Julio Torres

It wasn't a hit, but it was there.

It's just sort of what we got that year.

Sometimes we get lions, sometimes we get genies.

sometimes we get a tender Parisian drama for the children.

But a part about that movie that really, really stayed with me was its villain.

This withering, possibly closeted, deeply troubled little man named Monsignor Cloud Frollo.

And during the peak of his narrative arc,

Monsignor Claude Frollo sings into the roaring flames of the fire about his lust for the gypsy girl Esmeralda.

And in that moment, we see him turn lust into misogyny, into essentially genocide.

Anyway, that was a Happy Meal toy.

So while some children were playing with like a Ninja Turtle or a Transformer,

Others were like, oh yeah, mine is this sort of medieval court justice.

He's morally bankrupt.

There's a lot of self-hate in him.

That combined with power just makes him lash out in really toxic and scary ways.

And sometimes, I don't know, I put him in a little car.

That must be it.

But I also think that the creative exercise of attributing personality and stories to inanimate objects is something that most of us have in childhood.

I mean, that is literally what playing with a toy is.

feeling for them, making up stories for them.