This group kicked off with a shared Miro link which allowed us all to put down our research in one place. We divided the workload into part one and part two, with Lee and Shane tackling the questions “What’s the research question? What’s the argument? What’s the methodology? What are the examples?” While Ellen, Ava and I answered the second section; “What is your reflection on this article? Are there any interesting points? What are the strengths and weaknesses? Do you agree or disagree? What did you learn?”
For this task, we decided to read the article individually, try and answer all the questions in our assigned part ourselves and then get together on a voice call and pick the best points of each question to put into the PowerPoint.
I was particularly intrigued by the ‘interesting points’ question and wrote about three points.
- Character design archetypes can be used to trick the audience via twist villains/twist heroes. The first example of this is Twist Villains – like Hans in Frozen (2013). Hans fits the typical ‘Disney prince’ archetype. He was a fit, charming prince with nice hair, who was clean-shaven and generically handsome, which is the formula for many other Disney princes in the past (Prince Philip from Sleeping Beauty, Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid), so the audience accepts him as the love interest without much thought. However, Hans defies expectations by becoming the main antagonist, leaving one protagonist to die and attempting to murder the other.
Another example of design archetypes being used to trick the audience is Bruno Madrigal from Encanto (2021). Bruno was introduced as the villain, described as being tall, intimidating, sadistic and unclean (“Seven-foot frame, rats along his back. When he calls your name it all fades to black.”- from the song We Don’t Talk About Bruno). Bruno is shown throughout the musical number as a hooded figure with a wicked smile, a creeping shadow and a towering man with sickly pale skin and glowing green eyes. This goes against the stereotypical hero archetype, which displays heroes as handsome and villains as sharp or ugly. Bruno is a selfless hero but is visibly dishevelled, which breaks the rules of character design previously set by Disney themselves.
The author connects Late Disney with Baroque by using Late Disney’s penchant for breaking their own rules of character design as a bluff, creating an illusion to trick the audience. The author defines ‘baroque’ as a “conscious deviation from the narrative security of the formula”, which is what is encompassed in the twist heroes/villains of Late Disney. Other examples of twist heroes/villains that broke character design rules are King Candy (Wreck-It Ralph, 2012), Robert Callahaghan (Big Hero 6, 2014), Assistant Mayor Bellwether (Zootopia, 2016) and Te Feiti/Te Ka (Moana, 2016).
2. Is ‘Baroque’ a compliment?
Yes: The author describes “splendour, multiplicity, complexity and fragmentation” as “fundamental to the Baroque” style, and compares this to the “achievements of computer-generated imagery”. He then goes on to compliment the immense detail in the Late Disney movies, quoting several instances throughout the nine movies he classes as ‘Late Disney’, including “Elsa’s ornate icy sculptures in the two Frozen films” and the “polymorphous microbots in Big Hero 6”. These descriptors certainly seem to shine a favourable light on the author’s opinions of the visuals of the recent Disney animated features, which I completely agree with.
No: Despite this, the article also describes Baroque as having an “investment in excess and disruption of presentation”, and is compared to ‘rococo’, which is described as “a late, florid, decadent stage”, as well as quoting Henri Focillion’s identification of baroque as “abandoned or denatured the principle of intimate propriety”. This sets the tone of Baroque as a last hurrah, a desperate last-ditch attempt to keep a fad alive by stuffing everything it included into one piece of media, with the result of far-too-busy visual clutter. I’d compare this to Disney by citing their many ‘first gay characters’ – “The Walt Disney Company announces each new LGBTQIA+ character in a Disney film or TV show as some sort of first for them” (ScreenRant, 2023). I also believe that Disney’s focus on better and more realistic animation is part of why the stories aren’t as fleshed out.
The rest of my points are included in this screenshot of the Miro.
Last Friday, we had a voice meeting over Discord, during which Ellen, Shane and I sorted through the points made on the Miro and put the best ones on the PowerPoint. We then delegated what slides we would present in class. This was the final draft:
Part 1:
Shane: What’s the research question, what’s the argument
Lee: What is the methodology, what are the examples
Part 2:
Ellen: Reflection, Interesting Points
Zoe: Strengths, Weaknesses
Ava: Agree/Disagree, What did we learn
This way, we all had two slides each, had two minutes to talk, and could expand on points that we didn’t originally make (half of the strengths/weaknesses were mine, the other half Ellen’s). I wrote out a script for my part and made sure my slides were brief and simple to focus attention on my words.
On the day, we realised that only three people had made it in (Ellen, Lee and myself), so we delegated Shane and Ava’s slides out between us, Lee handling all of part one, then Ellen taking Ava’s ‘agree/disagree’ and myself taking Ava’s ‘What did we learn’. Ellen and I created the slides and scripts for this ourselves, as they had not previously been completed.
In the end, the presentation went well. We spoke clearly and professionally and got through all the slides with very few slip-ups. If I were to do this again, however, I would probably make my slides a little less basic and boring, and perhaps spread them out over a few more slides.
References:
Lang, J. (2023), Disney’s ‘Strange World’ Was 2022’s Biggest Box Office Flop, According To New Report. Available from https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/strange-world-light-box-office-bombs-227881.html [Accessed 7 February 2023]
Michaelsen, S. (2023) Why There Are So Many “First” Gay Disney Characters. Available from: [Accessed 13 Febuary 2023]