{"id":8514,"date":"2014-06-25T13:05:39","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T17:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=8514"},"modified":"2014-06-25T13:05:39","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T17:05:39","slug":"in-which-i-watch-maleficent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2014\/06\/in-which-i-watch-maleficent.html","title":{"rendered":"In Which I Watch “Maleficent”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

for AmSpec. I liked it more than their hed\/subhed imply, but it\u2019s not what the philosophers would call \u201cgood\u201d:<\/p>\n

My initial reaction on hearing that Disney was remaking Sleeping Beauty<\/em>from the point of view of Maleficent was, \u201cOh God, not another one.\u201d Batman, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Snow White: Must everything get a gritty reboot? I\u2019m surprised the recent My Little Pony show wasn\u2019t called \u201cMy Little Pony: Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the villain\u2019s-eye view is also really played out. Grimmed-up, self-pitying tales of misunderstood outcasts are everywhere these days, simmering with Nietzschean ressentiment<\/em>. It\u2019s like watching two hours of rationalizations: Other people never gave me a chance, you\u2019d be like this too if you\u2019d suffered like I have, I am secretly better than everyone.<\/p>\n

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that Maleficent<\/em> is almost<\/em> a gentle film about repentance and what Alcoholics Anonymous calls \u201cseeing your part\u201d\u2014accepting whatever degree of responsibility you bear for your own misery, even when other people bear a much larger share they\u2019ll never admit. The epic final battle doesn\u2019t take place between hero and villain, but between penitent villain and impenitent one. Maleficent<\/em> is a film about maternal tenderness toward a child: about how responsibility for the next generation can cause us to reassess our own past actions and change our ways.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

for AmSpec. I liked it more than their hed\/subhed imply, but it\u2019s not what the philosophers would call \u201cgood\u201d: My initial reaction on hearing that Disney was remaking Sleeping Beautyfrom the point of view of Maleficent was, \u201cOh God, not another one.\u201d Batman, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Snow White: Must everything get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[290,41],"class_list":["post-8514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-all-of-life-is-a-choice-of-genre","tag-reading-and-repentance"],"yoast_head":"\nIn Which I Watch "Maleficent"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"for AmSpec. 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