One Angry Princess

There’s two halves to this episode. The first is a well constructed, if over simple, mystery for the kiddos to solve. The other is a failed attempt at being ‘deep’ and ‘mature’.  

Summary: Attila is finally opening up his own bakery, but people generally don't want to stop by because of his scary helmet. The next day, Monty's Sweet Shoppe is destroyed, and Attila is arrested. He is about to be banished from the kingdom, but Rapunzel makes an appeal to investigate the matter further. 

The Episode is Meant to be a Homage to 12 Angry Men, but Misses the Point of the Original Film

So for those who haven’t seen the movie, (though really you should) 12 Angry Men is about a jury trying to decide if an accused person is guilty of a violent crime. At first the evidence seems clear, but one lone juror refuses to vote guilty until the evidence has been gone over again. One by one he convinces the other men to vote not guilty as they each have to face they’re own personal biases.

Sound familiar? 

In the show Rapunzel is the sole believer in Attila’s innocence despite evidence to the contrary. She insists on investigating herself while challenging everyone else’s personal biases. 

The difference?

12 Angry Men is a hard hitting look at how privilege, prejudice, and cognitive bias can interfere with the American judicial system. None of the jurors are named, but they are all middle class, presumably Christian, white guys. And that is the point. They are all different from the accused; a young, poor, arguably non-white teen (the play is intentionally vague about the kid’s race so that you can slot any minority in there) who has a history of getting into trouble. If you were to change the ethnicity, race, gender, class, or age of any of the 12 characters then you would suddenly have a very different story. It’s their backgrounds and pre-formed opinions that inform their decisions. Even the main protagonist is not exempt from re-examining his own personal biases. 

Meanwhile the writers of Tangled: the Series are too busy showing off how clever Rapunzel is to actually deal with the themes of injustice and bigotry that they added in themselves in the first place.

Rapunzel Knowing Attila Before Hand Weakens the Message

In 12 Angry Men none of the jurors know the accuse. In fact, they can’t know him. It’s against the law. In order to have an impartial jury, no one can have any ties to either the defendant or the prosecution, and they must not have knowledge of the case or have had specific experiences that might cause them to be biased or unfair. 

Rapunzel being Attila’s friend means that she already has her own bias and an invested interest in making sure Attila goes free. She’s not acting out of the simple goodness of her heart here. She’s doing something that directly benefits herself. 

I don’t expect a children’s fantasy show to recreate the US judicial system with all of the complexities there in, but I do expect it to uphold it’s heroine as the selfless person it claims her to be. Yet the show constantly undermines this supposed character trait by only having her help the people she befriends, and only if that help doesn’t require anything emotionally challenging or mentally taxing from her.   

How much more powerful would this episode be if Rapunzel was defending a stranger or someone she actively disliked? Imagine if it was Monty who was being accuse and Raps had to swallow her pride in order to do what is right. But that would require the show having Rapunzel actually learn something instead of placing her on a pedestal. It would also mean giving Monty a reason to exist rather than keeping him around to be a convenient red herring.      

Rapunzel Shouldn’t Have to Prove Attila’s Innocence

Rather than have a courtroom drama the show opts to have a ‘whodunit’ story instead. This unfortunately gives the implication that Corona’s judicial system runs on a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ mantra, which is backwards to any humane legal system. ‘Innocent until proven guilty’, ‘reasonable doubt’, ‘due process’, are the cornerstones of our modern social ethics. 

In 12 Angry Men, we never find out if the accused actually committed the crime or not. That is because his actual innocence isn’t the point of the story. It’s about whether or not the system is working like it should or if it’s being compromised by human error. 

Once again, I don’t expect a recreation of the US judicial system, but if you’re writing a story for a modern audience then you need to reinforce modern morals. Simply crouching Corona’s legal system as ‘of the times’ or ‘fantasy’ while ignoring why we no longer have such systems in place reduces the story to puerile fare. 

It also means that show’s writers didn’t put enough thought into their world building. 

No One Calls Out the Obviously Corrupt System 

The show has interwoven throughout its ongoing narrative themes of classism, injustice, abuse, and authoritarianism, but then fails to follow through on those themes by not having any of the protagonists actually examine any of these issues. They just sit there in the background, even as the show tries it darndest to present Rapunzel as an arbiter of reform. However a person can’t bring about change if they can’t even admit that there is a problem to begin with.   

In this episode alone we have

• Banishment is considered a reasonable punishment for an act of vandalism. A crime that is usually considered only a misdemeanor unless the damage goes over a certain amount. Keep in mind that not even most felonies would be given such a punishment in the real world
• Introduces the prison barge that regularly carries away convicts. In the past ‘undesirables’ would be shipped off to prison colonies as a form of persecution. Attila and every other person we see subjected to Corona’s legal system are of a lower class. 
• Many prejudge Attila based off his appearance, lower class, and past upbringing. However, it is either Attila who is expected to change or Rapunzel who is expected to win people over. At no point is anyone told that they shouldn’t be prejudiced to begin with. 
• There is no judge, jury, or lawyers. The king alone decides the fate of criminals, the Captain is expected to be the both the prosecutor and the ‘executioner’, which is a conflict of interest, and the defendant has no one to represent them unless they so happen to know a kind statesperson. Meaning you have to be either rich or well connected in order to even have a chance to defend yourself. 

Oh and there’s this...

Uh, yeah you do. You’re the flipping king. You make the law. You’re the one to bring charges against Attila, and nearly every other criminal in the show, in the first place. 

The show constantly wants us to view Frederic as simply an everyman who is only doing his job, but he’s not. He’s a ruler and as such he has powers and responsibilities that no one else has or ever will have. The series gives both him and Rapunzel all of the privileges of being in charge without holding them to account for the consequences of their actions. 

By not pointing out how wrong these actions are, the show winds up avocating them instead. When I call Tangled the Series authoritarian, this is why. Because authority is never questioned even when clearly wrong and nepotism is presented as the solution to conflicts as oppose to being the problem itself.

The Show Introduces Complex Issues but Then Oversimplifies the Conflicts Surrounding Those Issues

The creators of the show have constantly declared that the series is ‘not for kids’. That they were shooting for an older audience than the pre-school time slot they were given. Now ignoring the fact that Tangled was always going to have a built in audince of pre-teen girls and ignoring that children’s media can be mature, TTS lacks the nuance needed to viewed as anything other than a pantomime. 

As stated before, this episode alone ignores the very real issues interlaced within the conflict in order to give us an overly simple mystery that anyone over the age of five could figure out.  

It’s frustrating to watch the show constantly skirt towards the edge of complexity only to see it chicken out and go for the low hanging fruit instead. As a consequence the series winds up being for no one. Too shallow for adults and older teens, but too confused in its morals to be shown to small children and younger adolescents. 

I wouldn’t recommend this show to a parent, not without encouraging them to view the series either before or alongside their child in order to counteract it’s ‘lessons’ and I know parents within the fandom itself who’ve stopped showing newer episodes to their kids; stating that they want their child to be old enough to point out the harmful messages to before doing so. 

Once Again No One Learns Anything 

Rapunzel doesn’t learn that the system is flawed. Attila doesn’t learn to open up to people. Nobody learns to treat people with respect and to not judge others based on appearances alone.

The whole point of the episode is to just show off how much ‘better’ Rapunzel is than everyone else. The show constantly feels the need to tear down other characters in an effort to make its favs look good as opposed to just letting the mains grow as people. 

Conclusion

Tangled the tv series is no 12 Angry Men. It’s no Steven Universe/Gravity Falls/Avatar:TLA/She-Ra/Gargoyles/Batman:TAS either. It barely reaches the same level as the likes of DnD, Sonic SATAM, or Voltron. Interesting ideas but poor pacing, build up, and lack of follow through, with some naff decisions thrown into the mix bring things down in quality. And unlike the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon from the early 80s, TTS lacks the benefit of being a pioneer in the field of animation, where such flaws are more forgivable.