title: Rorschach (character)

text: While Moore came up with Rorschach's name and descriptions, Dave Gibbons was in charge of the character's appearance. In Gibbons' initial designs, Rorschach wore white clothing which had inkblots not only on his head but all over his body. He also wore a large blue trench-coat, red gloves, red-blue hat and items that look like jodhpurs or spats over his boots. When designing the characters of the series, Gibbons said Rorschach was his favorite to draw due to his relatively simpler features. He described:


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Moore said he did not foresee the death of Rorschach until the fourth issue when he realized that his refusal to compromise would result in his not surviving the story. He claimed that initially he knew a lot about the character's surface mannerisms, but did not realize what was inside him until he "started to dig." Moore added that Rorschach had a "king-sized" deathwish due to his psychologically troubled life, and actively wanted to die but in his own dignified and honorable way, no matter how "twisted" it might have been. In response to why he chose to have Rorschach take off his mask to face death at the end, Moore said that he thought it "just felt right". He believed that it "is not the mask talking, it's not Rorschach, it's the actual human being [Walter Kovacs] that is somewhere under there".


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Walter Joseph Kovacs was born on March 21, 1940, the son of Sylvia Kovacs, who was a prostitute, and an unknown father only known to Kovacs as "Charlie". His mother was frequently abusive and condescending towards him. In July 1951, at the age of 11, Kovacs became involved in a violent fight with two older bullies, and subsequently his living conditions were finally looked into. He was removed from his mother's care and put in "The Lillian Charlton Home for Problem Children" in New Jersey, where he rapidly seemed to improve, excelling at scholastics as well as gymnastics and amateur boxing. In 1956, after leaving the Charlton Home when he was 16, Kovacs took a job as a garment worker in a dress shop, which he found "bearable but unpleasant" partly because he had to handle women's clothing; it was here that he acquired a certain dress fabric that he would later fashion into the mask he wears as Rorschach. In 1962, Kovacs scavenged the material from a rejected dress that had been special-ordered by a young woman with an Italian name. Though Kovacs learned how to cut and fashion the material successfully with heated implements, he soon grew bored with it, as it served him no real purpose at the time.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Two years later when buying a newspaper on his way to work in March 1964, Kovacs read about the rape and murder of Kitty Genovese, who he believed was the Italian woman who had rejected the dress. Ashamed by what he read about the unresponsiveness of her neighbors, Kovacs became disillusioned with the underlying apathy that he saw as inherent in most people. Inspired by Genovese's fate, Kovacs returned home, made "a face [he] could bear to look at in the mirror" from the dress's fabric, and began fighting crime as the vigilante Rorschach. Initially, Kovacs left criminals alive, but bloodied, for the police to arrest, leaving a calling card in the form of a Rorschach test at every crime scene. In the mid 1960s, he teamed up with Nite Owl II, a partnership which proved highly successful at battling organized crime.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: In 1975, an investigation into the kidnapping of a young girl named Blair Roche led to the transformation of the "soft" Kovacs into the ruthlessly uncompromising Rorschach. He tracked the kidnapping to a man named Gerald Grice. At Grice's shack, Kovacs found evidence Grice had killed the girl and had fed her remains to his dogs. Discovering this, Rorschach suffered a psychotic breakdown, killed the dogs with Grice's meat cleaver and waited for his arrival. When Grice returned, Rorschach hurled the corpses of the dogs through his windows, handcuffed him to a stove, and poured kerosene around him. Leaving Grice a hacksaw, Rorschach told him that his only chance to escape would be by cutting off his hand. Rorschach then set the shack on fire and left. No one emerged. During a later psychological evaluation, the vigilante stated that Kovacs went into the shack, but that Rorschach came out.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: When the Keene Act was passed in 1977 to outlaw vigilantes, Rorschach responded by killing a wanted serial rapist and leaving his body outside a police station with a note bearing one word: "never!"


title: Rorschach (character)

text: By 1985 and the events of "Watchmen", Rorschach is the vigilante who continues to operate in defiance of the Keene Act, the rest having retired or become government operatives. He investigates the murder of a man named Edward Blake, discovering that he is the Comedian. He believes that someone is picking off costumed superheroes, a view that strengthens when Doctor Manhattan is forced into exile and when Adrian Veidt, the former vigilante known as Ozymandias, is targeted in an assassination attempt. Rorschach questions Moloch, a former supervillain who unexpectedly attends Blake's funeral, who tells him what little he knows. Later, after reading a note written by Moloch telling him to come over for more information, Rorschach visits him again, only to find him dead, shot through the head. The police, tipped off anonymously over the phone, surround the house. Rorschach scolds himself for falling into such an obvious trap, and is arrested after a fight, in which Rorschach tries to escape by jumping through a window, but is unmasked. After the unmasking, Rorschach is revealed to be the red-haired man who, in addition to being the first character to appear in the series, was shown several times in the early chapters carrying a sign reading "THE END IS NIGH".


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Rorschach is sent to a prison where many of its inmates are criminals he put away, including Big Figure, a dwarf crime boss who is hungry for Rorschach's blood. During his incarceration, he is interviewed by the prison psychologist Dr. Malcolm Long. Long believes he can help rehabilitate him; instead, Rorschach's explanation of his life and his justifications for his uncompromising worldview lead Long to question his own views.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: One day during lunch, one of the inmates attempts to attack Rorschach with a shiv, whereupon Rorschach throws the boiling-oil contents of a deep-fryer into his face in self-defense. As the guards grab and begin to beat him, Rorschach hoarsely yells at the watching crowd, "None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me." After the inmate dies, the prison breaks out in a riot. The Big Figure and two of his associates try to kill Rorschach, but he outwits and ultimately kills them all in rapid succession. Rorschach's two former colleagues, Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II, begin to take his "mask killer" theory seriously and break him out of jail to follow up on it.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: After the prison break, Dr. Manhattan comes back from his self-exile to transport Silk Spectre II to Mars. After acquiring a spare costume from his apartment, Rorschach, along with Nite Owl, enters underworld bars to find out who ordered the assassination attempt on Veidt. They obtain a name, a company called Pyramid Deliveries, and then break into Veidt's office. Nite Owl correctly deduces Veidt's password and finds that he runs Pyramid Deliveries. Rorschach, who has been keeping a journal throughout the duration of the novel, realizes that they may be no match for Veidt. He makes one last entry in his journal, stating his certainty that Veidt is responsible for whatever might happen next, and drops it into a mailbox.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Nite Owl and Rorschach fly out to Antarctica. There they learn the true nature of the conspiracy and Veidt's motivations: to unite the world against a perceived alien threat and stop the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. Veidt then reveals that he set his plan into motion well before they arrived. Doctor Manhattan and Silk Spectre II arrive at the base after viewing the carnage Veidt's false alien has wrought on New York City. Despite their mutual horror, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre II and Doctor Manhattan all agree to keep quiet about the true nature of the events when the United States surprisingly does enter into a peace accord with the Soviet Union.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Rorschach states the others must be joking, and leaves to tell the world. Dr. Manhattan confronts him outside, telling him he cannot allow Rorschach to reveal the truth. Refusing to compromise his principles, Rorschach understands he will be killed. He removes his mask and demands that Manhattan just "do it", which he does.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: In the final scenes of the comic, Rorschach's journal has made it to the offices of the "New Frontiersman", a right-wing newspaper. Outraged by the new accord between the Soviet Union and the United States, the editor pulls a planned two-page story. He leaves it to his assistant Seymour to decide how to fill that space, and Seymour begins to reach for the paper's "Crank File," which contains the journal. The outcome is ambiguous.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: The events of "Doomsday Clock" begin with Robert Redford winning the 1992 election by using the details of Kovacs' journal, which he gained from the "New Frontiersman", leading the citizens of New York to rally against Ozymandias, while the United States faces an inevitable nuclear war. Reggie Long, son of Kovacs's prison psychologist Dr. Malcolm Long, later takes on the Rorschach mantle after being driven insane by Veidt's monster and learning self-defense techniques from former Mothman Byron Lewis, and mistakenly believing that his father and Rorschach had been friends after reading parts of his reports on him.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Thirty-five years after the death of Rorschach, right-wing vigilante Laura "The Kid" Cummings brainwashes two elderly comic book creators, Wil Myerson and Frank Miller, into believing that they are Rorschach's reincarnation, before attempting to assassinate Robert Redford's political opponent, being killed themselves in the process.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Rorschach is 5'6" tall and weighs 140 pounds, and, as Walter Kovacs (his "disguise"), he appears as a red-haired, expressionless, man who always carries with him a sign that reads "THE END IS NIGH". Most people who see Kovacs consider him ugly and Rorschach himself states that he cannot bear to look upon his human face, considering his mask (or true "face") to be beautiful instead. His clothing then matches those of a homeless man, which seems to be his disguise when he has not donned his vigilante attire.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: During Rorschach's nighttime patrols, he wears a striped purple business suit, similarly colored leather gloves, a grayed scarf, and heavily unpolished elevator shoes. More signature of his apparel is his brown trench coat with his matching fedora hat that has a light purple stripe. However, Rorschach's most defining feature of his costume is his ink-blotted mask.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Rorschach's mask, which he considers his true "face", is a piece of fabric made from a material derived from the technologies of Dr. Manhattan, and it is blank except on the front, where two viscous liquids, one black and one white, are between two layers of latex. The liquids continually shift in response to heat and pressure, which explains why the liquid only animates when Rorschach puts it on his face. The black liquids form symmetrical patterns like those of a Rorschach inkblot test while never mixing with the white color of the mask, thus never producing a gray color, much like Rorschach's view of morality and the world.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: During his childhood, Walter Kovacs was described as bright, and excelled in literature, mathematics, political science, and religious education. Kovacs continues a one-man battle against crime long after superheroes have become both detested and illegal, eventually replacing his Kovacs identity with the persona of Rorschach. Rorschach considers his mask his true "face" and his unmasked persona to be his "disguise", refusing to answer to his birth name during his trial and psychiatric sessions. Moore depicted Rorschach as being extremely right-wing, and morally absolute, a viewpoint that has alienated him from the rest of society, even among other superheroes. Rorschach presents his views on right and wrong as starkly black and white with no room for compromise, with the exception of his respect for the Comedian, whose attempted rape of the first Silk Spectre he dismisses as a "moral lapse." He holds deep contempt for behavior he considers immoral and is openly derogatory toward heroes who do not share his unwavering views, deriding them as "soft".


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Rorschach displays a discomfort with female sexuality as a result of his early childhood, although the crimes that most affected him spiritually were against women: the murders of Kitty Genovese and Blair Roche. Rorschach is often described as being mentally ill by other characters in the comic.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Like most characters in "Watchmen", Rorschach has no obvious "superpowers". He merely has his strong will, peak-human physical strength, and finely-honed sense of timing and precision. Rorschach is very resourceful and creative, adapting ordinary household objects into tools or weapons, such as the use of a can of aerosol spray in combination with multiple matches to set fire to a police officer and throwing ground black pepper to blind another police officer, during a confrontation at Moloch's house. During the series he is shown to use cooking fat, a toilet bowl, a cigarette, a fork and his jacket all as weapons; he is also shown using a coat hanger as a makeshift measuring device. He owns a gas-powered grappling gun, which he uses to climb buildings (and once as a makeshift harpoon gun against a police officer), as seen in Chapter One, which was designed and built by Nite Owl II.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Rorschach is well versed in street combat, gymnastics, and boxing. He is also extremely stoic, as shown by his indifference to pain and discomfort. He even tolerated Antarctic temperatures while wearing only a trenchcoat over street clothes, without complaining or even commenting on the severe cold.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Despite his mental instability, Rorschach is extremely intelligent and was described as "tactically brilliant and unpredictable" by Nite Owl, and shows a marked affinity for detective work, as evidenced by his ability to locate the Comedian's costume in his apartment when the police could not. Much like Batman in the mainstream DC Universe, Rorschach is given the title of "World's Greatest Detective."


title: Rorschach (character)

text: He is also skilled at lock picking (although a running gag throughout the series has him simply forcing Nite Owl's front door to talk to him).


title: Rorschach (character)

text: The character of Rorschach has been received with critical acclaim by critics, reviewers, and readers; he has also been awarded. In 1988, the character won the "Character Most Worthy of Own Title" category in the American Section of the Eagle Awards for comics released during 1987. Rorschach has been labelled the "obvious fan favorite" and the "flagship" character of "Watchmen", and is often regarded as the most iconic and popular character of the series. The misanthropic character's popularity has led author Alan Moore to proclaim "Watchmen"s failure as literature.


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Rorschach was named the 6th-greatest comic book character of all time by "Wizard" magazine in May 2008, with the magazine stating that "Rorschach still stands as one of the most compelling and frightening characters in comics' history." In July 2008, he was ranked as the 16th "Greatest Comic Book Character" by "Empire" magazine, which, when picking their top "Watchmen" character, proclaimed "from a purely iconic point of view, it had to be Rorschach" and described him as "taut, tortured, complex creation who, as well as being at the centre of some of "Watchmen"s most memorable sequences [...], ends up being perhaps the most pure out of the graphic novel's characters." TopTenz placed Rorschach 3rd on their 2010 list of the "Top 10 Comic Book Anti-Heroes (Marvel & DC)" where he was described as "just one of many outstanding characters introduced during the landmark "Watchmen" series, but he is far and away the most popular and fascinating." In 2011, IGN ranked the character 16th on their "Top 100 Comic Book Heroes" list, noting that "One has to admire his determination, if not necessarily his methods." Rorschach's friendship with Nite Owl II was listed 10th on Fandomania's 2009 "Top 10 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Friendships" list, which commented that "even though they have contrasting world views, they have the same belief towards crime: it must be fought against."


title: Rorschach (character)

text: In the making of the film adaptation, director Zack Snyder said "no character" was more important than Rorschach. The "Los Angeles Times" further added on Snyder's statement, claiming "The filmmaker said [Rorschach] 'is easily one of the greatest comic book characters ever' and that's a view shared by many fans and the press that serves them." When asked what he thought of the character, Jackie Earle Haley responded that Rorschach was "an awesome character. He is one twisted, sick individual but he's still a fascinating character."


title: Rorschach (character)

text: Haley's performance as Rorschach in the "Watchmen" film has been acclaimed. "Empire" magazine remarked that the portrayals of Rorschach, along with Nite Owl, were the most successful and commented that Haley's performance would make the audience "half-wish Snyder might have stuck with Rorschach as [the sole] protagonist rather than spreading the net so wide." IGN praised Haley's performance, despite his face being obscured for most of the film, as one of the film's key highlights, proclaiming that "Haley IS Rorschach. It's not just a career-defining performance, it's one of the best this genre has seen other than Heath Ledger's Joker. He owns the screen whenever he's on it." Richard Corliss of "Time" praised Haley, "who does right by his grizzled role" and named him and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Comedian) as the standout actors of the film.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Chandler Muriel Bing is a fictional character from the NBC sitcom "Friends", portrayed by actor Matthew Perry. Chandler was born to Nora Tyler Bing, an erotic romance novelist, and Charles Bing, a gay female impersonator and star of a Las Vegas drag show called "Viva Las Gay-gas" as Helena Handbasket. Chandler is of Scottish and Swedish descent. He is an only child and is apparently from an affluent family. His parents announced their divorce to him over Thanksgiving dinner when Chandler was nine years old, an event which gave him trauma and now he refuses to celebrate the holiday in his adulthood and develop his notorious sense of humor as a defense mechanism. It is revealed in season 1 that he went to an all-boys high school.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Chandler's best friends are Joey Tribbiani, who is his roommate, and Ross Geller, with whom he previously lived. He met Ross' sister, Monica Geller, and her friend, Rachel Green, while celebrating Thanksgiving at Ross' parents' house. Chandler was the first person to know about Ross' love for Rachel. He moved to New York City and lives across the hall from Monica and, through her, meets Phoebe Buffay. Chandler has a very good sense of humor, and is notoriously sarcastic. He attributes his sarcasm as a defense mechanism he developed due to his parents' divorcing when he was a child. He is the highest earning member of his friends' circle on account of responsible income management, having learned the value of money from a young age. He suffers from commitment issues, but later marries Monica at the end of season 7. In season 10, Chandler and Monica go on to adopt twins, Jack and Erica. His birthday is celebrated on the 8th of April, even though there are misconceptions that it is on the 24th of April.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Chandler works in 'Statistical analysis and Data reconfiguration,' but loathes it, although it pays well.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Chandler was Ross Geller's roommate in college. Chandler met his future wife Monica Geller while celebrating Thanksgiving with the Geller family during his first year at college. On a tip from Monica, Chandler later moved to Apartment number 19 in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, across the hall from Monica and her roommate Phoebe Buffay. After his roommate Kip moves out, actor Joey Tribbiani moves in with Chandler, who becomes his best friend.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Ross and Chandler have been best friends since their freshman year in college, where they were roommates. They were in a band together. Chandler also learned "Hug and Roll" from Ross when he was dating Janice.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Until moving in with Monica, Chandler shared an apartment with Joey. Chandler and Joey's apartment is an important focal point for the series as one of the few meeting areas of the gang. The two form a close and enduring friendship, and get into many humorous situations. In the pilot episode of the sequel series "Joey", Joey's sister Gina briefly expresses her belief that Joey and Chandler were a gay couple.


title: Chandler Bing

text: When Chandler first meets Joey and interviews him as a roommate, the two start off on the wrong foot when Joey says that he "is cool with the gay thing" (Joey assuming that Chandler is gay). Chandler initially chooses Eric, a fashion photographer with a porn-star sister as his roommate, but after their eccentric neighbor Mr. Heckles (Larry Hankin) tells Eric that "he" is Chandler's new roommate and is able to open Chandler's unlocked door, Eric leaves. Chandler assumes that Eric simply did not turn up, and he gives the keys to Joey, but soon finds that they have a lot in common, including a fondness for "Baywatch" and beer. Chandler often supports Joey throughout the show, by always supporting Joey at every step of his roller-coaster of a career in show business besides paying the rent, paying for Joey's head-shots, buying most of the food, and even giving money to Joey for his numerous dates. Even when buying a new house for his own family, Chandler reveals that he is going to have a 'Joey room' in it for him.


title: Chandler Bing

text: The relationship between the two is balanced: Joey looks to Chandler as his intellectual superior, while Chandler acknowledges Joey as the more confident counterpart, especially when it comes to romance and Chandler often takes advice from Joey on how to date women.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Chandler and Rachel originally did not like each other, but grew to become good friends. Rachel does not understand Chandler's sarcasm early in the series, and even later on has a hard time appreciating his sense of humor, as she acknowledges in the final episode. In "The One with All the Cheesecakes" Chandler and Rachel steal and share the cheesecake which originally belonged to their downstairs neighbor. Rachel, who works for Ralph Lauren, is also the one who helps Chandler pick out his wedding suit. Rachel also sets up Chandler with her boss Joanna (Alison LaPlaca). Rachel and Chandler never have any romantic relationships apart from a glance back to their time in college when they made out. In "The One with the Flashback," Rachel is shown briefly fantasizing about Chandler at the end of the episode.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Chandler and Phoebe are good friends. Although Phoebe mocks Chandler frequently, they sometimes are goofy and have fun with one another. In "The One with the Metaphorical Tunnel", Phoebe and Chandler play hide and seek. They also play games, like coming up with superhero names and reclining the Barcaloungers like cowboys. They share a duet of "Endless Love" at the end of one episode, when Chandler is sad after a breakup with his on-off girlfriend Janice (Maggie Wheeler). In "The One Where Everyone Finds Out", she tries to trick him into believing that she is attracted to him, but Monica tells him that Phoebe finds him charming in a "sexless" way, indicating that any hints of romance are jokes. Phoebe is the initial reason that Chandler quit smoking in "The One with the Thumb", after an argument between the group about his smoking. He is leaving the apartment when she offers him $7,000 to never smoke again.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Chandler is brash, zany, and estranged from both of his parents. He suffers from commitment issues, brought on by growing up in a broken home with no idea of what a stable marriage looks like, can be neurotic and extremely defensive, with humor as his shield. Chandler also views everything associated with his parents' divorce in a negative light, specifically Thanksgiving when his parents revealed their separation over a turkey as his father planned to run away with the bus boy.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Both of Chandler's parents are extremely promiscuous, and he has made several allusions to having caught them during sexual acts. Most of these involve his father with other men. Among other things, he alludes to having witnessed orgies by the time he was seven years old, and playing "the far left" background dancer during his father's rendition of It's Raining Men when he was growing up. His mother Nora is a world famous writer of erotic novels, which is demonstrated when Rachel's short-term boyfriend Paolo – who is Italian and barely speaks any English – is shown to know her.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Chandler began smoking when he was nine years old after his parents announced their divorce. Chandler is first seen smoking during the first season and is chastised by his friends for breaking his non-smoking streak of three years. He does a fairly good job at controlling his habit throughout the series' run, although a few times he cannot resist temptation and has a single cigarette or just a single drag off someone else's. His only major relapse occurs in season 9 when he stays in Oklahoma four days a week for work and smoked "three cartons in three days" because all his colleagues lit up during work meetings. He promises Monica never to smoke again, and is not seen smoking in the series after this point. But, there is evidence of him still smoking in Season 10 when Monica caught the smell of cigarettes on him after he came home from seeing the house Monica and Chandler buys in Westchester. Chandler does not deny the allegation.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Chandler is afraid of commitment and had the fewest relationships out of all the Friends. Despite all this, he and Monica are the first to have a committed marriage that does not end in divorce.


title: Chandler Bing

text: At Ross' wedding in London, Monica and Chandler sleep together and decide to begin dating. They try to keep their relationship secret, as they are unsure about how the others would react. Eventually, however, they all find out and give their blessing. Things briefly become strained when Monica reveals that she had initially been looking for Joey for a one-night-stand, but they reconcile. Their wedding takes place during the finale of season 7. In the final episode of the series, Monica and Chandler adopt twins, due to their inability to conceive.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Before his relationship with Monica, Chandler has an on-and-off relationship with Janice Hosenstein (Maggie Wheeler). She is a regular feature in his life, even though he regrets dating her and keeps ending their relationship in season 1. He calls her in season 2 out of fear of being alone, only to find out she is married and pregnant. In the season 2 finale, they meet after unknowingly chatting with each other online when her husband cheats on her, and they quickly get back together. The relationship lasts through the first few episodes of season 3, with Chandler genuinely infatuated by her, but when she kisses her husband whilst in the midst of her divorce, Chandler urges her to go back to her husband, not wanting to destroy her family. However, Janice makes further appearances later in the series, even after they have both married other people.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Kathy (Paget Brewster) makes an appearance in the fourth season of "Friends". Chandler sees her in Central Perk and asks the gang if he should ask her out, only to learn that she was already waiting for a date with Joey. Chandler and Kathy then fall for each other even though she is dating Joey. This causes huge friction between Joey and Chandler, but this is resolved and Chandler and Kathy get together and begin dating. She is an actress, and Chandler gets extremely paranoid when she shares a sex scene with her co-star prompting a big fight between the two. Chandler's paranoia drives Kathy into having an affair with the co-star, and Chandler and Kathy split up.


title: Chandler Bing

text: Chandler works in statistical analysis and data reconfiguration. Despite disliking his job, Chandler stays because they keep giving him promotions and raises, eventually becoming boss to his old workmates. His friends do not understand what he does; during the contest for Monica and Rachel's apartment, Rachel guesses "Transponster" for his job title. This results in Chandler and Joey winning the apartment.


title: Chandler Bing

text: In the episode "The One Where Emma Cries", Chandler falls asleep during a meeting and on waking, realizes that he had agreed to head the new division in Tulsa. Chandler quits his job on Christmas, so that he can fly home to New York to be with Monica. Monica helps Chandler secure a job in advertising through an old colleague of hers. Much to Chandler's dismay, he begins as an unpaid intern. However, his more mature approach eventually pays off, and he secures a full-time job in the business as a junior copywriter, which he enjoys much more than his previous career.


title: Individualism

text: Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reliance and advocate that interests of the individual should achieve precedence over the state or a social group while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government. Individualism is often defined in contrast to totalitarianism, collectivism and more corporate social forms.


title: Individualism

text: Individualism makes the individual its focus and so starts "with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation". Anarchism, existentialism, liberalism and libertarianism are examples of movements that take the human individual as a central unit of analysis.


title: Individualism

text: "Individualism" has been used as a term denoting "[t]he quality of being an individual; individuality", related to possessing "[a]n individual characteristic; a quirk". Individualism is also associated with artistic and bohemian interests and lifestyles where there is a tendency towards self-creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors such as with humanist philosophical positions and ethics.


title: Individualism

text: In the English language, the word "individualism" was first introduced as a pejorative by utopian socialists such as the Owenites in the late 1830s, although it is unclear if they were influenced by Saint-Simonianism or came up with it independently. A more positive use of the term in Britain came to be used with the writings of James Elishama Smith, who was a millenarian and a Christian Israelite. Although an early follower of Robert Owen, he eventually rejected its collective idea of property and found in individualism a "universalism" that allowed for the development of the "original genius". Without individualism, Smith argued that individuals cannot amass property to increase one's happiness. William Maccall, another Unitarian preacher and probably an acquaintance of Smith, came somewhat later, although influenced by John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle and German Romanticism, to the same positive conclusions in his 1847 work "Elements of Individualism".


title: Individualism

text: An individual is a person or any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today within the fields of statistics and metaphysics, individual means "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person" as in "The problem of proper names". From the 17th century on, individual indicates separateness, as in individualism. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individuated being; a person separated from everything with unique character by possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires in comparison to other persons.


title: Individualism

text: The principle of individuation, or "", describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinguished from other things. For Carl Jung, individuation is a process of transformation, whereby the personal and collective unconscious is brought into consciousness (by means of dreams, active imagination or free association to take examples) to be assimilated into the whole personality. It is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche to take place. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development. In "L'individuation psychique et collective", Gilbert Simondon developed a theory of individual and collective individuation in which the individual subject is considered as an effect of individuation rather than a cause. Thus, the individual atom is replaced by a never-ending ontological process of individuation. Individuation is an always incomplete process, always leaving a "pre-individual" left-over, itself making possible future individuations. The philosophy of Bernard Stiegler draws upon and modifies the work of Gilbert Simondon on individuation and also upon similar ideas in Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. For Stiegler, "the "I", as a psychic individual, can only be thought in relationship to "we", which is a collective individual. The "I" is constituted in adopting a collective tradition, which it inherits and in which a plurality of "I"s acknowledge each other's existence."


title: Individualism

text: Individualism holds that a person taking part in society attempts to learn and discover what his or her own interests are on a personal basis, without a presumed following of the interests of a societal structure (an individualist need not be an egoist). The individualist does not necessarily follow one particular philosophy. He may create an amalgamation of elements of many philosophies, based on personal interests in particular aspects that he finds of use. On a societal level, the individualist participates on a personally structured political and moral ground. Independent thinking and opinion is a necessary trait of an individualist. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, claims that his concept of general will in "The Social Contract" is not the simple collection of individual wills and that it furthers the interests of the individual (the constraint of law itself would be beneficial for the individual, as the lack of respect for the law necessarily entails, in Rousseau's eyes, a form of ignorance and submission to one's passions instead of the preferred autonomy of reason).


title: Individualism

text: Individualism versus collectivism is a common dichotomy in cross-cultural research. Global comparative studies have found that the world's cultures vary in the degree to which they emphasize individual autonomy, freedom and initiative (individualistic traits), respectively conformity to group norms, maintaining traditions and obedience to in-group authority (collectivistic traits). Cultural differences between individualism and collectivism are differences in degrees, not in kind. Cultural individualism is strongly correlated with GDP per capita. The cultures of economically developed regions such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, North America and Western Europe are the most individualistic in the world. Middle income regions such as Eastern Europe, South America and mainland East Asia have cultures which are neither very individualistic nor very collectivistic. The most collectivistic cultures in the world are from economically developing regions such as the Middle East and Northern Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and South-East Asia, Central Asia and Central America.


title: Individualism

text: An earlier analysis by Ruth Benedict in her book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword states that societies and groups can differ in the extent to which they are based upon predominantly "self-regarding" (individualistic, and/or self-interested) behaviors, rather than "other-regarding" (group-oriented, and group, or society-minded) behaviors. Ruth Benedict made a distinction, relevant in this context, between guilt societies (e.g. medieval Europe) with an "internal reference standard" and shame societies (e.g. Japan, "bringing shame upon one's ancestors") with an "external reference standard", where people look to their peers for feedback on whether an action is acceptable or not.


title: Individualism

text: Individualism is often contrasted either with totalitarianism or with collectivism, but there is a spectrum of behaviors at the societal level ranging from highly individualistic societies through mixed societies to collectivist.


title: Individualism

text: According to an Oxford Dictionary, "competitive individualism" in sociology is "the view that achievement and non-achievement should depend on merit. Effort and ability are regarded as prerequisites of success. Competition is seen as an acceptable means of distributing limited resources and rewards.


title: Individualism

text: Methodological individualism is the view that phenomena can only be understood by examining how they result from the motivations and actions of individual agents. In economics, people's behavior is explained in terms of rational choices, as constrained by prices and incomes. The economist accepts individuals' preferences as givens. Becker and Stigler provide a forceful statement of this view:


title: Individualism

text: On the traditional view, an explanation of economic phenomena that reaches a difference in tastes between people or times is the terminus of the argument: the problem is abandoned at this point to whoever studies and explains tastes (psychologists? anthropologists? phrenologists? sociobiologists?). On our preferred interpretation, one never reaches this impasse: the economist continues to search for differences in prices or incomes to explain any differences or changes in behavior.


title: Individualism

text: Individualists are chiefly concerned with protecting individual autonomy against obligations imposed by social institutions (such as the state or religious morality). For L. Susan Brown, "Liberalism and anarchism are two political philosophies that are fundamentally concerned with individual freedom yet differ from one another in very distinct ways. Anarchism shares with liberalism a radical commitment to individual freedom while rejecting liberalism's competitive property relations."


title: Individualism

text: Civil libertarianism is a strain of political thought that supports civil liberties, or which emphasizes the supremacy of individual rights and personal freedoms over and against any kind of authority (such as a state, a corporation and social norms imposed through peer pressure, among others). Civil libertarianism is not a complete ideology; rather, it is a collection of views on the specific issues of civil liberties and civil rights. Because of this, a civil libertarian outlook is compatible with many other political philosophies, and civil libertarianism is found on both the right and left in modern politics. For scholar Ellen Meiksins Wood, "there are doctrines of individualism that are opposed to Lockean individualism [...] and non-Lockean individualism may encompass socialism".


title: Individualism

text: British historians such as Emily Robinson, Camilla Schofield, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Natalie Thomlinson have argued that Britons were keen about defining and claiming their individual rights, identities and perspectives by the 1970s, demanding greater personal autonomy and self-determination and less outside control, angrily complaining that the establishment was withholding it. Historians argue that this shift in concerns helped cause Thatcherism and was incorporated into Thatcherism's appeal.


title: Individualism

text: Within anarchism, individualist anarchism represents several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and their will over any kinds of external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in conflict.


title: Individualism

text: In 1793, William Godwin, who has often been cited as the first anarchist, wrote "Political Justice", which some consider to be the first expression of anarchism. Godwin, a philosophical anarchist, from a rationalist and utilitarian basis opposed revolutionary action and saw a minimal state as a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge. Godwin advocated individualism, proposing that all cooperation in labour be eliminated on the premise that this would be most conducive with the general good.


title: Individualism

text: An influential form of individualist anarchism called egoism, or egoist anarchism, was expounded by one of the earliest and best-known proponents of individualist anarchism, the German Max Stirner. Stirner's "The Ego and Its Own", published in 1844, is a founding text of the philosophy. According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of the individual is their power to obtain what they desire, without regard for God, state, or morality. To Stirner, rights were "spooks" in the mind, and he held that society does not exist but "the individuals are its reality". Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw unions of egoists, non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will, which Stirner proposed as a form of organization in place of the state. Egoist anarchists claim that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals. Egoist anarchism has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy. It was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and LGBT activist John Henry Mackay.


title: Individualism

text: Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first American anarchist and "The Peaceful Revolutionist", the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, was the first anarchist periodical published. For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, "[i]t is apparent [...] that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews. [...] William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form". Henry David Thoreau was an important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the United States and Europe. Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher and leading transcendentalist, who is best known for his book "Walden", a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience", an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Later, Benjamin Tucker fused Stirner's egoism with the economics of Warren and Proudhon in his eclectic influential publication "Liberty".


title: Individualism

text: From these early influences, anarchism and especially individualist anarchism was related to the issues of love and sex. In different countries, this attracted a small but diverse following of bohemian artists and intellectuals, free love and birth control advocates, individualist naturists nudists as in anarcho-naturism, freethought and anti-clerical activists as well as young anarchist outlaws in what came to be known as illegalism and individual reclamation, especially within European individualist anarchism and individualist anarchism in France. These authors and activists included Oscar Wilde, Émile Armand, Han Ryner, Henri Zisly, Renzo Novatore, Miguel Giménez Igualada, Adolf Brand and Lev Chernyi among others. In his important essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" from 1891, Wilde defended socialism as the way to guarantee individualism and so he saw that "[w]ith the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all". For anarchist historian George Woodcock, "Wilde's aim in "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" is to seek the society most favorable to the artist. [...] for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated. [...] Wilde represents the anarchist as aesthete". Woodcock finds that "[t]he most ambitious contribution to literary anarchism during the 1890s was undoubtedly Oscar Wilde "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"" and finds that it is influenced mainly by the thought of William Godwin.


title: Individualism

text: Autarchism promotes the principles of individualism, the moral ideology of individual liberty and self-reliance whilst rejecting compulsory government and supporting the elimination of government in favor of ruling oneself to the exclusion of rule by others. Robert LeFevre, recognized as an autarchist by anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard, distinguished autarchism from anarchy, whose economics he felt entailed interventions contrary to freedom in contrast to his own "laissez-faire" economics of the Austrian School.


title: Individualism

text: Liberalism is the belief in the importance of individual freedom. This belief is widely accepted in the United States, Europe, Australia and other Western nations, and was recognized as an important value by many Western philosophers throughout history, in particular since the Enlightenment. It is often rejected by collectivist ideas such as in Abrahamic or Confucian societies, although Taoists were and are known to be individualists. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote praising "the idea of a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed".


title: Individualism

text: Liberalism has its roots in the Age of Enlightenment and rejects many foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as the Divine Right of Kings, hereditary status, and established religion. John Locke is often credited with the philosophical foundations of classical liberalism, a political ideology inspired by the broader liberal movement . He wrote "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."


title: Individualism

text: In the 17th century, liberal ideas began to influence European governments in nations such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, England and Poland, but they were strongly opposed, often by armed might, by those who favored absolute monarchy and established religion. In the 18th century, the first modern liberal state was founded without a monarch or a hereditary aristocracy in America. The American Declaration of Independence includes the words which echo Locke that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to insure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."


title: Individualism

text: Liberalism comes in many forms. According to John N. Gray, the essence of liberalism is toleration of different beliefs and of different ideas as to what constitutes a good life.


title: Individualism

text: Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a 19th-century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of individualist anarchism." According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of the individual is their power to obtain what they desire, without regard for God, state, or morality. Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw unions of egoists, non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will which Stirner proposed as a form of organisation in place of the state.


title: Individualism

text: Egoist anarchists argue that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals. Egoism has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy, but it has also gone beyond Stirner within anarchism. It was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and LGBT activist John Henry Mackay. John Beverley Robinson wrote an essay called "Egoism" in which he states that "Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by Ibsen, Shaw and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that they are an individual; that, as far as they are concerned, they are the only individual." Stirner and Nietzsche, who exerted influence on anarchism despite its opposition, were frequently compared by French "literary anarchists" and anarchist interpretations of Nietzschean ideas appear to have also been influential in the United States.


title: Individualism

text: Ethical egoism, also called simply egoism, is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people "do" only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism which holds merely that it is rational to act in one's self-interest. However, these doctrines may occasionally be combined with ethical egoism.


title: Individualism

text: Ethical egoism contrasts with ethical altruism, which holds that moral agents have an obligation to help and serve others. Egoism and altruism both contrast with ethical utilitarianism, which holds that a moral agent should treat one's self (also known as the subject) with no higher regard than one has for others (as egoism does, by elevating self-interests and "the self" to a status not granted to others), but that one also should not (as altruism does) sacrifice one's own interests to help others' interests, so long as one's own interests (i.e. one's own desires or well-being) are substantially-equivalent to the others' interests and well-being. Egoism, utilitarianism, and altruism are all forms of consequentialism, but egoism and altruism contrast with utilitarianism, in that egoism and altruism are both agent-focused forms of consequentialism (i.e. subject-focused or subjective), but utilitarianism is called agent-neutral (i.e. objective and impartial) as it does not treat the subject's (i.e. the self's, i.e. the moral "agent's") own interests as being more or less important than if the same interests, desires, or well-being were anyone else's.


title: Individualism

text: Ethical egoism does not require moral agents to harm the interests and well-being of others when making moral deliberation, e.g. what is in an agent's self-interest may be incidentally detrimental, beneficial, or neutral in its effect on others. Individualism allows for others' interest and well-being to be disregarded or not as long as what is chosen is efficacious in satisfying the self-interest of the agent. Nor does ethical egoism necessarily entail that in pursuing self-interest one ought always to do what one wants to do, e.g. in the long term the fulfilment of short-term desires may prove detrimental to the self. Fleeting pleasance then takes a back seat to protracted eudaemonia. In the words of James Rachels, "[e]thical egoism [...] endorses selfishness, but it doesn't endorse foolishness."


title: Individualism

text: Ethical egoism is sometimes the philosophical basis for support of libertarianism or individualist anarchism as in Max Stirner, although these can also be based on altruistic motivations. These are political positions based partly on a belief that individuals should not coercively prevent others from exercising freedom of action.


title: Individualism

text: Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who generally held, despite profound doctrinal differences, that the focus of philosophical thought should be to deal with the conditions of existence of the individual person and his or her emotions, actions, responsibilities, and thoughts. The early 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, posthumously regarded as the father of existentialism, maintained that the individual solely has the responsibilities of giving one's own life meaning and living that life passionately and sincerely, in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation and boredom.


title: Individualism

text: Subsequent existential philosophers retain the emphasis on the individual, but differ in varying degrees on how one achieves and what constitutes a fulfilling life, what obstacles must be overcome, and what external and internal factors are involved, including the potential consequences of the existence or non-existence of God. Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophy in both style and content as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience. Existentialism became fashionable after World War II as a way to reassert the importance of human individuality and freedom.


title: Individualism

text: Freethought holds that individuals should not accept ideas proposed as truth without recourse to knowledge and reason. Thus, freethinkers strive to build their opinions on the basis of facts, scientific inquiry and logical principles, independent of any logical fallacies or intellectually limiting effects of authority, confirmation bias, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, sectarianism, tradition, urban legend and all other dogmas. Regarding religion, freethinkers hold that there is insufficient evidence to scientifically validate the existence of supernatural phenomena.


title: Individualism

text: Humanism is a perspective common to a wide range of ethical stances that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority. Since the 19th century, humanism has been associated with an anti-clericalism inherited from the 18th-century Enlightenment "philosophes". 21st century Humanism tends to strongly endorse human rights, including reproductive rights, gender equality, social justice, and the separation of church and state. The term covers organized non-theistic religions, secular humanism, and a humanistic life stance.


title: Individualism

text: Philosophical hedonism is a meta-ethical theory of value which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic bad. The basic idea behind hedonistic thought is that pleasure (an umbrella term for all inherently likable emotions) is the only thing that is good in and of itself or by its very nature. This implies evaluating the moral worth of character or behavior according to the extent that the pleasure it produces exceeds the pain it entails.


title: Individualism

text: A libertine is one devoid of most moral restraints, which are seen as unnecessary or undesirable, especially one who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour sanctified by the larger society. Libertines place value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the senses. As a philosophy, libertinism gained new-found adherents in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly in France and Great Britain. Notable among these were John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester and the Marquis de Sade. During the Baroque era in France, there existed a freethinking circle of philosophers and intellectuals who were collectively known as "libertinage érudit" and which included Gabriel Naudé, Élie Diodati and François de La Mothe Le Vayer. The critic Vivian de Sola Pinto linked John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester's libertinism to Hobbesian materialism.


title: Individualism

text: Objectivism is a system of philosophy created by philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand which holds that reality exists independent of consciousness; human beings gain knowledge rationally from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive and deductive logic; the moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest. Rand thinks the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure "laissez-faire" capitalism; and the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical forma work of artthat he can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally. Objectivism celebrates man as his own hero, "with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."


title: Individualism

text: Philosophical anarchism is an anarchist school of thought which contends that the state lacks moral legitimacy. In contrast to revolutionary anarchism, philosophical anarchism does not advocate violent revolution to eliminate it but advocates peaceful evolution to superate it. Although philosophical anarchism does not necessarily imply any action or desire for the elimination of the state, philosophical anarchists do not believe that they have an obligation or duty to obey the state, or conversely that the state has a right to command.


title: Individualism

text: Philosophical anarchism is a component especially of individualist anarchism. Philosophical anarchists of historical note include Mohandas Gandhi, William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Benjamin Tucker and Henry David Thoreau. Contemporary philosophical anarchists include A. John Simmons and Robert Paul Wolff.


title: Individualism

text: Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms such as solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it. In the proposition 5.632 of the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: "The subject doesn't belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world". Metaphysical subjectivism is the theory that reality is what we perceive to be real, and that there is no underlying true reality that exists independently of perception. One can also hold that it is consciousness rather than perception that is reality (subjective idealism). In probability, a subjectivism stands for the belief that probabilities are simply degrees-of-belief by rational agents in a certain proposition and which have no objective reality in and of themselves.


title: Individualism

text: Ethical subjectivism stands in opposition to moral realism, which claims that moral propositions refer to objective facts, independent of human opinion; to error theory, which denies that any moral propositions are true in any sense; and to non-cognitivism, which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all. The most common forms of ethical subjectivism are also forms of moral relativism, with moral standards held to be relative to each culture or society, i.e. cultural relativism, or even to every individual. The latter view, as put forward by Protagoras, holds that there are as many distinct scales of good and evil as there are subjects in the world. Moral subjectivism is that species of moral relativism that relativizes moral value to the individual subject.


title: Individualism

text: Horst Matthai Quelle was a Spanish language German anarchist philosopher influenced by Max Stirner. Quelle argued that since the individual gives form to the world, he is those objects, the others and the whole universe. One of his main views was a "theory of infinite worlds" which for him was developed by pre-socratic philosophers.


title: Individualism

text: Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from Latin "solus" ("alone") and "ipse" ("self"). Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. Solipsism is the only epistemological position that, by its own postulate, is both irrefutable and yet indefensible in the same manner. Although the number of individuals sincerely espousing solipsism has been small, it is not uncommon for one philosopher to accuse another's arguments of entailing solipsism as an unwanted consequence, in a kind of reductio ad absurdum. In the history of philosophy, solipsism has served as a skeptical hypothesis.


title: Individualism

text: The doctrine of economic individualism holds that each individual should be allowed autonomy in making his or her own economic decisions as opposed to those decisions being made by the community, the corporation or the state for him or her.


title: Individualism

text: Liberalism is a political ideology that developed in the 19th century in the Americas, England and Western Europe. It followed earlier forms of liberalism in its commitment to personal freedom and popular government, but differed from earlier forms of liberalism in its commitment to classical economics and free markets.


title: Individualism

text: Notable liberals in the 19th century include Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo. Classical liberalism, sometimes also used as a label to refer to all forms of liberalism before the 20th century, was revived in the 20th century by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek and further developed by Milton Friedman, Robert Nozick, Loren Lomasky and Jan Narveson.


title: Individualism

text: Libertarianism upholds liberty as a core principle. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association. Libertarianism shares a skepticism of authority and state power, but libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling for the restriction or dissolution of coercive social institutions. Different categorizations have been used to distinguish various forms of libertarianism. This is done to distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left–right or socialist–capitalist lines.


title: Individualism

text: Left-libertarianism represents several related yet distinct approaches to politics, society, culture and political and social theory which stress both individual and political freedom alongside social justice. Unlike right-libertarians, left-libertarians believe that neither claiming nor mixing one's labor with natural resources is enough to generate full private property rights, and maintain that natural resources (land, oil, gold, trees) ought to be held in some egalitarian manner, either unowned or owned collectively. Those left-libertarians who support property do so under different property norms and theories, or under the condition that recompense is offered to the local or global community.


title: Individualism

text: Related terms include "egalitarian libertarianism", "left-wing libertarianism", "libertarianism", "libertarian socialism", "social libertarianism" and "socialist libertarianism". Left-libertarianism can refer generally to these related and overlapping schools of thought:


title: Individualism

text: Right-libertarianism represents either non-collectivist forms of libertarianism or a variety of different libertarian views that scholars label to the right of libertarianism such as libertarian conservatism. Related terms include "conservative libertarianism", "libertarian capitalism" and "right-wing libertarianism". In the mid-20th century, right-libertarian ideologies such as anarcho-capitalism and minarchism co-opted the term "libertarian" to advocate "laissez-faire" capitalism and strong private property rights such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources. The latter is the dominant form of libertarianism in the United States, where it advocates civil liberties, natural law, free-market capitalism and a major reversal of the modern welfare state.


title: Individualism

text: In the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", Peter Vallentyne calls it right libertarianism, but he further states: "Libertarianism is often thought of as 'right-wing' doctrine. This, however, is mistaken for at least two reasons. First, on socialrather than economicissues, libertarianism tends to be 'left-wing'. It opposes laws that restrict consensual and private sexual relationships between adults (e.g., gay sex, non-marital sex, and deviant sex), laws that restrict drug use, laws that impose religious views or practices on individuals, and compulsory military service. Second, in addition to the better-known version of libertarianismright-libertarianismthere is also a version known as 'left-libertarianism'. Both endorse full self-ownership, but they differ with respect to the powers agents have to appropriate unappropriated natural resources (land, air, water, etc.)."


title: Individualism

text: With regard to economic questions within individualist socialist schools such as individualist anarchism, there are adherents to mutualism (Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Émile Armand and early Benjamin Tucker); natural rights positions (early Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner and Josiah Warren); and egoistic disrespect for "ghosts" such as private property and markets (Max Stirner, John Henry Mackay, Lev Chernyi, later Benjamin Tucker, Renzo Novatore and illegalism). Contemporary individualist anarchist Kevin Carson characterizes American individualist anarchism saying that "[u]nlike the rest of the socialist movement, the individualist anarchists believed that the natural wage of labor in a free market was its product, and that economic exploitation could only take place when capitalists and landlords harnessed the power of the state in their interests. Thus, individualist anarchism was an alternative both to the increasing statism of the mainstream socialist movement, and to a classical liberal movement that was moving toward a mere apologetic for the power of big business."


title: Individualism

text: Libertarian socialism, sometimes dubbed left-libertarianism and socialist libertarianism, is an anti-authoritarian, anti-statist and libertarian tradition within the socialist movement that rejects the state socialist conception of socialism as a statist form where the state retains centralized control of the economy. Libertarian socialists criticize wage slavery relationships within the workplace, emphasizing workers' self-management of the workplace and decentralized structures of political organization.


title: Individualism

text: Libertarian socialism asserts that a society based on freedom and justice can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control certain means of production and subordinate the majority to an owning class or political and economic elite. Libertarian socialists advocate for decentralized structures based on direct democracy and federal or confederal associations such as libertarian municipalism, citizens' assemblies, trade unions and workers' councils.


title: Individualism

text: All of this is generally done within a general call for liberty and free association through the identification, criticism and practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all aspects of human life. Within the larger socialist movement, libertarian socialism seeks to distinguish itself from Leninism and social democracy.


title: Individualism

text: Past and present currents and movements commonly described as libertarian socialist include anarchism (especially anarchist schools of thought such as anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, collectivist anarchism, green anarchism, individualist anarchism, mutualism, and social anarchism) as well as communalism, some forms of democratic socialism, guild socialism, libertarian Marxism (autonomism, council communism, left communism, and Luxemburgism, among others), participism, revolutionary syndicalism and some versions of utopian socialism.


title: Individualism

text: Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought which can be traced to the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a socialist society where each person possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market. Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank which would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate only high enough to cover the costs of administration. Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value which holds that when labor or its product is sold, it ought to receive goods or services in exchange embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility" and that receiving anything less would be considered exploitation, theft of labor, or usury.


title: Individualism

text: Plato emphasized that individuals must adhere to laws and perform duties while declining to grant individuals rights to limit or reject state interference in their lives.


title: Individualism

text: German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel criticized individualism by claiming that human self-consciousness relies on recognition from others, therefore embracing a holistic view and rejecting the idea of the world as a collection of atomized individuals.


title: Individualism

text: The anarchist writer and bohemian Oscar Wilde wrote in his famous essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism" that "Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine." For anarchist historian George Woodcock, "Wilde's aim in "The Soul of Man under Socialism" is to seek the society most favorable to the artist, [...] for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated. [...] Wilde represents the anarchist as aesthete." In this way, "individualism" has been used to denote a personality with a strong tendency towards self-creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors.


title: Individualism

text: Anarchist writer Murray Bookchin describes a lot of individualist anarchists as people who "expressed their opposition in uniquely personal forms, especially in fiery tracts, outrageous behavior, and aberrant lifestyles in the cultural ghettos of fin de siècle New York, Paris, and London. As a credo, individualist anarchism remained largely a bohemian lifestyle, most conspicuous in its demands for sexual freedom ('free love') and enamored of innovations in art, behavior, and clothing."


title: Individualism

text: In relation to this view of individuality, French individualist anarchist Émile Armand advocated egoistical denial of social conventions and dogmas to live in accord to one's own ways and desires in daily life since he emphasized anarchism as a way of life and practice. In this way, he opined that "the anarchist individualist tends to reproduce himself, to perpetuate his spirit in other individuals who will share his views and who will make it possible for a state of affairs to be established from which authoritarianism has been banished. It is this desire, this will, not only to live, but also to reproduce oneself, which we shall call 'activity."


title: Individualism

text: In the book "Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism", humanist philosopher Tzvetan Todorov identifies individualism as an important current of socio-political thought within modernity and as examples of it he mentions Michel de Montaigne, François de La Rochefoucauld, Marquis de Sade, and Charles Baudelaire. In La Rochefoucauld, he identifies a tendency similar to stoicism in which "the honest person works his being in the manner of a sculptor who searches the liberation of the forms which are inside a block of marble, to extract the truth of that matter." In Baudelaire, he finds the dandy trait in which one searches to cultivate "the idea of beauty within oneself, of satisfying one's passions of feeling and thinking."


title: Individualism

text: The Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky once wrote that "[t]he surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, evenif you willeccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with." Ralph Waldo Emerson famously declared that "[w]hoso would be a man must be a nonconformist"a point of view developed at length in both the life and work of Henry David Thoreau. Equally memorable and influential on Walt Whitman is Emerson's idea that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Emerson opposed on principle the reliance on civil and religious social structures precisely because through them the individual approaches the divine second-hand, mediated by the once original experience of a genius from another age. According to Emerson, "[an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man." To achieve this original relation, Emerson stated that one must "[i]nsist on one's self; never imitate", for if the relationship is secondary the connection is lost.


title: Individualism

text: Pope Leo XIII's letter "Testem benevolentiae nostrae" condemned 'Americanism', which is associated with individualism.


title: Individualism

text: People in Western countries tend to be more individualistic than communitarian. The authors of one study proposed that this difference is due in part to the influence of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. They pointed specifically to its bans on incest, cousin marriage, adoption, and remarriage, and its promotion of the nuclear family over the extended family.


title: Individualism

text: The Catholic Church teaches "if we pray the Our Father sincerely, we leave individualism behind, because the love that we receive frees us ... our divisions and oppositions have to be overcome"


title: Disney Renaissance

text: The animated films released by Disney during this period are "The Little Mermaid" (1989), "The Rescuers Down Under" (1990), "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), "Aladdin" (1992), "The Lion King" (1994), "Pocahontas" (1995), "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1996), "Hercules" (1997), "Mulan" (1998), and "Tarzan" (1999).


title: Disney Renaissance

text: After the deaths of Walt and Roy O. Disney (in 1966 and 1971, respectively), Walt Disney Productions were left in the hands of Donn Tatum, Card Walker, and Walt's son-in-law Ron Miller. While critics and audiences alike awaited the birth of a new golden age for Disney animation after "The Rescuers" (1977), the films released over an 18-year period following this change of management did not perform as well commercially as their prior counterparts. An especially hard blow was dealt during production of "The Fox and the Hound" (1981), when long-time animator Don Bluth left Disney's animation department to start his own rival studio, Don Bluth Productions, taking eleven Disney animators with him. With 17% of the animators now gone, production on "The Fox and the Hound" was delayed by six months. Don Bluth Productions produced "The Secret of NIMH" (1982), whose story had originally been rejected by Disney for being too dark, and the company eventually became Disney's main competitor in the animation industry during the 1980s and early 1990s.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Disney made major organizational changes in the mid-1980s after narrowly escaping a hostile takeover attempt by businessman and financier Saul Steinberg. Michael Eisner, formerly of Paramount Pictures, became CEO in 1984, and was joined by his Paramount associate Jeffrey Katzenberg as studio chairman, while Frank Wells, formerly of Warner Bros. Pictures, became president. In 1985, Peter Schneider was hired as president of Disney's feature animation department, which was soon to be rebranded as Walt Disney Feature Animation. In the same year, to make more room for live-action filmmaking, the animation department was moved from the main Disney lot in Burbank to a "temporary" location in various hangars, warehouses, and trailers about east in nearby Glendale, where it would remain for the next ten years. Thus, most of the Disney Renaissance (in terms of where the films were actually made) actually took place in a rather ordinary industrial park in Glendale, the Grand Central Business Centre.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: After the box office failure of the PG-rated "The Black Cauldron" (1985), the future of the animation department was in jeopardy. Going against a 30-year studio policy, the company founded a television animation division (now Disney Television Animation), which produced such shows as "DuckTales". In the interest of saving what he believed to be the studio's core business, Roy E. Disney, who resigned from the company in 1984, persuaded Eisner to let him return and supervise the animation department in the hopes of improving its fortunes.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Disney released "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986) a few months before Don Bluth released "An American Tail" (1986). "An American Tail" outperformed "The Great Mouse Detective" and became the highest grossing animated film to that date. Despite "An American Tail"s greater level of success, "The Great Mouse Detective" was still successful enough (both critically and commercially) to instill executive confidence in Disney's animation department. "Oliver and Company" (1988) would later be released on the same day as "The Land Before Time" (1988). Despite "The Land Before Time" becoming globally the highest grossing animated film to that date, breaking the previous record of "An American Tail", "Oliver and Company" outgrossed it in the United States, launching an era of increased theatrical turnout for Disney.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: In the 1980s, Disney collaborated with filmmaker Steven Spielberg—producer of "An American Tail" and "The Land Before Time" and a long-time animation fan—to produce "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988), a live-action/animation hybrid that featured animated characters of the 1930s and 1940s from many different studios together. The film was a critical and commercial success, winning three Academy Awards as well as a Special Achievement Academy Award, and renewing interest in theatrical animated cartoons. In addition to the film itself, Spielberg also helped Disney produce three "Roger Rabbit" shorts. Disney moved to first place in box office receipts by 1988, with "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" being the summer's biggest hit.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: The Disney Renaissance was prompted by competition with Don Bluth's animated productions, along with the evolution of overseas animation, most notably the Studio Ghibli anime productions from Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. His "Lupin the Third" film adaptation, "Castle of Cagliostro" (1979), influenced the climax of "The Great Mouse Detective", which in turn paved the way for the Disney Renaissance. The two-minute climax scene used computer-generated imagery (CGI), making it the first Disney film to extensively use computer animation, a fact that Disney used to promote the film during marketing. Glen Keane, a leading animator for Disney films, has also credited Miyazaki's work as a "huge influence" on Disney's animated films.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Disney had been developing "The Little Mermaid" (1989) since the 1930s, and by 1988, after the success of Touchstone Pictures' "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", the studio had decided to make it into an animated musical, much like many of its previous animated movies, but with a more Broadway feel to it. Lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken, who worked on Broadway years earlier on "Little Shop of Horrors" alongside now-Walt Disney Feature Animation president Peter Schneider (who served as company manager on the stage musical), became involved in the production, writing and composing the songs and score for the film.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Upon release, "The Little Mermaid" was a critical and commercial success and garnered a higher weekend gross than Don Bluth's "All Dogs Go to Heaven" (1989), which was released on the same day, eventually breaking "The Land Before Time"s record of highest-grossing animated film.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: It won two Academy Awards for Best Original Song ("Under the Sea") and for Best Original Score, earning an additional nomination for Best Original Song for "Kiss the Girl".


title: Disney Renaissance

text: "The Rescuers Down Under" (1990) was released as the first sequel produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. The film garnered mainly positive reception, but was not as financially successful as "The Little Mermaid". However, it was notable for being the first film to be completely produced using Disney's new Computer Animation Production System (CAPS). The rest of the traditionally-animated films during this period would be produced using CAPS.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: "Beauty and the Beast" (1991) was Disney's next film and proved to be an immense critical and commercial success. It was the first animated film nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, remaining the only animated film nominated for Best Picture when that category had only five entries (1944–2008), and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) and two Academy Awards, for Best Original Score and Best Original Song ("Beauty and the Beast"). "Beauty and the Beast" also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound, as well as two additional nominations for Best Original Song. In addition to being Disney's highest grossing animated movie at the time, it was the first animated film to reach $100 million at the box office in the U.S.<ref name="http://www.thetech.org/about-us/media-room/disneys-animated-beauty-and-beast-celebrates-10th-anniversary-worldwide-large"></ref> The box office success also gave way to a profitable merchandising campaign. In 1994, it was the first Disney Renaissance film to receive a Broadway adaptation.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: "Aladdin" (1992) and "The Lion King" (1994) followed, respectively, with both films having the highest worldwide grosses of their respective release years. "Aladdin" was the highest-grossing animated film at the time of its release, but later became second after being surpassed by "The Lion King", which became the highest-grossing animated film at the time and remains the highest-grossing traditionally animated film in history.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Howard Ashman wrote several songs for "Aladdin" before his death, but only three were ultimately used in the film. Tim Rice ultimately joined the project and completed the score and songs with Alan Menken. Rice later went on to collaborate with Elton John and Hans Zimmer for "The Lion King" after ABBA had turned down the offer to write songs for the film. Both films won Academy Awards for Best Original Song ("Can You Feel the Love Tonight") and Best Original Score, and also like "Beauty and the Beast" won the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy). "Aladdin" also earned an additional Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song and nominations for Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing, for a total of five nominations. "The Lion King" earned two additional Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song, giving it a total of four Academy Award nominations.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Between the two in-house productions, Disney diversified in animation methods and produced the stop-motion animated film "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993) with former Disney animator Tim Burton, which was directed by also former Disney animator Henry Selick. Thanks to the success of the early films of the Renaissance era, Disney management was able to allocate sufficient money to bring Feature Animation back from its ten-year exile to Glendale. A 240,000-square-foot building designed by Robert A. M. Stern opened across the street from the main Disney lot in Burbank on December 16, 1994.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: The next Disney animated film, "Pocahontas" (1995), opened to mixed reviews, though it still earned $346 million worldwide and garnered two Academy Awards for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score and Best Original Song ("Colors of the Wind"). However, its box office gross was far lower in comparison to what "The Lion King" earned the previous year. The following year, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1996), Disney's first animated film produced at a budget over $100 million, opened to better reviews than "Pocahontas", but a lower total box office of $325 million. Both films feature composer (now serving only as lyricist to Menken's music) Stephen Schwartz.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: When "Hercules" (1997), with songs by Menken and David Zippel, earned $252 million—$73 million less than "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"—at the box office, news media began to openly suggest that Disney animation was on a downward trend of their animated film releases. Although it gained more positive criticism than "Pocahontas" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", it was still vulnerable to competition from companies such as DreamWorks Animation and Pixar.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Disney's next film, "Mulan" (1998), with a score by Jerry Goldsmith and songs by Matthew Wilder and David Zippel, earned $304 million at the worldwide box office, restoring the commercial and critical standing of Disney's output.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: The release of "Tarzan" (1999) is retrospectively seen as the end of the Renaissance era. With a score by Mark Mancina and songs by Phil Collins, "Tarzan" won an Academy Award for Best Original Song ("You'll Be in My Heart"), and became Disney's most commercially successful film since "The Lion King", earning $448 million at the box office and widespread positive reviews. "Tarzan" was also Disney's most expensive animated feature to that date at $130 million, much of which went to developing new processes such as the computer-assisted background painting technique known as "Deep Canvas". It was also the first film since the start of the Renaissance era that was written, developed, and produced at the studio's new home in Burbank; all the other films had either been made entirely in Glendale or had started development in Glendale and moved with the studio to Burbank.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Most of the films Disney released in the Renaissance era were well-received. According to review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, six of the movies—"The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", "Aladdin", "The Lion King", "Mulan" and "Tarzan" garnered approval ratings of over 85%, with the first four being referred to by Roger Ebert as the "big four". "Pocahontas" has the lowest reception of Disney's Renaissance films - it averaged 55% positive reviews.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Nine of the ten films in the Disney Renaissance were nominated for Academy Awards, six of which won at least one Academy Award; six Best Original Song and five Best Original Score, with the first five films won awards in both categories. The Disney Renaissance is also notable for being its film "Beauty and the Beast" became the first animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture. Nine of the films were nominated for Annie Awards, with eight of them winning at least one:


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Many have attributed the success of the Disney Renaissance to a collection of key similarities found in most if not all of the films from 1989 to 1999. Broadway-style musical numbers were put into place that forwarded the narrative of each film. Characters used songs to showcase their internal emotions. Most of the Renaissance films had songs that have the main character singing what they want out of life as well as chorus numbers led by the supporting cast. Critics have also said that the music style of Renaissance films varies from film to film. An example would be "The Little Mermaid" having Calypso-style musical numbers and "Hercules" utilizing Motown in its soundtrack.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: The use of CAPS, action sequences, and inclusion of celebrity voice talent is also said to have drawn audiences in. Robin Williams' performance as Genie in "Aladdin" is the reason why many believe other studios began to cast celebrities as voice actors in their animated films.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Due to Disney never acknowledging an official timeline of films for their Renaissance, it is debated what film should be considered the end of the era. Some consider "Dinosaur" (2000) for its use of CGI or "The Emperor's New Groove" (2000) for its comedic tone to be the end of the Renaissance. Given its release in 1999, "Fantasia 2000" is included in the line-up of films if either "Dinosaur" or "The Emperor's New Groove" is seen as the end of the era. Brandon Zachery of "Comic Book Resources" states that "Tarzan" is widely considered to be the finale of the Renaissance as it was the final film in a row of Disney's that, "still adhered to many of the era's standard traits, including multiple songs, cutting-edge visuals and celebrity cameos in small roles."


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Disney MovieToons, later known as Disneytoon Studios, was established by Disney to produce direct-to-video sequels to many of the Renaissance films utilizing the crew of their television animation studios. "The Return of Jafar" (1994), a sequel to "Aladdin", was the first film to be released. Further sequels to Renaissance films include "" (1997), "" (1998), "" (1998), "" (2000), "The Hunchback of Notre Dame II" (2002), "Mulan II" (2004) and "Tarzan II" (2005).


title: Disney Renaissance

text: The success of the Disney Renaissance attracted the attention of many animation studios and film studios. Major film studios established new animation divisions such as Fox Animation Studios, Warner Bros. Feature Animation and DreamWorks Animation to replicate Disney's success by turning their animated films into Disney-styled musicals. Examples of said musicals include "Cats Don't Dance" (1997), "Anastasia" (1997), "Quest for Camelot" (1998), and "The Prince of Egypt" (1998).


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Many have hailed Walt Disney Animation Studios’ theatrical film releases from 2009 to onward as a return to form, referring to this era in Disney history as the Disney Revival or even the new Disney Renaissance. Most films in the Revival use CGI animation to tell stories set in fantastical settings incorporating the Renaissance’s Broadway musical style. Several crew members from the Renaissance returned to help create Revival films. Ron Clements and John Musker returned to direct "The Princess and the Frog" (2009) and "Moana" (2016). Alan Menken scored "Tangled" (2010) and was a songwriter for "Ralph Breaks the Internet" (2018).


title: Disney Renaissance

text: The Disney Revival is the most profitable era in Disney animation history. "Frozen", for instance, grossed over 1.2 billion worldwide. The film held the title of highest-grossing animated film, fifth-highest-grossing film of all time, and third highest-grossing Walt Disney Pictures film of all time in 2013. "Frozen" also was Walt Disney Animation Studios' first feature-length motion picture to win an Academy Award since "Tarzan".


title: Disney Renaissance

text: "Beauty and the Beast", directed by Bill Condon, was released on March 17, 2017 as the first live-action adaptation of the Disney Renaissance. Alan Menken returned for writing a new score and new songs with Tim Rice. The film grossed over $1.2 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing live-action musical film, second-highest-grossing film of 2017, and the tenth-highest-grossing film of all time. "Beauty and the Beast" received generally positive reviews from critics, with many praising its faithfulness to the original animated film, as well as elements from the Broadway musical, performances of the cast, visual style, musical score, songs, costume design, and production values, though criticism was drawn toward some of the character designs and its excessive similarity to the original.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: "Aladdin", directed and co-written by Guy Ritchie, is the second live-action Disney Renaissance adaptation theatrically released in the United States on May 24, 2019. Alan Menken returned again to write new music and songs with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. It grossed $1 billion worldwide, becoming the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2019. The film received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for its music, costume design, and the performances of actors, but criticism for Ritchie's direction and the screenplay.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: The third live-action Disney Renaissance remake became CGI remake "The Lion King" (directed and produced by Jon Favreau). It was theatrically released in the United States on July 19, 2019. Hans Zimmer returned as composer, and Elton John and Tim Rice returned to write new songs with Beyoncé. It grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide, becoming highest-grossing animated film of all time, the highest-grossing musical film of all time, the highest-grossing remake of all time, the highest-grossing Walt Disney Pictures film of all time, the second-highest-grossing film of 2019, and the seventh highest-grossing film of all time. The film received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for its visual effects, music, and vocal performances, but criticism for its lack of originality, and facial emotion on the characters.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: The fourth live-action adaptation, "Mulan", was released on September 4, 2020. It was directed by Niki Caro with Harry Gregson-Williams acting as the new composer and songwriter for the film. Originally scheduled to be a wide theatrical release in March 2020, it was ultimately cancelled in the United States after being delayed multiple times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disney instead premiered the film on September 4, 2020 on Disney+, for a premium fee in countries where the service had launched. The film had a traditional theatrical release in countries without Disney+ where theaters have re-opened. With a production budget of $200 million, the film was a financial disappointment (partially due to the pandemic), grossing only $70 million, not including digital earnings from Disney+. The film received generally positive reviews from western critics, who praised the action sequences, visuals, and performances but criticized the screenplay. It received unfavorable reviews from Chinese audiences, who criticized the character development, inaccurate depictions of Chinese history and mishandling of Chinese cultural elements.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: "The Little Mermaid" is the upcoming fifth remake from the Disney Renaissance. Directed and produced by Rob Marshall, it is set to be released on May 26, 2023. Alan Menken also returns as the film's composer and will write new songs alongside producer Lin-Manuel Miranda.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Live-action adaptations of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Hercules" are currently in development, with the latter being directed by Guy Ritchie.


title: Disney Renaissance

text: Disney Interactive Studios, the video game company who creating video games based on the "Disney Renaissance" films, "The Little Mermaid" (1991), "Aladdin" (1993), "Beauty and the Beast" (1994), "The Lion King" (1994), "Pocahontas" (1996), "" (1996), "Hercules" (1997), "Mulan" (1998) and "Tarzan" (1999).


title: Village Roadshow Pictures

text: Village Roadshow Pictures is the American subsidiary of the Australian co-producer and co-financier of major Hollywood motion pictures established in 1986. It is a division under Village Roadshow Entertainment Group (VREG), which in turn is owned by Australian media company Village Roadshow. It has produced over 100 films since its establishment in 1986 including, as co-productions with Warner Bros., "The Matrix" series, the "Sherlock Holmes" series, the "Happy Feet" series, the "Ocean’s" series, "The Lego Movie" and "Joker". The films in the Village Roadshow library have achieved 34 number one U.S. box office openings and received 50 Academy Award nominations, 19 Academy Awards and six Golden Globe Awards.