Not So Happy Ever After

In his video, "After Ever After", YouTube star John Cozart takes the innocent tunes of Disney movies and morphs them into a dark, eye-opening tune. This song tells the stories of Ariel, Jasmine, Belle and Pocahontas after they have reached their "happily ever after". The twist is that their fairy tale endings are the opposite, by applying contemporary and realistic issues to their stories, Cozart points out the flaws in our society.

John Cozart carefully selected issues which are relevant today, terrorism, pollution, immigration, and marriage rights.  Taking these classic stories which the majority of our generation is familiar with and displaying this dark quality is the largest part of the satire, these stories which are providing all these unrealistic goals only fulfilled in fantasies now are equated to situations which you would never want to be in. Possibly the most striking portion of the video is Jasmine's story because terrorism is a large concern of today's society. It emphasizes racial profiling without stating it blatantly, because he has similar characteristics to those in terrorists groups like al-Queda he is undergoing "interrogation from the nation of the 'free'", this line specifically drips with sarcasm. The nation that is always emphasizing freedom of all people is throwing innocents into camps which torture them on the justification that they look like a terrorist. The entire medley has many instances of satire but it is easy to only listen to the tune and be caught off guard by the lyrics, a brilliant strategy, shocking you and causing you to listen more closely and contemplate the situations further.