A llama, a golden ass, and a golden doodle walk into a salon...

thoughts on The Emperors New Groove and todays political climate

It's been 25 years so I don’t know if this warning is needed, but there will be spoilers for The Emperor’s New Groove ahead.

The idea to watch this movie as a tarot experiment, much less publicize it, felt insane but watching this Disney classic during the inauguration was surprisingly insightful. The biggest mystery for me going into the movie was what is a groove. I was concerned that grooving would have something to do with dancing which, with Disney, usually means a lot of singing, which… is it ok to admit I hate musicals?

My fears were quickly confirmed as we learned the story of Emperor Kuzco through song in the first five minutes. He is depicted as a selfish, greedy asshole who, as a baby, rips apart his toys and gets more in return and, as a man, is presented with a stage full of possible wives and finds something wrong with each of them. The song and dance ends when he runs into an old priestly looking man who is thrown out of the castle for disrupting his boss’s groove (literally just standing there).

A peasant walking to meet with the Emperor comes across the old man and learns about the Emperor’s intolerance for anyone who gets in his way. The old man defines a groove as “the rhythm in which he lives his life” and “a pattern of behavior.” I realized here that the movie wasn’t about dancing, the title has less to do with theatrics but character growth, which is what makes any movie good.

What follows are three pages of notes compiled into a narrative with two sections: classism and transformation. So much has happened in the last week that I could add as context to this interpretation but that is how I end up never sharing anything — because I am constantly working through revisions. These thoughts are admittedly incomplete and already outdated but I am beginning to think any writer would say that about their work (at least those with integrity lol).

Classism

The main plot of the film is that an Emperor turns into a Llama (we will talk about that transformation next) but the subplot is about the peasant who saves the old man from the flag. We learn his name is Pacha and that he was summoned to the castle to learn he would be losing his village when the Emperor builds his new summer home.

That night, when Kuzco is turned into a Llama, he ends up on Pacha’s cart on his way out of the city. After a multi-day journey tied in a sack, they return to Pacha’s hillside village and, for the first time, Kuzco realizes what has happened to him. He wasn’t just kidnapped, he has been transformed into a version of himself he does not recognize. He runs off into the night, determined to return to the place where he was in power but is quickly surrounded by animals that know nothing of his royal lineage. When his life is in mortal danger, Pacha comes out of nowhere to save him.

Of course, this is a cartoon, and if the movie is going to continue he has to be saved, but what does it mean for Pacha to risk his own life in this moment? Even after being faced with the awful truth that this person would heartlessly destroy his village, he took a chance — probably hoping for a little quid pro quo. If Pacha saved him, maybe Kuzco wouldn’t destroy the town out of loyalty to his new friend.

Pacha succeeds in his heroic efforts, but Kuzco fails to live up to any ideal of a good friend or leader. Even as a Llama, he still feels a sense of inherent superiority toward a person who continues to risk his life for him. This dynamic becomes the central conflict of the film until halfway through the movie when two more characters enter the story — Yzma, and Kronk, her servant.

These new adversaries represent another aspect of the class battle playing out. Yzma is responsible for turning Kuzco into a Llama but she was actually trying to kill him so that she could assume the throne. They begin to pursue Kuzco and Pacha which helps them channel their frustrations into teamwork. Sometimes all it takes is a common enemy to see past our differences.

All of this might seem silly and irrelevant, but it is so similar to this Kierkegaard quote that The Centre of Applied Jungian Studies sent out on the morning of the inauguration:

Whether you are man or woman, rich or poor, dependent or free, happy or unhappy; whether you bore in your elevation the splendour of the crown or in humble obscurity only the toil and heat of the day; whether your name will be remembered for as long as the world lasts, and so will have been remembered as long as it lasted, or you are without a name and run namelessly with the numberless multitude; whether the glory that surrounded you surpassed all human description, or the severest and most ignominious [shameful] human judgment was passed on you -- eternity asks you and every one of these millions of millions, just one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not, whether so in despair that you did not know that you were in despair, or in such a way that you bore this sickness concealed deep inside you as your gnawing secret, under your heart like the fruit of a sinful love, or in such a way that, a terror to others, you raged in despair. If then, if you have lived in despair, then whatever else you won or lost, for you everything is lost, eternity does not acknowledge you, it never knew you, or, still more dreadful, it knows you as you are known, it manacles [shackles] you to yourself in despair!

This quote is so dense with distinctions, but ultimately, he is saying that despair is an emotion that we all share as humans no matter what place you take in the binaries of society that you identify with. We lose sight of ourselves through our attachment to these identities.

When Kuzco is forced to let go of the idea that he is safe because of who he is (royalty) and feels the despair of being cold and alone, he learns the power of friendship and community.

According to the Jung Institute, Kierkegaard believed that despair was “not to be eradicated but embraced as part of the human struggle to become one’s true self, a process he called "becoming a self before God." This understanding places despair at the heart of Kierkegaard's existential philosophy, where suffering can lead to transformation and authentic existence.”

God is a loaded concept, especially to Kierkegaard, but I think, in some sense, becoming a self just requires being seen by another person. Maybe identity is like Shrodingers’s cat — it exists once someone else sees it. Once Kuzco’s humanity is witnessed by Pacha he can no longer be idolized or demonized — he is just human.

If despair can lead us to transformation, what does transformation teach us?

Transformation

Going into this watch party, the overarching question that felt important to answer was: What does it mean to become a version of yourself you no longer recognize?

It can be so easy to feel like a loss of familiarity is a loss of existence. After the LA fires, John Mayer said that one of the greatest things lost after the lives themselves was the proof of life. Memories might live on in objects but they are not proof of life, they are just proof of the past. The gentle rising and falling of your chest is the only thing you need to prove you are living.

But life is not just about living, it is about being something.

When Kuzco is physically transformed into a Llama instead of dying, his energetic spirit (or personality) is also forced to evolve. As the story unfolds, we watch the interplay between nurture and nature and how much circumstance influences experiences and thus how we see the world.

There is so much we do not have control over, but one thing we can control is how we choose to make sense of it all. There are many words you could use to characterize the world we live in today ranging from the optimistic to the pessimistic to the ambivalent but no matter how good of a story you tell, you can never know how something will turn out. If assumptions don’t change anything, why wouldn’t you choose to be hopeful?

The movie gives us examples of each of these types of people: Pacha is an optimist, Yzma is a pessimist, and Kronk seems ambivalent. Our main character, Kuzco, goes through a transformation from ambivalent to optimistic. Being a cartoon, the ending ties everything into neat little bows, which of course isn’t always how life works, but that doesn’t mean the whole thing is a farce.

As I was writing this and looking at the political landscape today, it felt scary to be hopeful. It feels like maybe we are losing something, but like everything that burned in the fires,—material things don’t make you what you are. Something like a letter does not define your gender — you do that. That is the power of transformation.

People argue that today new generations are destroying traditional concepts of man and woman but this isn’t exactly true. Those ideas have only really existed since the Enlightenment, when scientists thought they had finally figured out the mysteries of the human body and then politicians tried to turn those theories into policy. Before then science was full of questions and the ways people fulfilled their self-expression varied greatly. Here’s the thing. The government doesn’t get to tell us who we can and can’t be. Don’t let anyone take who you are away from you.

Stories of transformation are ancient. There is no traditional concept of who we should be or what we are. Even religion has transformed itself again and again to adapt to the times.

Who do you want to be? Be that! What do you want to do? Do that!

The Golden Doodle

There is a book from the late 2nd century called The Golden Ass, which is about a man who accidentally turns himself into a donkey. After reading it, I wrote a short story inspired by a mythology within the book and I thought I would share that here. This doesn’t feel like the final form of this story but I’d love to hear what you think of this version (critiques and questions welcome). I think it relates to the Emperor’s story not just because of the animalistic transformation but because it reveals some of the ambiguity that comes with being hopeful.

When the salon door opened, the sun had dropped low enough to reflect off the mirrors and flood the room with light. A woman sitting under a dryer chair in the center of the room watched as a younger woman stepped through the dazzling refractions glittering across the room. As the door slammed shut, the sunlight retreated to a single square on the floor and the room returned to its typical grayness.

Peeking out of a designer bag tucked under the younger woman's right arm was the floating head of a toy poodle. She approached the front desk and announced she was there for her 3 pm blowout. After a moment, she followed the receptionist to a chair in the corner of the room. The dog noticed the woman in the center of the room watching them and stared back, but the girl was distracted by her cell phone ringing. She pulled the dog onto her lap and dug through her bag until the ringing stopped.

When she pulled the phone out, the screen was still flashing, indicating the incoming call was still ringing, silently. Her face looked as if she had seen a ghost. She sheepishly answered the phone and with every word it looked as if she was crumbling into the chair. The old woman tried to read her lips but the young woman mostly mumbled. Before the conversation ended, the older woman heard the name of the salon they were both in and when she hung up the girl turned toward the door and waited anxiously.

The receptionist returned to the back corner of the salon with water for the girl and the dog. The dog nudged to be let down, and the girl delicately set him on the floor in front of the bowl. The old woman watched the dog lapping water with its small pink tongue. The door opened again, and, this time, the room was flooded with pink and orange from the setting sun.

The richest woman in town stepped through the door. Her family were the first settlers on this land and they still own most of the buildings, maybe even this one, though this was probably her first time inside this establishment. The rich woman rushed over to the young woman.

“Why would you come here?” she questioned, too loudly.

She took a step closer to the young girl and took her volume down considerably. Nobody knew what she was saying, but everybody knew what was happening.

It was common knowledge that the time had finally come to marry off her bachelor son. There were rumors about the bride. Some people said she was a foreign princess who wanted citizenship, or that she was ugly, or challenged with drinking or drugs, or something horrible. But now the problem was clear: she was pregnant.

A stylist approached the old lady and lifted the drying hood. She checked a few of the foils and once she was satisfied, she brought the old woman over to the washing station, set a towel around her shoulders, and gently guided the back of her neck to the cradle of the washing bowl. She pulled the rest of the foils and then washed the hair with the pressure of the sprayer nozzle. When the water ran clear, the stylist applied a purple conditioner and told the old woman to wait.

On the other side of the salon, the young woman tried to describe to her stylist what she wanted but every time the young woman spoke, the rich woman spoke louder. The girl stopped speaking, and the stylist started looking at the rich woman for confirmation. Once they settled on a plan, the stylist led the young woman to the shampooing bowls.

The tiny dog emerged from under the chair to follow its owner and startled the rich woman. She stepped back into the bowl of water, spilling it across the floor. She aggressively smoothed the front of her skirt, as if doing so would also soothe her rattled nerves. The receptionist rushed over, apologizing, and throwing towels around her feet to dry the ground and her shoes.

At the shampoo station, the dog hopped on the young girl's lap, and the stylist said she would be right back.

“What kind of dog is that?”

The young woman took a moment to respond, and the old woman wondered if she was wrong about her. Maybe she was one of them too.

She barely looked up from her lap and whispered, “A golden doodle,” in a broken voice.

She realized the girl was crying. She paused, unsure of how to proceed.

“I always thought that was a funny name for a dog.”

The young woman was surprised by this response, it wasn’t the typical cooing or silly insistence that the dog might actually be a stuffed animal. She tried to swallow her emotion and locked eyes with the woman until the corners welled with tears again.

The old woman offered a distraction. “Have you ever heard of The Golden Ass?”

“Is that another dog breed?” The girl asked hesitantly.

“No, it’s a book,” the old woman laughed, “in it, there is an old woman who tells a sad girl a story to cheer her up.”

“Ok?”

“So, do you want to hear a story?”

The stylist placed a towel along the edge between the bowl and the chair, guiding the young woman’s head backward.

“Perfect, now you are trapped too.”

“Oh, leave her alone” the stylist teased.

The young girl lifted her head and studied the old woman. “What does it have to do with a golden ass?”

“Well the ass is actually a man, a hostage, that’s why I made the joke about being trapped—he is both trapped in his body and being held hostage. I guess it’s not really about him, but in the book, the donkey man hears this story while he is held captive with a girl, and an old woman. The girl is upset about their situation so to make her feel better, the old woman tells a story about Psyche, and her jealous mother-in-law, Venus.”

“Well, the ass is a man. He’s trapped in the body of a donkey who was thi a hostage man. He was turned into a donkey In the story, he’s held hostage while stuck inside the body of a donkey. This is why I made the joke about you both (gesturing to the Stylist and the young girl) being trapped. How do I put it quickly? This story is not about him, it is about tale he listens to while he is held captive with a girl, and an old woman.”

In the corner of the salon, the rich woman’s phone rang. She answered it and quickly headed toward the door. The sun had set by now and she disappeared into the darkness outside. The girl took a deep breath, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes.

“What happened next?”

“Well it's a long story, I’m not sure I can even remember it all. Psyche was considered the most beautiful woman in the world and Venus was jealous, like I said. She sends her son, Cupid, to make Psyche fall in love with a monster to embarrass her but instead, he falls in love with her. To protect her from his mother, he kidnaps her and puts her in a palace but doesn’t let her see his face so she won’t know who he is and his mother won’t discover what he has done”

cupid and psyche

“Why not?”

“Because then Venus will discover his secret.”

“And Psyche is ok with that?”

“Psyche doesn’t like secrets. She plays a trick and shines a light on Cupid while he is asleep and then brags to her sisters and they brag to their friends and eventually Venus finds out. Cupid returns to his mother for punishment while Psyche looks endlessly for him. To punish her, Venus sends Psyche on a bunch of horrible tests to prove herself and her love.”

“Does she pass?”

“As you read the book, you start to wonder why she hasn’t just left, but finally Cupid saves her and begs Jupiter—the god of the gods—to make her immortal and so they get pregnant and have a baby.”

The girl placed her hands on her belly.

“I didn’t trap him, this wasn’t on purpose. I’m not like Psyche!”

“That’s not what I meant, I’m sorry….” The old woman trailed off, worried she had stepped into something far out of her depth.

The rich woman returned inside without either of them noticing and approached the shampoo bowls.

“Well, hello there. It's been too long. How have you been?”

“I was just welcoming your daughter-in-law to town, telling her how much of an absolute goddess you are, who knows where this town would be without you.”

The old lady’s stylist returned to the washing station, oblivious to the conversation taking place. She turned on the faucet and placed her hand under the tap, waiting for it to run warm.

“We will have to get everyone together soon.” Then she turned her attention to the girl. “Are you done shampooing? We have a lot to get done tonight. Technically this wasn’t even on the list.”

The girl’s stylist abruptly ended the extended scalp massage and finished rinsing her hair. They returned to the station across the salon, but the girl could still see the shampoo bowls in the mirror.

The old woman and her stylist laughed as she rinsed the conditioning treatment out and they walked back to her station. The girl followed their movements with her eyes until her stylist gently pushed down on the back of her neck and told her not to move as she trimmed the ends of her chin-length bob.

She remained still except when the stylist angled her head again, for the next section, and attempted to continue observing the woman with her other senses. The dog became aware of its owner’s attention and as the old woman finished and started walking toward the door, the small dog rushed to her feet and began barking.

The girl chased after it with lopsided, mid-haircut bangs. She apologized to the woman and attempted to say goodbye before blurting out what she really wanted to say. “I feel like you know everything… Tell me, what should I do?”

They both looked over at the rich woman whose face had gone blue from the glow of her phone screen.

As she put her wallet back in her purse, the old woman finished the story. “Well, Psyche did everything she had to. She submitted to Venus and in the end, she got what she wanted. She became a goddess and married Cupid and had his child.”

“And what about the girl? The one in the story that was sad? After she heard this story what did she do?”

“Well she did get free of the bandits and got married and was happy and in love. But, then her husband was murdered by a jealous man, the one who kidnapped her and when she discovered this, she slit her throat to be with him. I guess anything can happen…”

The dog barked again.

“Oh, of course. The golden ass heard the story too. We never know exactly what he thinks, but at the end of the book he joins a cult and devotes himself to Isis through a series of difficult tasks. Maybe he decided it was better to be like Psyche. I guess she might say: follow your heart and see how things work out.”

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Thanks for reading <3

If you want to read The Golden Ass, I recommend the translation by Sarah Ruden. It’s honestly hilarious and feels surprisingly contemporary for being 2000 years old.