IDR Labs

On Learning Typology through Spurious Sources

A young boy was raised on Disney.

Just a few DVDs ago, the boy had no qualifications in life, but he already feels like Disney has taught him everything he needs to know.

“What a great friend I have in Disney!” the boy thinks to himself as he skips down the street with a spring in his step.

Years later, the boy enters a library reading hall and encounters a dusty leather-bound volume. The book contains the original source material for The Little Mermaid, Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and other such stories.

“Oh, that’s nice,” the boy thinks to himself as he lodges the volume off the shelf. “I know this stuff. It will be fun to see what they’ve written about ‘my’ topic.”

The boy starts reading with gleeful anticipation. But his anticipation soon turns to disgust. This is not what he was expecting. The stories feature all manner of sinister convolutions that he doesn’t fully understand and what’s worse – these deviant versions of familiar themes are presented unapologetically as if they were the real accounts. It’s like Victor Hugo and Hans Christian Andersen never even stopped to apologize for deviating from Disney.

“This is ridiculous!” the boy exclaims. “These guys have it all wrong! Hercules never murdered his own children, and the Little Mermaid doesn’t die in the end! She gets the prince and they live happily ever after. If these authors don’t even know that, then they’re total idiots,” the boy thinks to himself.

Disgusted, he puts down the volume.

The boy makes a pledge to himself: To stay with Disney for the rest of his life.

There’s no good reason grown men can’t watch Disney.

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