I love Disney—genuinely. I grew up on it; the songs and TV from Disney Channel and the old classic movie soundtracks ran through my head and my hot pink princess CD player. But for a studio built on dreams and magic, Disney has a long history of turning “different” into “dangerous.” 

Its villains have always looked, sounded, or acted like somebody that society already mistrusts: darker-skinned, older, curvier, gayer, foreign, or anyone that’s not a glowing blond. Whether it’s Ursula’s drag queen inspiration, Hades’ New York accent, or Mother Gothel’s aging, Disney doesn’t invent stereotypes; it animates them. 

The result is a familiar formula. Heroes are youthful, smooth, radiant, and innocent: villains are everything else. And that “everything else” has, over time, meant a rotating cast of traits associated with marginalized communities: Jews, queer people, people of color, immigrants— the  “others.”  

The Brother’s Grimm laid the blueprint, Disney just added lighting and effects. Long before Disney got involved, the Brother’s Grimm were already telling tales where beauty and goodness were fair-skinned, and evil was everything else. Their stories were full of 19th-century European ideas about purity, femininity, and danger—and Disney turned that aesthetic into a brand. 

Let’s start with “Tangled.” Which, I must mention, is an amazing movie. The animation of Rapunzel’s hair, for instance, is so impressive. At first glance, “Tangled” is just a glowy hair princess movie. But scratch the surface and you’ll find it echoes one of Europe’s most antisemitic legends, the “blood libel” myth: a medieval accusation that Jews kidnapped Christian children and used their blood to bake matzos, and a myth that was often used for Nazi propaganda. Mother Gothel, a dark, curly-haired, secretive woman who kidnaps a golden-haired girl and hides her away in a tower to stay young, mirrors these tropes. The blond purity, the hidden captivity…it’s all there, just wrapped in a big blue Disney bow with a cute little chameleon. 

Of course, no one at Disney was like “hey, let’s do blood libel but make it musical with a pan,” but when your source material comes from the Brothers Grimm—who collected tales from a Europe deeply rooted in antisemitic folklore—the undertones stick around. Gothel’s obsession with beauty, her manipulation, her curls, and her hooked nose all line up with centuries-old visual cues for untrustworthy women and, often, for Jewish ones. It’s not that “Tangled” invented those ideas; it’s that it never questioned them. 

And then there’s “Hercules.” Another childhood favorite, where the hero literally glows, while the villain looks like he hasn’t seen the sun since dinosaurs roamed the earth. He’s got long, beasty fingers—just like Gothel—, a long crooked nose, wild hair that’s literally on fire, and spiky, animal-like teeth. His diction isn’t smooth and polished, like all the other characters; it’s straight out of  New York (so am I, though): fast talking, sarcastic, and snarky. He’s the god of the dead, but is more alive than anyone else in the movie. 

And that’s the point. He’s not like the others. While everyone else on Olympus looks like they were set to light by Apollo himself, Hades looks less human, less divine, less acceptable. He doesn’t look like or fit in with any other creature in the movie. He’s dark, loud, and funny, and for that, he’s the villain (besides the whole murdering thing). 

Disney didn’t have to give Hades horns or fangs to make the message clear: different is dangerous. The physical cues, crooked nose, wild hair, and Yiddish slang–he literally says “schmooze”—line up perfectly with the centuries-old caricatures used to mark people as different. It’s the same playbook as “Tangled,” just with better one-liners and more fire. 

 I love these films, though, and many others. That’s what makes the conversation complicated. They’re part of my childhood and my imagination, but loving something doesn’t mean pretending it’s perfect. Disney’s better now, with more diverse stories, more nuance, and more awareness, but its foundation is still built on the old rules of light vs. dark and same vs. different. The challenge is: how do we untangle the roots without losing the magic? Because even as I sing along, I can’t ignore how easily “different” still gets drawn as “dangerous”. I can’t unsee how many of those villains—curly-haired, dramatic and emotional—look a lot like the rest of us. 
So yes, I’ll keep watching “Hercules”. I’ll still sing “When Will My Life Begin.” But I’ll also keep side-eyeing the way the animators frame Gothel’s curls like a warning and Hades Yiddish like an alert. Because maybe the moral isn’t “don’t leave your tower,” it’s “pay attention to who’s being drawn as the monster.”