It's times like these, when the world is going to shit and we're getting exhausted just thinking about it, that the soul cries out for a recharge. For inspiration to action, in the form of a story to get attached to. But not just any story. The kind of story that takes the very issues we're facing, pairs them with engaging characters, and dares to say "we're not powerless."
Required viewing in the Era of Trump is stories that go to the heart of what it means to resist evil. And so I present my top five picks for movies and TV series we need to revisit when we're feeling like throwing in the towel:
Princess Mononoke
In Princess Mononoke, the title character, Ashitaka, is the
last crown prince of a persecuted ethnic group, the Emishi, that was
supposedly wiped out five centuries before. In a battle to save his
village from the crazed Boar god Nago, he is injured by the demonic
presence that had driven the boar mad, and cursed with a demon mark that
will eventually consume his body and kill him. As a result, he is
ordered to leave his village to prevent the curse from spreading. And
with him goes his people's last hope of survival.
As he
journeys west, he soon discovers that Nago was transformed from a god
to a demon because of what has been happening to the forests; man has
been destroying the forests to build forges and get to the iron ore in
the ground beneath them, in order to build weapons that they use to hunt
the animals that guard the forest. Ashitaka soon learns that what drove
Nago mad was rage at the forest's suffering, and the humans that have
caused it. His fight is then taken up by Okkoto, another Boar god, who
wishes to exterminate the humans and save the forest.
In
particular, the humans of a village called Irontown, led by Lady
Eboshi, and the men who follow her partner Jigo, a monk who seeks the
favor of the Emperor against the local warlord Asano. In Irontown,
Ashitaka is enraged to learn of the destruction Lady Eboshi's efforts
have caused. But it's tempered by learning that the citizens of Irontown
are the most downtrodden members of society. Brothel girls, lepers,
etc. Lady Eboshi takes them all in and gives them a place to both feel
safe and have a purpose.
But as a result of her
destruction of the forest, Lady Eboshi has earned the hatred of the Wolf
god Moro, and her three children: her two Wolf pups, and her human
daughter San (the eponymous princess), an abandoned child that was
thrown at her feet by her own parents when they escaped Moro's wrath.
Rather than eat her, Moro adopted her as one of her own. Due to Lady
Eboshi's efforts to destroy the forest for its wood and iron, San (and
to a lesser extent, Moro) has made it her mission to kill her.
Later
on, a plot unfolds between Lady Eboshi and Jigo to harvest the head of
the Great Forest Spirit to gain the Emperor's favor. They're successful,
but the result is that the Great Forest Spirit drains all life from the
landscape while searching for his head. Ashitaka and San return it to
him, ending the destruction and repairing the land.
On the surface, the film seems relevant only because of environmental issues. But it's so much more than that. At its heart, Princess Mononoke is a film about the destructive power of hatred, and how we must end the cycle with empathy and compassion for all creatures, not just the ones we belong to.
V: The Miniseries
I'm not even going to pretend this piece of 1983 sci-fi wasn't campy as all get-out in the way that only 1980s TV sci-fi could be. But what it lacked in special effects -- because what Star Trek: The Next Generation contributed to the medium hadn't been invented yet -- it made up for in being horrifyingly on-the-nose in its depiction of the rise of fascism and the normalization of atrocity.
The Visitors present themselves as curious and benevolent explorers, and gradually take over the planet using every tactic in the dictator's playbook: propaganda, suppression of knowledge, recruitment of sympathizers, and brainwashing. And it's left up to a small but resilient band of resistance to push back and eventually find a way to beat them.
First by (literally) unmasking them and showing their true nature to the cowed human population, and then by finding a way to fight them and actually win. You'll also never watch the Nightmare on Elm Street films the same way again after seeing Robert Englund as an adorkable alien Minion With an F in Evil.
I'd say more, but I don't want to spoil it. It's that good.
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame
While it doesn't follow the book too well because Victor Hugo was a huge fan of "rocks fall, everyone dies" and Disney is...well...not, it frankly does a much better job of capturing the spirit of Hugo's work -- his entire body of it, not just this novel -- better than most of the other film adaptations of the story.
Because a major theme of Hugo is calling out the rank hypocrisy he saw, and it's the same hypocrisy we're fighting today. The hypocrisy that allows Frollo to claim he's a righteous man of virtue and purer than the rest of us common, vulgar, weak, licentious masses after murdering a young unwed mother on the steps of a cathedral venerating the Virgin Mary is the same hypocrisy that allows white Evangelicals to claim Trump is sent by God to save the United States while he's cheated on every wife he's had and stolen billions of dollars from contractors by not paying them for their work.
Disney's version is ultimately the story of an oppressed populace finally deciding there is a line they will not let anybody cross, and defending their beloved faith and the cathedral that represents it from the corruption and rot of those who would use it to do exactly the kind of shit Jesus flipped tables over.
We can take lessons from Quasimodo. When we get mad enough, we can move stone and shrug off chains because we're all made of something stronger.
Blue Submarine No. 6
Back when this aired on Toonami in 2000, every teenager and 20-something who watched it at midnight with the lights off started recycling and going green like Captain Planet himself was going kick their asses with his bare hands because the thought of a flooded hellscape and half of humanity drowning was that horrifying. Little did we know we'd be facing exactly that fate in real life not two decades later.
But rather than a single mad scientist, the cause is greed and religious zealotry, because a bunch of fossil fuel tycoons have teamed up with Evangelical cult leaders since they have a common vested interest in bringing on the apocalypse.
But like Princess Mononoke, there's more to it than just the environmentalism. It's also about breaking the Cycle of Revenge, and two sides that have been taught nothing but how to kill each other learning to either coexist or ensure their mutual destruction.
It's required viewing because Zorndyke's forces encapsulate perfectly what we're up against; a brainwashed cult blindly following their creator whom they believe will lead them to inherit the future, no matter completely fucked up it is. It also posits a way to get through to them. Not by violently nuking them into oblivion, but by proving what they've been taught wrong. As anybody who has left a cult will tell you, they started to question things when they saw that people on the outside did not, in fact, behave the way they'd been told they would.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
I could not in good conscience make a list of this nature and not include what's got to be the best of the Star Trek films with the original series cast. What makes this one imperative is that it deals with the opposition to peace by those who either fear the other side, or profit from war. And that's another huge factor that we're facing with regard to terrorism and political unrest in general.
As Kirk says at the end, people can be very frightened of change. What we need to face now is that there is an entire faction of our government that is so desperate to hold on to power that they. will. do. anything. Even if that means selling out the country to hostile foreign actors. Because the idea of having to adapt to changing demographics terrifies them.
They believe the future is the end of history, simply because it means the end of white men holding the pens that write it. If we're ever going to move forward, we need to find them, unmask them, and foil their plots.Even -- especially -- when they're on our own side.
