Ryan J. Tucker: 2014

Monday, July 7, 2014

The Disney'd Hunchback and how it Relates to "Wreck-It Ralph."

I watched "Wreck-It Ralph" the other day, a sit-down with friends, and was struck by the way that the movie acted pretty complacently about the dissolution of the romance between Ralph and Vanellope von Schweetz. It's clear that the relationship can't be consummated, according to social rules that we have about older men and prepubescent women. That may not seem like a problem, initially, but I'd like to talk about it.

It really gets my goat that the film glosses over the romance and eliminates it, in order to sneak around the consequences of a petulant bad-guy and good girl romance, post-"Beauty and the Beast." Fix-It Felix's flimsy and foppish pass at Sargeant Calhoun ends up being validated by a kind of flat marriage plot, which feels basically shoe-horned in. The whole point here is that *someone* has to get married, but it CAN NOT be Ralph and Vanellope. Of course the heroes of the film are allowed the socially-accepted convention, even if the trope is slightly modified with a "strong woman/bashful man" twist (note that the reason Calhoun is so strong is because of her past relationship--she's disallowed from being strong simply because she's strong, and Felix still has to pursue and woo her).

So why, in a film that's supposedly about feeling good about being different (the protagonists are a "bad guy" and a "glitch"), are the main characters not the ones getting married in the end? Not that I'd argue that marriage is a necessary outcome, but that it seems like the film insists on marriage, enough to make sure that it's included in the plot somehow.

A short answer: because Ralph is seen as a kind of "loveable idiot," like Quasimodo in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." I want to draw attention to the difference between the endings of the novel by Hugo and the Disney film, to underscore the recent change in what unconsummated relationships for idiots look like. In Hugo's novel, Esmeralda gets hung, and Quasimodo's bones turn to dust when an attempt is made to disentangle his body from hers, after he's wasted away in mourning. In the Disney film, Quasimodo's forced into realizing that Esmeralda doesn't want to marry him, so he basically "gives his blessing" to this other "heroic" relationship (let's set aside for a moment the problematic nature of Esmeralda as property here [she gets to choose who 'owns' her, but is that actually a choice?]).

Somehow, we've come to a place where society's outcasts are told simultaneously to be proud of themselves and their place in the world, to love as they like and to love freely, and also that they'll never get to "see it through." Again, I'm not arguing for marriage here, just indicating that it's still denied for the unfavorable, while being made accessible (to the point of necessity) to those who are traditionally beautiful. Most people, identifying as outcasts (why else would the "outcast" film be so prolific?), are forced to ask themselves how they can deal with a love that isn't even unrequited, but is actually unallowable. Unfortunately, it seems like the answer in "Wreck-It Ralph" is that one should just suck it up and take your knocks, look lovingly across the aisle towards the other's console/world and that this kind of love ought to be enough. Enough for you idiots, I mean. The heroes are still allowed their wedding, and by extension, their wedding night...