bull in Katie Woodencloak.

I also like the Finnish variant, The Wonderful Birch, that combines the above two themes. It portrays the Stepmother as an ogress who turns the heroine's real mother into a sheep, and then has the unsuspecting father slaughter her; but after the heroine gives her sheep-mother's bones a proper burial, a birch tree grows from the spot and drops gowns and slippers down to her.

Another helper I especially like is the gooseherd from Tattercoats: a very interesting magical helper in that (a) he's a boy, (b) he's the heroine's best friend long before he reveals his magic, and (c) he casts his spells with a magic flute. (I think Mozart would have liked that!)

The Jewish variant where the heroine's helper is the Prophet Elijah disguised as an old man with a magic stick is another good one.

The three hazelnuts from the Czech variants, which each crack open to reveal a gown and slippers, are charming too, even if they lack the emotional connection of a person or animal.

The funny thing is, I think the movie does a great job of showing Quasimodo's friendships with Esmeralda and Phoebus. Quasi's feelings for Esmeralda are based very much in real friendship, not just infatuation with her beauty and charm, and we also see Quasi and Phoebus grow from initial tension, to commitment to working together for Esmeralda's sake, to genuine friendship by the end. The trio's reunion scene after Frollo's death and after Phoebus saves Quasi from falling, first with Quasi and Phoebus's hug, then Quasi and Esmeralda's hug, and then of course Quasi joining Esmeralda and Phoebus's hands, seems just as meaningful to me as any romance. Even though Quasi doesn't "get the girl" in a romantic sense, he does have her in the way that really matters, as a close friend, and Phoebus hasn't taken her away from him, but only brought more friendship into his life.

Then when he comes outside, and the little girl hugs him and the crowd celebrates him, it's just the icing on the cake, pointing toward a future where he'll find even more bonds with others than the two excellent ones he already has.

That does sound awkward. It sounds as if she's too afraid of offending anyone by liking the "wrong" characters.

If I met her, I would advise her to understand the aspects of each heroine of color's portrayal that some people consider problematic, but not to let it make her discount the representation altogether or stop her from liking the characters.

After all, not everyone agrees about what counts as problematic or not.

I just watched a YouTube video made by a black girl, complaining that the Disney heroines of color are almost always in stories specifically about their cultures (at least in part), which couldn't play out the same way in ay other culture, and which seem to exist partly to teach audiences about those cultures. She argued that this "others" those heroines, and that Disney should make more fairy tale movies with a Princess who just happens to be of color, but where the plot has nothing to do with her culture or ethnicity.

Yet a long time ago, I read an article criticizing the 1997 version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella precisely for having a black heroine in a fairy tale that has nothing to do with her ethnicity. They argued that it's not "really" good representation for black girls, because it just puts a black girl's face on a white girl's story, with no elements of black culture or any specific experiences of young black womanhood.

I doubt this one comedy short inspired the whole discourse, especially because it was only uploaded two months ago and I think the discourse is older than that. But it's definitely a symptom of it.

Now of course this skit is comedy, so it's exaggerating Quasimodo on purpose. But if anyone really does think Quasi's attitude about his own ugliness is whiny self-pity, then I wish they would try to imagine what it would be like to have his deformities, in a medieval setting where people tie him up and throw vegetables at him the one time he dares to venture out of the bell tower. And more importantly, what it would be like to be raised by Frollo, who constantly reminds him of how monstrously hideous he is and tells him he's doomed to be hated and feared by everyone except Frollo himself.

I agree!

I know.

I have no idea where it comes from. Maybe ableism. Maybe victim-blaming for his emotional scars from Frollo's abuse. Maybe difficulty accepting a male hero as sensitive and vulnerable as he is. Or maybe they’re so eager to defend Esmeralda and Phoebus from fans who insist that Quasi should have “gotten the girl” that they feel the need to paint Quasi as more flawed than he is and frame him as a “bad choice.”

As it happens, the other day when I was reading posts about Star Wars, I saw one post that complained about how some fans to insist that Anakin's love for Padmé is just a toxic obsession from the start, rather than a true and beautiful love tragically doomed by his wrong choices and fall to the Dark Side. The OP pointed out that whenever Anakin expresses any desire for himself and Padmé to live happily together, those fans say "You see? He's selfish! If he loved Padmé the right way he would only care about her happiness, not his own!" As if wanting mutual happiness with your spouse weren't natural.

That reminded me very much of some of the bad takes I've found about Quasimodo – or specifically, one. It was a YouTube video analyzing "Heaven's Light" and "Hellfire," which argued that by singing about how Esmeralda has made him happy and filled his tower with "heaven's light," Quasi is "only thinking of how she benefits him, not unlike Frollo." This supposedly contrasts with Phoebus and how he focuses on helping Esmeralda, which is supposedly why Phoebus is the "good choice" for her while Quasi and Frollo are both "bad choices."

As if when Quasi sings that song, he hadn't just helped Esmeralda in a huge way, by helping her escape from her imprisonment in the cathedral, even though it means saying goodbye to her and not knowing when or if he'll see her again! As if it weren't only natural for a lonely, abused, self-loathing person, who's never had a human friend before and thought he never would, to be overjoyed that a caring friend (who also happens to be a beautiful woman whom he's infatuated with) has come into his life! How is such a thing remotely comparable to what Frollo expresses in "Hellfire"? And I'm pretty sure that the only reason why we don't hear Phoebus thinking of how Esmeralda "benefits him" (as they put it) isn't that he's so incredibly selfless, but just that he doesn't have a song about her!

“This is interesting. Both sides make valid arguments.”

A pro-Jedi post:

“The Jedi, and the Buddhists who inspired them, don’t advocate suppressing your emotions. That’s a misconception. That’s not what they mean by ‘letting go.’ On the contrary, the key to managing your emotions in the Jedi way is to acknowledge and accept them…”

Me:

“This is very good. As someone who identifies with prequel-Anakin much more than I wish I did and has always felt almost personally shamed by the theme of ‘He went to the Dark Side because he felt too much and loved too much’ (an oversimplification, I know), I like this better than the standard ‘Conceal, don’t feel’ interpretation.”

The post continues:

“…and then be indifferent to them.”

Me:

I actually created a poll once about the possibilities of his origins:

Maybe his mother and her apparent husband (the man who holds her protectively when Frollo arrives to arrest them) are both his biological parents, and his light coloring is just a fluke of nature, like his deformity.

Maybe his biological father was a white man (either from a previous relationship or, as was all too likely, by rape), which would make him ethnically half-Romani.

Or maybe he was born to white parents, but they either died or abandoned him, and the Romani couple found him and adopted him.

What the actual heck?! How does any of that make sense whatsoever?

How can they accuse Quasimodo of whining when he almost never complains about anything? Yes, he expresses sadness, yearning, etc. – though only when he's alone, for the most part – but just expressing emotion isn't the same as complaining and certainly isn't whining! Can they just not handle a male hero who isn't stoic?

His songs aren't whining either: they're not even laments. If these people are talking about "Made of Stone" from the stage musical, that's not whining at all: it's rage, despair, and self-loathing because Esmeralda is about to die and it's all his fault. As for "Out There," it combines yearning with ecstatic joy at imagining life in the outside world, and "Heaven's Light" is about the affection and joy Esmeralda has brought into his life.

And criticizing him for not leaving the bell tower to fight against Frollo? That's (a) ignoring his character arc, and (b) victim-blaming. Quasi has been emotionally abused by Frollo all his life, yet at the same time sees Frollo as his father figure and only protector. His character arc in the Disney version is to gradually learn to see Frollo for who he is, overcome the fears and self-doubt that Frollo has instilled in him, and break free. It sounds like these people are criticizing him for having a character arc instead of being a flat paragon from the beginning – and while they're at it, victim-blaming him for having realistic psychological scars.

As for Esmeralda, I love her and admire her too, but how is she more of a "real hero" than Quasimodo? Yes, she stands up to Frollo at the festival, but afterwards she spends the rest of the film mostly running and hiding from Frollo and his soldiers, not doing anything more to stop them except discretely saving Phoebus's life. Quasi is the one who saves Paris in the end, by overpowering Frollo's soldiers in the battle at the cathedral, and then indirectly causing Frollo's death. (Or in the stage version, killing him outright.)

And as for calling him "racist"... where to begin?! In the first place, Quasi belongs to the same ethnic group as Esmeralda: he's Romani too, he's just lighter in coloring. But even if he weren't... WTF?!?! Is there some new rule that if you're a light-skinned person and you have romantic feelings for a person of color, then you're not allowed to be sad if they choose someone else, and if you are sad, that means you're racist?! There's no logic in that! No logic at all!