Thoughts on Disney's "Wish" -- We Are Not Our Dreams

This is not a critical or laudatory review of the film-- everything within are my own thoughts and reflections. Also I'm aware that this move has been out for 9 months and I'm just talking about it now.

Image from official studio press kit, authorized for editorial use

Last year, Disney celebrated its 100th anniversary. In that hundred years, the studio has released countless films, TV shows, and Broadway musicals, all of them with a distinctive Disney flair-- magical, dreamy, ambitious. Some of them better than others.

Wish is a tribute to the many works the company has released over the last century. Easter eggs honor many of Disney’s most popular films, including Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, and more. It is aesthetically Disney-esque, with a sneering villain, a plucky heroine, enough talking animals to fill a dozen cottages, and enough talk of “granting wishes” to send Cinderella to a ball a hundred times over.  Indeed, the primary conflict in the film is over the fulfillment of wishes, in case the title didn’t give that away. 

Wish tells the tale of Asha, a young woman living on a fantastical island in the Mediterranean. The island of Rosas is ruled by a seemingly benevolent king, who collects the wishes of the kingdom's citizens and guards them in his castle, waiting for the appropriate time to grant them, at his discretion. The islanders live in harmony, the island has a thriving tourism economy, Asha herself works as a tour guide, and even has the opportunity to apply for a much higher role: apprentice to the king himself.

In this fairytale setting, "wishes" are a person's strongest desires, their lifelong dream which drives every action they take and every decision they make. Some wish to fly, some wish to be successful in their trade, or to leave an impact on the next generation. The islanders are content because they have surrendered their desires to the king, making him their custodian to grant or reject as he sees fit. In the meantime, they forget their "wish", leaving them content until such a time as it is granted.

At first, few question this system. Asha has not yet given her wish to "King Magnifico", but sees her friends and family members-- most notably her beloved grandfather, Sabino-- live their lives longing for wishes they no longer remember. They are left with an emptiness inside that they cannot fill, unless their wish is granted. Asha's goal in seeking the king's apprenticeship is to learn the ways of wishes and convince the king to grant Sabino's.

The moment she makes this goal apparent, the king snaps, his once benevolent and magnanimous personality replaced with arrogance and sarcasm. Asha is punished and her chance at gaining the much-coveted apprenticeship ruined in a matter of moments. A brooding, fittingly "lime green tinted" musical number follows, and Asha leaves dejected, mourning her grandfather's doomed wish and her own humiliation.

What follows is an hour or so of Asha leading a teenage revolution against King Magnifico's reign, with the help of a magical wish-granting Star and a plucky talking goat, featuring betrayals and moments of despair as befit any Disney movie. Their goal? Grant the wishes of every islander in order to restore their personhood. Every person should have the right to their lifelong dream! Your dreams are what make you, you! The only person who has the right to determine the course of your life is yourself. And in the end, they emerge victorious, with Asha gaining the Fairy Godmother-like ability to grant wishes for anyone she wants.

In Wish, the islanders surrender and forget their ambitions with the hope that they will someday be fulfilled. In exchange, they live among each other in a close-knit community, trusting their king to preserve their wishes until it's time to grant them. In the meantime, they can endure the emptiness in their souls. But Asha says waiting is not enough. Why should Magnifico be the one to determine whose wish is worth granting? Why should the islanders sacrifice such a major part of themselves, just to have it remain unfulfilled? It’s not right, and what’s more it isn’t Disney.

Magnifico even gives her an answer as to why he doesn't grant every wish: some wishes conflict with one another, or are too vague to grant, or simply aren't ripe yet, or might harm the kingdom if they were granted. But at the slightest push from Asha he snaps and becomes cruel almost without warning. The change from kind and (fairly) reasonable king to cartoonish Disney villain is instantaneous, and all it takes is a snide comment from a 17-year-old girl with a pet goat. Any chance of him being seen as a reasonable ruler is gone. Long live the revolution!

Disney's films have historically leaned towards messages of self-fulfillment and pursuing your dreams at all cost. Heck, their theme, which has set the tone of most of their movie’s openings since 1985, is all about the fulfillment of wishes. Disney has made its living as a mongerer of dreams, and in many ways, it is analogous to the American dream itself. No idea is too big. No wish too grand, or too small. And what's more, all of them are within reach, if only you believe!

The execs at Disney surely meant to liberate their audience with its message. Every person has the right to do whatever they long to do! No person should have control over any other person! Ultimate fulfillment is within your grasp! It's a nice idea, on the surface. But the idea of every person having the right to self-fulfillment is incredibly American in scope.

A devout Buddhist living in Nepal would scoff at the idea that every person should strive to achieve their ambitions without considering the good of the majority first. Buddhism, which has nearly 507 million followers worldwide, teaches that the ultimate purpose is to achieve Nirvana-- which requires one to eschew physical pleasures and reach a point of spiritual ascension in order to avoid suffering. In Islam, which is the second largest world religion after Christianity, the purpose of all living things is to worship Allah. Worldly ambition is acceptable, but should only be exercised in moderation lest it lead one further from Allah. The highest goal is a person's connection to Allah. And in Judaism, a religion which has practitioners across the world, the purpose of God’s people is to fulfill the Torah-- with the goal of setting a people apart from the rest of the world, which can only happen if the majority work together and keep a series of traditions. And while secularism is growing worldwide, it is increasing slower than the global population, meaning that the number of people with no religious affiliation will likely decrease over the next 40 years.

I am not a believer in Buddhism, or Islam, or Judaism. I have not smashed those particular like and subscribe buttons. But in this department, Wish and the major world religions (and as a result, a massive chunk of thinkers worldwide) find themself in conflict. Every belief system requires the giving up of something in exchange for something else. They just differ as to what and for what result. Every religion knows that something is wrong, and Wish's suggestion to just "pursue your dreams" doesn't quite cut it as an answer. 

Wish is not entirely tone-deaf. It attempts to address a universal human longing for something that cannot be humanly achieved. The sehnsucht that is present in every person, asking them to understand it, which is the very reason the major world religions exist in the first place, and the reason that so many spend so much time “striving after wind”. Wish attempts to answer that longing by encouraging the audience to chase their dreams. Wish tells us that we are our dreams, and that until they are fulfilled sehnsucht will remain. Wish dreams too small.

Christianity offers an alternative to wishful thinking. A Christian surrenders their earthly longings to God. We do not do this in a vacuum, but at the behest and example of Jesus. Christ himself "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped [even though he IS God], but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:6-7). Orthodox understanding of scripture acknowledges that Christ did not become less than God by this sacrifice, but that he did not consider his God-ness to be above sacrifice. Christ, in his divinity and humanity, modeled surrender. We, in our humanity, surrender our desires for better ones.

Wish’s insinuation that by giving up your dreams, your longings for the unachievable, you become less than yourself, is almost silly by comparison. When the son of God himself died a miserable death in order to bring us to him, he did not become less of himself. And by changing the object of our dreams, we do not become less of ourselves, but gain more of him. Our identity is not so unstable that, simply because we do not pursue something, we cease to be ourselves.

In the world of Wish, a person either fulfills their dreams, or gives them up entirely, surrendering to sehnsucht and an identity that is less than themselves. In Christianity, a person either strives to fulfill dreams that will not ultimately be fulfilling, or asks God to give them better, brighter, holier dreams. How glad am I that I don’t live in the world of Wish!