So I wrote this essay for school when my English teacher let us choose our topic. I'm still shocked that I got an A and wasn't graded off for political incorrectness.

Disclaimer: Do I look like I own Disney or anything else, for that matter? I don't even own an ironing board!

Disney and the Dark Side

What makes an outstanding villain? Fans of fiction have debated this issue for ages, yet they all agree on at least one thing: the best (or perhaps worst, if you look at it that way) villains are the most memorable. They strike emotions into your heart, invoking fear, hatred, or even the rare laughter, and few villains do this better than those of Disney. Disney's villains remain in our hearts just as much as their heroes, and not without reason. In fact, a majority of Disney villains all follow a similar pattern, exemplifying specific traits and habits.

First of all, Disney villains mostly share the same motives and desires: They want power, wealth, or beauty, if not all three. For example, there's the wicked Queen (no given name) from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. She'd lock herself in her quarters, believing herself to be too hot for unworthy peasants to handle, and would then proceed to chant to her mirror, "Magic Mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of all?" When the Magic Mirror says it's not her, it's as if the Mirror slapped her silly and shouted, "Tough luck, toots, it ain't you!" The Queen then tries to kill her stepdaughter, who is apparently prettier than her (and certainly much nicer). The bad guy attempting to kill the unlucky and unlikely hero plot is repeated throughout Disney canon. The Lion King's main antagonist Scar's goal was to rule the Pride Lands and steal the throne by murdering his brother and nephew. Jafar from Aladdin didn't want much...just unlimited wealth and magical powers of doom to compliment his desired marriage to Princess Jasmine, adding her to his harem.

There are a notable exceptions to these wants: the most notable are Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty and Judge Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Honestly, Maleficent makes no sense at all. Why did she try to murder Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip? Because she wasn't invited to a party! The whole incident is like, "You dare not invite me to your baby shower? I SHALL SMITE YOU ALL!" Frollo, on the other hand, craved annihilation of the Gypsies. It seems that party crashing is just as malicious as genocide, in this case.

You have to admit that the villains all have style. Jafar, ever the fashionista, struts around in his red and black turban that he probably attacked with a Bedazzler, twirling his twisted beard like he's too sexy for his robes (he's not). Then there is Maleficent, the most recognizable character of Sleeping Beauty. Cold, chic, and distant, her style leaves a lasting impression, though this could also be due to her green complexion. Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective both dresses and acts like a king. The Horned King of The Black Cauldron is a humorous play on all this because the animator chose him as the leading villain mainly because he had horns sticking out of his head. Even more hilarious, though, is Ursula from The Little Mermaid, who was modeled after a drag queen.

Most of the villains have a wickedly demented song. These villainous anthems have disturbing themes: fratricide, child abuse, narcissism, and even hellfire. Scar's ominous song "Be Prepared" involves him plotting the deaths of Mufasa, the king of Pride Rock, and Simba, heir to said enormous boulder. He bellows of the "shiny new era" yet to come, most of which probably consists of mauling zebras until all prey flees, leaving the lions to starve. Oh, the humanity! Then there is "Gaston" from Beauty and the Beast, which is an obsessive, drunken song sung by Gaston and his cronies about Gaston's one true love: himself. If the song is to be believed, Gaston uses antlers in all of his decorating (which is probably compensation), stomps around in boots like no other man alive, and can win any spitting match with his mad expectorating skills. Yes, this man is incapable of reading anything other than picture books, but somehow he knows words like "expectorating." On top of that, his vocabulary seems to only expand when he totally wasted out of his right mind!

It should also be noted that Disney villains have bumbling and usually funny sidekicks and henchmen, though this is probably to relieve the younger audiences from the actual villains' intensity. They're usually loyal to the main antagonist, or at least at first. For example, during Scar's "Be Prepared" the hyenas march onward beneath his stone pedestal. This scene was inspired by Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens, and many other Disney sidekicks are inspired by some form of artwork. Funnily enough, Scar betrays his hyenas (no surprise there), so they eat him up like Savanna Fried Lion drumsticks with a side of barbecue sauce. Cruella De Vil of 101 Dalmatians fame had the Badun brothers as her underlings. Like Scar, Cruella treated her inferiors like dirt, and like my mother, she assumed she was always, always right. Folks in the audience all cheered when one Badun gets fed up with Cruella's "I'm right, you're wrong" attitude and tells her to shut up. The Queen of Hearts had many of those beneath her decapitated at random, but that could be because the Queen was, as animator Kram Nebur put it, "One word: psycho". No matter what, the henchmen had to take all the garbage imaginable because these villains were too daft to learn some manners, say please and thank you, and eat with the right utensils at dinner instead of using that salad fork to stab their goody two-shoes family members.

When these villains face their arch nemeses for the final time, they truly realize that desperate times call for desperate measures. If the villain has magical powers, expect some ultimate form in which the villain's power reaches potential's peak. Like always in this paper, Maleficent is a prime example: in the climax of Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent battles Prince Phillip to prevent him from saving Aurora, his true love. Her original plan to keep him imprisoned until he reached a ripe old age while Aurora remained forever at age sixteen had been foiled. Outraged, Maleficent merely frowns, coats the castle in a pretty layer of sharp, pointy, hazardous thorns, and boasts, "Now you shall deal with ME, O Prince, and all the fires of HELL!" Cackling evilly, she then, in a brilliant bit of animation, transfigures herself into a show-stopping dragon, which bears great resemblance to herself. That's right, now even dragons can look chic! Jafar became a huge genie, the Queen became a hideous hag, and Ursula grew over one hundred feet tall, which finally made her as tall as she was wide. This is all averted in The Emperor's New Groove, when the evil Yzma became a conniving but adorable kitten.

Good is always praised; evil is always punished. This is always proven in Disney with no exception. They're usually nonviolent, such as the cliche "falling off the cliff" end, though Mother Gothel in Tangled disintegrated as she did so. The Queen was struck by lightning, Ursula was stabbed by the trident, and Scar was devoured. What goes around comes around. This is certainly true when it comes to Disney, and it helps make a strong moral message about good and evil.

Usually, Disney villains that aren't in the animated movies are either radically more monstrous or ridiculous, though they share the various other traits discussed. Captain Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean shamelessly murdered countless British soldiers onscreen, something unheard of in the animations. Xehanort of the Kingdom Hearts video games was even more terrible: he obliterated entire worlds, possessed two characters (one of them for eleven years), nearly murdered the best friend of the other boy he controlled by ripping his heart out, stole people's hearts and turned them into beings of darkness called the Heartless, and manipulated all of his minions and so-called allies. On the other end of the spectrum is Dr. Heinz Doofenschmirtz from the television show Phineas and Ferb. Not only is his arch nemesis a blue platypus, but he fails at scheming entirely.

Though it's usually easy to tell who is good or evil, it's entirely up to oneself to decide who is the greatest/worst. After all, they're mostly similar, but each ferocious foe has a few characteristics that are vastly unique. What's truly important for the villain is that he or she is a character on par with the protagonist's skills. Disney villains must prove their worth and mettle time and time again, outwitting and beating the heroes at least once in every movie before they get flushed down the metaphorical toilet. Overall, the malevolent and wicked Disney douche bags have shown their sly and slimy natures, something that they all have in common.

Yeah, still can't believe I got an A.