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100 Disney Things [014]: High School Desegregation Musical Movie Trilogy Trilogy
100 Disney Things [014]
This is a post I intended to make last year -- I watched the latter two Descendants movies and the Z-O-M-B-I-E-S trilogy back in 2022, held back my reviews of them because I wanted to write a longer essay type thing for my 100 Disney Posts challenge, and thought I would write up my thoughts sometime in 2023, but then it didn't happen. So here it is. And you know what? I'm also going to go with my long tradition of bending the prompts of Snowflake Challenges to fit whatever it is I was going to talk about anyway, so this also counts for Snowflake Challenge #6:
Challenge #6: In your own space, share a favourite piece of original canon (a show, a specific TV episode, a storyline, a book or series, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.
Note: This post contains light spoilers for all the movies discussed here (HSM, Descendants, and ZOMBIES).
High School Musical 1 / 2 / 3
I'm going to start off with a set of Disney Channel Original Movies (DCOM movies) that people are likely to be much more familiar with before moving into the films I saw more recently and want to spend more time talking about. But in some ways, High School Musical (HSM) forms kind of the origin or template of Descendants and Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (which I will write as "ZOMBIES" from now on because I hate typing that out).
Despite being a DCOM movie with not particularly great production values or acting, HSM was a kind of surprise hit because, well, the music and dance numbers are just bomb. I'm a big fan of all of the music numbers in HSM 1, particularly "Get'cha Head in the Game" and "We're All in This Together," which are both very fun, upbeat, elaborately choreographed numbers, but probably my #1 favorite number has to be "Bop to the Top":
It's a very short number but it's extremely catchy and danced very enthusiastically. What I love about this number is that it's kind of a... villain song? Except the "villains" of this movie are a pair of self-centered diva twins who ALWAYS get the lead roles of the musicals (so evil! XD). And it's got all the pizzazz of a good Disney villainous "I want" song, somehow translated into a mundane high school setting. Another thing I love about this number is that... it makes no sense in the context of the film. Sharpay and Ryan Evans are presumably auditioning for the lead hero and lead heroine of some unspecified musical (we shall not talk about the incesty overtones of two siblings auditioning to be romantic leads!) and I think this is supposed to be one of the songs that the main character duo is supposed to sing as part of the musical-within-the-musical, but why are the main characters both so ambitious and willing to step on anyone on their way to the top? It's kind of an example of the different levels of narrative (the movie characters themselves vs. the musical-within-a-musical characters) coming apart in a way that's fun and something you can do when you have different narrative levels going on in a piece of fiction.
The reason why I mention this musical trilogy is that there is a theme especially in the first movie of desegregation and crossing barriers. In this case, the desegregation is of the very low-stakes variety of trying to break down barriers between high school cafeteria cliques and the narrow "archetypes" of geeks, jocks, theatre kids, stoners, etc. (This will not be the case in the next set of movies!) Some of the songs like "Stick to the Status Quo" or "Breaking Free" portray secret barrier-crossing interests almost like a closet metaphor ("If Troy can tell his secret, then I can tell mine") or gay anthem ("You know the world can see us in a way that's different than who we are"). Some of the barrier-crossing relationships are also interracial, like when basketball-baker Zeke confesses to theatre kid Sharpay that he likes her.
The second two movies unfortunately don't manage to have the same magic as the first. But there are some occasional high points, such as this wonderfully homoerotic number between Troy's BFF Chad and the high camp Ryan who is trying to convince him to be part of a talent show:
I love the baseball metaphor (pitching and catching, the bats...) and the entendres in the lyrics ("I'll show you how I swing" -- o rly 👀). I also like this number because of the dissonance here too between what's happening on the on-screen level (Chad is dancing ALL THE TIME in these movies' many musical numbers) and what is happening in-universe (Chad is a jock who refuses to be an "artsy kid" and be part of a show).
Okay, that's pretty much all I wanted to say about the High School Musical movies: the first is great, the others not so much, there are some light themes here about desegregating high school, although in a low-stakes "mixing up the cliques" sort of way, although there's the possibility of reading something deeper into it. Now to move on to...
Descendants 1 / 2 / 3 (2015-19) -- watched on Disney Plus
So I watched the first Descendants movie when it aired on TV. I remember it clearly because I was interning in L.A. at the time, and had a summer sublet rental. My partner stayed with me for 1 month of my 4-month internship period, and I found out this DCOM was airing during that window so I asked him if he wanted to watch it with me (since the sublet I had came with cable TV), and he took one look at it and was like, "Hell YES."
But Descendants 1 was... honestly a bit disappointing! The movie's aesthetic looks campy and cheap as hell and the premise sounds terrible (villains from various Disney animated films are locked up on a prison island, but the goth children of Maleficent, the Evil Queen, Jafar, and Cruella de Vil are offered the chance to go to the preppy prep school that the kids of various Disney princes/princesses attend), but it's a Kenny Ortega musical about high schoolers, so I felt like there was a chance that he would be able to pull it off despite the cheesy premise and low production values, like he did with High School Musical. But no, it actually was just quite lackluster as you might expect.
Well, after that, I completely forgot about this movie, until I came across a song from Descendants 3 ("Queen of Mean" if anyone is curious), which I thought was surprisingly good?? And made me think "What?? There's a Descendants 3??" So I checked Disney Plus and, yep, all three of the movies are on there. Once again, I asked my partner if he'd be interested in watching them all, and even though we both remembered the first one being kinda disappointing, he was still like, "Heck yes, why not."
We actually had to rewatch Descendants 1 because neither of us could remember what the plot was. Having rewatched it, though, yeah, our memories were accurate -- it's weirdly disappointing, especially in terms of the music/dance sequences, and not at all memorable.
We'd even forgotten that in this movie, there is a (magical, G-rated) date rape plot, where the main villain kid, Mal, uses a love spell to force her good guy love interest, Prince Ben, to want her to be his date so that she can get close to a magical artifact her villain mother wants her to steal. While obviously this drives a wedge between her and the guy, it's not really fully addressed because the main thing the (saintly, very forgiving) guy is upset about isn't that she MAGIC-ROOFIED him but that she might not actually have feelings for him :( (because he already had feelings for her). But yeah, when we watched it we were like, "Oh yeah! I remember this plot point! ...It's really weird and oddly unaddressed!"
BUT weirdly, Descendants 2 & 3 are better, in basically every way. The stories are more interesting, the music is actually... really good? And the dance sequences are great, even if the premise is still cheesy AF. It's a bit weird, but if I were to rank the movies in this trilogy, it would be 2 > 3 > 1, which is a very strange ranking for a trilogy. Anyway, I kind of suspect the reason why the first one was so meh is because maybe they spent most of their budget on getting Kristin Chenoweth. And I mean, she's doing a fun performance in the first movie, but without any other strong elements to support her, her performance just doesn't land, IMO. Chenoweth's character isn't in the other movies, so I think that gave a bit more time and money to focus on the essentials with the sets and costumes and choreo.
It's a bit weird for a musical trilogy with the concept of the kids of various Disney heroes and villains go to high school together, but all three of these movies feature a very strong race and class analogy in its theme of heroism and villainy. You notice from the start that the songs the villain kids sing as they walk around their neighborhood on the villain island prison are very influenced, both in terms of the music, dance, and clothes style, by urban rap and punk. This is probably very intentional because the whole villain island prison is a literal ghetto (even if these movies never use that word), in multiple senses of the word: in the "poor urban slum" slang sense and in the more technical "segregated neighborhood where travel in and out is restricted" sense. Because yeah, I didn't really mention this earlier but the core issue this movie trilogy focuses on is the fact that the kids of villains spend their whole lives on this island prison because the villains are seen as too dangerous to be let out.
Going along with this theme, the main character in these movies, Mal (the daughter of Maleficent), vacillates between the two extremes of proudly embracing a villain (i.e. petty criminal i.e. gangster) role as not only something good to be but almost out of a kind of defeatism that being the top gangster in town is the best thing she can aspire to be, given the opportunities life hands her, and being a complete sell-out, joining the ranks of the upper-middle class and enjoying all the benefits that she gets from that (wealth, safe neighborhoods, public resources, stable relationships), which requires hobnobbing with people who have only ever lived that privileged life, wracked with a sense of dread and guilt that she's forgetting her roots and abandoning all the people still left in the ghetto. Which is a common theme in gangster rap, when the rapper actually makes enough money to leave the ghetto behind and they start worrying about whether they're losing their roots in the hood.
While the movies start off first with feting a very individualistic solution to the problem of slums (selecting the "good/talented ones" from the ghetto and giving them a scholarship so that they have the best opportunity that society can provide), in the second and third movies, the main character eventually realizes that's not enough and the solution ends up being to tear down the walls of the ghetto entirely and fully integrate the two neighborhoods. Like... these are all surprisingly mature topics to grapple with in a DCOM movie?? O_o
Of course, the race/class metaphor can only go so far since it's a metaphor using villainy as the basis of creating a ghetto. If you take the metaphor too seriously/literally, you start to get into Oppressed Mages territory where it IS reasonable to lock up villains in a magic prison if their powers could destroy the world, which is not the sort of situation that arises in the real world, at least on the level of individuals. But the third movie DOES arrive at the conclusion that even in this oppressed mages fantasy world, it is still not permissible to lock up all the villains behind a magical barrier, and they're all set free.
Because villainy is being used as the analogy for race here, the casting in these movies is a multiracial rainbow of diversity on both the villain and hero sides, which is probably a good idea because the desegregation message of the movie is probably spicy enough without bringing actual race into it...
In addition to more deeply grappling with a race and class analogy via the metaphor of villlainy, another surprising thing about the second and third movie is that they fix up a lot of the issues and feature a strong "no villains" morality, where the main antagonist of the film (black women who want to steal the dreamboat prince from Mal in both cases, oddly) is humanized and eventually forgiven for her actions. In particular, the villain of the second movie, Uma (daughter of Ursula) makes a great foil for Mal. When Mal left, Uma became the big gangster in town in her absence and so she is kind of a glimpse of what Mal's life would have been like if she hadn't been plucked out of poverty by a rich benefactor. And Uma's goal/villain motivation is that she wants the barrier taken down and all the villains' children to be given the chance to go to the prep school. Her plans are thwarted here, but Mal eventually comes around to her position, and Uma returns in the third movie as a sympathetic good guy.
And you know that weird magic roofie plot in the first movie where the main character never really got any consequences for that aside from some love drama between her and her love interest? Incredibly, the third movie even fixes that! I forgot to mention that, while under the influence of the love potion, Ben very publicly declared his love for Mal while he was, uh, currently dating another girl, Audrey, so ended up very publicly dumping/humiliating her while entirely under the influence of a spell. And then never really took it back when he returned to his senses. In the third movie, Audrey is still bitter about all of that and turns into a villain, so Mal's villainous actions from the first film eventually come back to bite her in the third movie... So a "huh, weird" plot point that is papered over in the first movie actually ends up having a satisfying payoff two movies later?? What the heck!
My favorite music number from these three movies is in the second movie. I won't spoil it by embedding it here because I think it's more satisfying in the context of the movie rather than viewed as a standalone dance number, but it's a stand-off between Uma and Mal's forces that occurs on a pirate ship. Again, the production values here are low and it shows, but everyone looks like they're just having so much fun.
Anyway, that's the second high school desegregation musical trilogy: It starts off a bit meh in all dimensions but then develops into a surprisingly mature take on race and class and bigotry and the injustice of ghettos and the importance of integration, while also exploring the conflicted emotions of someone from the hood who manages to make it out but then has to grapple with what she owes her old home. Which is not at all what I expected these movies to be like!
Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 1 / 2 / 3 (2018-22) -- watched on Disney Plus
Okay, so after we watched the Descendants movies, Disney Plus was like, "Oh hey, you might be interested in this OTHER set of teen fantasy movies called ZOMBIES..." So we were just like "Okay fine." (This one is NOT directed by Kenny Ortega, though.) It seemed like a high school romance except featuring zombies. What I didn't expect was that we'd get... ANOTHER racial desegregation analogy story??
So basically, the premise here is that there was a zombie outbreak or something and it was eventually contained and stabilized but zombies were corralled into a neighborhood and only recently have technological advancements made it so that they can go to the normal human school. And this film is even more heavy-handed about the desegregation analogy, because you've got like an extremely stereotypically American suburbia setting that the zombie kids are integrating into. The Descendants movies also featured fear related to letting villains into mainstream society, but I feel like in the ZOMBIES movie, there was even more heavy emphasis on people being scared to be around zombies and moral panics about letting zombie kids into OUR schools, etc. in a way very much meant to evoke post-Brown v. Board U.S. school desegregation efforts. Again, they make sure to cast the film multiracially, but the main leads again are a white couple (even though one is from the fantasy ghetto).
Zed, the zombie lead here, is a very interesting character. He's tall, good-looking, and is able to defuse potentially tense situations with charming humor. It kind of makes him the perfect ambassador for the zombie community even as he resents the need for a "non-threatening model zombie" ambassador. Addison, the human lead, is also a fascinating character, like a super pure soul completely untouched by racial bigotry and extremely dedicated to making all the zombies feel welcome even as she discovers she is in a minority here and it's an uphill battle advocating for including zombies in all activities.
I don't particularly remember the music numbers in this movie, except this one, which occurs while the main leads are locked down in a zombie outbreak shelter together, and they basically just have an enjoyable time:
My reaction:
The choreography is really charming, the actors sell the chemistry well, and I love the height difference between these two leads! Anyway, the other two movies reprise this song and it's kind of the couple's love anthem, and I find that really charming!
Anyway, the first movie is definitely a story about a tense situation integrating
Well, the second movie introduces a new monster race: werewolves! So the story with the werewolves is that they used to live where the town of Seabrook currently is, but they were pushed into the surrounding forest. However, proof that they used to live in the town is that their artifact, a giant moonstone, is located under the town's power plant. Yep, that's right, the local power plant is built on stolen land. It is also raised as a possibility that
Wait a second... Are the werewolves Native Americans?? Well, it wouldn't be the first time people have done the whole werewolves = Native Americans thing in urban fantasy... At least this movie had some self-awareness to subvert the "white person discovers they have secret Native American heritage" plotline rather than playing it straight.
At this point, my partner and I were making bets on whether the third movie would feature a Latino analogy or an Asian analogy. We watched the third movie until the new monster race showed up (aliens) and:
Ah, got it -- Asians it is, then. In this case, though, Addison finally DOES discover she has non-human heritage (and you can kind of read some themes about immigration, passing, and losing the culture of the home country into this plotline, if I recall correctly?). Aside from that, this third movie wasn't particularly memorable, to be honest.
Like with the previous trilogies, there's a strong "no villains" ethos to these films where eventually everyone ends up working together to help everyone get what they want/need. Overall, the Descendants trilogy probably has a more sophisticated grappling with (fantasy) race than the ZOMBIES trilogy, but they're both interesting and just kind of a surprising thing to see in a bunch of DCOM movies. Unfortunately, none of the films in the three trilogies quite reach the concentration of catchy songs that the first High School Musical film achieved, but (aside from the first Descendants film) there are some fun, well-choreographed songs worth watching, assuming you can generally tolerate some cheese and low-budget aesthetic. But the production values of the Descendants and ZOMBIES films are actually not too bad.
These movies all portray integration as not without difficulties but ultimately is optimistic about the necessity and possibility of integration. This is unfortunately a bit ironic since the U.S. is still incredibly segregated, still dealing with the effects of the undermining of integration efforts by white people, and even portraying interracial couples in cinema is easier to do when they're white people playing fantasy races than if they're actually interracial... Nevertheless, I appreciate in these movies the tackling of issues of segregation and racism in a kid-friendly format, with a sense of civic duty, responsibility, and optimism, even if the real world paints a much more negative and pessimistic sort of picture. It makes for a very interesting watch!
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I have been interested in Descents since I know that the main writer for Twisted Wonderland watched all of them when preparing for her role with that game. It sounds like it goes a little deeper than I expected it to!
Have you heard of Lemonade Mouth? It was another DCM, but one that was High School Musical meets the Breakfast Club. I only ask because I had never heard of it, but some of the GenZers I work with all love it. I watched the beginning and couldn't get past the cliched stereotypes and how awful the adult actors were so only got about 20 minutes into it.
If you call it "the Gen Z version of High School musical," I learned first hand you'll be told "but High School Musical is the Gen Z version of High School Musical!" It did seem more of a general "bringing together different school stereotypes" sort of thing and not as culturally relevant as something like Zombies sounds.
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Oh wow, I'm going to have to add Lemonade Mouth to the watchlist (you weren't kidding about the "High School Musical meets the Breakfast Club" thing!). It sounds super interesting, and I'm guessing my partner and I will be able to make it farther into the movie given our tastes. XD