Why we love Doctor Facilier

This guy right here. For those of you not familiar, Doctor Facilier is the villian from the Princess and the Frog, and has turned out to be something of the ensemble dark horse. People LIKE him. Including me. But why do we like someone who is obviously evil?

And as a disclaimer, yes I'll be talking about voodoo and hoodoo, no, I don't think his use of them automatically make him evil. And remember everything in here is opinion and guesswork.

First off, let's look at him. Tall, thin, composed, with a grin that is both predatory and endearing, and a snappy dresser. At first glance, anyway. He walks around with a cane and moves smooth when he's talking to other characters, not unlike a snake. All in all, you can't say he's not one cool customer.

But you notice above I said "at first glance", so here's where we get speculative. Notice his midriff. If you watch the movie carefully, it's actually coming out a little bit. And his vest looks overly tight. Now look at the shoulders of that evening jacket. Fairly tight aren't they? At first glance he does appear to be sharply dressed, but, and especially during the later parts of the movie, we see his appearance slightly more disheveled the minute he stops projecting his aura of "cool".

Doctor Facilier is poor. We knew that, but maybe we didn't realize how much. He's literally wearing clothes that don't fit, but he's pulling it off because he does have a good sense of fashion and the ability to "sell sizzle".

And now we get one reason maybe adults like Facilier so much. Because despite crossing he moral event horizon like a rocket ship, we can understand where he is coming from. Very few people alive today can say that they haven't been financially tight in their life, cutting corners, scraping and saving, even with a carefully planned safety net. We may not agree with what he does, but who hasn't been in a similar situation? Which leads us into the second reason we like him so much.

He, and Lawrence, are both sympathetic characters.

Down! Down! I didn't mean to say that EVIL IS GOOD. No, what I mean is that despite being evil, he shows real signs of humanity. Ultimately, while it's painted more as greed then anything, remember that greed is an aspect of hope. Facilier has obviously been down on his luck for a long time, and as revealed later, he's been trying to pull scams like this for a long time. His greed stems from his sense of indignation that he's always been denied the finer things in life while other people coast on by him, but worse, they ignore him. They don't respect him, if they even bother to notice him in the first place.

Now, we don't know what led to this. It could be that he started off ok, got involved in something he shouldn't have, and ended up losing what he had to it. But that doesn't seem to sync with the amount of debt he's in with his "friends" (and we will get to them!). It seems like he's been in this a long long time, possibly since he was a teenager.

But still...a man struggling and trying to make his way in a world while feeling bitter that other people seem to get by so easily, and others ignore him at the best of times? As he points out, he can't conjure anything for himself. Voodoo doesn't work like that (in this world). So everything he has he has scrapped for, using his tricks, and his magic.

Speaking of magic, a quick look at his Voodoo. New Orleans Voodoo in real life is actually a branch of Catholicism (!). Yes. I know. Everyone's going hubbawuh. Voodoo sprung up as a way of combining some of the tradiational african beliefs with the catholic dominance in the colonies they were sent to. Do you know why you get voodoo in places like New Orleans and not say, Virginia? Because Louisiana was French, and the French were extremely catholic up until the French Revolution.

The portrayal of voodoo in the movie is a mixture of fantastic and accurate. It's a lot better then the hollywood voodoo, which is basically satanic worship with African vibes. The makers of the movie actually really looked into this, and the only reason it's not more accurate is because they were actually afraid of offending voodoo practitioners (and the loa, the major spirits of voodoo(read: saints)) if they used actual voodoo imagery. Score one for disney.

His name, by the way, can contextually translated as "Doctor who makes things easy". And that's where the voodoo comes in. When in our life have we not been tempted to try and take the easy way to get ourselves something? He sells his entire business on it! He can't conjure a thing for himself but he can make things appear to become easier for people, in exchange for a little coin and presumably their souls. Of course, because he IS the villian, ultimately any attempt to use it backfires, and we get "work hard and live life and you can come out on top of anything" via the main characters vs. "cut deals with spirits to try and take the "Easy" way to happiness".

So what we have is a character, who, while obviously Evil (You'll know when he steps well beyond the realm of sympathetic into DIE YOU ASS DIE territory in the movie) who is struggling to try and get something for himself in his life, who wears clothes that don't fit and scrapes by doing a mixture of parlor tricks and real voodoo, while being in debt to his friends on the other side.

Which brings me to my last reason we love Doctor Facilier. Because, and you can quote me on the following, Doctor Facilier is an unequivocal badass. He dresses and talks smooth, sings, dances, and is a showman. His spirit friends are scary cool, and his magic is scary awesome. His shadow has a personality of it's own and we love it. And I think this may be the biggest reason people LOVE this character.

And now a quick side note on the tarot cards: Yes, they do hold some resemblance to several real tarot cards

The first card he flips (The super long one) contains elements from "The Fool" and "The Empress" and "The Emperor". The fool is literally who the prince is, a fun loving person more concerned with having fun then anything else. The other two are essentially your basic parental figures but with a distance to them.

The second one evokes "The Tower" in the background, and when he flips it, we see the "King of Cups" with a little extra flair. The Tower has a lot of interpretations, but the most agreed upon one is probably the idea of rapid, sudden, perhaps violent change (e.g., him being cut off by his parents after a life of having cash), and the King Of Cups is literally a maternal older man who is rich in wisdom and love. Jeeze, who could that represent?

In the final card of the princes deck, we again see "The Fool", dancing and singing and surrounded by the green. Basically, people who know the meaning behind tarot cards were probably laughing their rears off during this scene.