Insights:

The new Walt Disney film, Tangled, begins with these words, "This is the story of how I died". The narrator who is now telling the story has died and been brought to life. The movie begins with Resurrection.

The story starts with a single drop of Sun that fell and grew into a magic golden flower. This flower could heal the sick and injured and restore what had been lost¹. The flower is plucked and crushed and given to the dying Queen who is healed by its properties and is then able to give birth to a little princess with golden hair. The King and Queen celebrate the birth of their daughter by lighting the lantern and, in thanksgiving for the light of life, they offer up their worship. By so doing they become reflectors of the light.

Mother Gothel in contrast is one who dwells in darkness. She first hordes the light by covering the magic flower with her basket and then steals the light by taking the princess. There is no light in her. When she sings her theme song, "Mother Knows Best", it is fittingly sung in the darkness. She does not want to receive the light, but only to use it and control it. She does not want the light to illumine her darkness; she wants her darkness to consume the light.

Rapunzel, the kidnapped princess, is a light healer. Her hair manifests the light and releases its qualities of healing and restoration. Mother Gothel isolates her in the tower to hide her and use her just as she had the magic flower. However, the darkness cannot keep the light out and every year on her birthday Rapunzel sees the "floating lights" and they speak to her of life outside the tower.

Rapunzel's journey from darkness to her dream of seeing the floating lights begins with an unexpected visitor. His name is Flynn Rider. This petty thief agrees to Rapunzel's proposal: take her to see the floating lights on her birthday and in exchange she will return his stolen satchel.

Their adventure takes them from:
        Bondage                     Her tower, his thievery
          into Fear                     The pub scene²
            of Death                      Their burial underground³
               through baptism          Immersed in water, led out by the light
                 to a new life                 Their true identities revealed
                   and ends in the movie's most beautiful scene: "Seeing the Light".

Mother Gothel is not finished with Rapunzel. Deceiving her once more, she tells her "The world is dark, selfish, and cruel and if it finds the slightest ray of sunshine, it destroys it".  It is a description of her evil self and her wicked intentions.

Death and darkness are often defined by philosophers not as entities themselves, but as the negation or absence of something. Death is the absence of life and darkness is the absence of light. This becomes evident when sacrificial love, the laying down of one's life for another (Rapunzel for Eugene and Eugene for Rapunzel) unmasks and destroys Mother Gothel. She shrivels up into death and darkness because there was nothing of life or light in her.

As the story begins so it ends, with resurrection. Rapunzel's magic hair was not the light healer; it was just the manifestation of its glory. The true healer was the light of the sun within her. One drop of the life light gives resurrection life to Eugene and their dream is restored. So it is true for all of those who have received the light; the King and Queen, the outcasts from the pub, even the animals are all restored to their original dream and glory.

For its 50^th animated film⁴ Walt Disney has rewritten the Germanic fairytale, Rapunzel, into a beautiful allegory of the true godspell⁵, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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