Evil characters, a classic in children's fiction, are on the way out. New educational times demand softer narratives or, at the very least, nuanced villains. But is it appropriate to sweeten stories for children?
Tyrannical queens, who order the cutting off of heads or the liquidation of princesses who are prettier than them. Witches who turn into cobras and hunters who kill mother deer. Stepmothers who mistreat stepdaughters and a sorceress, so resentful of not being invited to a baptism, that she curses the party and turns her into a Sleeping Beauty. A psychopathic lion who decides to kill his brother and his nephew to crown himself king and a millionaire, vain and cruel, so obsessed with fur coats that she is willing to sacrifice 101 adorable Dalmatians to get one.
These are some of the villains (with a striking proportion of women among them), that the Walt Disney animation studio has produced since its founding in 1923. Very bad bad guys, who have marked several generations of children. Millions of creatures who sympathized with poor Cinderella, who feared that the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland would cut off their heads and who cried uncontrollably when they saw Bambi.
Even director Quentin Tarantino, known for the extreme violence of his films, claimed to have been traumatized by this legendary Disney film. A story that begins as a fairy tale, with friendly animals running through the forest and, after an unexpected twist in the script, becomes “a horror movie,” as Stephen King himself described it.
But: Isn't life, sometimes, a horror movie? Aren't those “script twists” something we have to learn to deal with? In fact, traditional fairy tales—on which Disney has based most of its production—have been a tool to introduce children to the dark side of existence. A way to warn them of the dangers of life and to help them differentiate between good and evil.
Even, on a therapeutic level, these stories have served to build character: in psychology, traditional stories are a tool to deal with fears and anxieties. By listening, seeing or reading about the vicissitudes of the hero or heroine, one faces difficult situations that, although they are fiction, serve as training for life.
However, one hundred years after Disney was founded, children's narratives are changing. The new educational times require other formats and the bad guys in children's movies are transforming and even disappearing. As Elena Neira, collaborating professor of the Information and Communication Sciences degree at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), points out: “In the last decade there has been a trend in the film industry to create stories that move away from the traditional antagonist.” Even the benchmark Disney has chosen to move away from those evil classics and evolve the narrative model.
The reasons for this change, adds Neira, are several. “On an audiovisual level, the starting point is when Disney buys Pixar, in 2006. Until then, it was a completely formal company when it came to producing animation: Disney had a catalog of archetypes, in which the good ones were very good and the bad, very bad. “A reflection of classic, sobering stories, in which there were no nuances.”
In Pixar stories, however, not everything is black and white. “From the beginning,” Neira continues: “It occurred to them to make films 'with layers', to appeal to a very wide audience: adults and children. Families are a very lucrative audience and at Pixar they knew that if you don't convince the prescriber (the parents who buy the tickets), there are films that won't be seen."
Not all without commercial reasons. The change in the hero-antihero model and the idea of incorporating nuances also occurs for cultural reasons. Faced with social advances in matters such as equality and feminism, plots are changed or modernized: “The production companies have realized that, in some aspects, they were tremendously disconnected from what was happening in reality,” says Neira.
“In the same way that the dangers have evolved over time, right now society is in the process of normalizing things that were not previously seen in children's fiction. A risk exercise has been carried out to incorporate other aspects into the narrative, in tune with social changes,” Neira points out.
Without forgetting, he adds, the demands of parents: “They want films to educate in broader content than there was until now.” Parents, some, who, in times of overprotection, are also overwhelmed by the possibility that their children will be “traumatized” by certain content, which is why they require happy endings and movies without bad ones. And the big production companies, as Neira confirms, comply.
Children's stories are transformed and, sometimes, sweetened. A change not without controversy, because there are voices that insist that sharing somewhat “raw” narratives with minors serves to work on emotions and acquire resources.
Is it a good strategy to soften children's stories and movies? I ask this question to Dr. María Velasco, author of Raising with mental health (Paidós). For this psychiatrist and psychotherapist, an expert in childhood, stories, in fact, help children understand the dark side of life: “They have a moral, some teachings, that help our children get closer to a reality, — which many times is difficult, unfair, even crude—learning things in a tolerable way,” he explains.
Classic stories, he adds: “They are useful, because they give them references of brave people, who are a source of inspiration and remain in their memory.” So, in principle, classical narratives “are good.” The problem, says the therapist, is that today we show them in images. "And I think that's where the nuance lies, because telling a child The Three Little Pigs is not the same as showing them a video where the three little pigs are real and the wolf too, where there is blood, because the wolf bites the little pigs... I think "It is the forms, not the content, that traumatizes," he summarizes.
For Dr. Velasco, today everything is so realistic that we are exposing children to a degree of violence that does not correspond to them. However, that does not mean that certain classic stories should stop being told, because, as he reiterates: “They served to learn about situations in the real world, where there are good guys and bad guys, heroes and heroines, people who seem good and who are not, and sometimes which they will later have to face. In life, children will also have to learn and develop tools, such as courage, or understand that you have to fight for your family, for your friends... All of that is in the morals of the stories."
For Elena Neira, evil people are not disappearing from children's narratives, but rather they are transforming. The antagonist characters are being humanized. Today the reasons behind this apparent evil are explained: “The evil ones still exist, but what there is now is a greater connection with their history.”
Traditionally, the context was not explained: we do not know, for example, what led Snow White's queen to order her death, everything was very flat. Now it's about knowing what has led the character to be like this." Neira gives the example of the somewhat sinister teddy bear from Toy Story 3: “He is the bad guy, the bad guy in the movie, but when they take him apart, he breaks down and explains his past trauma to them: everything he does is a consequence of something… That's the difference.”
Another redeemed evil character is the sorceress Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty: in 2014, Disney released a film about her, with Angelina Jolie as the protagonist, which explained the reasons why she became evil.
These changes in contemporary narratives also drag down the good guys. To the point that, sometimes, heroes become their own enemies: “Elsa, from Frozen, fights against herself. While in Encanto, the protagonist and her brother battle against her family to be accepted,” exemplifies Neira.
In some cases, the fight is against the forces of nature or, as happens to the protagonist of Red, against human nature: the chaos of adolescence and the first period are the “enemies” to beat in this curious released story. in 2022.
“Now the great victories focus on the intimate space, on our interaction with society and with ourselves. They also explain that you can be good and do bad things and make bad decisions. In some way, they are invitations to introspection, to understand the backpack that each person carries,” summarizes Elena Neira. These changes in focus, she adds, are important for fostering children's empathy. “A capacity, that of putting yourself in the shoes of others, that new technologies, in which you cannot see the reaction of other people, drastically reduce.”
Both Neira and Dr. Velasco emphasize the importance of fiction to give values and build character tools in minors. “It is true that there are stories that must be removed, because our society has matured and there are things that cannot be tolerated, but it is essential to continue telling stories that bring our children closer to reality and that continue to give them references.”
As? Adapting them to their age and showing them in a tolerable way, but without overprotecting them or telling them everything in an idealized way: “Because that puts them in a defenseless state that will make them not understand anything... Children must be helped to grow and, although, of course , their childhood must be respected, they must be prepared to have tools for life. And one of the most beautiful ways to do it are stories and stories,” says the therapist.
