The Perils Of Obedience In Ella Enchanted

Many people in our society have been taught, starting in their early years of life, that they should be obedient to those older than them or those placed in a position of authority. Being taught from a young age that disobeying will lead to harsh consequences. But what if one is asked to do something that doesn’t aline with their personal morals? Why is it that most people in society seem to act under compulsion when faced with things they don’t care to do? What makes it so hard for them to disobey in that moment? In the movie Ella Enchanted, Ella (Anne Hathaway) was never taught to be obedient, as a baby, she was given the “gift” of obedience by her fairy godmother Lucinda (Vivica A. Fox), which requires Ella to obey anything she is told. This talent causes Ella …show more content…
Especially when her mother dies and she is forced to live with the evil Dame Olga (Joanna Lumley). As Ella grew older, her desire to break her curse grew. Determined to find a way to break it she sets out on a journey to find her fairy godmother and make her reverse the curse. On her journey, Ella is accompanied by Prince Charmont ( Hugh Dancy). In the article "The Perils of Obedience” Stanley Milgram describes obedience as a basic element in the structure of social life and the effects it has on all communal living(Milgram 693). What if one is asked to be obedient to something that doesn’t aline with their personal morals? Milgram wanted to run an experiment to find this out. He simply wanted to know if the Nazis were acting out in pure evil or just simply following direct orders by a person who, they thought, was placed in a position of authority. In order to do this, he sets out to test how a normal person reacts when given violent orders by a person, who they believe are in a place of authority. He wanted to discover which factors affected obedience and in the experiment, obedience was measured by how many participants went to the maximum 450 volts when teaching the leaner the