The Matt Walsh Show - December 28, 2023


Matt Walsh Explains Why These Movie Villains Were Right

Topics
deer hunters in bambi Scar and Mufasa moral dishonesty Gaston as protagonist in Beauty and the Beast
Hosted by
Matt Walsh
Mentioned
Gaston Snow White Bambi Mufasa Scar Jiminy Cricket Lion King Simba
My Crew Gave Me New Year's Resolutions For 2024 Ep. 1284 - Another Cowardly Republican Gov ernor Caves To The Trans Agenda

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

177.16

Word count

2,117

Sentence count

225

Harmful content

Misogyny

9

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Disney villains get a bad rap, but in many cases they are misunderstood, misconstrued, and misused. Here s a list of 5 Disney villains who were actually right all along. 1. Bambi 2. Scar 3. Lion King 4. Mufasa 5. Simba

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So we all know that Disney movies these days are hopelessly woke and basically awful in
00:00:14.840 every way. I'm a narcissist. Weird. Weird. And that's why most people think back fondly to
00:00:22.380 like the old days at Disney. They pine for the classics. I understand that mentality but
00:00:30.000 the truth is that even older Disney movies have issues. The problem is that in those films in
00:00:36.920 many cases the alleged villains are treated I think very unfairly. They get a bad rap. In many
00:00:43.480 cases they are misunderstood, misconstrued. I only wanted to help. And look maybe it's just my
00:00:48.780 overabundance of empathy and compassion. You know it gets me into a lot of trouble sometimes and
00:00:53.620 maybe that's what allows me to see it this way. But either way today in this very important video
00:00:57.300 we're going to talk about Disney villains who were actually right all along. So we'll go through
00:01:03.480 five movies. Number one is Bambi. Wake up. We have company. Now first of all I've never met a child
00:01:12.160 who actually likes this movie. I don't know anyone my age who liked Bambi growing up. Bambi is
00:01:17.100 one of the weakest films in the Disney canon. And yet it's viewed as a classic because it
00:01:26.060 happened to be released in the 40s. Although it could have been released last year based on the
00:01:29.960 fact that the villains in this movie are the hunters who shot Bambi's mom.
00:01:34.780 No hasty, careless shooting.
00:01:36.380 There you are. File away. Oh good shot boy, good shot. But they were obviously entirely justified in
00:01:45.720 doing so. First of all because venison is delicious. Those hunters I'm guessing made some
00:01:50.180 great venison steaks. Maybe some deer jerky out of Bambi's mom. Which is a fact that could have 1.00
00:01:56.540 brought Bambi some comfort and solace if anyone had explained it to him but they never did. Second,
00:02:00.800 deer populations are out of control in this country. Like they wreak havoc in ecosystems.
00:02:06.660 They cause 1.5 million car crashes a year, including hundreds of fatalities. So deer hunters are
00:02:13.140 performing a service and yet they've been villainized in a movie that generations of bored children have
00:02:18.320 been forced to watch. Think about this. If Bambi's mom had not been shot and killed, she may have gone 1.00
00:02:24.960 on to like run into the road one night. Causing a family returning home from dinner to veer off into
00:02:32.540 a tree and die. Whole family. Dead. Think about that. Number two is Lion King. Now I'm not saying that
00:02:46.460 Scar is the good guy in that film. I'm not justifying what he did. Like killing your brother
00:02:54.320 trying to kill your nephew is inappropriate. I don't condone it. 0.98
00:03:01.780 Oh god!
00:03:03.080 But all I'm saying is that, you know, I think the character deserves a bit more sympathy than he gets.
00:03:08.740 For one thing, his name is Scar.
00:03:10.800 Yeah!
00:03:11.980 Okay? I don't want to get into the nature versus nurture debate, but when you name your child Scar,
00:03:16.320 you can't complain when he becomes a villain. Especially if we have one kid that you name Mufasa.
00:03:21.260 You got that strong name.
00:03:22.440 Mufasa!
00:03:22.840 The other one you named Scar.
00:03:25.300 What'll that make you?
00:03:26.480 A monkey's uncle. 0.74
00:03:27.680 So what did you expect? Also, I'm not saying that Mufasa deserves to be thrown off a cliff,
00:03:32.280 but there's a fundamental, like, moral dishonesty to Mufasa that I've, that I always found deeply
00:03:38.700 troubling. Even as a child, the first time I saw it, I even said to my parents, there's a fundamental
00:03:43.220 moral dishonesty in this film, mom and dad. I said that to them. And here's why. He eats his own
00:03:47.900 subjects. Okay, one minute, they're all celebrating the birth of his son. You know, they're bringing
00:03:53.840 gifts or whatever they're sharing. And the next, they don't show this in the film, but Mufasa is
00:03:58.180 hunting them down and consuming them. And by the way, lions eat their prey alive. That's how lions
00:04:05.240 eat. That's how Mufasa treated his subjects. And then he has the audacity to get all high and mighty
00:04:12.400 towards Scar. Like, you can understand Scar's resentment. And to make matters worse, they acknowledge
00:04:19.660 it in the movie. So Simba asks his dad. Dad, don't we eat the antelope? They were just at our baby shower
00:04:25.560 and now, like, we eat them. And that's, that's kind of not cool. And Mufasa says, well, son, that's okay
00:04:30.500 because it's part of the circle of life. When we die, our bodies become the grass and the antelope
00:04:36.380 eat the grass. Okay, but that is not the same thing at all. That is not an even trait. So give me a
00:04:42.240 break. And also your body doesn't even become grass. So that's bullshit to begin with. And I'm not
00:04:46.420 holding it against the lion for being a lion. I'm just saying that there's arguably a certain
00:04:50.500 intellectual integrity in Scar's outlook and behavior that you don't find with Mufasa. That's my point.
00:04:56.840 Number three is Pocahontas. This is an obvious one. The villains in this movie are the evil white 0.98
00:05:04.840 Europeans who are portrayed as brutal, greedy barbarians, oppressing the innocent Native 0.99
00:05:08.700 Americans who are all kind and generous and so in touch with nature they can literally talk to the 0.87
00:05:13.400 trees. Somehow everybody speaks perfect English, including the trees. This is like the noble savage
00:05:20.420 myth put the film. It's also really, we talk about wokeness in Disney films. This was the beginning
00:05:27.140 of Disney's long march into wokeness.
00:05:36.180 But you could argue that that march began with the vegetarian propaganda of Bambi. But in any case,
00:05:41.420 the white settlers in reality were courageous and intrepid pioneers, not villains.
00:05:45.240 We build roads and decent houses and... Our houses are fine. You think that only because you don't
00:05:51.560 know any better. So that's an easy one. Number four is Snow White. Now this is another case where I'm
00:05:56.100 not so much claiming that the evil queen was wholly justified in her actions. I'm simply suggesting
00:06:01.580 that the situation is a bit more nuanced. There's some nuance, there's some complexity, okay?
00:06:06.940 Did Snow White deserve to be poisoned with an apple? No. But does she also bear some responsibility 0.99
00:06:16.140 for eating an apple offered to her by a random old woman who showed up at her window laughing 0.81
00:06:23.180 maniacally? Yes, absolutely.
00:06:26.260 All alone, my pet?
00:06:28.600 She never even asks, like, who the woman is.
00:06:30.460 Yes, I am.
00:06:31.880 Just the woman shows up at the window and says, hey, do you want an apple? And she never says,
00:06:35.020 who are you? What are you? Why? Um, excuse me, what the actual f*** are you doing in my house?
00:06:39.860 This woman's walking around the forest, randomly handing out apples. There's no question. She just 0.98
00:06:43.420 takes it and eats it. Doesn't bother washing it in the sink. So it's hard for me to feel sorry for.
00:06:47.600 And for the record, you should never eat anything if the person offering it is laughing while they
00:06:54.780 hand it to you. Never mind if it's an evil laugh. I don't care if it's any kind of laugh.
00:07:01.320 And never mind that they're at your window in the middle of the day for no reason.
00:07:05.020 Not to mention the fact that the whole Snow White fairy tale is really about home invasion and
00:07:10.840 burglary. Uh, this woman barges into the home of these clearly mentally disabled old men, 0.97
00:07:16.540 Jiminy Crickets, who aren't even half her size, makes herself at home. 0.99
00:07:21.920 With a new little chair.
00:07:23.480 Now, eventually the dwarves grow attached to her. So you might say, oh, they're friends. 0.66
00:07:28.560 No, they were, they were terrified when they first got away. Like anybody would be. You get home and
00:07:33.000 there's this giant, like sleeping on your bed, all of your beds that she's helped herself to. Of
00:07:38.000 course you're going to be, anyone would be scared. And they were scared, but eventually this kind of
00:07:41.140 Stockholm syndrome takes effect. And, uh, and, and they become friends. And then when she dies,
00:07:46.480 they put her in a glass coffin because they somehow had a full size glass coffin lying around, 1.00
00:07:51.800 which makes you question their motives, frankly. And they display her body for several days until a
00:07:57.560 prince who has never met her before. Okay. Shows up out of nowhere, kisses this woman who for all he
00:08:03.640 knows has been dead for days. And this is, this is back when they didn't have like the preservation of
00:08:08.680 the body. Nothing was done to preserve the body. There could be some, you know, decomposing. I mean,
00:08:13.840 and he starts just kissing this dead woman. It's very dark. It's a very morbid story. When you think
00:08:20.060 about it, like an insane person, which means the evil queen is maybe still evil, but her action should 0.96
00:08:27.200 at least be understood in proper context. And maybe you could argue that she even was an advocate
00:08:30.560 for private property rights. And that's why she was so upset at Snow White. I don't, you know,
00:08:34.900 that's one interpretation. Number five, finally, is Beauty and the Beast. Now we've talked about this
00:08:39.360 before. I consider it to be one of the most important issues that I discuss. It probably
00:08:42.980 deserves to be the subject of its own documentary. Gaston is the quintessential villain who was
00:08:49.680 actually the hero of the story. And I will insist on this until my dying breath. We're supposed to
00:08:59.800 hate Gaston from the beginning because why? He's manly and in good shape. He eats a lot of eggs.
00:09:07.960 Is that his crime? What has he done wrong? It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts 1.00
00:09:13.480 getting ideas and thinking. They never explain it. And the anti-Gaston propaganda is laid on thick from
00:09:20.120 the very beginning. But even in spite of that, it's clear who the real protagonist is. We see Gaston
00:09:24.960 early in the film. What a pleasant surprise. Right? He's dressed to the nines. He visits Bell to
00:09:31.200 propose marriage. Say you'll marry me. And he's obviously an advocate of traditional marriage and
00:09:37.080 the nuclear family. He even says that. He makes a pitch for the nuclear family, traditional marriage
00:09:41.120 to Bell. He's explaining. We'll have six or seven dogs. No, Bell. Strapping boys like me. You know,
00:09:48.500 he wants to have children. He wants to have a family. It's a very lovely thing. Bell turns him down
00:09:53.360 and pushes him into a mud pit. Total humiliation. And yet by the end, Gaston is still willing to risk
00:10:03.440 his life to rescue this woman, this woman who humiliated him from the clutches of a beast.
00:10:10.080 And how did Beauty end up in that situation? Yeah, she initially went to the beast castle to save her 0.96
00:10:15.560 dad or whatever, I think. How did you find me? But she had many opportunities to escape after that
00:10:20.320 point. Like, she could have just walked out. I mean, she was in the prison cell and then she's
00:10:25.880 invited to dinner. And from that point on, she doesn't go back to the prison cell. So she could
00:10:30.520 have left anytime. Anytime. But she stays because she ends up falling in love with a non-human creature 0.99
00:10:36.280 who looks kind of like an evil water buffalo. Keep something in mind. Bell didn't know that the
00:10:44.080 beast was really a human prince. She had no idea about that. Okay? That's true. Look up on the...
00:10:49.040 You can go back and watch the movie. She never is aware of that fact. That was just luck of the
00:10:54.700 draw. So as far as she knew, she was entering into a romantic relationship with a member of
00:11:00.220 another species. That's a simple fact. Now, of course, poor Gaston, he didn't know about any of
00:11:06.700 this. He didn't know that the beast was really a prince. He didn't know that the woman of his dreams
00:11:10.580 had fallen in love with a giant mutant mountain goat. All he knew from his perspective was that Beauty
00:11:15.920 had been imprisoned by a monster. Her own dad told Gaston that...
00:11:21.860 Who's got Bell locked in a dungeon? 0.99
00:11:23.780 A beast! A horrible, monstrous beast!
00:11:27.480 And so he rallies the troops. He marches off to fight for her and save her. This is the villain of
00:11:31.960 the story? The man who ultimately gave his very life for the woman he loved? And the monster who
00:11:38.280 kidnapped a young woman is supposed to be the one we're rooting for? 0.91
00:11:41.840 That's just wrong. And I won't stand for it. So thank you for spending 10 minutes watching this
00:11:51.280 piece of content. It was obviously very important and well worth your time. And mine.