The Rev. Jason Poling is the Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.
I wouldn’t describe myself as a Disney fan, in much the same way that I wouldn’t describe Bob Ehrlich as a Martin O’Malley fan. But I was deeply impressed by The Princess and the Frog.
It wasn’t the animation, though having been exposed to far too many of Disney’s “dreck-to-video” offerings it was a pleasure to see an animated film produced with such care. Nor was it the story, with its predictable Disney-esque plotlines. It wasn’t even the brilliant minor comic figures, though they were outstanding: one of the virtues of animation is that characters may be literally overdrawn, achieving comic effect that would be tiresome in a formulaic live-action movie. (So that I don’t spoil anything for folks who haven’t seen the movie, let’s just say that the show was stolen by a firefly named Ray who could have been the love child of Sir Mix-A-Lot, Thomas Edison and the Cavity Creeps.)
No, I was most impressed by the quality of the film that will no doubt emerge as the most controversial: the spiritual. And I don’t mean spiritual in the “believe in yourself” sense that pervades so much of the Disney cosmology; this film features real-live demonic activity and otherworldly malevolence that deserves a G rating as much as the original (un-Victorianized) Grimm tales do.
The villain in The Princess and the Frog is, like every Disney villain, rotten to the core: egotistical, manipulative, deceitful and power-hungry. Yet while Dr. Facilier exhibits enough nastiness to frighten Disney’s core audience, what strikes real terror into the hearts of men is his shadow side …literally. We see on the screen not merely Dr. Facilier but what my Jewish friends would call his yetzer hara, the evil essence of his soul, portrayed as a shadow that manifests the true intentions behind his sneering grin.
And it is not merely Dr. Facilier’s inner demon that we see, but those of his “friends on the other side,” whose aid he enlists by means of voodoo magic. The Witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty were capable of some wicked magic, but this villain is engaged in genuine intercourse with the dark side of the spirit realm; indeed, as the film progresses he demonstrates himself to be literally in debt to his devilish masters. The evil in The Princess and the Frog is not merely the craven fratricidal selfishness of Scar in The Lion King; it is sinister to the point of being profoundly infernal.
As I thought about the spiritual component of the film, my mind went back to the controversy that erupted in evangelical circles over the Harry Potter books. Some argued that as these books deal with witchcraft and sorcery they should not taint the minds of good Christian youth; others saw the “magic” of Harry Potter as instrumental, a means of exercising power liable to corruption but not a malevolent personal force in itself. In this way, J. K. Rowling followed her initialed countrymen C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien in developing villains, as well as heroes, who interacted with magic the way all of us interact with strong powers like wealth, or sexuality, or authority, or wits, and either master these capacities or are twisted by them until we ultimately become something less than human even as our sins take on a superhuman quality.
In this respect The Princess and the Frog is the Disney film most deeply in touch with the ancient wisdom that there is such a thing as evil, that human beings are subject to being hijacked by the agendas of malevolent personal forces we cannot see, that our weaknesses expose us to this kind of manipulation, and that virtues like loyalty, industry and charity are helpful (though not guaranteed) means of keeping us from danger. Dr. Facilier’s name derives from the French word for “easy;” it is the low road, the path of least resistance that leads us to trouble.
Beyond the sound moral instruction, though, I must note that it is unusual indeed to find occult practices like Tarot reading outside of a horror film; more so to find them in portrayed in a children’s movie not as harmless parlor tricks but as a highway to Hell.
It would not be inappropriate for those of us who have believed this sort of thing all along to recognize Disney’s achievement.
(Source: The Baltimore Sun)