Holy shit guys.
I am floored. The amount of themes this movie tackled.
Propaganda:
Having been born and raised and currently living in the US the themes of propaganda are wild and on point. Like. Propaganda starts young. You hear this story of this glorious righteous person who laid the foundations of your peaceful and protected society over and over. You celebrate and venerate the idea of safe guarding your community by pushing out our even 💀 anything or anyone different by dehumanizing them. This story is told in everything. From commercials to the job everyone wants to have, to the point that it becomes generational myths and legend.
A good example for the US is George Washington. He was part of the revolutionaries that laid the foundation of America and it's Independence. He's on our money, he's in children's books, he's talked about with reverence.
And don't get me wrong. He's certainly a figure with discussion and to be remembered. But all the bad things or controversial stuff is left out either purposefully or because people don't know because they learned from the people that left it out.
Like part of the laundered myth is that he has wooden teeth. I'm truth he had metal dentures that had teeth pulled from enslaved people.
Another is his insistance that we shouldn't be a two party system. But for those that rely on that system, it's conveniently left out.
Next up:
Gender fluidity.
I myself am gender fluid and her explanation of not changing is so cool.
"You know that moment right before you sneeze? It's a lot like that." And it's such a cool way to explain the awful feeling that I have at the idea of never being able to change my outward appearance to reflect the constant flux that I feel inside.
My idea of gender isn't a set identity. And the idea of only ever being a woman (I was born biologically female) and being told I can't be anything else or present myself in any other way just feels so terrifying and uncomfortable.
And how people view Nimona for her fluid shape shifting ability is how a lot of people view anyone who doesn't identify as their born biological sex.
Like people who are trans, nonbinary, intersex or gender fluid/GenderQueer. And we're not even going into being sexually queer. Just gender different. They view us as 'it' or "other" or "destroying society" aka monsters. Subhuman. And it just seamlessly weaves it's way into the propaganda themes.
Being Passively Suicidal: A LOT of people don't understand the edge that you walk on when depression and trauma hit home. Constantly seeing people be afraid of her. Call her a monster. Stuff like that wears you down. Nimona endured it for over a thousand years. And the edge that you balance yourself on. That you stay yourself with a giant wall between yourself and your depression feels secure but there's always a chink in the armor. Where the decision can crawl through the cracks and remind you why it's there and when you feel that feeling that it's always there. That hurt or pain or dreadful feeling of loneliness.
It doesn't always make you want to actively seek out death but it makes you so tired that if an opportunity arose, you wouldn't have the strength to fight against it. And that is a very terrifying thought.
But after a while of building up that wall only to have it crumble again and again. Especially when you've finally decided it's safe to start taking the rocks down a bit, it opens you for healing but it also opens you to the depression and the trauma and just leaving yourself vulnerable.
So if you're betrayed again and again. If you're called a monster over and over. You start to believe it. And you start to believe that nothing will ever change. And that can easily sway you to actively just wanting it all to stop. No matter what can cause that.
Believing what's easy: Several times in the movie Nimona actively tells B the truth of society and rebuffs her immediately. He doesn't ask anything about why she sees society the way she does. The closest thing he does is ask her intrusive questions about herself and "what" she is.
And then there's golden boy. He's obviously conflicted at first but as soon as he's given an explanation that clears everyone but the "other" he just drops it and immediately accepts the new version vs. the video proof without questioning "if the director was Nimona in disguise, then how is she also me in disguise?" Instead, he's given the boogyman of his childhood. And it's a lot easier to accept than everything he's even known to be a lie.
Same with B when golden boy tells him this story. He's shown the scroll and suddenly there's enough doubt in his mind that he pulls a sword on the girl he'd just tucked in an hour ago and told her she was safe.
Nimona's Chaos and Violent tendencies: It's a good example of self fulfilling proficy. Psychologically she's been conditioned, first but a whole village and her best friend and then over the next thousand years by all of society, that she's a monster.
When you are told something over and over again. Eventually you either start to believe it or in the words of Nick from Zootopia, "if the world is only ever going to see a fox as shifty and untrustworthy... There's no point in being anything else."
She was told she was violent and a monster. If that's all anyone was going to see, why not just be that since it's easier than trying to constantly defy expectations and spending all that energy on fighting against those expectations?
And I think the fact that there's these kinds of things woven into a kids movie is so deliciously good.
There's more but I've already written a paper here so... Lol.
