[Entire lengthy post deleted because:
Please do not steal from other sites, then claim that the material is yours. Thank you.
-slythe]
[Edited by slythe on 11-27-2000 at 08:55 PM]
:rolleyes:
Boy, did someone forget to take his pills this morning or what?
Wait, I think that you may be onto something:
Popeye: Poopdeck Pappy but no mother.
The Chipmunks: Being raised by Dave, who is obviously not their father.
Tom and Jerry: No parental figures to be seen.
Casper the Ghost: Again, no parents. Just those three other ghosts who torment him. Uncles perhaps?
And this nefarious movement is not just reserved for cartoons:
Dif’rent Strokes: Two boys whose mother has died is adopted by a (gasp) single father.
Punky Brewster: I don’t know what the deal is with her parents, but she’s adopted by some old guy.
The Facts of Life: Lots of girls and whenever their parents come into the scene, they’re usually trouble.
The list goes on and on. It is most assuredly a plot.
Or maybe orphans, children whose parents get killed, or struggling single parents just make for more interesting and more emotional storylines. Hmmmm?
Since the flicks are aimed at kids, subtle techniques at generating sympathy for the lead characters may not work. It’s easiest to just whack the parents.
While you mentioned Donald Duck, let’s not forget his little fling with Daisy producing the bastard children Huey, Duey, and Luey. Naturally, not wishing to be burdened down with them, he abadoned them to his uncle for the life as one of the seamen.
And those pesky rodents, Chip n Dale? Thanks to a complete lack of parental supervision, they went from being cute little fuzzy animals to sleasy exotic dancers!
Disney On Ice? We all know that’s code for “Disney says ice your parents for forcing you to attend this horrid, horrid show. ooooh! Cotton candy vendors. Buy some more sugar!”
Flight of the Navigator. Sure, no one died, but here’s the moral: if you somehow disappear for eight years, life will still go on without you. Kill your smug parents now before they have a chance to ignore you as an angst ridden teenager.
What about DisneyWorld? The two rides my family enjoyed, the two rides we wanted to go on? Space Mountain. Always broken down because an hour before someone threw up in it. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. They closed it, those bastards! How can we support family unity when the only thing left to enjoy are the life and times of raping murderous pirates and “It’s a small, small world” played so many times you’d sooner kill off the person sitting next to you rather than listen to even one more note? Not to mention that every parent just drops their kids off at Disney World before skidaddling over to Epcot for the day.
Yes, Disney is surely trying to kill off the parents. But only after they’ve reached breeding age and thus produce a new line of murderous tykes to influence.
Huey, Louie, and Dewey were adopted from Donald’s sister, Dumbella. She sent a letter to him asking him to take care of her three “darling” children, proving that she lost custody as a result of her stupidity.
Ehm - if you introduce the concept of parents and offspring, you’re getting very close to the subject of procreation. And everybody knows that if there’s one thing kids should NOT know about, it’s that. The other solutions may traumatize them a little, but at least there’ll be no annoying questions on where the kids came from. (The printed version of “Lady and the Tramp” is extremely advanced in this respect as the final drawing shows Lady surrounded by - gasp - puppies!)
As for Donald Duck, the Norwegian researcher Jon Gisle has made a breakthrough in his excellent work “Donaldismen” (I fear this groundbreaking work hasn’t been translated outside Scandinavia). Gisle puts forward two theories as to the “uncle/nephew” or, for that matter, “aunt/niece” relationships - according to Gisle’s “Law of sexual structure”, no dwellings have inhabitants of varying sexes (with one exception, left as an exercise to the reader).
The theories are as follows:
The exclusionary theory. As Donald Duck’s universe has an extremely strict moral code, people (ducks) who give in to their base instincts and produce offspring are simply cut off from society, brutally ostracized, stricken from Uncle Scrooge’s will, denied any of Grandma Duck’s strawberry jam and never heard from or spoken of again. The children are raised by a morally outstanding family member, most often a sibling of the offender.
The cuckoo theory is based on a 1950’s one-page episode where a childhood photo of Donald Duck simply shows an egg. This led to speculation that female ducks, finding themselves in the family way, snuck into other houses to lay their eggs, thus avoiding the moral stigma involved. The “uncle/nephew” labels are simply a social construct.
The cuckoo theory prevailed for several weeks until a member of the research team pointed out that Mickey Mouse has nephews as well. Constructing a rationale for Mickey being a member of an egg-laying mouse species proved impossible, so - at least according to Gisle - the exclusionary theory seems more likely. Additional data supporting this theory is the fact that the only character depicted as living with a son has his lack of morals imbedded in his very name - I refer, of course, to the Big Bad Wolf.
I hope this cleared up at least a bit of the confusion on this point.
S. Norman
**Uniball wrote:
Let’s hope enough people get wind of this, and send the message to DISNEY that this bullshit has to end. STOP KILLING OFF THE PARENTS IN YOUR MOVIES.**
The problem with most of your examples is that you can’t really blame Disney for “killing off the parents.” Just about every Disney film is taken from a myth or folktale of western culture where one or both parents are killed off. Don’t blame Disney, blame the original folktales or mythology.
If Disney attempted to re-write the tale and keep both parents alive or, at worst, only slightly wounded, you’d lose most of the basis for the plot. The critics would scream that Disney was re-writing our “cherished, traditional folktales!” Never mind that the post-modern crowd is saying that Disney movies enforce “sexist and paternalistic attitudes!” You can’t please everyone.
There was no T. REX in the DINOSAUR movie, the star carnivore was instead a large CARNOTAURUS. I think the lemur family remains intact throughout the movie. But you certainly wrote a good article.
What about HERCULES? The Disney film has a more traditional family than the actual myth, doesn’t it? In the Disney story, Zeus and Hera were happily married, Hercules was their kid, but they lost him. In the actual myth, Zeus and Hera were siblings but married anyway, Hercules was the offspring of Zeus and a mortal woman, so Hera tried to kill him. Either way though, Hercules is raised by mortals and Zeus isn’t around much.
And don’t forget, the Hunchback of Notre Dame was abandoned by his parents at the very beginning, then raised by a mean old guy who gets killed.
In Toy Story, Andy’s dad is never there. Never says why.
Anyone know what horrible parent-destroying story Disney has planned for summer 2001?
Goofy WAS married, for a grand total of one short. Likewise Sylvester the Cat. You don’t think the studio system would tolerate out-of-wedlock kids for even five seconds, do you? I was always under the impression that having a social life precluded having kids. Mickey and Donald chase Minnie and Daisy more than the Phantom Blot, and have only nephews. Goofy dates fewer women than Rock Hudson, and he’s been married and had a kid. You can say the same for Bugs and Daffy versus Sylvester.
There are much more perplexing questions in this affair than where nephews come from, though. Like, how did the little girl Pete was photographing in A Goofy Movie turn into his daughter in Goof Troop? That must have been a shock to his wife. “Honey, this little girl mooned me on the job. Now she’s our own little punkin’. Let’s call her Pistol!”
Only 15 of the 101 Dalmations got to reunite with their true parents. We can only guess that Cruella 86’ed the parents of the other 86.
I always thought Dumbella (so THAT’S her name!) was trying to ditch the little monsters before they killed her.
I’m not sure how the old folks will eat it in the next flick, The Emperor’s New Groove. I haven’t even deciphered the plot yet. Something about an Inca who turns into a llama. Groove promises to be the worst Disney flick since at least The Great Mouse Detective
Nay. Quasimodo’s ma, the gypsy, is KILLED by Frollo at the steps of Notre Dame.
BTW, if Quasi is from gypsy heritage, why the heck his skin is pale, not dark as his mother’s? Make no sense.
David Spade in a kid’s movie? This could be interesting…
To whoever suggested blaming the original fairy tales: the originals were A LOT worse than anything Disney’s ever shown. Can you say gratuitous violence? Trust me, dead parents is nothing compared to the horrors in the original stories.
And let’s not forget that most modern Disney or Disney-esque live-action movies aimed at kids have child protagonists living with one parent, because their parents were (gasp!) divorced. Rookie of the Year was like this, as were That Darn Cat (the remake, not the 1965 original), Little Big League, Angels in the Outfield, and probably all the others I haven’t seen yet.
Jaime wrote:
The Great Mouse Detective was a work of cinematic genius when compared with The Black Cauldron.
Heck, you can go further back than that. The whole premise of The Parent Trap was based on the fact that the parents were divorced.
Zev Steinhardt
Um…Disney DOES re-write fairy tales and folk tales…do you guys have any idea about the REAL Sleeping Beauty?
Well, yes, to some degree they do. However, there is a limit to what you can do.
Take Cinderella for example. Sure you don’t have to go into the whole bit with the stepsisters slicing off parts of their feet to fit into the slippers, or the birds pecking out their eyes at Cinderella’s wedding. But you DO have to have a dead (or missing) mother for the story to work at all (unless you paint the real mother as the villian, which wouldn’t go over very well).
Zev Steinhardt
So many misconceptions, so little time …
In “Donald’s Nephews” (1938) Huey, Dewey and Louie do indeed visit Donald, but no indication is given that Dumbella is giving them up. In fact, at the end of the short, the inferrence is that they are going out the door heading back home. It’s only until 1943’s “The Spirit of '43” (I think) that Donald lists the three on his tax return as “adopted,” but knowing Donald, that could have just been a dodge.
Actually, in the 50’s he was married for four different shorts : “Fathers Day Off”, “Cold War”, “Get Rich Quick” and “Fathers are People.” He also had a son in these shorts as well. There is quite a bit of controversy as to whether the son in these shorts and Max in the Goof Troop show should be indentified as the same person or whether we’re dealing with an alternate universe here. For a good discussion of the problem, see my friend Rich Bellacera’s page on Mrs. Goofy.
I was SO just about to post something saying “Euty’d LOVE this one.”
Uniball, if you’re going to make a stupid rant like that, at least don’t rip it off from someone else!
Oh moderator…