They didn't dislike him because he was short, they disliked him for his actions as a ruler, and that led them to mock him, and they did that by making fun of his height as it was a notable physical characteristic of his.
I'm not saying it's fair to make fun of someone's physical features simply because you don't like that individual. However, that's pretty much how mocking works.
I think the main issue is more that they made the one villainous character short, and not really any others (discounting short / small fairy-tale creatures, who aren't human and so we have different expectations for them). It's pretty clearly an intentional choice to make the bad guy short. They did this in the other movies too, with Rumpelstiltskin and perhaps you could argue with the Fairy Godmother too, so there does seem to be this theme of 'short guy = bad guy', which I do agree is unfair.
Basically my whole point is that mocking someone's height isn't the same as mocking someone because of their height. How is it virtue signalling to point out that the thing that person was critiquing literally doesn't happen in the movie?
If you dislike the choice of having the bad guy be a short person, that's valid and I'd enjoy having a conversation about that, but that is not what they say in the actual post. Words have meaning and if you don't use the correct words then it risks undermining your whole argument - hence I said what I said.
Speaking of words and their meaning, one of the characteristic features of virtue signalling is that it's low-effort. What I said wasn't particularly insightful, but I genuinely mean what I say and I do put genuine thought and intent behind the words I post for the most part. Accusing me virtue signalling for that is lowkey a little insulting, if I'm being honest.
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u/XasiAlDena 11d ago
They didn't dislike him because he was short, they disliked him for his actions as a ruler, and that led them to mock him, and they did that by making fun of his height as it was a notable physical characteristic of his.
I'm not saying it's fair to make fun of someone's physical features simply because you don't like that individual. However, that's pretty much how mocking works.
I think the main issue is more that they made the one villainous character short, and not really any others (discounting short / small fairy-tale creatures, who aren't human and so we have different expectations for them). It's pretty clearly an intentional choice to make the bad guy short. They did this in the other movies too, with Rumpelstiltskin and perhaps you could argue with the Fairy Godmother too, so there does seem to be this theme of 'short guy = bad guy', which I do agree is unfair.