Reading Response To Thomas Nelson's Darkness In The Look

For this final reading response, I have decided to look in depth at Thomas Nelson’s piece of writing called Darkness in the Look and to also interpret and analyze specific aspects of this particular reading. In the reading, Nelson does quite a wonderful job analyzing Disney’s representations of evil over the decades between 1938 and 1974. His view is that darkness in Disney was used in the first few films to convey a more haunting, and dramatic form of evil and that as the years progressed, Disney moved away from imagination being directly linked to lightness and darkness within the icon world of Disney. Throughout this response, I will be contrasting, in particular the idea of evil being prevalent in nature and in one’s self to evil being within one entity, or

Nelson mentions first, that Snow White, has a very prominent evil presence throughout, unlike the latter films created by Disney. Not only is there a strong, and terrifying antagonist, but evil exists before we even meet the evil witch. The evil that we see involves imagination, and nature when Snow White journeys through the dark woods and ultimately scares her own self with imagination. We can assume that this evil is from the wicked queen, but evil also resides within darkness and nature. Not only this, but the transformation of the evil queen into an old witchy lady with an apple is also terrifying. This, according to Nelson changes in the film Cinderella. In Cinderella, the evil stepmother starts to bring forth a more externalized version of evil. Nelson writes “Rather than embellishing the villainy of the principal antagonist, as was the case in Snow White, Disney chooses to soften the Perrault original” (Nelson, 99). While arguing this, Nelson also argues that the use of evil side-kicks helps to