Today's object lesson in "Everything you really need to know in life you should have learned from Disney Movies" comes to us in the form of the Josh Duggar scandal, which could have and should have been avoided if certain conservative Christian sects had paid closer attention to The Hunchback of Notre Dame:
To the maybe three people in the world who are apparently cut off from the Internet and haven't heard of the Josh Duggar scandal, but are somehow getting my blog posts delivered to them via carrier pigeon: Josh Duggar, the recently-resigned executive director of FRC Action wing of the arch-conservative Family Research Council and first of 19 children born to a rabidly patriarchal Christian family with rigid rules against birth control, dating, and indeed any non-marital sexual expression, was discovered to have spent an accountability-free year molesting children as young as five, four of them being his own sisters.
Now, at least Frollo had the decency to be lusting after someone who was unrelated to him and post-pubescent!
But in Josh Duggar's defense, as far as we know* he hasn't tried to burn anyone at the stake yet...so...um, I guess we can say he's got that going for him! Congratulations, Josh. No, really:
*Although, to be thoroughly consistent, if he had, we'd have to wait for the statute of limitations on stake-burning to run out before we could reasonably expect the Duggar parents to address it.
In fact, the parallels between the Duggar scandal and Frollo's twisted motivations in Hunchback are uncanny: both show that shame and denial of sexual appetite do not ensure chastity, but rather pose a significant danger of corrupting healthy desire into a furtive, consuming, destructive force that drives people to exploit the vulnerable via coercion, intimidation, or force. The perpetrator's own shame as a sexual being leads him (usually but not exclusively him) to prop up a façade of purity and respectability, while seeking sexual gratification from those who (he thinks) cannot threaten his public image or require him to openly acknowledge himself as a sexual being. Indeed, the nonconsensual nature of these acts becomes an additional thrill for the perpetrator, as he externalizes his own sexual guilt into degrading his victim(s).
To fully illustrate the self-serving, sadistic, and hypocritical rationalizations that go into the evolution from obsession with sexual purity to sexual victimization of others, I give you the single greatest Disney Villain song of all time:
1. Both conspicuously declare their own purity and look down on others' morals despite their own obvious shortcomings:
"Beata Maria, you know I am a righteous man. Of my virtue I am justly proud. Beata Maria, you know I'm so much purer than the common, vulgar, weak, licentious crowd." —Frollo
"Our marriage is very different from other people's marriages--our age, or even people that have been married for a long time--because the fact that, we are trying, our goal is to remain pure before marriage." —Josh Duggar
I feel dirty putting Stephen Schwartz's brilliantly crafted lyrics next to that word salad.
View this video on YouTube
(side note on the general creepiness of Josh Duggar: how dare he say "I love her so much that I would not step over that line" after what he did to his own sisters! Is he just admitting that he doesn't love them? How must it feel to them to hear him say that on national television?!)
2. While both of them use their public piety to shore up their own worldly influence and power:
3. Misogynistic, purity-obsessed scolds just love to blame women for the abuse they perpetrate against them:
"It's not my fault! I'm not to blame! It is the gypsy girl, the witch who set this flame." —Frollo
"Why did God let it happen? Result of defrauding by: immodest dress, indecent exposure, being out from protection of our parents, being with evil friends?" —manual from ATI, an organization with close ties to the Duggar family, on counseling sexual abuse victims
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