Disney Evil | By James
After being an ardent fan of Disney movies since the wonder days of Snow White, it has finally dawned on me that there is a striking similarity amongst all (bar 2 that I can see thus far) of their feature length cartoons. And it is definitely not something I want my prospective children pondering as they progress through childhood.
Disney Movies serve to destroy the idea of traditional family structures. They make it an absolute necessity that if the main character isn't an orphan from the get-go, they damn well will be by the end. Skeptical? Well take a look at the evidence.
Bambi's mother dies early into the movie, for no apparent reason but to make girls cry and to act as a benchmark against which all male insensitiveness issues would be measured. In The Lion King, Simba is treated to a first hand viewing of his father's stampede under a billion gazelle, and what does the duration of this movie teach our children? Just go out into the jungle and sing Hakuna Matata and you know what? Everything will be just fine!
Aladin is an orphan for the whole movie. It was only like 3 years later that as an after thought Disney gave him a father in 'Aladin and the King of Thieves'.
Young Tarzan gets to see his parents killed at the hands of a jaguar in their treehouse (?), and then later on in the movie, his surrogate father gorilla gets shot. That's twice for Tarzan!
However, the Disney Movie that tops the scale of BY FAR, is Peter Pan. Let's look at this, Peter, the 'star' of the show is an orphan, as is Captain Hook. On top of this though, Peter Pan has a whole clan of orphans - the Lost Boys, stashed in Never Never land. Where this movie differs however, is that not only does it attack the traditional family structure by revolving itself around orphans, it also teaches us some serious lessons in parenting (when they are alive) - I mean what the hell kind of parents leave their kids under the protection of their sleeping dog who is chained downstairs while they party East Coast style?
In Pinnochio, Gepeto for reasons we won't delve into is un-able to have a child. So what does he do? He carves one out of wood. I don't know what you think but that is just a tad sinister.
Mulan however, breaks the mould. Not only do none of her parents die, (although they do flirt with the idea of the old man dying in his attempt to fight) but she even lives with her grandmother. However, the prospects of producing a movie which contained no parental carnage came as quite a disturbance to Disney, so they kill off General(?) Shang's father (Mulan's later boyfriend) - you know, to keep with the theme of things.
Now you may feel that none of this atrocities were in fact Disney's responsibility; These were all pieces of literature before Disney made a movie out of them. So this leads us to the original Disney characters.
Donald Duck has no parents. He does however have a rich uncle Scrooge who unfortunately gives him nothing. Not only this, but Donald plays the role of parent to Huey, Duey and Louey. Where are their parents? I don't know about you, but would you really trust your children to the supervision of someone who doesn't wear any pants?
Goofy was over the last few years given a son - Max. Now without going into the mysteries of how he was a) able to seduce a woman and b) able to perform the process of reproduction, why oh why is he automatically given the burden of being a single parent? Surely if Disney can give him a son, why not a wife too?
In conclusion, the only movies I can see that have no death of parents, or major defects to the family are Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmations. So basically if you're a dog, then Disney's got your back. If not, then you better watch out.
* all article and graphical content is property of james & louis - 'suckball'