CarrieAngelina

This shit.

So Hunchback is far and away my favorite movie from Disney’s Renaissance, and it always makes me so happy that yes, people seem to appreciate it, people seem to love it, but I’mma go into exactly WHY it’s my favorite, and WHY I think it’s so crucial, and WHY I think it should be required viewing for young boys specifically.

We all know that a huge bulk of the media we’ve grown up with consistently has that one frustrating message:  Being the hero means you’ll get the girl.  Many boys let this mentality bleed into reality.  We have “nice guys,” who feel that their niceness entitles them to romance, when obviously that discredits a female’s personal choice.  We all get this, we all know this, and a lot of us get that it’s a toxic message.

So check out our hero.

He’s an incredibly good person who isn’t conventionally attractive.

Check out our lady.

Super good person, conventionally attractive.

The movie so deliberately builds up Quasi’s hopes.  There’s a whole fucking song about it.

But Esmeralda, who is her own person with her own motivations and preferences, chooses another man, who is also good and also attractive.

A lot of people criticize this aspect of the movie, the fact that Quasi doesn’t get the girl BECAUSE of his appearance.  But my argument?  This is the best damn message a movie could ever send.

Because when things get dicey, when Esmeralda’s life in in danger, when Quasi would be putting his own life on the line, he knows that romance is no longer within the realm of possibility.  He knows he won’t be “getting the girl.”  He knows this, and he allows himself a moment of bitterness, he risks falling prey to the “nice guy” trope, and he almost succumbs.

“She already has her knight in shining armor, and it’s not me.”

BUT THEN HE DOES THE RIGHT THING.

He has NO ulterior motive for saving her life.  NO ulterior motive for opposing the man who raised him.  And he doesn’t know that he’ll get any reward, he knows he could straight up get killed for his actions, and yet he still acts.

And there’s no bitterness. There’s still so, so much love between him and Esmeralda, pure awesome platonic love, and love between him and Phoebus, and just fucking love all around, it’s amazing.

I’ve heard so many people express distaste at Quasi not ending up with Esmerelda.  Like he was cheated out of some kind of reward.  But have they watched the ending?

Does that look like a man cheated of his reward?  Does he look like he “lost” to Phoebus?  No dude, that’s a man who has everything he ever wanted, and that’s also a man who didn’t “get the girl.”

My wife was of course thrilled and went out and bought a crap ton of full size Candy bars because she wants the reputation of “That house” so that more kids visit so she can see their cute costumes. The only issue with this plan was that we have a newborn and two dogs that go apeshit whenever the doorbell is even looked at.

To try and reduce the number of barking fits that trigger a crying baby, we kenneled the dogs upstairs in our bedroom and put a sign next to our doorbell that said “Please do not ring the doorbell, Barking dogs and sleeping newborn inside”. Our front door is visible from our living room so if we left the solid door open and the storm door closed, we would have no issue seeing if anyone was waiting for Candy.

At the beginning of the night, the system worked with no issues. The baby was content and never startled. I held onto her and my wife would greet the children at the door and offer to let them CHOOSE TWO FULL GODDAMN SIZE CANDY BARS because she loves children and Halloween and just wants them to have a great time.

Around 8 o'clock the baby finally fell asleep so I put her in her bassinet so I could take a break from baby duty and hand out candy myself. That’s when he showed up.

This child in a bleeding Ghostface mask walked up to our porch and stood in front of the storm door. I saw him, he saw me. With a smile, I got up and started to walk towards him. As I approached, the kid broke eye contact and started reading the sign above the doorbell. Then the little shit reached up with his spindly little fingers and fucking rang the goddamn doorbell.

The dogs lost their shit and started barking like an intruder was on their way inside to murder the family. This of course woke up the sleeping baby, who of course began to cry.

The smile my face held quickly fell to pissed off glare as I walked towards the door to reward this little asshole with some Candy. As I reached for the bowl filled with full sized candy bars, I noticed the “treat” I received at the office the day before that I had lazily neglected to throw away. I grabbed it and threw it on top of the bowl with the rest of the candy.

I opened the door with a smile, holding the bowl of goodies at his eye level. “Trick-or-treat!” he said with glee as he held out his bag and eye-fucked the candy that I held before him.

“Happy Halloween!” I said back as the baby screamed in the background. It was here that I did NOT let him take two Candy bars. I didn’t even let him take ONE candy bar. Instead I reached into the bowl myself, picked up the lone “fun sized” bag of candy corn, and dropped it into his outstretched bag.

He looked the candy into his bag. Then looked back up at the bowl filled with Full sized Reese’s, Snickers, Kit-Kats, and M&M’s. Then he looked at me. After a moment’s pause he whimpered out a half assed “Thank you”, and trudged down the steps towards the cul-de-sac.