The Forces of Evil

TOP TEN DISNEY VILLAINS
We know them. We fear them. Hell...sometimes we even love em. There are, in my humble opinion, the best of the best evil-doers in the history of Disney.

10. Mother Gothel
      Film: Tangled.
      Motivation: Vanity.
After hoarding the power of that trippy-ass plant thing and kidnapping an infant only to lock her in a tower and let her hair grow for 18 years (that shit is just unsanitary), she has the nerve to kill the only man in the life of the young Rapunzel but not before she kicks the chameleon against the wall. Yet she is the perfect musical-theatre villain. Fabulous and manipulative, she tosses out one-liners and melodramatic flair as easily as she does shards of broken glass.

9. Shan Yu
    Film: Mulan
    Motivation: Power/ Bragging rights.
I can't elaborate much on this guy. His character isn't established beyond that he is scarier than Hell and has some weird fetish about having old men bow down to him. He sounds like a perv but he has a smile that kills small mammals, so I figure his spot on this list isn't unwarranted.

8. Cheshire Cat
    Film: Alice in Wonderland
    Motivation: Boredom and possibly a mild valium addiction
A lot of people would disagree that he is really a villain and is more along the lines of ambivalent Wonderland furniture. After all, he doesn't try to burn Alice alive in a house like Dodo or crush her like those bitchy flowers....BECAUSE HE IS TRYING TO GET HER HEAD LOPPED OFF BY THE RAGING SOCIOPATH/TEA PARTY ACTIVIST KNOWN AS THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. The Queen can't be blamed totally because she clearly has some sort of visible derangement like a brain tumor or mental disease. Alice was clearly in trouble and what does the Cheshire cat do? Throws out "Fat, pompous, bad tempered old tyrant" like a stripped, disappearing douche-bag.

7. Madam Mim
    Film: Sword in the Stone
    Motivation: Bat-shit insanity.
Madam Mim is hands-down my favorite Disney antagonist. She has unlimited magical ability and spends all her time destroying what is pure and decent for sport (not unlike our own Rush Limbaugh). What other villain could boast an opening line better than "Sounds like someone's sick. How lovely!" We learn something right away about this bitch. She means business. She withers flowers. She turns into dangerous animals and she only wants rules so she can break em. She is like all four of the Golden Girls rolled into one.

6. Dr. Facilier
    Film: The Princess and the Frog
    Motivation: Ambition/ Repressed homosexuality
We've had some fun with villains so far. Forget that shit now. Dr. Facilier is one terrifying bitch. He has a trippy shadow that moves on its own and a league of demons willing to do his bidding even if it includes traveling through the swamps looking for one of the only two frogs who apparently live in the Louisiana bayous. He has friends on the other side and they are pissed. He is not above a bargain (or mild voodoo and blood curses) to get his way (see also: Christine O'Donnell).

5. Scar
    Film: The Lion King
    Motivation: Ambition/ Sibling rivalry
This is another villain I with a twang of sympathy. While Scar is a raging lunatic who mass-organizes the down-trodden animals of the Pride Lands to form a coup-de-grace against his own brother whom he mercilessly tosses into a stampede, there is clearly something in what he wants. While Disney spends the film portraying the Pride Lands as happy and pretty enlightened about death and natural balance, this hippy-dippy bullshit wears thin if you happen to be a hyena. They have to stay in an elephant grave yard and clearly have good reason to follow Scar in his revolt. Disney message: There is never any need for a labor union or else Mufasa died in vain. My version: Scar probably suffered from Daddy-issues and clearly was an ineffective ruler, but Mufasa wasn't a crack-shot either. Lions don't control the weather.

4. Hades

    Film: Hercules
    Motivation: Ambition/ Power-lust.
You have to feel bad for Hades. He is clearly a much smarter being than the idiotic, man-child Zeus who inexplicably has slept his way to the top of Mount Olympus. Then, through blatant and unconcealed nepotism, he forces every deity to shower gifts and praise to his new brat Hercules. By now, Hades should be good and pissed. He works all day in a literal hell and can't go anywhere without people trying to bum a ride. He just wants to rule the cosmos and isn't afraid to bring in outside resources to get what he wants. Move this guy from middle-management to the top of the heap says this Disney fan.


3. Lady Tremaine
    Film: Cinderella
    Motivation: Stone-cold bitchiness/ Sloth
From the get-go, there is very little to like about this lady. While Cinderella is clearly about a 2 watt in terms of brightness, she certainly doesn't deserve the abuse heaped on her by some lady who sits in bed all day. Furthermore, she is totally sinister. I still don't like looking in mirrors because I am slightly afraid I'm going to see the reflection of her locking me in my bedroom so that I can't get married to some hot rich guy who can only recognize my feet. Maybe she was doing Cinderella the biggest favor of her life, because, Hell, the bitch got a kingdom and 8 shows a day a Disneyland because she DIDN'T go to the ball in that 80s prom dress thrown together at the last minute by vermin.

2. Judge Claude Frollo
    Film: Hunchback of Notre Dame
    Motivation: Umm...let's just say loving too much.
He is that creepy gym teacher who looked at your rack, that boring old person who doesn't like music or modern haircuts, and that "bingo" Nazi from Inglourious Basterds all in one. Anyone who would burn half of a freaking city to the ground simply so he could get laid needs a spot on a list of sociopaths and raging lunatics. He kills people right and left and has the law on his side. Also, someone needs to take him shopping. If he wasn't wearing that robe thing, he might have been number 3, but he looks like number 2 in that thing, so it is where I put him. Seriously. It's ugly as hell.

1. Maleficent
    Film: Sleeping Beauty
    Motivation: Spite
Here's a right vicious bitch. She spends 16 years plotting the death of some random woman and goes to extreme lengths that ultimately end in her own death...because she wasn't invited to a baby shower. Clearly her powers are beyond compare. She can make stone walls disappear (and have her creepy yellow eyes stare through them), turn into a freaking dragon, and has a scary-ass palace where she controls the weather. I wouldn't want to tango with this bitch and as a direct result, I still send her invitations to any parties I'm having.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

It had been 59 years to the day since the Rosenbergs had been electrocuted that I arrived in New York City. It was, I especially remember, a day of firsts. It was the first time I had taken a taxi cab (from LaGuardia to Jamaica). It was the first time I had ever slept without a pillow and it was the first time that I bought deodorant at a 7-11. Beyond all else, the city was hot. I had until that day lived my entire life in Georgia. Heat was no challenge and in many ways was a welcome (albeit aggravating) friend. However, this heat seemed trapped within the skyscrapers and subway tunnels, a ghost dragging itself through the city like a sluggish shade. Unable to move on but unable to stay completely still. There was also something old about this heat which hovered, musty and stale, like a stench in the home of an ancient relative whose candy bowls hold only keys and gray fossilized taffy unfit for eating.

My first moment that allowed me to sit was monopolized by the view from the top window of my dormitory building. There was luck for you. The perfect outline of the city, just beginning to freckle itself in electricity against the blushing twilight sky seemed distant and close enough to touch at the same time. For a moment, I wished that the sun would not set and would simply dangle on the border of land and sky for eternity. Yet the hours overtook it and the city awoke beneath the darkness of night.

I reflected on what New York City meant to me. Undoubtedly, there was something sinister about it. For two centuries, this had been the place where people from across the world buried their old, their young, and their dreams. I thought of tenement buildings, brown, colorless and decaying holding families. Mothers who worked in the day, whose clothes were stiff with sweat who slap their children and hug them with the same arm. Fathers who frantically study English books and the Torah against the backdrop of a single pine table. Children crawling like grub-worms across the floor, crying, nagging, pleading against the noise of vendors and carriages on cobblestone below. The wind had taken them all over. Their bones were tossed across America, left to root into the earth where they landed. These buildings now stand vacant, haunted by the echoes and phantoms of tears and the strikes of matches.

But even the wind was not strong enough to disrupt the heat. It was enough to make a person crazy not because of its extremity, but for its persistence. Humidity was trapped in the fist of the city. Neither solid nor liquid, it oozed like a blob that could not abandon its shape and no matter how it creeps out of cracks in its prison walls, it could not travel far.

59 years ago to the day, the Rosenbergs had died while electricity surged through their bodies and I was here, looking from Queens into the city that draped itself in heat to keep out the chill of the mid-Atlantic. 

Are There No Prisons? Are There No Workhouses?

   So last week I spontaneously went to see a production of "A Christmas Carol" with some lovely friends. I know what you are thinking..."A Christmas Carol"...cliche cliche cliche. However, this production, apart from being visually stunning and brilliantly performed, offered some new insight. I'm not entirely sure whether it was just because of the season or the political maelstrom spinning over the American public, but watching Dickens's immortal saga of supernatural intervention and personal reformation had a different effect on me this year. We all know the story as it has been adapted to virtually every single holiday known to humanity (Valentines Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, you name it) so I will spare the details. Yet when Scrooge looked up from his coin covered desk and into the faces of the charity workers imploring him for a donation and callously asked, "Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses?" there was suddenly something quite relevant in this story.  Later that evening, while driving back to Macon, we drove past the Capital building (yeah, the one with the golden roof) to see a crowd of homeless people sleeping in the freezing night air. This finalized the sentiment. I'll contextualize the upcoming rant and its relevance to the previous allegory with the field of 2012 Republican Presidential candidates. Newt Gingrich (Former American House of Reps Speaker and amoral, sexist, degenerate Capitalist) recently publicly stated that he found child labor laws "stupid." In his mentality, children in poor areas would be better served by acting as paid custodians in the schools that they attend (thus terminating the employment of the current custodians). Furthermore, I came across an editorial in my local newspaper in which a man seriously stated that people should not give to charity as it promotes laziness among those greedy, evil poor people usually working double shifts in order to pay the taxes that the wealthy are shirking thanks to the House of Representatives. It is astounding to me. These people are doing Scrooge one better. They are not merely stating, "Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses?" but are basically asking "Why the fuck are there prisons? Why the fuck are there workhouses? Shit sounds expensive."

    I don't want to believe that Capitalism has grown to such a point where people are legitimately considering assisting the poor and homeless as something not only unnecessary but also something to be discouraged. To people such as Gingrich/ Perry/ Bachmann/ Santorum/ basically any Tea Party-endorsed Candidate, it seems to be a goal to eliminate the strain of government programs for the poor as well as private welfare programs be discouraged simply because it inconveniences those who can afford to give by guilt-tripping them into thinking they actually should . What is worse, there are legitimately workers out there who are not exactly elbow-rubbing with the millionaire class that these candidates are running in who are running to support these policies which basically require those with less to fend for themselves by classifying lower classes as "lazy." I am curious which of Captain John Smith's wet-dreams this concept was pulled from. As Steinbeck said, "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”  

These words are especially true now. At a time of year where people generally try to act nicer, to be a little more compassionate, to drop the change from the money they just spent on gifts that would feed a family of 6 in Cuba for a year into a Salvation Army bucket, we now see men and women essentially calling on people to save money by saying loud and clear, "Fuck the poor," (see the Roman Senate in Mel Brook's History of the World Part One). Laborers are thus alienated against laborers by claiming loyalty to Capitalism and a cruel system of anti-humanitarianism to save a few dollars. As the days get colder and the streets beneath the golden roofs sting a bit more against the skin, I hope Americans will come to their senses about the inhumanity of the policies of those who try to demonize the less privileged and not inquire the next time they are approached for a few coins or God forbid a dollar bill, "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"