2. Esmerelda’s Sexy Fire
In some ways The Hunchback of Notre Dame handed the conspirators some fuel for their fires on a plate, by featuring a religious devout character embroiled in a gripping personal conflict over his sexual desire for a young gypsy girl. It might not be the major focus of the story, but it is the film’s major conflict and the framing for its villain Frollo, whose burning desire for Esmerelda
Ignoring for a minute the enormous, and unnecessarily highlighted breasts, the image actually also suggests that Frollo’s vision of Esmeralda is in fact naked for part of her appearance. For the most part, she appears very obviously in clothing, but for one particular moment, those clothes seem to vanish, and as in the image above, you can clearly see a little too much detail around her inner thigh area that wouldn’t be visible were she clothed.
This was not the first time the film oddly fetishised Esmeralda’s curvy body in the film either: her first appearance shows her performing a fairly raunchy dance, including an impromptu pole dance, and an underwear flash for Frollo. For good parts of that dance, Esmeralda’s dress becomes suspiciously figure hugging, turning what once was flowing material into lycra, showing off her shapely curves so much, you can basically see her bum crack…
The Explanation
It’s never been acknowledged, let alone denied or confirmed, but it’s a reasonable jump to think the fetishism was at least partially intended, given the fact that Frollo’s struggle to counter his physical desires for Esmeralda through faith is a key element of the story, and her mockery and rejection of him as a sexual partner seems to be one of his biggest motivations.
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6 Comments
I was just talking to some people at work about these things the other day.
It all started when I was listening to the Disney Radio station on Pandora, and “Reflection” from Mulan came on and I realized that she was totally transgender. When I looked it up online to see if anyone else had come to that conclusion (of course they had), I stumbled across another hypothesis that Shang from the same film is gay.
Kinky Disney
Haha! Didn’t realise there were so many subliminal messages in Disney’s classics… I don’t think I can look at my childhood favourites in the same way again…
I’ve always heard what Donald said as either “Says who?” or “Says you!”.
The fact that the spring retorts with “Says I” pretty much cinches it.
What’s with you and “filthy perverts” ? You act as if people who enjoy some raunchy humor or mistakenly see dirty things where they aren’t are the scum of the Earth. Did they kill your parents or something ? Have you become a dark knight, avenging their deaths by beating down the pervs of Gotham ? Maybe you’ll take it down a notch with your incessant dehumanization of perfectly normal adults ?
I remember some friends and I getting the Disney VHS tapes out to see if we could find the hidden dirty stuff back when we were young. Good times.