Somebody touched on this in the Pirates of the Caribbean thread and I figured it warranted a thread of its own.
I can’t think of one other than Bambi’s mom (who dies in the film, so she’s even only half there).
Where are all the Mother’s in Disney movies? Here, look at this list:
-Snow White: Stepmom only, no birth mom.
-Little Mermaid: No mother.
-Beauty & The Beast: No mother, not even mentioned.
-Aladdin: Nobody has a Mom here.
-Lion King: There were female lions, but no reference to Simba’s mom.
-Pocahontas: again, nothing.
I haven’t seen Mulan, so I can’t say there. The same carries on with Pirates of the Caribbean.
Why don’t main characters in Disney movies have Mothers?
Ah, perhaps, but he has no Father to speak of, and doesn’t he seperated from his Mother for the majority of the film?
Doing some research, I found even more disturbing elements Disney uses in the family unit:
-Simba may hav had a mom, I can’t remember that clearly. But he watched his Father die before his eyes (at his fault).
-Tarzan: Young Tarzan watches both parents get killed by animals at the start, then his adoptive father (the Gorilla) gets it too!
-Pinocchio: No parents at all for him. And Gepetto’s desire for a boy borders on creepy by todays standards.
-The Jungle Book: Mowgli is also an orphan -abandoned in the jungle to die by his folks, presumably.
-Peter Pan. Here’s where it goes off the chart! Not only does he have no parents, there is an entire island of unwanted children!
It’s not just limited to their movies. Mickey Mouse has a g/f, but no parents? Donald Duck? Huey, Duey and Louie. They were babies without parents for crying out loud! Goofy has no known parents, has a son, but get this… no wife! (I understand he was given one laterm buit originally was a ‘single dad’)
Happy nuclear families tend not to sell so many tickets, and it’s not just Disney. Think of the various family sitcoms of the 70’s and 80’s: Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, Eight is Enough, One Day at a Time… for every complete nuclear family you’ve got five or ten shows where there’s been a divorce, death, or mysterious nonexistence of a parent.
Reading theread kindly linked by herwono (thanks, btw! ), the main argument seems to be that it is often used as an easy method of character development.
But that doesn’t really ring true for ‘Beauty & The Beast’ or ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. There is no real advantage to having a dysfunctional family in either of these.
I’d expect missing people to be more of a trend nowadays when kids are more often growing up without someone in theor lives, but I was puzzled to see this go sa far back when the “nuclear family” was the norm.
Since most Disney stories are based on fairy tales (which often have missing or dead parents, and tend to cut out the superfluous characters) or other children’s books, it’s perhaps not Disney’s fault. From Roald Dahl to The Sound of Music, it’s a common feature of children’s stories to throw the child into a position where they can no longer depend on one or both parents and have to make their own way in the world.
Because your parents would never really let you go have the adventures the ‘kids’ in Disney films have.
In Mulan there is a mother and a father but Mulan goes against their will and serves in the army in her fathers place.
Aristocats have a mom.
Oh and
Bambi, Tarzan, The Jungle Book, Pinnochio, Snow White, Cinderella,
All based on previously published material. So maybe Disney chooses to do stuff w/o moms or familys but you need to go back and ask why classic fairy tales don’t have traditional familes and ask Kipling, Burroughs, Salten, and Barrie what they have against moms and families.
In animated films there’s a practical reason for leaving out parents – every character in the movie costs them a lot of money to design, draw, ink, and paint. I know that early versions of the treatment and script for Disney’s Aladdin included Aladdin’s mother, just like the original story from the Arabian Nights. Howard Ashman even wrote a song for her. But in the end it was decided that her role was not essential to the story (in the fairy tale she serves primarily to help formally arrange the marriage between her son and the princess) and she got cut.
I don’t believe Princess Jasmine’s mother was ever intended to appear in the script, but again I would be pretty sure this was for reasons of economy and simplicity. For plot reasons Jasmine couldn’t be an orphan, she had to be the daughter of the local monarch. The fantasy Arabian culture depicted does not allow for ruling queens (Jasmine is under pressure to marry because she cannot inherit the throne herself), so she had to have a father. A mother could have been included as well, but the character wouldn’t have had much to do so the trouble and expense of animating her would be wasted.
Most of the other movies mentioned in the OP are based on fairy tales where the heroine’s mother is dead. In Snow White (also Cinderella) this is crucial to the plot, as otherwise there would be no room for an evil stepmother to cause trouble. The Lion King, Disney’s first animated feature based on an original story, does include Simba’s mother and I remember her as playing a fairly prominent role.
Well, in Sound of Music it was both a plot device and, as Frau Hauptmann von Trapp was actually dead when the real-life events of the show took place. Maybe that particular one is a bad choice.
I always figured that the other spouse was usually left out so the producers didn’t have to pay another adult actor.
Peter Pan has a mom–Mrs. Darling. And Wendy acts as a Mother to the Lost Boys for a while.
In the original Jungle Book, Mowgli wanders off into the Jungle as a baby; his folks look for him so frantically that when he comes back to his original village as a tenn a woman is pretty sure that he’s her son Nathoo. She brings him into her house but he can’t stand ‘civilization’ so he escapes. I’m not sure if he’s really Nathoo or not–need to re-read.
[hijack] Mehitabel–I think you’re right but I’d have to back and re read the book. Mowgli DID have parents but he was stolen from them as an infant by Shere Khan, who had his mancub dinner foiled by the wolves, IIRC.[/hijack]
IDBB
Freaky Friday has a Mom. But I don’t know why they did two remakes of this film. The first one (1976) starring Barbara Harris, Jodie Foster, and John Astin was good enough. I enjoyed that. And if you haven’t read the book, check it out from the children’s section of the public library. IMHO, the book is even better than the film.
I saw a few minutes of the first remake of Freaky Friday starring Shelley Long. It was painfully bad, so I switched to another channel.
I’ve seen the commercials for the latest version starring Jaime Lee Curtis. I wasn’t impressed with the bits shown in the commercial, so this version is not on my list of films to see.
It would be interesting if they had instead cast Jodie Foster as the mom in this latest remake. Maybe she wasn’t available, or maybe she was not interested.
Lamia: That’s what I recall too. The whole joking “at sunrise, he’s YOUR sun” thing, and her argument with Scar over the slim prey pickings after he’s taken over. Who did the OP think that was, I wonder?
Try looking at almost any group of movies, TV shows and games starring kids or young adults. Try the Japanese.
Goku from Dragonball- Orphan
Krillian from Dragonball- No parents
Tenchi - Mother’s dead
Jim Hawking from Outlaw Star- No parents
Gene Starwing from Outlaw Star- Father dies, no mother
Yusuke from Yuyu Hakusho -No father, mother a drunk
All three children from The Mysterious Cities of Gold - No parents
Kagome from Inuyasha - Extended adventures in a demon filled past with no parents. Is her father dead? I think so.
The Final Fantasy series is filled with orhpans.
Link from Ocarina is an orphan.
Link from Link to the Past only has an uncle
Chihiro from Spirited Away - Parents turned into pigs
Pazu from Castles in the Sky- No parents
Sheeta from Castles in the Sky- Orphan
Princess Mononoke - Parents dead
Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service - Has to move away from parents.
I’m of the opinion that while production costs and character development may play a part the main reason is plot based. Kids with good parents who are always there do not have adventures. They either have to be clueless like in Dexter’s Lab, removed from the situation like in Kiki or killed off which seems to be the favored action.
), the main argument seems to be that it is often used as an easy method of character development.