writinRepo/destruction/2024-06-05 great mouse detective exploration of Ratigan.txt

Pretty solid. I may get a little too esoteric on this one.

One worldbuilding weakness is that it's weird that the mouse world just so happens to mirror perfectly the human world. It's something you have to ignore and play off as a joke in order for the story to function, but it's easier to ignore because the scope of it is quite small. If it didn't exist, there wouldn't be an implication that somehow mouse society and human society are in sync and perfectly mirror each other, which is a supernatural implication. You could remove this joke and most of the plot would function as if it were just a regular Holmes piece. But I'm not sure how the original book series dealt with this confusion.

One worldbuilding *strength* is that it very well understands classical British culture and governance, perhaps better than I understand it.

The man who marries the Queen isn't the King; he's the Royal Consort to the Queen. This means he only has as much power as the Queen delegates to him, and if the Queen were to die, then the power structure reverts back to who is truly in succession to the throne. Oftentimes, the seventh cousin of the Queen has a more legitimate claim to the throne than her husband. Sometimes the monarchy or loyalty of other independent nations has a more legitimate claim. So when Ratigan says that he's in power, he follows it up with the stipulation that that's the case so long as the queen approves. So the situation he engineered to gain political power, so long as his automaton was convincing enough, would have given him legitimate power until he died and presumably planned a contingency. It's a cool detail that I'm not sure writers necessarily will think into for "serious" productions today, let alone for the much-neglected "children's" films.

For this reason it's obvious that anyone would be opposed to his rule given that he is an illegitimate leader within their political system. But clearly his rule in and of itself would be objectionable. We only see that he has a lot of rules, but I believe the only one we see him enumerate is that there should be a heavy tax imposed on those who cannot work; i.e. children, the elderly, and the disabled. He extrapolates, in so many words, that he sees these people as drags on society at large. Now, somebody who cannot survive on their own, categorically, will die if nobody labors to sustain their life. They are incapable of creating tangible, *economic* value. Why then, is it at all sensical for one to impose a tax on a group that cannot create value? Why tax someone who has no money to tax in the first place? These are questions that have been addressed through history, but it seems to be glossed over in this moment given it's an attribute of the Badguy™ to just do evil things. But this feeds into the perception that we have that evil is an attitude, rather than a pathology that makes reasonable, but self-centered presumptions about what is right, and thus leads to terrible consequences. Taxing those who cannot work forces that tax onto the people who care for those dependents; it's expensive enough to take care of dependents, so if you tax additionally for the dependents, it makes taking care of them not financially feasible, so old people die, and having children becomes a luxury for only the very wealthy. But this would come back to bite Ratigan in the tail later, because it would impoverish the working class of his Empire, thus impoverishing him and allowing him to be overtaken and destroyed by the power and interests of neighboring nations. Freedom from tyranny is not only just, it also leads to much economic success. There have been many throughout history and in present day who cannot come to understand this, so I believe that Ratigan can realistically make the same blunder, I just don't think this is a position he would logically take given the circumstances.

The challenge in creating a realistic villain is that, in order to do so, you must first understand that irrationality is a subjective term and an illusion. Every individual has an internal logic to them that makes sense given what they've experienced and learned via their environment. If we judge the actions of others, present or past, as irrational, we make the presumptive mistake of thinking their logic can never make sense to *them*, because *we* can't understand it. Someone can only be irrational, if they have the exact same understanding of the situation as those judging them. Nobody who knows they are behaving irrationally continues to behave that way unapologetically. Nobody is capable of truly comprehending that they themselves are irrational, and also decide to continue their irrational behavior. Some people may double down on said behavior, but there's an internal logic to that too. The job of the writer is to ensure that enough of that internal logic is as explicit or implicit in the story, as is required for the motivation of *any* character to logically follow. The definition of evil is not when one violates the rights of others for no reason, because nobody has literally no reason to do so. There's always a reason. The definition of evil is when one violates the rights of others, because they *excuse* it by making rationalizations of certain behaviors and attitudes they fall prey to; they prioritize one principle over all, they prioritize the rights of one over the rights of the other due to that one principle they think trumps that of all others. Indeed; if you think never to violate one principle, and so long as it's not okay to violate this principle at all costs, you can get away with violating every other possible principle, sacrificing them for the sake of what you deem to be more important. There's little evidence to suggest that Evil has ever came into power just for the sake of Evil. Evil is most likely to have always came into power due to the unbalanced priorities of a motivated person or persons, a lack of perspective in these persons, and a lack of opposition, in whatever form, at several points of failure that could have prevented that path from being taken. In other words, everybody who is evil thinks they are good, and nobody who thinks they are good thinks they are evil. Every creature given Reason, i.e. every human being, acts in their own rational self-interest. And thus the logical conclusion is that nobody should ever consider themselves good, lest they accidentally become evil. Everyone must hold themselves accountable for the mistakes they make, as to not rationalize and attempt to justify them. This isn't to say that there is no objective truth or morality; there certainly is. The issue is that, as we are not omnipotent, and thus imperfect beings, the objective truth isn't readily discernable. This is what distinguishes good and evil morally; one of them recognizes its inherent flaws, and attempts to account for them, while the other refuses to account for its own flaws, and instead justifies them to themselves and anyone who will listen.

So how does this apply to Ratigan in this context? Well, his motivation in the story is implicit: power is both an end in and of itself, and he utilizes the power he's already gained as a means to that end. The ambitious seek power, we don't need to be told the exact motivations of it every time. We don't need to know how his father treated him or how he grew up to learn that, that he was always seen as a Rat growing up, that he only ever wanted the adoration of the Mice that surrounded him, so much that he pretended to *be* one while violating the rights of several others just for recognizing that he isn't one. We don't need that, because Machiavellian principles have tempted the motivations of Man since before they had a name. Power is a common motivation, common enough to assume he has his own reason for doing so, so additional detail isn't necessary. But the story itself *presents* very little rationale in that situation for him to enact such an obviously evil policy. At least, it glosses over it. He says, old people, the disabled, and children can't take care of themselves, thus others, by necessity of them suriving, are forced to take care of them, therefore, a tax will be imposed on them so they... are incentivized to stop being old, disabled, or children? How can he expect them to just figure that one out? Hmm... perhaps I could attempt to Steel Man this position via Logical Form.

1. He who is not willing to work, let him not eat; nobody is entitled to the fruits of labor they haven't worked for, or haven't provided fruits of equal value to trade.
    I assume this aphorism as premise 1 because it's a premise I believe to be true, but if prioritized over all, has lead to evil. It hails back to the New Testament, and may be older still than that. It was a rationale for policies in Jamestown in colonial America, but was used to justify the policies of Lenin, then Stalin. Given Ratigan's brief rationale, I can assume he believes this.
2. Children, the disabled, and the elderly, are incapable of labor.
    Self-evident, and Ratigan clearly voices agreement with this premise in the film.
3. Incapability of providing labor to take care of oneself, requires the labor of another to sustain their life.
    Assumed from 1 and 2, but neither vocalized by Ratigan nor demonstrated by his in-film behavior.
4. Thus, our society's labor is absorbed by these dependents. [From 3]
    Assumed from 1, 2, 3, and 5, but not explicit in film.
5. Thus, our society's productivity is slowed by these dependents. [From 4]
    This argument is explicitly expressed by Ratigan.
6. Thus, these dependents should be heavily taxed, to the end of turning them into a net positive on society. [From 5]
    Also explicity expressed by Ratigan, though it's a stretch to say he wants them to improve or be better; he likely just doesn't want to worry about them.
7. However, given they are incapable of labor, there is no value for them to provide in the first place. The only of these three ailments that promise eventual labor, and thus value to society, are children, in that they may become capable adults one day. [From 2]
    I would speculate that Ratigan probably doesn't believe this. I included this premise to account for the fact that childhood is always temporary, whereas people hardly ever are "cured" of disability and age.
8. Thus, they must figure it out. If they cannot provide enough value to society to pay the tax, regardless of the willingness of their kin to provide for them, they deserve to starve. [From 1, 3, 4, 6, and 7]

Obviously this justification requires significant mental gymnastics, and its conclusion is evil. If I sat down with Ratigan I'd want to understand what makes him think this way. If Ratigan were real, I would know there is a rational explanation to his behavior, rooted in his pathology. So I'd know the answer is out there somewhere, I just have to think and test scientifically to find it. But it's overly generous to any story to assume that the writers integrated an explanation for this, if it's not in the story. So Ratigan's form of evil goes from nuanced evil, i.e. "I care about the rights of the people, thus it is morally correct to prevent freeloaders from exploiting the working class by taxing them out of existence. It's only coincidental that this tax goes in my pocket and benefits me, it is the right thing to do." to cartoonish, obtuse evil, i.e. "I just don't like disabled elderly children and I'll steal their crutches and suck them dry of their life force to benefit myself, muahahahaha."

Is this standard too much to ask of a children's movie, given how steeped in politics, culture, and Epistemology it is? I don't think so. Just because children haven't yet the capacity to comprehend politics doesn't mean it can't be in the film in any capacity. My counterargument would be Kent Mansley from The Iron Giant. He's the villain, by far the most major antagonist of that film. But he acts in his own rational self-interest. It wouldn't be good news for him to attempt to interrogate, coerce, threaten, and entrap Hogarth, a minor, let alone without his mother present. This is because these actions are wrong, in that they violate his rights. So why does he do it? Because he *thinks* he's fighting for the greater good, he sees Hogarth's rights as a worthy sacrifice for not only his own career, but national security as a whole. He has immense hubris and thinks he's better than this small town. "Big things happen in big places. The sooner I fill out my report, the sooner I can get back to them." He thinks his career in DC and the work that he does is more important than the *entire town,* let alone the least of them, a troubled yet clever child who lost his father to war, now cared for solely by an overworked mother. This causes his knee-jerk reaction to fire the missile at the Giant, even though doing so would sacrifice everyone in the town, including himself. This was caused by a lack of foresight, caused by an overcorrection, caused by a paranoia for political enemies abroad, caused by a war that was resultant from a lack of shared values and common understanding between two or more nations. During the cold war, there were many a paranoid person who would certainly have been willing to sacrifice a small coastal town to ensure a single victory against the Soviets. It makes perfect sense that a Mansley could have existed in such circumstances, and his motivation is internally consistent. I don't have to agree with him in order to understand that *he* believes in his actions. And it's exactly that reason that the audience doesn't resonate with his actions, not only because he has a disdain for and mistreats these small-town residents, not only because he's awful to Hogarth, who, as our emotional vehicle we like, we side with. It's because he's wrong, and wrong people *exist.* His other behaviors, to each individual, could be the most egregious thing he's done. The five-year-old could dislike him because he's rude and controlling to Hogarth, who we love, and he tries to kill the Giant, who we also love. The Mother could dislike him because she's seen men like Mansley, or because she also has children and works tirelessly to benefit them, so when she sees a mother love her son, she sees herself, and when that son is mistreated, she sees that as an attack on herself due to her love for that child, in deed. Fathers could think the same thing, or perhaps, for the more politically inclined men, they could see his prioritization of national security over the rights of the people as indicative of the evil and tyranny of D.C., or that of the CIA or other government agencies. Or you could simply not like his narcissism. Any conclusion drawn from what is literally in the film is valid, the only difference is what the priority is given the subjective perspective of the viewer. Well-crafted stories emulate a version of their own reality that have no errors, and are thus real. Just because one can't see an error doesn't mean it isn't there, and vice versa. Flawless stories tend to reflect reality so well, that they give us a mirror with which to assess ourselves. Sometimes they points out things to us that we didn't realize were a great aspect of ourselves. Sometimes it's the opposite. But it happens to be that, when a story is well crafted, people of all ages can enjoy them, and the truth they glean from it is something of worth to them at that time. You could have a children's story so reflective of reality, that both children and adults can gain a valuable understanding of themselves, regardless of their maturity. If a story, in

Long winded tangent as always. So, to bring it back to this film, can Ratigan feasibly exist without a rational explanation for his motivation? No. Can the world itself exist without a rational explanation for how two different worlds can simultaneously exist in the exact same way, in two different scales across two different species? No. Does that make the story entirely worthless? Absolutely not! There's always something of value in any story. It's just difficult to scientifically measure, so we're forced to make the case for or against any story in seeking higher truth. Just because the worldbuilding is shaky doesn't mean the characters aren't good, but a character's quality is also dependent, to a degree, on that of the rest of the story. The triangle of storytelling is worldbuilding, plot, character. Each affects each other, and all other elements of any story serve to bolster each. They are all essential mechanical elements of the story. Tone and Theme are not the foundation, but the *result* of good storytelling. So if you want Theme, you must build upon the mechanics that allow Theme to exist. If your foundation is faulty or nonexistent, your Tone and Theme will be exceptionally damaged, and the same applies to this film. However, if this film's worldbuilding were stronger, there could be more reasonable assumptions made that make it possible for the same scene to play out the exact same way. This just requires additional elements, more meat, peppered throughout the film to effectively provide that context. There's no one universal solution to this, but some solutions are more effective than others. The job of the writer is to ensure the best overall solution is executed to fit the many needs of the film.

So clearly it's not perfect. But it still has a lot going for it and is well worth the watch.