Charlie from Hazbin Hotel is a Classical Liberal.
For those who don’t know, Hazbin Hotel is an adult animated fantasy comedy by Vivienne Medrano about the Charlie, the Princess of Hell, trying to reform sinners to that they can be transferred to Heaven. In the first few weeks since its release, the pilot episode racked up more than eighteen million Youtube views, which is quite good for an original, independently produced property. With its unusually smooth animation for an adult cartoon, intriguing and easily explained premise, and affable humor it is developing a bit of a following. It is also one of the greatest modern indictments of the problems with classical liberalism, though probably without any intent on Medrano’s part.
As you probably know, classical liberalism is the belief that civil liberties can be provided to the people through the Rule of Law and a capitalist framework. Despite some controversy around her old social media posts and old preferences regarding Youtube personalities, Vivienne Medrano has not discussed politics in depth on social media or any of her streams. Hazbin Hotel derives much of its humor from broad slapstick or the juxtaposition between Charlie’s anodyne personality and the raunchy world she occupies, with pretty much the only overt reference to the matter being a joke where the character Angel Dust says he doesn’t know about an all-powerful demon named Alastor that’s defeated many of the most powerful demons because he’s “not into politics.” So yeah, it’s a safe assumption that Medrano does not have an axe to grind against center left stances here and that the messaging is unconscious.
The unintentional critique begins from the very beginning, which efficiently establishes both the central dilemma and Charlie’s goals. Hell has recently experienced a purge of damned souls by immense angels with some sort of celestial spears. The purpose of the purge is Hell being severely overpopulated. The angels are portrayed as black, blood-splattered silhouettes with sinister glowing smiles and haloes, since they’re the (offscreen) antagonists of the story. Charlie signals to her demon subjects that the coast is clear, and with tears in her eyes looks at a clock tower showing that the next purge will come in 364 days. Implicitly, it’s a ticking clock that Charlie has hanging over her to get some of her subjects to Heaven.
The thing is that the entire notion of wanting to go to Heaven is so tainted that it would generally be considered undesirable. Look at those angels: Would you want to spend an eternity with them if you were one of the previously damned? Even if the alternative were oblivion, imagine the resentment at knowing that they obliterated some of your friends or until very recently considered you unfit to exist. Imagine the contempt they would likely hold for the previously damned if they’re willing to obliterate damned souls with smiles on their faces.
Hazbin Hotel’s pilot never has any explicit religious statements, despite the canonical existence of a Heaven and a Hell. Those mythological places have been portrayed in popular culture so many times in so many ways that they don’t necessarily have hardline religious connotations. But if the religious rules of the story are meant to parallel real world Christianity or Judaism, then all the numerous LGBT characters (which includes Charlie) are completely stuck in Hell until their eventual obliteration for a ludicrously petty reason. The Holy Bible says that if a man or woman has laid with another, then they will surely be put to death (Leviticus 20:13.) No room for redemption or conversion of any kind there. If I were one of that damned group, the requirement to change such a basic part of identity to appease the callous forces would make Heaven seem like the wrong place for me, and I don’t think I would be alone.
But Charlie doesn’t see an intractable enemy when she looks at those genocidal angels. She sees an authority figure that she needs to appease through redeeming the damned. It’s an accidental metaphor for the “civility” and compromise politics that have characterized how liberals think it’s best to interact with conservatives and oligarchs. They’re willing to accept the social hierarchy, even when it leaves them among the actively oppressed. It’s possible, even likely, that the angels are one hundred percent unassailable, but there’s no discussion of that even being attempted. It’s not established either whether the angels and God can be appeased enough to grant the damned entrance to Heaven either, but I suspect it’s not. As has been shown repeatedly in recent events, conservative parties have little interest in compromising with outgroups.
Charlie’s solution for the problem of redeeming the damned is practically capitalism writ large: A hotel where the damned are meant to develop redeeming qualities and have the inclination to sin treated. More than a few Youtube commenters have pointed out that Charlie’s idea is more like a rehabilitation center than a hotel, and Charlie’s explanation of going with a hotel is that they’re for “people passing through. Temporarily.” Charlie’s solution doesn’t deal with material realities: The damned are in Hell because sinning is their natural inclination or because sinning provides more pleasure than being clean. Considering that Angel Dust, the first customer of the Happy Hotel, says he’s only there to get free room and board for two weeks, presumably there’s no sort of redemption regimen or any significant pressure to stay in the hotel to curb his sinning. Charlie is too focused on the desired result of commodified redemption brought about in a comfortable, convenient way to confront the painful process that redemption entails in reality.
After her public announcement of the opening of the Happy Hotel is met with derision, Charlie admits on a phone call that she has no idea what she’s doing. A protagonist being in a bad place at the beginning of their journey is in keeping with classic story structure. But it gains extra meaning because it reflects a lack of introspection beyond self-pity and defeatism common among the liberal community today. It prevents liberals from connecting with the base they ostensibly want to serve, preferring idealized versions of the people they want to reach out to (e.g. preferring a politically correct version of a working class person to the very often non-pc reality of many working people.)
Almost certainly Charlie’s approach to curing sin will, if Medrano wants to take the show in a direction where she enjoys significant believable success, involve her attempting to develop empathy with her clients through understanding why they sin and how the needs sinning fulfills can be met in more benevolent ways. Inevitably it will be a difficult process marked by setbacks and humiliation, but Charlie will likely persevere, if only because she’s the protagonist and Medrano wants to keep the show commercial. This is the solidarity and empathy that’s provided by true engagement with people, not through idle privileged fancies.
After reaching her nadir, Charlie tentatively accepts the aid of the powerful “Radio Demon” Alastor to get Happy Hotel running properly. This despite the fact she knows that Alastor has personally wrought havoc for personal gain with powers she has no known way of controlling and the cavalier cynicism he expresses regarding her endeavor.
This parallels the disastrous compromises that liberals will make with authoritarian entities such as America’s infamous military industrial complex or law enforcement. It’s why for all the ostensibly cultural sensitivity of liberal administrations such as that of Barack Obama, the controversial (and relatively new) law enforcement body ICE was kept intact while deporting a record number of illegal immigrants and the number of wars America was fighting was expanded from two to seven. The likelihood that Medrano will have Charlie’s arrangement with Alastor prove calamitous is pretty high, just as these liberal compromises invariably are.
I am not asserting that Medrano made this raunchy, absurdist, stylized musical sitcom with any parables in mind. But accidentally or not, Vivienne Medrano and company have created a timely fable behind all that lovely animation and catchy music. I look forward to seeing how the Medrano has Charlie grow or fail to do so.
Dustin Koski also wrote an unconsciously politically charged fantasy story, his being a novel called A Tale of Magic Gone Wrong.
