Ugly Dolls is seriously underrated (spoilers)
Ugly Dolls. The trailer made it look like a cute movie, and the reviews it’s getting are pretty bad. After watching it for myself, I think it has some pretty interesting things to say about discrimination and representation. Here are some things I noticed in the movie that may not have been the intention of the creators, but can be interpreted in these ways.
This movie isn’t very hyped up and I didn’t even know it was out until earlier today, but for those of you who don’t want this movie spoiled, you might wanna stop reading.
1) Eugenics
Anyone who’s seen the trailer or read a synopsis of the general plot should know that there are 2 towns: Uglyville (where all the ugly dolls live) and the Institute of Perfection (where the “perfect” dolls live). It seems more like simple segregation at first, until you get closer to the end and find out the origins of Uglyville. Uglyville is essentially a paradise for ugly dolls filled with music and color and fun. The founder of Uglyville (Ox) later reveals that before the town was created, ugly dolls were sent to an incinerator (which is referred to as recycling in the movie to soften the implications this has for all the child viewers). Ox was extremely distraught by the discovery of the incinerator, and he boarded the entrance to it to prevent ugly dolls from being sent there, instead being redirected to what would become Uglyville. The leader of the perfect dolls (Lou) actively tries to make the incinerator look like a good and merciful option for ugly dolls, saying they’ll be remade into more perfect dolls that kids will actually want to play with. This idea sounds eerily similar to things eugenicists and autismoms say about how it’s good and merciful to euthanize disabled people so “they won’t have to suffer through life with a disability.” The result of eliminating euthanasia as an option resulted in the thriving community of Uglyville where everyone’s differences are celebrated.
Another very interesting note is that the dolls in Uglyville seems to take their community for granted, blissfully unaware of the efforts of the oldest doll in town to create this community for them. To them, their happy lives are normal, but it wasn’t very long ago that they wouldn’t have even been allowed to live simply for being deformed.
2) Discrimination in disguise
The motivation for the main character (Moxy) that drives the plot is the idea that she can some day be chosen by a child. People in Uglyville don’t believe that the human world and children exist, but Moxy never gives up hope of being adopted by a child.
When she and her friends arrive at the Institute of Perfection, Lou maintains a front of caring and wanting the ugly dolls to succeed in passing the rigorous tests that all dolls have to go through before being sent to the human world. The tests are designed in such a way that the ugly dolls will fail just by being themselves. The first test involves making sure that the dolls don’t get messy from having stuff spilled on them, and before the tests even begin, the ugly dolls were having fun spraying glue at each other. Their punishment: being thrown in a washing machine. Lou explains that each time a doll is thrown in the washing machine, they become “a little less perfect” until they eventually become unacceptable to humans and end up in the trash. The ugly dolls are fun loving and clumsy, so they get thrown in the washing machine several times. When Moxy manages to make it through the obstacle course perfectly clean, Lou slashes a permanent marker across her back when she’s not looking, so she has to go to the washing machine again even though she did nothing to deserve it.
Also, while the ugly dolls are living in the Institute of Perfection, they’re led past a bunch of houses that look exactly the same and are on very organized streets. The ugly dolls themselves are led to a supply shack that looks pretty run down compared to the other fancy houses. They embrace their housing arrangements and are actually put off by the uniformity of the houses.
To the people watching the movie, it’s made clear that he wants to see the ugly dolls fail and is actively sabotaging them. However, the characters themselves believe that Lou cares about the ugly dolls and is giving them a fair shot.
This reminds me of the education and prison systems in real life. Disadvantaged people (people of color, people with disabilities, etc) find themselves being unsuccessful at certain things simply for being who they are, and even managing to do everything perfectly still isn’t enough in some cases. All the while, people put up a facade of caring about their needs and wanting them to succeed, but are also hindering their success and blaming them for their own failures.
3) Pressure to conform and High/Low Functioning Distinctions
Not even the perfect dolls who are sent to the Institute of Perfection are immune to the judgment and hatred of Lou and their other perfect peers. When Lou is introduced in the movie, he sings a song called The Ugly Truth, in which he insults perfect dolls for the most arbitrary reasons (having a slightly smaller head, a slightly longer neck, a freckle that he needs a magnifying glass to see, etc). All the perfect dolls wear the same clothing (all the girls dress one way and the guys dress another way) and live in identical houses.
The perfect dolls are made so self-conscious about their microscopic imperfections that they do their very best to hide them at all costs. One female character was about to cry when she saw that another girl had stolen something of hers, when the thief told her “Don’t cry; it’ll give you frown lines,” and this causes the doll to stop crying and smile.
Mandy, a perfect doll, has some kind of visual impairment that makes wearing glasses necessary. However, she would rather bump into things than wear her glasses because she felt that they made her look ugly. This is indeed seen as an imperfection, and she felt more comfortable wearing her glasses around the ugly dolls because they didn’t judge her for wearing them.
Mandy is in the position of the “high-functioning” disabled person; she experiences the effects of a disability, but is able to hide it from people so that she can experience some level of acceptance in her society. Her needs are disregarded, and trying to accommodate herself or making her disability visible would result in rejection. The ugly dolls have very easy to spot differences, making them analogous to “low-functioning” disabled people. Even when Mandy gives them a huge makeover and dresses them in the same clothes as the perfect dolls, their differences are still very easy to see, and they’re still rejected. Mandy is sympathetic to the ugly dolls’ cause and does her very best to help them succeed.
4) Representation/Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
When the ugly dolls first arrive in the Institute of Perfection, they see the perfect dolls going though some kind of scanning device that says “You are a (Insert profession here) and a model” (this is also shown in this trailer). At the end of the movie, Moxy finally finds a home as a birthday gift for a young girl. The girl sees Moxy, looking very stunned and not knowing how to react to getting an ugly doll. And then she smiles, revealing 3 teeth that look exactly like Moxy’s teeth. In the end credits, Mandy (who’s wearing her glasses) is being held by a child who’s being given an eye exam.
One thing I thought to myself before watching the movie (and a lot of other people thought this too) is that the ugly dolls aren’t actually ugly; they’re all really cute. It wasn’t until after actually seeing it that I realized that this is supposed to include the message that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Even though the rigorous beauty standards of the perfect dolls would categorize the ugly dolls as ugly, they’re not ugly to us.
The girl who received Moxy as a gift shares a very subtle physical similarity with her. The girl who received Mandy has a doll with glasses, just as it’s implied that she herself will have glasses.
Conclusion:
The ending did drag on a bit too long and had a few unnecessary moments that just felt like gratuitous additions to make it more like a conventional kids movie, but overall, I thought it was pretty great. I recommend this movie.