Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Violet Versus Indigo (A Megamind Analysis)

I've watched Megamind many times, and I've seen clips of it and music videos for it many more times, and so there are certain things I've picked up on that I didn't necessarily the first time around.  Since I'm also a huge fan of purple, I loved Roxanne's dress at the restaurant.  Did you notice it never makes a reappearance?

In the rain, it turns blue and, it seems, never regains its original, gorgeous color.  I'm talking about when she dons the dress again at the end of the movie.  Did DreamWorks mean something by this? by the color? by the reappearance?  Probably not.  Can I surmise something from it anyway?  Certainly, because even if the animators just goofed or weren't thinking philosophically about this, the coincidences can still make us think deeper about how it played out.  And who knows?  Maybe DreamWorks was thinking irony.

If they were, they were probably pointing out that, at the first instant, she was in love with Bernard - enough to kiss him (it seems likely to me, based on her personality, that it was her first kiss) - and in the second instant, she's in love with whom he really is.

When Roxanne so unwittingly thrust reality upon herself, she runs and her dress turns soaked-blue.  What's going on when her dress morphs?  She realizes that the man she's loved all along is really the evil villain of the city she's been plotting against to stop, the evil overlord of the city, the man who destroyed Metro Man.  She's in shock, hurt, betrayed, and cut wide open.  Everything she's believed in is a lie - and it put her at his mercy.  At the time, she rebels against the revelation by dumping him, leaving him alone in the rain.  The man she loved is not this alien super-villain.

So how does this further apply to the closing scene?

Well, I propose that it is kind of a reminder - whether intentionally or no - that the deception and revelation happened: Megamind lied to Roxanne, tricked her into caring about him, and then the truth came out.  All of that is still true, none of it has changed.  Megamind did wrong and Roxanne had every right to dump him.  But now, still keeping all of that, she accepts him and, well, takes him back, if you will.  The blue dress reminds us of that night in the rain - how all the other times they spent together came to a close in that moment - and brings home the fact that Roxanne has taken that and channeled her feelings for the real person behind the hologram.

~Meggy


 
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