The Prince of Egypt from Pharaoh's POV

hello and welcome back to episode of generation films my name is american band coming to you live from my closet and today we are going to reimagine the 1998 dreamworks animated film the prince of egypt through the eyes of pharaoh the prince of egypt is one of the most underrated animated films of the past few decades just about anyone i know who's seen it including myself vouches for the high quality of its narrative and songs therein it's also a very emotional movie and easy to connect to the plight of the israelites if however you haven't seen it it re-tells albeit not strict to its source text the exit is story from the bible that is the tale of the israelites escape from slavery in egypt if you don't know that story it goes kind of like this in ancient egypt pharaoh viewing the israelite denizens of egypt as threats orders their children slaughtered at birth and imprisons the rest of them as slaves one israelite who survives is moses as his mother places him in a basket when he's an infant and sends him into the nile down course of which he comes into the arms of pharaoh's daughter and is raised in the palace as one of pharaoh's own when he comes of age moses learns of his heritage he's haunted by the enslavement of his people and flees egypt and horror where he meets god god then tells moses to go back to egypt free the israelite slaves and bring them to the promised land moses follows god's orders but the new pharaoh who has ascended to the throne following the death of the old one refuses to let the israelites go so god inflicts ten plagues on the kingdom of egypt sequentially intensifying from bloody water to killing the firstborn son of every egyptian family pharaoh thus finally relents and allows the israelites to go free the israelites flee egypt but pharaoh changes his mind and goes after them but god through moses parts the sea and the israelites safely escape pharaoh's clutches now to those of you yet uninitiated to this channel i suppose i should probably take some time to reaffirm that yes i sympathize with the israelites that pharaoh bastard however if you aren't so inclined to reduce the psychological dynamics at play in pharaohs or more specifically ramsay's mind to that vague and mystical dark spark we term evil then we might come to understand the impetus for pharaoh's actions a bit better i mean he is a human after all though he'd strongly disagree with that statement so yes let's examine pharaoh's actions through a philosophical lens and rather than assume that he represents the epitome of evil and the israelites the same of good let's start with a blank slate first ramses's father seti is operating on the philosophy that the israelites are a threat to his rule and thus as he's god a threat to all being he tells moses this is why he must enslave the israelites and kill off their progeny moses sometimes for the greater good sacrifices must be made ah seti classic utilitarian theorist is he now we assume that seti is wrong because well slavery and killing is wrong it's just wrong there is never a need to kill well except for when moses kills a guard or when you know the israelites god kills all first-born egyptian children across the land god uses murder for a different end than pharaoh but nonetheless uses it like pharaoh to achieve a desired outcome of course the israelites would say well enslaving us obstructs us from our full potential which if achieved would allow us to help egypt flourish but faro would probably respond well look at all these fabulous pyramids look at the majesty of my kingdom i sort of think we're doing just fine with you guys as slaves just saying the israelites may too over killing us is unwise for it will stir in us a desperation to break free and escape the kingdom and so you'll lose all of our merits at once and perhaps even be failed anyway in due time but pharaoh would then say i'd rather have you dead than overthrowing me you're an industrious and enterprising people and i can't let such merit persist if it starts from blood that isn't mine own well you see this back and forth could go on forever and alas we will never quite know how egypt would have fared without slavery in the first place to raise its marvelous structures some of which we still know today better yet perhaps the israelites are a threat to pharaoh's rule however to me the israelites most true utilitarian argument is to say they who most merit rule should have it for this will best serve the greater good to which pharaoh would then say in his subconscious i actually don't really seek to benefit the all but the one myself god among men he who makes existence be and without which it will but cease i'm awesome and then he would kill every israelite in the kingdom for daring to even threaten him like that what i'm getting at here is that righteous as it may be to wield the throne in magnanimous fashion it's not so easy to maintain one's rule if we're to measure the reigns of kings across the course of history listen it's easy to say pharaoh just be a good guy man but he doesn't want to be a good guy he wants to be god he is a god as far as he's concerned and to relinquish that truth the truth of his ancestors the truth born thousands of years air than now is an unthinkable action enter seti sun ramses ramses is a tragic villain if there ever was one as a ruler he must consider the greater good and yet as a god how could he separate the greater good from his own greatest good more practically ramses is an insecure man he doubts his competency and his leadership abilities he isn't such an obviously bad tempered gent he's rather loving to his brother actually moses is seemingly far more clever and talented than ramsay's though and as ramses is the heir to the throne this must only further ramsey's feelings of inadequacy especially as his father seems to openly disdain him for his shortcomings and favor moses instead ramses is sort of a communist figure vis-a-vis marcus aurelius in this way to use a good roman analogy thus unable to sufficiently fill his father's shoes and sensing his inadequacy ramses becomes insecure and desperate desperate to prove he isn't inadequate at all and so egypt gets a mad fool for a king on the other hand unlike commodus ramses isn't as incapable as he's made out to be and his insecurity leads him to build a greater egypt than his father before him listen let's be honest how much death has man's insecurity caused throughout human history i'd say quite a lot and yet ramsay's insecurity also leads to great progress and if we're going to see progress as an ultimately moral and then well has ramsay's really done anything wrong more importantly think about ramses's feelings in this situation he's intended to be a god of egypt and should he fail to lead the kingdom to new heights or should it come tumbling down under his watch his detractors first among them being his father will be proved correct and he'll have to live the rest of his life out and then presumably eternity too aka kind of a long time as a failure to be ridiculed among all souls it is he ramses the foolish king who let egypt die thus to let the israelites go is to fail for all eternity but worse to let the israelites go is to invalidate his entire conception of the world and the belief system of his people it is to invalidate his gods and thereby himself if only you would let the hebrews go i will not be dictated to i will not be threatened i am the morning and the evening star i am fair try to see things from pharaoh's perspective here he is god in his view this is the view his people have held for thousands of years there is no truth but this truth and this is the only truth he has ever known and now moses has come before him to claim that indeed his gods are false and it is the god of the israelites a god who favors the israelites who is the ultimate creator the sun the stars yoda the moon and all we don't think twice before accepting that god is of course angry with pharaoh he's keeping slaves under hard labor and murdering masses of people all whilst living in luxury after all however pharaoh and his people fully expect that were there gods to intervene such deities would only affirm the greatest good to be the prosperity of egypt at all cost and then they would smite those evildoers seeking to bring down the egyptian empire by going free commanding to pharaoh let my people go is akin to demanding disregard your entire faith spurn your gods reject your mandate and accept the will of the israelite god for he is not on your side and it is too akin to demanding fail your father and prove your unworth this is no easy task for one man and yet upon the death of his son he relents and fulfills it well almost ramses is a tragic villain not just in that egypt bears the brunt of the plagues during his reign and not just because he loses his son to the tenth of them but also because he's made to be the ass of history via a choice of two evils hold strong against the israelites and see egypt destroyed or relinquish his divine right and delegitimize the gods of his people i'd not like very much to be in his position though i suppose it'd actually be kind of fun for a while you know before the frogs and locusts overrun the kingdom so tell me what would you do if you were in ramsay shoes or sandals or whatever would you free the israelites for the sake of a moral code that doesn't even really exist yet and then do your best to maintain order in a kingdom that has just surrendered itself to a foreign god or do you attempt to crush the israelites and fight the powers of said israelite god let me know in the comments below anyways that's the video it's getting hot in here so i gotta bring it to a close please do give it a big thumbs up if you enjoy it remember as i just said comments down below uh should be a really fun discussion down there i'm gonna hit subscribe and that notification bell so you don't miss a damn thing for now my name is eric ben and i'll catch you next time generation films peace

Channel: Generation Films

Views: 65,547

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Id: wbFYuJ4JFzw

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Sat May 07 2022