Hunchback of Notre Dame

Ever seen The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Probably the darkest movie Disney has ever done. ("And now all Paris is burning because of you!") Also one of my favorites (Bells of Notre Dame? EPIC)

It's also a movie that has the potential to be very socially conscious. Sexism, racism, religion, deformity, class awareness--this movie touches on it all. Sadly, it fails to follow through on these issues.

Esmerelda. She's pretty cool. A little cliched, the highly sexualized spunky girl with a heart of gold. Still, she's a fun, talented, brave woman.

But did you notice that she was basically the only woman in the movie? Racking my brains for other women, I come up with 1) Quasimodo's mother, 2) that little girl in the purple dress, and 3) Laverne the gargoyle. Either way, note that she is the only adult human woman alive during the actual story.

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the three other main characters are all attracted to her. Quasimodo is helplessly in love with her, Phoebus finds her exciting, and Frollo has unholy desires for her. Did anyone else notice this? It's kind of freaky.

Because, okay, here's the thing. Only having one female character is bad. Women make up half of the population and that's about what it takes to satisfy me. A scarcity of women results in situations like we have with Esmerelda the Only Woman Available, and also the beginning of the movie.

Quasimodo's mother, as she must be defined, for her character gets its importance only from her relation to a man, dies in the first four minutes of the movie. She dies a heroic death in the service of a male, and that's what makes her likable. This may be the only situation like this that has been pointed out to you, so you may think I'm coming out of nowhere on this one, but I'm starting to get pretty tired of women who we approve of because they make sacrifices for men.* (Harry Potter also made a pretty big deal out of this.) I'd like to see someone we approve of because they make a sacrifice for a woman.

You may say "But this is bullshit! Quasimodo's mother (whose name we do not know) would have done the same thing for a daughter!" Well, that's the thing. She didn't have a daughter. Quasimodo was a male. (So was Harry Potter.) This is what happens when you have almost every character be a man: women don't get a chance to interact with each other.

And interacting with other men, Esmerelda is always in a subordinate role (Clopin's assistant, the archdeacon's, um, advice-taker, the soldiers' victim) or in a sexual one. There's probably some really nasty stuff to unpack here given that she is not just a woman but a woman of color, and that the men who love/fetishize her are all white, including Quasimodo who should be a man of color but is distinctly not--but I'm not as familiar with the patterns of racial oppression. Suffice it to say that I think it adds to the creepy.

One more thing that annoyed me was the climax. Esmerelda is a fierce, competent woman and would have been at least as valuable an asset as Phoebus in fighting Frollo and his soldiers, but instead she is incapacitated. First she is tied to that whole burning stake, putting the woman in danger so that the man can find his character development. Then, she is unconscious, making it look like the woman is dead so that the man gets extra emotion for the fight. She is completely put out of commission, and robbing such a strong character of the chance to be in the final battle, except as an object of motivation for the man, is lame. This is, like, the gypsy princess here. Can she get some action?

Le sigh. Some things they did right:
1. Phoebus does not beat Esmerelda in their fight in the cathedral.
2 Laverne is just as likable as the other two gargoyles, and not defined by her sex.
3. Esmerelda ends up with Phoebus, not Quasimodo.
4. Clopin is the shit.

*Arwen is pretty much the gold standard for this phenomenon.