Not so long ago, a certain best friend visited Disney World with her family. (If you missed her posts about that trip, you should go read them now.)
I have not yet visited Disney World with my husband and children. I’m sure that day will come, it just hasn’t happened yet. However, we have traveled as a family, and I know how much work said trips can be.
As is clear from her posts on the subject, Rose clearly had to do a lot of preparation for the journey. Much of that preparation involved looking through a lot of information provided by Disney about the services and accommodations at their parks. In so doing, she came across a disclaimer from the company that characters on hand at Disney World are subject to change without notice.
What this obviously means is that you can’t visit and then demand a refund if your kids never meet Pluto. Maybe it’s Pluto’s day off. There are scads of characters from Disney’s vast hoard of intellectual property roaming around and populating the stores and eateries, but there’s no guarantee which one will be where at any given time. You may have to make do with Belle when your heart’s set on Princess Jasmine.
However, when she mentioned this disclaimer in another social medium, she went on to jokingly suggest that it meant characters would spontaneously transform before your eyes. One minute you’re getting served tea by Cinderella, then boom — it’s Madame Bovary. I then commented on how startling it would be if your kid was posing with Goofy, only to find himself on the lap of a post-metamorphosis Gregor Samsa.
This, of course, led to a back-and-forth of texts where the two of us tried to one-up each other trying to come up with the most outlandishly inappropriate and unsettling character from literature to suddenly appear at Disney World. Since games of this ilk are precisely where I first got the idea for Stupid Tuesday questions, it seemed a perfect idea for a new one.
So that, of course, is this week’s Question — which character from literature would be most heinously out of place standing where Winnie-the-Pooh just was? (I’m going to restrict your choices to literature, because it’s too easy to pick a random horror movie boogieman.) I happen to think I’ve already texted Rose the best answer to the question when were playing our game, but I’m going to hold off and see if anyone else comes up with it.
Humbert Humbert seems like a good place to start. I’m sure it’ll go downhill from there.Report
Your a bad man for suggesting this Mr. Likko. Well played.Report
Well a recognizable horror to children that jumps out to me immediately is he who should not be named.Report
Phil?Report
Don’t know how it goes downhill from Humbert Humbert, unless we’re going for someone who would be more startling. Is Watchmen considered literature? Because a giant blue glowing penis guy would be very disconcerting.Report
I’d say the hunter who killed Bambi’s mother, if we knew what he looked like.Report
I’m confident that Mickey Mouse transforming into Minnie Mouse would drive certain segments of the population absolutely batty.Report
The child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang would be both “of genre” and wildly inappropriate at the same time.
Come to think of it, why Disney doesn’t tap the Villain’s List for Halloween has long made me wonder.
Off-childhood lit genre, you can always toss in a vote for Cthulhu.Report
And then people would descend and start chanting
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu Epcot Center wgah’nagl fhtagn”Report
Dr. Christian Szell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_Man_%28novel%29Report
“Und vat ride are you going to now, kinder?”
“The Matterhorn.”
“Is it safe?”Report
That be it.Report
For a more haunting answer:
The governess from the Turn of the Screw.Report
Although it’s not really a character per se, the bear from “A Winter’s Tale” would be an appropriately inappropriate ursine counterpart to Winnie.Report
Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction.
The Winter’s Tale is my favorite play by Shakespeare so it makes me a bit sad that most people seem to know this stage direction from the play and little else. It is good but only a small part of an entirely wonderful and entirely strange and not frequently produced play. The geeky love for the stage direction does the play injustice.Report
I must admit that although I actually did read the play in college (or maybe I just skimmed it), the only thing that stuck with me was the stage direction. I suspect that I was focusing more on my engineering classes when we covered the play, but it may have also been during one of the semesters when I was just lazy.Report
Melmoth the Wanderer.Report
Elric of Meliborne, Ffard and the Grey Mouser, Torak and his disciples Cthulick, Zedar, and Urvon along with the mad King of the Murgoes Taur Urgos and his red gold armor.Report
Oh, I don’t know any of those, but they all sound deliciously evil.Report
The only really evil ones are the latter ones. Torak was the antagonist in David Eddings’ The Belgariad, a mad God that demanded devotion in the form of horrific human sacrifices. He wore an iron mask to cover his deeply scared face. Cthulick, Zedar, and Urvon were his disciples. Taur Urgos was a berserk mad man that delighted in battle and dipped his armor in red gold to make it look like he was covered in blood.
Elric, Ffard, and the Grey Mouser are anti-heroes and very self-interested but aren’t exactly evil. Still not kid appropriate.Report
Ah. Melmoth was sort of the devil’s errand boy. He’d sold his soul to the devil for immortality and certain supernatural powers, and the only way he could get rid of his curse was to get someone else to take his place, so he traveled around trying to convince people who were down on their luck, say, to sign the papers. The problem was, the moment he stepped into town, everyone knew he was the embodiment of evil, and they shunned him.
The book is wonderful, though.Report
Fafhrd and Gray Mouser were rougishly charming!Report
And charmingly roughish.Report
“The name is Fafhrd.”
“Fafrd?”
“No, there’s a silent ‘h’.”
Chris, if you don’t know Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, that’s more books to buy. At least find collections that include Ill Met in Lankhmar, Lean Times in Lankhmar, and The Bazaar of the Bizarre. I wrote about the F&GM stories here.Report
I think nobody mentioned the obvious answer. The most disturbing change would be to replace the Disney versions of characters with the actual literary characters that they are based on. Get rid of all the bowlderization that Disney needed to do to make these stories child friendly for today’s kids. Disney Hercules becomes the more violent and randy badass Heracles. Cute, cudly Quasimodo becomes the more tormented Victor Hugo one, etc.Report
Ooooooh. I kind of like that one!Report
Thank you kindly.Report
Yeah, this is good.Report
Well, yes, but our example involved Winnie the Pooh. He does not become appreciably less child-friendly in this particular scenario.Report
It doesn’t work for some Disney characters but it does work for a lot of them. Imagine all the little girls shrieking when their beloved Little Mermaid dissolves into foam.Report
First thing that came to mind is Frankenstein’s monster, though I’m not sure how desensitized kids are these days to him.
From a different angle, my non-literary choice would be Richard Stallman.Report
How about Dracula as interpreted by Bram Stoker rather than the subsequent romanitzations?Report
With or without the katana?Report
I was starting to think bout the question when I glanced at the very first comment by @burt-likko. Then I figured, what’s the point?
Game, set, and match on the very first response.Report
That was a name that came up early in our game, too.
But I’m still waiting for another.Report
I sort of thought that Humbert Humbert wouldn’t end the discussion, either. We get to know him from his own mind, and he doesn’t consider himself a monster or a villain even as he knows he will be perceived that way.
So what could be worse? How could the costume be more inappropriate than the horror of seeing your child embraced by a man who thinks sexual congress with a child is an appropriate way to express love? That would scare the crap out of me were I a parent.
Another way might the visceral impact of seeing Gregor Samsa, the giant cockroach, embracing a child. Certainly that would be worse than, say, Quasimodo or the Phantom of the Opera (the ones from literature, not the more recent and benign depictions).
There may be a third way, but I haven’t thought of it yet.Report
a man who thinks sexual congress with a child is an appropriate way to express love?
To be fair, HH was interested in 14-year-olds, not 4-year-olds.Report
That will be of great solace to the parent, I’m sure.Report
I was always under the impression that HH only felt that way about one girl, not all. Then again I haven’t read it in 20 years.Report
HH felt it for 9-15 year olds or so, fell in love for the first time since he was a kid with LH, took up with her at 15, saw her again at 20, and it was clear the magic had gone.Report
The first image that came to mind was a Vogon reciting poetry.Report
You go to Cinderella’s castle, but find Cersei and Joffrey holding court there. You turn to flee, and the clown selling balloons outside the portcullis trips you with his giant shoe.
He’s Pennywise.Report
Fletcher from Pennywise maybe, not that sad Stephen King villian.Report
Then you go to a Punch and Judy show, and the puppeteer is Horrabin.Report
Honey Boo-boo?Report
Oh wait, literature. I was just trying to think of the honey connection.Report
Actually, you came with two brilliants that I can think of.Report
D’oh! Didn’t read OP carefully enough. Samsa was one of them.Report
The Judge, from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, a 7 foot tall man without any bidy hair at all, who kills, probably after raping, a young child.Report
I like Vincent D’Onofrio as Edgar the Bug, but I realize that’s cheating…
Same goes for Fek’lhr: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ofYRHe1cFM …
Anything from Stephen King is fish in barrels…
Can we have a hint?Report
I don’t care if it breaks the rules, I want to see Ash from the Evil Dead movies incorporated into the Disney theme park experience.Report
So these are all good suggestions, but I submit that nothing beats Medea.Report
I thought you said no movies.Report
Glyph wins the thread!Report
If we’re going Greek, Dionysus wins, if only because the symbol for Dionysus is not very Disney.Report
Fair point.Report
Dionysus shows up in Fantasia.Report
Yeah, as the drunken Roman version, not the hyper-sexual Greek one.Report
One Medea, or Multimedea?Report
You should submit that idea to Tyler Perry and/or Disney. It’s a serious cash cow!Report
Oddman 7.
Really, most any of the oddmen would do, but the combination of nudity with *spoiler* *spoiler* would be rather frightening.Report