Is hell other people? By Claire ALEXANDRE

We know others can make your life hell. Think of Cinderella: the eponymous character in the Disney cartoon is treated badly by her own family. Hell is when everyone around you makes you feel less than human and that’s exactly what the cartoon shows us. Cinderella’s demons are the members of her family. She in effect belongs to her stepmother. As a slave, she is not allowed to control her own life. Hell is being trapped. Hell is not being free. There is no exit from Hell…

Just like Garcin in Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre, who is imprisoned by his cowardice (“coward” is the label the other characters in the play use to remind Garcin of his shortcomings), Cinderella is stuck with a label which denies her true self. Her family do not call her by her real name so as to make her understand that she is less important than they are. “Cinderella” feels she can’t escape the hell they’ve made of her life. The only moments she can get away from them is when she’s dreaming or playing with her pets, in other words, when she is not with other people. Only her Fairy Godmother and a Prince Charming will save her (it is a Disney movie after all!).

In the movie WALL.E, the idea that hell is other people is rejected. WALL.E the sentient robot only has one friend: a cockroach. His life is his job: he busily builds absurd skyscrapers from the rubbish the humans who have fled planet earth have left behind. He collects odd objects, classifies them, trying to make sense of the hell-hole created by the profligate humans. His life only takes on meaning when he falls in love with EVE, the feisty female robot sent back to Earth by the space-bound humans to see if life has come back to the planet. Earth is a lonely place and WALL.E, in the end, finds no comfort from his rubbish mission; he has to follow EVE because being with others is what makes sense. Meaning, for the robot lovers and the humans too, comes from cherishing life (planting pizza plants!) in a common effort, in peace and harmony.

It is other people who stopped Cinderella from being able to choose what she could do with her life. In WALL.E, it is the absence of others that makes the robot feel that he is trapped on Earth, just doing what he is programmed to do. The lesson of the film is that we can only feel free to be who we are when we can show who we are to someone, to learn who we are with the help of others, and change for the better because of others. WALL.E realises who he really is when he chooses to help EVE. So, we may say hell is other people but we can also say that heaven is other people too. Happiness is found in a fulfilling relationship; we’re constantly reaching for someone to be with us. If there are no other people we can turn too, life can become a lonely hell…

Let me, to conclude quickly, talk about Beauty and the Beast. The Beast thought his hell was caused by other people: the enchantress cursed him and his castle. He withdrew into himself, refusing to admit his guilt. He became scared of others. From this cartoon, we learn that we are individually responsible, at least in part, for how we relate to others. The Beast becomes a sociopath, choosing to blame others for his ugliness. Hell, in other words, can also be of our own making… It is Beauty who courageously makes the Beast see the errors of his ways. So, the humanist Disney message is still that people can indeed be bad (and bad to each other), but that good people can help you - if you let them - become good again.