Trolls World Tour — An unexpectedly deep educational message on personal and social conversations
The delights and troubles of living with kids are endless. I am discovering it as my partner, I, and his kids, who are in shared custody, start resembling an almost perfect model of the modern extended family. One of the delights, so to say, is that I am watching way more kid movies than I ever imagined I would have.
Recently, it was the turn of Trolls World Tour. A movie that had no particularly moving moment or exceptionally engaging story — all those colors and songs were not really my cup of tea either. Yet, a single crucial moment truly blew my mind.
So, here is the plot. Queen Poppy, the beloved main character of the first Trolls movie, gets an unexpected invitation from Queen Barb to unite all troll tribes for a music party. What a surprise! Poppy did not even know that there were other tribes. Luckily, her old and wise father is there to tell her the sad story from the dawn of times that, yes, six Troll tribes exist in the Troll Kingdom, but they separated a long time ago to live apart. Each of the six tribes represents a different genre of music: Pop (Poppy’s tribe), Rock (Barb’s tribe), Funk, Classical, Techno, and Country. Discord came when the tribes could not determine which genre was the best, and they decided to separate so that each could be free to live in their own way and play their own music. Listening to this story, Poppy gets upset that jealousy separated her ancestors and becomes eager to help Barb in the mission of uniting the different forms of music. All trolls will finally be together, united in brotherhood.
What Poppy does not know is that Barb’s evil plan is to unite all the tribes under the Rock music and delete all other genres forever. However, Poppy’s intentions are not that good either. She foresees a world where all trolls are the same, differences do not matter, and everyone lives in harmonious agreement. Her intentions come from denial of differences as much as Barb’s plans.
And here it comes the moment that blew my mind. In her trip to unite all tribes, Poppy meets the wise and kind King Quincy, monarch of the Funk tribe. To explain why her plan is not as brilliant as she thinks, Quincy says to Poppy that assuming that all trolls are the same does not help heal the ancient controversy. Precisely, Quincy says something like: “we are not all the same — hiding differences is hiding the truth of who we are”. Mind-blowing!
This message was impressive not because I never thought of this wise truth but because I found it to be a profound content to deliver in a movie for kids. Children might even be too young to realize it. Still, this simple message has implications that even many adults fail to understand.
People are often uncomfortable with disagreement. Consequently, they reject disagreement and deny differences, either with Barb’s evil intentions or Poppy’s naïve attitude. However, this rejection has effects that negatively impact all our relationships — both with our teammates and our opponents. How does this happen?
Let’s take the example of our teammates. We tend to associate with people who think like us. We might thus initiate conversations with them, become friends or lovers, or even team up with them to start ambitious work or societal projects. However, for reasons that are admittedly beyond logic, we often start assuming that we agree with these people on everything. And what happens if disagreement appears? Whereas not all friendships dissolve completely, many of them cool down with a sense of disappointment or even betrayal. Romantic relationships become theatres of furious quarrels. If the disagreement is serious enough, allies or partners in important projects do not look like allies anymore but start resembling enemies. Hatred, contempt, disownment spread publicly on the internet and social media. At the exact moment when agreement faded away, no conversation of any sort could be continued.
True that not all companionships are meant to be. Yet, these fallouts often show an uncomfortable truth: that those companionships were grounded not on inclusivity but on mere agreement, the type of agreement that makes one feel reassured by social approval. However, no solid friendship, love, or partnership can flourish on such foundations. By rejecting the differences of our friends, we hurt them. By not accepting the ways of our partner, we condemn ourselves and them to unhappiness. By not being able to understand and support the nuances of opinions of our allies, we elevate ourselves to sole judges of what is right and what is wrong.
At this point, the supporters of Barb the Queen of Rock (who pursued the annihilation of all other music genres) might object that it is easier to deal with people who are not that different from us. For example, Rockers might more easily tolerate Hindi-rock folks than K-pop dancers (something I did not even know existed before this movie).
Sure, tolerating or accepting differences is harder with an opponent than with a friend — but this does not make it less important.
People usually face a divergence of opinions by trying to convince the other person or group of people of the good of their arguments. Frequently, the other person or group is trying to do the same. However, this attitude is counterproductive to personal and societal conversations as it generates endless and often sterile conversations that rarely contribute to mutual understanding. On the contrary, they can only end with a winner and a loser. They feed our ego when we win and leave a bitter sense of humiliation when we lose — and where is the space for Trolls’ educational message?
As with friends or allies, I suspect that this happens because we tend to perceive people who are radically different from us as enemies to our lifestyle and views. But this perception is often false. One becomes our opponent or even enemy when they actively try to limit our and others’ freedom and not only because they live or think differently than us. We are not obliged to make friends with everybody, as Poppy naively aims to. Instead, we should be more than ready to accept and even ignore someone who lives different from us if they let us live as we want. More than that, we should actively support their right to live as they want because it is our same right. That’s the deep educational message of Trolls World Tour.
Thus, with friends as much as with opponents, there is no good in denying differences or trying to level them out into a uniform view. As much as life in agreement might look more comfortable or desirable, as Poppy thinks at the beginning of the movie, it is doomed to fail because grounded on a lie. That we can agree with someone on all things. It is even almost impossible to disagree with someone on everything — just like the old saying says, even a broken clock gets to be right twice a day. Instead, the real challenge is how to coexist given our personal, social, and cultural differences. These differences are not only present, sometimes they are radical and extreme. However, in the face of such a challenge, even our most radical opponent could become an unexpected ally in this greater common goal.
This change in perspective does not mean that there should be no space to express our point of view and argue for the lifestyle that we perceive as good. Compelling conversations and debates like this can enrich everyone if the listener has a sincere interest in knowing another point of view that is, in turn, sincerely expressed as such. But our energies in the face of relational frustrations and greater injustices, even our very perception of injustice itself, should change to focus on how to ensure equal space, freedom, and opportunities for everybody, rather than convincing someone else of the good of our lifestyle or opinions.
Unfortunately, this change in perspective does not mean either that all personal or social debates can be resolved with the acceptance of disagreement and the creation of enough space for individual freedom. Sometimes other people do want to prevent others from living how they want. Other times, people simply want enemies — they will actively look for them and will enjoy the battle. However, in many remaining conversations, accepting disagreement will shift the emphasis from changing others to the much more intriguing challenge of building relationships in which differences coexist. And I am glad that I found this simple but fundamental truth in a kid movie, it looks like a good starting point for the generations to come.
I do not think that if we all start accepting disagreement, the world will naturally end up in a multivocal concert as in the movie. But for those who are ready for the Trolls World Tour unexpectedly deep message, this perspective will rephrase many relational and societal problems in the most illuminated way. Do not fight to change others but to ensure you have enough space to live as you want. And what if our children might educate the adults of today even before becoming the adults of tomorrow?
Written in May 2020
