This is an analysis of Misunderstood Monsters, a children's…

For a long time I had an image burned into my mind of a boy in a void that looked like dripping paint and a pair of floating eyes and lips. I couldn't remember anything else but I remembered thinking the whole concept of this program was cool. Was it some kind of religious program? I seemed to remember a heavy-handed message. Has anybody else seen this? Long story short I was eventually able to find it again and it was called Misunderstood Monsters.

The program begins with a boy named Stanley who wants to play baseball with the other children. However, they won't let him play because he is short and they make fun of him for playing the piano.

Enraged, Stanley throws the ball into the lake and the other kids call him a monster.

Next, Stanley kicks a random ball out of anger and accidentally destroys a girl's sandcastle with it. Her mother won't accept his apology and again calls him a monster.

Then he is chased by a dog who he interprets as also calling him a monster.

He then ducks inside an unmarked service door in order to escape the dog.

Inside, he finds himself in the flowing paint void.

And he meets the floating eyes and lips. Now I would finally find out who this mysterious character is who so captivated my childhood imagination!

"Who are you?" asks Stanley.
"I am the spokesman for the misunderstood. Guide for the misguided. You can call me sir!" he says.
Oh. He won't say who he is.

"Where am I?"
"You're between where you want to be and not where you should be. In other words, Stanley, nowhere."
So we learn that the flowing paint void is nowhere.

"Yeah well what do you know?" asks Stanley.
"I KNOW EVERYTHING!" screams the guide, knocking Stanley over with his voice. (Pretty sure I know who he is by this point.)

"You feel that everyone thinks you're a monster." says the guide. "That you're strange and different."

"Maybe I am" says Stanley.
"Is it because you're an odd size?"
"I'm a shrimp, you mean?"
"Negative thinking, Stanley" says the guide. "Is it because you play the piano?"
"They call me piano puss."
"AGAIN NEGATIVE THINKING!" bellows the guide, threatening to knock Stanley over again.

"It all has to do with attitude! That's the key to success!" says the guide. Then we watch a cartoon.

So far, we have learned that the guide is extremely volatile, particularly around what he calls "negative thinking", which refers to the nasty names that the other children use on Stanley. This, of course, is not a very good way of handling intrusive thoughts. Stanley would be expected to become anxious around these names and repress thoughts about them in order to avoid the guide's anger. Repressed thoughts do not go away, however. Instead they return as projections. Thus, Stanley will start to read thoughts of him as a monster into innocent peoples' turn of phrase.

However, is negative thinking really Stanley's problem? Has Stanley, in fact, internalized the idea that he is a monster or is he just unhappy with the way he was treated? Stanley has said that "maybe" he is a monster, but overall his problem is much better identified with the other children than with his attitude.

The cartoon turns out to be an adaptation of Creole, the Serendipity book.

Creole is an ugly creature who hatched from an egg in a swamp with no known parents.

Her mind has nothing but thoughts of love and friendship, but the other creatures are terrified of her.

Her tears of sadness at being rejected wake up a sleeping alligator below her, who was the only one who didn't run away.

"Why didn't you run away like everyone else?" asks Creole?
"Because I hoped, " said the alligator, "that is, I mean, I was thinking... it would be nice.. gosh! If you... if you would be my, you know, friend! The other alligators all laugh at me because I, well, you know, I can't talk straight!"

"Oh that's just because you have too many ideas in your head at once," says Creole. "If you'll just concentrate on one thing at a time, you'll find you can talk straight just like everybody else." The two shared a friendship from then on.

Creole enlists the alligator to be her mouthpiece to spread her message of love, happiness, and tenderness.

She hides in the bushes and pushes the alligator out and encourages him to make a speech. "Don't worry, I'll tell you what to say," she says.

"Tell them your heart is full of love for all creatures," she whispers to him. The alligator soon stops stuttering and the animals gather around to listen to him. "It is important to think of everyone as an equal member of society. We are all brothers under the skin you know," says the alligator.

However, soon Creole is observed and all the animals start to run away again.

But the alligator manages to convince them that she's ok with his newfound speaking powers and they all accept her and join her in a big hug.

"Learn to accept who you are and don't try to be somebody you aren't," says the guide.
"Is that all?" asks Stanley.
"If you feel good about yourself, others will feel good about you too!"

The message that the guide has given does not correspond to the story they just watched. Does Creole try to be somebody she's not and accept herself for who she is? No, she is perfectly happy with herself. Her problem is that the other animals are racist.

She resolves her problem using deception to befriend them vicariously by speaking through the alligator.

Stanley's problem, too, is external, not internal. Is feeling good about himself magically going to make him grow taller? If Stanley was actually supposed to learn from the story, what he might think he was supposed to do was to manipulate events from the background.

Thus, the version of events according to the guide is at odds with reality in the same way with regard to both Stanley and Creole.

"You have a lot to offer, Stanley," says the guide.
"You're right! I'm not really a bad guy, you know?" says Stanley.
"You're making progress Stanley! But that's just part of it!"
"There's more?"
"You need a lot of work! I suggest you stick around!"
Of course, Stanley can't really leave so he has no choice.

Returning from the commercial break, we find the guide playing the piano.

"Excuse me for saying this," says Stanley, "but that's really terrible."
"I suppose you can do better!" says the guide.
After Stanley plays, he says "Not bad! If you practice more it will be even better!"
Thus, the guide appears to give Stanley a boost by letting him outplay him on the piano, but he immediately turns it into a guilt for on not practicing enough.

"I've got a book here that will show you how to be what you want to be instead of what other people expect you to be," says the guide.

Before going into the story, let us ask, is Stanley's problem trying to be what others expect him to be rather than himself? Man is a social animal so (virtually) all men what to be accepted by society. It seems to me that this is all that Stanley wants. Of course it is not good if you are some kind of people pleaser, but that's not what Stanley is. He got mad and threw the ball in the lake when the other children bullied him, which seems quite reasonable under the circumstances. Again, it seems the guide is framing an external conflict as an internal conflict, when what might help Stanley a lot more is to talk about what the other children would respect and what they would value.

Additionally, it seems to be that the "misunderstood monster" label does not really apply to Stanley and that his problems are quite typical of childhood. Thus, the guide is falsely telling Stanley that he is special because of his problems. Thus, what makes Stanley special isn't relevant to the situation, unless it is something that the children value, which it isn't. It seems that the guide is telling Stanley to substitute pride for his piano playing for acceptance from the other children.

In this version of The Reluctant Dragon, the dragon has a gay lilt in his voice, so his friendship with a young boy looks especially suspicious, as if the whole misunderstood monster concept is a fraud to lower the defenses of victims.

"You see, all the other dragons are so active, chasing knights all over the place, devouring damsels, going on generally, but with me it's my mind that's active! Always active, I assure you!" says the Dragon. Then he invites the boy to read poetry with him. His parents don't even know where he is!

The boy and the dragon bond over their shared interest in poetry. "I've got another interesting book to show you!" said the Dragon. "It's called the Symposium!" Haha no he didn't really.

The boy tries to convince the dragon that he has to go for his own safety because the people will never accept him, but he refuses.

The next day, St. George arrives to fight the dragon.

Taking a break from the story, the guide says,"See? not all people are the same."
"Yeah, some are short and play the piano."
"Come here, Stanley. How many times must I tell you? THINK POSITIVE!"
Ok now that time he didn't lose his temper. He got angry on purpose.

The guide's anger is so strong that the piano disintegrates. "Now look what you made me do!" he says. Thus, we see the guide clearly now as a manipulative gaslighter. If this treatment continues, Stanley will grow up with a free floating guilt complex over things that are not his fault.

"You know, Stanley," says the guide, "you can be anything you want to be if you work at it. What would you really like to be?"
"I'd like to be a composer, " says Stanley. "Like Beethoven!"
Stanley seems enthused in the way he responds but one must ask, is he saying something that he knows the guide will approve of because he knows the wrong answer will get him punished? What if he were to say that he just wants friends?

Returning to the Reluctant Dragon, the boy easily convinced St. George that the dragon is ok. They have a meeting St. George explains that a fight must take place in order to satisfy the villagers' bloodlust.

The fight is staged and St. George pretends to beat the dragon.

After the fight, St. George explains convinces the villagers to accept the dragon because he won't fight for them anymore after that.

The Reluctant Dragon has the almost the same plot as Creole. A monster enlists friends to help stage a deception to enable it to be accepted in society. Yet both stories are falsely interpreted by the guide as meaning "be who you want to be" or "accept yourself for who you are." Neither story is actually about that because nobody in the story has a false self-image. Instead, society is racist about them.

Both of these stories appear to address Stanley's problem of being accepted by his friends, but Stanley is not allowed to say that what he wants is to be accepted. The false narrative of accepting yourself for who you are is the only one allowed and it does not address Stanley's problem with friends--it implies that he should stop trying to have friends and just focus on the piano instead.

If one were to read a hidden meaning into all this, one might say that as a monster, deception is the only means available to Stanley to be accepted by society. Yet, as we have noted, he is a perfectly normal child. Who is the real monster?

"Now I get it!" says Stanley. "I can be my own person. The dragon proved it to me! I can play the piano! Be what I want to be!"
"Precisely!" says the guide.
Again, I do not see how this epiphany is relevant to Stanley's problem. Is practicing the piano going to win him friends? Has he neglected the piano in order to please the other children? I do not see his desire to have friends and be accepted as somehow inauthentic. All that is going on is a repression of his need for friends and replacing it with pride in his piano playing.
After threatening to lose his temper again, the guide introduces the third story.
"It's one thing to know what you want but it's another to know how to get it!" he says.

The third story turns out to be Beauty and the Beast, and it is a straightforward adaptation of the original version. Although the animation is bad, it is very well done, especially for a child. I won't go into it too much because the details don't matter too much for my interpretation suffice to say that the guide misinterprets the story again.

Beauty and the Beast is not about a monster who is misunderstood by society. It is about a real monster who undergoes a genuine moral transformation in order to satisfy his need for love. Yet, for the guide, it is a story about "knowing how to get what you want". What does Stanley want? Does he want to play the piano or does he want friends? If what he wants is to play the piano, then this story doesn't belong here.

The message is clear: the unspoken message is about being accepted by society, which is what Stanley really wants but is not allowed to say.

In Beauty and the Beast, the Beast must tame himself. He becomes worthy of love when he grants Beauty her freedom to go back home and care for her dying father. In allowing her the option of disloyalty, he treats her as a moral agent. Beauty also changes, for although she is aware that the Beast has his own kindness, she does not value it. She believes she is destined for something greater, which we know because she dreams of marrying a prince. She doesn't value his kindness until she understands that she could lose it. This is what secures her loyalty and drives her back to him. Thus, the Beast transforms both in reality and in her eyes to become her prince. Is this a feminist story or a red pill story?

After the cartoon, Stanley says "So what you're saying is, if you're a good person on the inside, it doesn't matter what you look like on the outside." An obvious misinterpretation of the story, because the Beast changes to become a good person on the outside. He does not win some kind of moral victory. He wins real success.

"You've got it!" says the guide.

"Gee, I guess I'm not a monster after all," says Stanley.

"No, you're not a monster, Stanley," says the guide. "But it's up to you to show everyone else, now that you know it."

Thus, it seems that according to the guide, Beauty came to love the beast because he rejected society's vision of him as a monster and showed her who he really is: a prince. Clearly, not what the story is actually about! According to this interpretation, there was no moral transformation, only a transformation of self-image.

"Why, I'll just be myself!" says Stanley.

"That's the right attitude, Stanley!" says the guide. Again, not what the story is about.

"Yeah I like who I am! I'm gonna play the piano. I HATE BASEBALL!" Stanley seems to knock the guide back with his voice just as the guide did to him earlier.

When Stanley plays the piano is he being himself? I would argue that no, he isn't. The piano is something that he uses to improve his own self-esteem, not something that he enjoys for his own sake. We do not see him play the piano simply to enjoy himself. Instead, he plays to show the guide that he's better at it.

"You deserve to be happy." says the guide as he draws a door for Stanley to escape from.