I have been sick for the last few days and have found comfort in watching endorphin inducing movies. Unfortunately, my all time go to sick movie, Gone With the Wind, was not on Netflix, so I searched around until I found Disney's Tangled. This is probably the fifth time I've seen it; my reaction to it has been consistent. I do not feel like I learned anything too new about the varieties of human expression, nor did the movie take a cathartic effect on me, until my friends brought out some differences of opinion.
Some of them argued that Rapunzel showed an unnatural reaction to her mom's, Mother Gothel's, death. They argued that the woman had raised her, taken care of her, as any mother would have. They quoted the line where Gothel says, "I love you," Rapunzel responds, "I love you more," and Gothel says, "I love you most." How tender. One argument I have heard is that little girls around the world are going to think that their mothers are villains because Mother Gothel is not overwhelmingly, nor overtly evil.
My answer to these statements are that no person is intrinsically evil. Also, I would expect a child to revolt against parents that are blatantly sarcastic and passive aggressive. I would encourage children everywhere to combat this. Mother Gothel repeatedly calls her daughter stupid, dumb, fat, weak, and overall inadequate, followed up with a laugh and "I'm just kidding!" and "This is why I love you," or "This is why you need me." It is some of the most disgusting verbal abuse and I applaud Disney's decision to show this kind of behavior as villainous, and to not show the remorse that Rapunzel might have felt from the antagonist's death.
All of this aside, because I had taken theraflu nighttime I had no trouble falling asleep throughout and after the film. In my dreams I had the most curious power of healing people when I cried on them. It took me a minute to realize my adventures and powers were not real, but it started me thinking on how they could be. I feel like we can help people heal as we cry with them, to be "Willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places" (Mosiah 18:9) is a special power. Anyone would say if they had a super power, they would use it as much as they could. We all do have super powers with our individual gifts to serve, relate to, comfort, and cry with. Let's use them. Let's use our natural human power to help, and by doing so, allow ourselves to be helped in the same way.
Tangled is a film by Disney. The scriptural quote is from
The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
