Listen Up: Disney villains reimagined in new musical at Hollywood Studios

South China Morning Post

2 days ago

Questions
1. What is the main idea of the new musical show?
A. how heroes fight Disney villains
B. how to become a Disney villain
C. history of Disney villains
D. none of the above
2. Who do the 'three antagonists of old-school Disney films' refer to?
A. Maleficent, Captain Hook and Cruella
B. Captain Hook, Elphaba and Scar
C. Cruella, Ursula and Maleficent
D. Jafar, Scar and Cruella
3. Which word can replace 'unfairly' in the podcast?
A. ungraciously
B. dishonestly
C. wrongfully
D. shamefully
4. Which of the following best describes what Murphy thinks about villains?
A. They should be portrayed as misunderstood.
B. There is no place for evil characters in children's stories.
C. Stories with completely bad, enjoyable villains can be positive.
D. Providing villains with a backstory can help audiences understand them better.
5. According to the podcast, what reason does Cruella give for why the character became a villain?
A. Her mother did not want her.
B. She was born with a wicked heart.
C. She was bullied at school.
D. She was attacked by puppies when she was young.
6. How many years are there in a century?
A. 10
B. 100
C. 1,000
D. 10,000
7. When did the trend of making villains more sympathetic begin?
A. in the early 1970s
B. in the late 1980s
C. in the mid 2000s
D. in the early 2010s
8. What is the purpose of 'rethinking villains' according to the ending part of the podcast?
A. to make them scarier
B. to turn them into heroes
C to look at them in a different way
D. to make the stories more complex
9. Which character does Wicked reinterpret?
A. the Wizard of Oz
B. Dorothy Gale
C. the Wicked Witch of the East
D. the Wicked Witch of the West
10. What was the result of Wicked being so popular?
A People started to add more villains in their stories.
B. People paid less attention to villains.
C. People started to make musicals that focused on villains.
D. none of the above
11. Listen to the podcast again and write down the intention behind the inclusion of the bad guys in the following stories.
(i) Little Red Riding Hood
(ii) Hansel and Gretel
(iii) Cinderella
Experts have been debating the trend of sympathetic baddies in children's stories. Photo: Instagram/wdwannualpassholder
Answers
1. D
2. A
3. C
4. C
5. A
6. B
7. B
8. C
9. D
10. D
11. (i) Little Red Riding Hood: not to get close to wolves
(ii) Hansel and Gretel: not to trust strange, old women in the woods
(iii) Cinderella: envy and vanity will be punished
Script
Adapted from Associated Press
Voice 1: Cruella de Vil wanted to turn Dalmatian puppies into fur coats; Captain Hook tried to bomb Peter Pan; and Maleficent issued a curse of early death for Aurora. But could it be possible that these Disney villains were just misunderstood? That is the premise of a new musical show at Walt Disney World, and it has some people wondering when Disney's villains stopped wanting to be so villainous.
Voice 2: The live show, Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After, debuted in May at Disney's Hollywood Studios park at the resort in the US state of Florida. In the show, the three antagonists from old-school Disney films plead their cases before an audience, claiming they are the most misunderstood villains of them all. According to Mark Renfrow, a creative director of the show, he and his team wanted to tell a different story that would ask the question: which villain has been treated the most unfairly ever after?
Voice 1: However, some Disney observers have different ideas about this concept. Benjamin Murphy, a professor of philosophy at Florida State University in Panama, said that he thought it was wonderful when there were still stories where the bad guys were completely bad. He also said that when the villains enjoyed being evil, it was funny and made people feel good.
Voice 2: Disney has some precedent for putting villains in a sympathetic light – or, at least, explaining how they got to be so evil. The 2021 film Cruella, for instance, presents a backstory for the dog-hater that blames her villainy on her mother never wanting her.
Voice 1: The centuries-old fairy tales that inspired many Disney films were originally intended to teach children important lessons. For instance, these stories warned against getting too close to wolves, as seen in Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs. They cautioned against trusting strange old women in the woods, as depicted in Hansel and Gretel and Rapunzel. Additionally, they conveyed that envy and vanity would lead to punishment, illustrated in Cinderella and Snow White. But they often made villains out of marginalised people, such as older women, people of colour or those on the lower socio-economic scale, said Rebecca Rowe, an assistant professor of children's literature at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
Voice 2: The trend of making villains more sympathetic began in the late 1980s and 1990s, as children's media gained popularity. There was a desire to present villains in a manner that was more complicated and less black and white, as there was an overall cultural push towards emphasising acceptance, Rowe said.
Voice 1: Other veins of pop culture have rethought villains too, perhaps none more famously than the book, theatrical musical and film versions of Wicked, the reinterpretation of the Wicked Witch of the West character from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The blockbuster success of Wicked, based on the 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, sparked a trend of rethinking villains in popular entertainment, challenging the audience to question who the 'wicked' one truly is.