10 Hunchback

Disney
confronts its
critics?
•  …it
…itwould
would
be difficult to find a more
be difficult to find a more thoroughly
thoroughly
film, one
Christian
film, Christian
one which stands
the which
devoutlystands
anticlerical
the devoutly
anticlerical
Victor167
novelist
Victor Hugo…
on his novelist
head. Pinsky
on hisa head.
•  IsHugo…
Hunchback
ChristianPinsky
film? 167
• •  Does
it stand Hugo on
head, so to
speak? That is, is
Is Hunchback
a his
Christian
film?
message
of this
film on
the his
opposite
of so
Hugo
s anti•  the
Does
it stand
Hugo
head,
to speak?
Christian message?
That is, is the message of this film the
opposite of Hugo s anti-Christian message?
• 
Positive Depictions of the
Church?
•  Is Notre Dame’s
Priest a positive
Depiction of the
Church? Or he
He representative
Of the powerlessness of the church?
Church as ineffectual?
Anti-clerical
statement?
•  The Secularization of Frollo
– Disney calls him a judge,
not a priest. However,
according to Pinsky, the
animators did everything
visually to indicate that he
was supposed to be a
priest.
•  Does Frollo present as a
priest in Disney s The
Hunchback of Notre
Dame?
Anti-religion, anti-God?
• 
The association of the church with this
kind of evil leadership implies a church
that is ineffective if not full of vice - the
very thing Hugo was criticizing in the
original novel. Religion… appears as
an impotent, irrelevant caricature… By
relegating the church, and more
specifically God, to irrelevancy, Disney
refuses to admit a serious role for
religion. Ward, p76.
•  Do you think religion is irrelevant in
this film?
•  Do you think God is irrelevant in this
film?
•  Do you think the Church is “irrelevant”
in this film?
What are the religious
implications of this scene?
God Help the Outcasts
•  What is the basis of Disney s vision for
Christianity here? What is Disney advocating?
What is Disney condemning, if anything? Can
you, as one Christian minister asks in Pinsky s
article, hear the gospel in that song?
Hellfire
• 
• 
Disney may well have had their
religious critics in mind when
creating this scene, suggesting
that it is they, rather than Disney,
that are obsessed with sexuality,
seeing it everywhere they look,
censuring others in the hope of
overcoming their attraction to
what they condemn. Fadner, 24
Do you think Disney was
criticizing the sexual hypocrisy of
fundamentalists, televangelists
and other church officials here?
Is this a plausible interpretation?
Televangelist Paul Crouch
Sex scandal 1996
Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart,
sex scandal 1988
• 
Homosexual people are under
attack in this country for having
propensities that are judged by
others to be abnormal and
grotesque; their self-esteem is
continually assaulted by those
who, usually speaking in the
name of God, declare their very
existence to be a monstrous
threat to human society.
Quasimodo s story takes on
increased personal depth and
social significance when it is
viewed against this background.
Fadner, p. 18
•  Is this song (and “Heaven’s
Light” an unspoken advocacy (in
part, or in whole?) for the gay
community? Or, simply a plea
for openness for anyone who is
different ?
Out There
“Heaven’s Light”
So many times out here
I've watched a happy pair
Of lovers walking in the night
They had a kind of glow around them
It almost looked like heaven's light
I knew I'd never know
That warm and loving glow
Nature of evil?
• 
Now here is a riddle / To guess if
you can / Sing the bells of Notre
Dame / Who is the monster / And
who is the man?/ Sing the bells,
bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells,
bells / Bells of Notre Dame - is
this a film about what it means to
be a man?
•  Virtually every evening s paper
brings a new story of a man who
has killed his estranged wife or
lover, and often their children, and
then in remorse turned the gun
on himself, attempting to possess
in death what he could not control
in life. Fadner
•  Is Disney s The Hunchback of
Notre Dame a commentary on
restrictive (Conservative Christian,
patriarchal) gender roles for men control rather than compassion?
Esmeralda: It appears we've
crowned the wrong fool. The only
fool I see is you!
• 
Is Disney s Hunchback a response to the Baptist
Boycott?
• 
Film released almost immediately after - 10 days
after - the boycott was announced. But early
complaints, early calls for Boycott would have
happened while the film was being made.
• 
At exactly the time when Disney and religion were
being discussed in the media as a result of the
boycott, Disney enters the debate with a film that
highlights questions of the true nature of Christian
virtue, morality, practice, etc.
• 
Disney as a competing voice to Conservative
Christian critics: All my life, you have told me that
the world is a dark, cruel place. But now I see that
the only thing dark and cruel about it is people like
you…. Is Disney issuing a condemnation of
hypocritical fire-and-brimstone religion here?
• 
What kind of religion is Disney advocating instead?