Hello Readers! Co-editor Gail here with my final Halloween moviethon post. Like last week, I’d like to talk about how a few different films handle similar themes and topics. I watched multiple films from various same franchises and noticed a common trend of using Halloween monsters and other spooky magic folk as a metaphor for acceptance of those different from ourselves. In film and other media, this can be a thin tightrope to walk because if done poorly, it can be incredibly problematic.The two films I am going to discuss today I think do a pretty good job of presenting these ideas in a fully thought out larger context.
*ONCE AGAIN SPOILERS FOR THESE MOVIES IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THEM!*
Hotel Transylvania-
As you may know, the Hotel Transylvania trilogy centers on plots related to monster-human relationships specifically familial and romantic. In the first film, Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) struggles with the fact that his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) has fallen in love with a human named Johnny (Andy Samberg) despite all of his efforts to shield Mavis from humans and their world outside the hotel her whole life since a mob of humans killed her mother. All these years later, Drac has demonized all humans as they did to him, his friends and family. But Johnny’s arrival starts to throw a wrench into Drac’s world view. Not only do Johnny and Mavis hit it off, Johnny’s knowledge of human culture reinvigorates the stale goings on at the hotel from new rock music, scooter tricks and swimming pool horseplay.
While Johnny is disguised as a monster throughout most of the film, when the truth is revealed Johnny is initially driven away by the monster’s fear of him, but after they have the time to cool down, the monsters realize they really liked Johnny and don’t care if he’s human. They support and help Drac retrieve Johnny to reunite him with Mavis. But in order to do so they have to make themselves known to the human world, that even Johnny could not guarantee that everyone would accept them. However to their surprise there is a monster festival occurring in the nearby village and the humans are all huge fans of Drac and his crew and also aid him in his quest.
As you can assume, everything works out and by the second film Mavis and Johnny get married and have a son named Dennis. In this film we see that Drac has accepted Johnny and his family but is having difficulty accepting that his grandson might be human rather than a vampire and spends the majority of the film attempting to get Dennis’s fangs to grow in. Meanwhile, Mavis herself has the flip side of this worry and fears that if Dennis is human, he should be growing up in more “normal” circumstances meaning that she wants to move her family to suburban California where Johnny grew up and visits to see if it’s a good fit.
This debate the adults are having over Dennis’’s identity comes to a head when Mavis invites her grandpa Vlad (Mel Brooks) to Dennis’s fifth birthday party even though Drac told her he would “not be cool” with Mavis being the wife and mother of humans. Vlad attempts to force Dennis’s fangs to grow by scaring him but Drac intervenes and has to admit that Dennis is probably human but he doesn’t care, he loves him and his family no matter what. At first Vlad is unmoved, but when his human hating minions attack Dennis, Vlad realizes he was wrong and helps the monsters and humans rescue him. Though by the end of the film Dennis does in fact grow his fangs, he is ultimately embraced by everyone as the best of both humans and monsters.
Finally, in the third film, it is Drac himself who falls for a human. Mavis takes Drac and her family on a cruise for monsters where Drac meets captain Ericka (Kathryn Hahn). On their dates they open up to each other about their past trauma and their shared value of family. Later, Drac saves Ericka’s life several times from booby traps and she is astonished that a monster would care enough about humans to do so. The reason Erick is shocked by this is because she is a Van Helsing, and has been raised by her great grandfather to hate and kill monsters. While at the beginning she aligns with this thinking, by watching Drac and his family care for each other and getting to know him, she realizes her upbringing was wrong and by the end of the film chooses her love for Drac over her family’s legacy and helps defeat her great grandfather.
I think what makes these films work is that they are saying more than “love is stronger than hate”. They are also saying that yes, hate and bias do exist and you have the power to break the cycle of generational trauma. You can learn from those who are different from you, explore their world and customs and share your own with them and create your own beautiful unique blend.
Halloweentown-
Disney’s Halloweentown quartet of films exist in a charming and quirky magical world. But that world is not free from prejudice. Something long time fans may not remember from this series is that its underlying narratives are all about segregation vs integration, power and superiority.
In the first film, Marnie Piper (Kimberly J. Brown) learns from her from Grandma Aggie Cromwell (Debbie Reynodls) that almost a thousand years ago, witches and other halloween beings created the dimension of Halloweentown to flee persecution from humans in the mortal world. A decision that she agrees to have been the correct one in order for them to all live in peace. However, the villain of the film Kalabar (Robin Thomas) views this as having been a grave mistake.
It could be argued that he is right. Maybe halloween folk could have done more to fight for their rights or make peace with mortals. Though safe, it could be argued that fleeing was the cowards way out of the situation. However regardless of whether individual halloween town citizens agree with him, the way and reasons why Kalabar wants to go about taking back his people’s place in the mortal world is by mind controlling them with magic and forcing them to go and harm humans in order to establish that they are superior. While Kalabar is ultimately defeated, the point still stands that perhaps it is time these separate worlds begin to interact once more.
In the second film, Kalabar’s son Kal (Daniel Kountz), shares similar sentiments about Halloweentown as his father, but goes about them in a different way. He seeks revenge on behalf of his father on both the mortal world and Halloweentown itself. He uses “the gray spell” to transform Halloweentown’s citizens into caricatures of humans, and he uses “the creature spell” to transform all the humans in the mortal world into whatever creatures they are dressed as for halloween. To stop him Marnie and her siblings create a new portal to bridge the two worlds. Marnie proves to Kal that her good magic is stronger than evil and he teleports away in disgrace. Aggie and the Piper-Cromwell family undo the spells in both dimensions but it goes to show that when you harbor that much hate in your heart, you end up hurting everyone.
In the third film, we finally see Halloweentown folk get to integrate into the mortal world as Marnie’s new portal is put on trial and she convinces the Halloweentown court to allow some teen monsters, witches and warlocks to attend her high school in disguise to prove humans have changed. Generally things are going well until they fear an ancient order or mortal knights called “The Knights of the Iron Dagger” have sensed their presence and arisen to get them. However it turns out that there are no knights, they are being sabotaged by one of the court members who does not wish for the worlds to combine. The Halloweentown teens are forced to reveal their true forms in order to fight back and the humans are at first afraid of them, seeming to prove the saboteur right, but then they start to realize that they are friends with these teens and their their differences make them who they are and that their relationships are only stronger for knowing who they truly are. This allows Marnie to win her case and the portal between the worlds if officially open for free passage back and forth.
The fourth film, while changing lead actresses and having less Debbie Reynolds, still has value. It goes into the problems that still exist in the aftermath of a newly integrated world. Marnie goes to college at Witch University in Halloweentown where she soon discovers that because of her actions, the school had a drop in enrollment with many Halloweentown young adults choosing to go to college in the mortal world. This forced Witch University to open enrollment to non-witches and subsequently to put a ban on using magic on campus or to complete school work in order to make things fair for non-magic students. But of course, a trio of wealthy mean girl witch sisters constantly break this rule or have others break it for them.
Marnie also finds herself at the center of prophecy to receive an amulet that allows the wearer complete control of the masses. The conspiracy is led by the rich and powerful father of the three sisters. He seeks to use Marnie and the amulet so that he and his other rich and powerful cohorts can make a witch and warlock supremacy and make all other halloween folk their slaves. The sisters at one point throw a party for witches only and exclaim how their father said that soon, the whole world will be like this, witch witches on top and everyone else at the bottom.
While of course Marnie saves the day and the bad guys get punished yadda yadda yadda, I think this film is important to the overall franchise as it shows that even when a world gains a large win for equality, there are still those who will try to use their wealth and power to be elitist and discriminatory to the people in their society they still see themselves as superior to.
So… yeah, thank you for coming to my TED talk about these films. I apologize for it being so long and explainy but analysis is my jam! Plus I have to do something worthwhile with all this halloween media I’m absorbing. I wish you all a very happy halloween as we head towards an even scarier time… ELECTION DAY! VOTE!
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Gail Bello is a poet and playwright from Waltham, Massachusetts. She graduated in 2019 with a BFA in Creative Writing and a minor in Theatre from The University of Maine at Farmington. Find her previous publications at https://thaumaturgedramaturge.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter @AquajadeGail