Why do Disney Films have Death as a center of the plot??

[ScreamingMeemie]

We're watching Tarzan (sort of) right now... Tarzan's parents? Killed. Bambi. Bambi's mommy? Killed. The Lion King? Simba's Daddy? Killed. ...or something else bad happens... Dumbo? (I still sob like the sap I am when "Baby Love" is played) Dumbo's Mama? Locked up as wild... Why? WHY? I can't take it anymore!!!


Edited to remove "always". :hi: joby!

[WCGreen]

1. To scare the shit out the kids.....

[jobycom]

2. Alladin, Pocohantas, Hercules, Beauty and the Beast, Emperor's New Groove

don't.

Lilo and Stitch does, but indirectly, and before the film starts. Mulan has death, but not really as the center.

[ScreamingMeemie]

3. I know some don't...but I'm talking about the ones that do...Why?

Why can't bambi just grow up and leave home?? Why can't Simba learn a valuable lesson about life by just having Mufasa break both his paws? Why? WHY??

[jobycom]

9. The Lion King was a mixture of Kimba and Hamlet

It's based on the orignal Japanese Anime series, Kimba the White Lion, which begins, IIRC, with his father's death. The rest is a nod to Hamlet, with a happier ending.

Bambi--one day I'll watch it, I guess.

Most great literature deals with death on some level. It's just a timeless theme. People, even kids, are always having to deal with it--either what they are feeling, or the knowledge that it will happen. It's not just Disney, it's one of the two titan themes of all art forms--the other being love/sex/procreation (depending on the culture).

[Aristus]

34. Actually, "The Lion King" was a nearly perfect blend of

'Hamlet' and 'Richard III'.

[philosophie_en_rose]

14. Except for Hercules and Mulan - mothers are missing.

:shrug:

at least an indirect element of death.

[jobycom]

22. Yes, but not central to the story.

[progmom]

4. and again....THANK YOU

We've just started watching movies with progspawn...and have been having to do a lot of explaining and consoling. :(

[ScreamingMeemie]

6. BabyG refuses to watch Disney movies because of Bambi and

The Lion King. I didn't think twice about it until he took it so badly. :(

BabyG is outside playing otherwise Tarzan would be off.

[billyskank]

5. To tug at your heart strings

See, it works :hug:

[ScreamingMeemie]

7. I'm a sap. Phil Collins just got done singing...

:cry: :hug:

[maxsolomon]

8. ask Joseph Campbell

in structure, Disney film is religion

[jobycom]

10. Good point. Not so much that Disney is a religion

but that it follows basic formulaic myths for its story lines. Wouldn't be surprised if their writers are required to learn Campbell.

[WCGreen]

12. DIsney is the religion....

Faith, myth and consumerism....

[jobycom]

24. I'm too dumb to understand what you mean.

Explain further? Disney tells stories, they make money off the stories, they have a basic "Be true to yourself/find yourself" theme in just about everything, and their stories certainly have mythic elements. But I don't see how that makes them a religion, or at least in any sense that, say, DU isn't a religion.

And I don't see the "faith" or "consumerism" points, other than that Disney, like any business, tries to make money.

[WCGreen]

27. They integrate children into the consumer culture....

the worship of products...

Tie ins...

Throw away culture that is only as good as the last movie out...

It's just like inculcating people religiously....

[jobycom]

28. Cereal companies do that.

And toy companies, and McDonalds (for adults, too) and Coka Cola and Ford and both political parties and you name it.

As for their movies being "throw away culture," I honestly can't think of another movie or entertainment company whose movies have been as permanent as Disney's. We still talk about their movies made 70 years ago. Most products of any sort don't last that long. That's hardly throw-away.

[WCGreen]

33. Not the movies...

The stuff....

Ever company does it but Disney is the master....

[supernova]

11. It's a quite common fear

if kids feel insecure for some reason, they often wonder what will happen to their parents. These kinds of stories work out those issues on a subconcious level. (There is always life, there is always someone to take care of you and love you.)

[Nevernose]

13. Why do so many of Shakespeare's plays have Death as a center?

Because it makes for good conflict. Also, you have to keep in mind that Disney movies are just as much for the parents watching them as for the kids.

[ScreamingMeemie]

15. But, I don't like it either.

:cry:

[Nevernose]

23. Lion King makes me cry; I haven't seen Bambi since I was five

I saw the Lion King as a teenager, actually. A teenager old enough to vote. My mother wanted me to go with her because of the good reviews. When Simba's father was killed, the usher had to come in and quiet me down.

"That's BULLSHIT! How could they kill Mufasa? What kind of fucking movie are you people showing!?!" Kids were looking at me shocked; mothers were looking at me angrily.

"Sir? Sir! If you don't don't cut out the foul language, we'll have to ask you to leave."

I haven't been able to bring myself to watch Bambi since I was five, and refuse to show it to my own kid. She also won't watch Dumbo, for the same reason: the psychological scars are just too great.

Great movies, though. Real classics, even if they're not up to my emotional threshold.

[alphafemale]

16. In some versions of the original folk tales of Snow White

The Evil Queen had red hot iron shoes placed on her feet and was forced to dance until she dropped dead.

Folk/Fairy tales were full of death. Disney actually sanitized most of them.

[ScreamingMeemie]

17. That they were... Even Peter Rabbit reeks of Death.

but why? WHY? :cry:

[alphafemale]

25. Heck...even "Ring Around a Rosy" is about the plague

People dealt with death how they could when they had to deal with it every day.

[mykpart]

18. There is a critic who says that nearly all Disney

feature-length cartoons have at least one dead parent. Peter Pan may be an exception, although Peter and the lost boys may very well have been orphans. Can't remember if Sleeping Beauty's mother died, but Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin all have a missing mother, and where are Aladdin's parents? I prefer to think of this phenomenon as a tribute to single parents!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. Both of Sleeping Beauty's parents are dead by the time she's

awakened from sleeping for 100 years. They go away to rule the kingdom after the thorn forest grows up around their castle.

[noonwitch]

45. The fairies put everyone in the castle to sleep in the movie

In the movie, they don't all sleep for 100 years, because the Prince rescues her. but the fairies put everyone to sleep after Sleeping Beauty falls asleep, so that they can get everything back in order.

I know the story the movie is based on is different, but Disney always changes stories around. After all, Hans Christian Anderson's "Little Mermaid" didn't have a very happy ending to it.

[LiviaOlivia]

19. You always have the most depressing posts

I hope things go better for you in the future.

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

20. No she does'nt.

But your opinion is yours.

[LiviaOlivia]

29. Indeed it is.

And Mrs. Grumpy isn't Mrs. Cheery.

[Deja Q]

37. Agreed. I'm the one with the most depressing posts.

[ScreamingMeemie]

38. Given the nature of my life...This post had me on the floor crying...

with laughter. :hi:

[ScreamingMeemie]

35. With the exception of my father, things are great for me!!!

But I'll take your "opinion" under advisement. :rofl:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=5261502&mesg_id=5261647
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=5261299&mesg_id=5261301
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=5261241&mesg_id=5261243
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=5260471&mesg_id=5260528

I have an awesome husband (as most of DU knows) two kids who are terrific...but OKAY!!! I'm a Downer. :rofl:

[Mutley]

21. Oh, I don't know. I saw American Werewolf in London when I was five

and I only had nightmares about it for four or five years. :P

[ScreamingMeemie]

44. Hahahah...

:scared: I'm no good with horror shows.

[Mutley]

50. I am now.

Musta been desensitized to it. :P

[bridgit]

26. a group of psyche & psychologists toured disneyland quite some time...

ago, riding all the rides, partaking of what-all everyone else seemed to be enjoying and it was determined...that between the skeletons, pirates, fairies, magic castles, sunken treasure, coon skinned caps, robotic abe lincolns, a 'main street' right out of fantasyland, flying elephants, walking broomsticks, rockets to the moon, and dead indians & settlers beside flaming log cabins stands a disturbed individual...

but i say, "what do they know for sure? let disney be disney" :thumbsup:

[ScreamingMeemie]

46. Hahaha...A friend of my husband's tells a tale of his Uncle.

I have no idea whether this is true or not, but his Uncle worked in a Dept store with this crazy guy who was always doodling cartoons. The guy "supposedly" asked his uncle if he was interested in helping to finance his career in cartooning. His uncle declined...and was left out of a legend... I don't know if it's true or not. Sounds too urban legendy to me, but my husband's friend is a trustworthy guy. :hi:

[Rabrrrrrr]

31. Because almost all literature and story-telling has death as a center

and if not death, then destruction - of some thing, or a psyche, or a mental state.

Death is the one universal human experience, and so in the entire history of human story-telling, death has played a very central part. Especially before the 1900s, pretty much all of humanity also had a personal and constant experience with death, of people and animals.

If you weren't a modern Westerner living in a civilized and urban and sterile-of-death environment, I bet you wouldn't be asking that question.

[ScreamingMeemie]

43. Probably...

But then I didn't expect this thread to be taken as seriously as it was. :hi: I've gotten some really interesting responses.

[RevolutionaryActs]

32. Because

they want to make you cry. :P

[ScreamingMeemie]

47. For once we can hear the words "Mission Accomplished"...and truly

believe it. :D

[Deja Q]

36. Awareness of the inevitable.

[Squeech]

39. How to Read Donald Duck

During the Allende era in Chile, a book was published with that title. It critiqued Disney comics as propaganda for capitalism, pointing out that, since WW2, the US government had been subsidizing their publication in the South American market. Most of the examples in the text were of how Donald Duck always had to be straightened out by his Uncle Scrooge, and the implicit lesson was that rich people are wiser than the rest of us. There was also a quite surprising amount of subtle denigrating of the third world.

But the author went on to describe the typical Disney family structure, which hardly ever looks like the nuclear family. Invariably, one parent is missing, or both. Donald has no children, but he has three nephews he seems to be primarily responsible for. Scrooge is in turn his uncle, and while he doesn't (always) need active parenting, Scrooge is always the one to take on the task. He hangs out with a female he isn't married to, Daisy, who similarly has three nieces. Mickey and Minnie Mouse aren't married either. The literature is full of step-parents, often wicked ones (e.g. Cinderella), or unrelated people who stand in loco parentis for peculiar reasons (e.g. Pinocchio). His point had something to do with the idea that Disney was implicitly telling his readers that, life being capricious, anyone willing to stand in for your father was valuable-- like a strong national leader, perhaps...

Even more interesting than the book itself is the story of what happened to it in the United States. As soon as an English language edition was published for distribution here, the Disney corporation sued for violation of copyright, since there was so much illustration of actual Disney panels and stories to demonstrate the author's points. The defense lawyers invoked the doctrine of fair use for purposes of critique. A compromise was reached where the publisher was allowed to distribute a very limited number of copies, like 500, that being the judge's estimate of the academic market. My first wife found a copy in a used book store once, which is how I know about it, and of course she took it with her when she left...

Personally, I never related much to Disney, except for Gyro Gearloose. The story that resonated with me as a kid was the Wizard of Oz. I find the arbitrary exercise of power much scarier than family tragedies. That's why I'm a librul, I guess.

[ScreamingMeemie]

41. Now I want to find that book.

Wizard of OZ was/is a tradition here. And Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well. Disney is entertaining, but I never understood why so much of it had to involve deep, personal suffering to learn a lesson.

[Squeech]

49. Actually

my favorite stories when I was a kid were scientists, explorers, inventors, people who added to the sum total of human knowledge. You want life lessons, you could do a lot worse than Ben Franklin or Alexander Graham Bell.

And I looked up How to Read Donald Duck on Amazon; they claim used copies are available, starting from $55! But I did know it was rare here. (I should ask my Brazilian friends whether they can get it. Brazil was under military rule during the Allende years, but not exactly in Uncle Sugar's pocket, so there may be a Brazilian edition.)

[NewJeffCT]

40. I asked this about 18 months ago on here

and, got far fewer responses... most of which told me that my then 18-21 month old daughter should learn about the real world.

At the time, I had put on Lion King so she could hear the songs, but then comes the scene where Mufasa gets stampeded, she was there, "Lion King is sleeping" when Simba comes to find his father. I was kind of at a loss as to what to say then.

Now that she is 3 1/4, she knows that the Lion King was hurt when he fell down, but I don't think she really knows.

[ScreamingMeemie]

42. Be Glad!!

:hi:

I was made aware on this thread of just how depressing a poster I am...:rofl:

And here I thought I was happily married with strong family bonds.

My daughter and I saw Lion King in the theater when she was 5. As a small child she had troubles with empathy so it didn't seem to bother her. My son is another story. He won't go near a Disney Film most times.

[NewJeffCT]

48. about 2 years ago...

I was accused of being a bad parent for wanting to expose my daughter to other cultures (my wife is originally from China and all her family still lives there...)

[LisaLynne]

51. I always sort of knew that, but ...

didn't realize the full extent of it until my brother's kids started watching them. There are some really scary scenarios in some of them -- and nobody has a family without somebody being dead, usually the mother. I think it's a plot device, but I don't see how movies that are supposed to be geared toward kids need that sort of thing in them. They learn about death from life, why put it in a movie? But, that's just MHO. I mean, it's really prevalent, when you think about it. That's why when the kids are at my house, if they watch anything at all, it's Dora and some of those cute, nothing happens sort of shows. :)

Maybe that's why I was always so fearful of my parents dying when I was growing up ... Hmm! I think I may have just uncovered the source of a childhood trauma! Thanks, MrsGrumpy! :)

[liontamer]

52. because death is a part of life

and it probably isn't healthy to overly shield kids from its existence.