[DoubleLatte]

...all I said was that I liked Randall. :p I'm not going to beat this into Mr. Marshmallow's head (since he's already taken his fair share of beating), but DO try looking deeper into it, m'kay Mr. M? I think the word "evil" is soo.. blegh.

Originally Posted by pitbulllady

ANYONE, when under enough stress, will do awful things and behave in very unpleasant ways. I mean, we have seen on Foster's that WILT, of all people, can be pushed into doing some bad things and has "triggers" that prompt him to be a rather nasty individual. What would your opinion of Wilt be, for example, if the only episode you've seen him in was "Beat With a Schtick"? We only get to see Randall in Monsters, Inc. following TWO FREAKIN' YEARS of acute, intense physical and mental stress. If Wilt can be a nasty person from time to time due to things HE is going through, or has been through in his past, why is it any bigger leap of logic to assume that Randall, had he not been in that situation, could not have at least been a fairly easy-to-get-along-with guy, more of a "healthy" Type Three Personality? I've lived long enough, seen enough and done enough, to know that there is no such thing as a truely evil person or a totally good person. Everyone of us has the equal capacity for BOTH, depending on our circumstances. Randall is no more, or less, evil than I am, or you, or Wilt, or anyone else. He is simply an ordinary individual caught up in something way over his head, something he has no control over, and had basically been pushed to that wild animal survival mode we all possess. I've been there, Tonya's been there(without even being nearly as old as I am), so we understand. It was easy for the filmmakers to use him as the "red herring", to take away attention from the REAL villain(Waternoose), and to make him an object of deep hatred simply because he's scaly and reptilian, so they were counting on that hate/fear of reptiles that many people have to sway their opinions of Randall. Had he been furry, he would not have seemed anywhere near as menacing to most people. He's also the only reptilian monster in that whole movie, if you don't count Celia Mae's "hair", so I have to wonder if he's always been hated and treated with suspicion in HIS world, because of that. If you tell someone they're "bad" based on their appearance for long enough, they'll start to prove you right.

pitbulllady

This discussion reminded me of a tidbit that my Social and Ethnic Relations professor was discussing about the German soldiers that assisted in murdering millions of Jews during the Holocaust. It was completely baffling to us how these people could bring themselves to do what they did (If you've seen any actual footage of the German death camps, you'll know what I mean) and even more baffling to us were the soldiers' indifference and/or denial towards their acts of manslaughter. They were able to block out any sort of logic and reason and switch on their "tunnel vision" to morph their perceptions and just follow orders. It was either your #$$, or someone else's. Like my professor said, "we all love ourselves" (and he said this in a 'If I have to kill you so *I* can live, so be it' way).