I was watching The Little Mermaid, specifically the scene where Sebastian almost gets killed by a chef. Between that scene and the heartbreaking parental deaths from hunting in Bambi and Fox and the Hound, it seems like Disney has been attempting to make a new generation of vegetarians. I know most of their protagonists are animals, but they are so good at anthropomorphizing and giving them likable personalities that it makes me wonder how many people were put off eating meat when they identified with and had sympathy for the characters. Any scene where an animal character dies or almost dies because of a human trying to kill and eat them is pretty horrifying.
There is always someone…but I doubt it.
The horrifying drama in Disney movies is far less horrifying to adults. And if the kids seeing Disney movies decide not to eat meat - well, that’s a hard decision for a small kid to make unless they have a LOT of parental support and a lot of willpower. Older kids, its easier, but older kids don’t watch Bambi and their animal rights activism is triggered by stronger material.
I had a four year old ethical vegetarian for - two weeks? Even giving her my complete support (we are a meat eating but vegetarian friendly household), it didn’t last. Chicken nuggets did her in (we were thinking it would be bacon). What send her over the edge was learning people ate rabbit…or bunnies…
Geez, my younger goddaughters traditionally ask me to make roast rabbit with hard boiled eggs on the greens as garnish for Easter … [if you dye the eggs right when you peel them they are colored :D]
Actually it has been a traditional easter dish for mrAru and I for about 15 years … one gets so tired of baked ham or leg of lamb. This way we have an alternate meat on the table for people to pick from 
I don’t know about vegetarians and Disney, but apparently Finding Nemo had at least a temporary impact. My sister teaches at an elementary school, and after Nemo was released, every time the cafeteria served fish they would be met with a chorus of “Fish are friends, not food!”
Disney has been making anthropomorphic animal characters for generations, and I don’t think a lot of people have become vegetarians as a result. I started thinking more seriously about vegetarianism after a Simpsons rerun, but Disney didn’t enter into it.
I have joked for years about the traditional Easter Bunny dinner. Never actually done it.
I do not remember this but I apparently made a visiting youngster cry by pointing to the buck and the wall and proudly announcing that my dad had killed Bambi’s dad.
So maybe that little crybaby is off somewhere eating tofu.
mrklutz, that’s fantastic!
Not Disney - but I had a friend that gave up pork after reading Charlotte’s Web.
I remember watching that scene in The Little Mermaid as an adult and being far more horrified than when I was a kid. I mean, Sebastian hangs out with all of those creatures. If you replaced all those fish with human bodies you’d get a better sense of what Sebastian must have felt upon stumbling inside the kitchen. (Although that did lead me to wonder if all people were vegetarians. Or maybe they only eat big scary mean fish like sharks?)
*merpeople, not people.
I think a lot of people still maintain a mental disconnect between “meat = animal.”
i was going to make a similar point, i don’t agree that disney drama is necessarily harder on kids than adults. i re-watched the stampede scene from the lion king recently, and i found mufasa’s death scene more difficult to watch as an adult than when i saw it as a kid. ymmv.
I think for a lot of kids, the concept of food as having some kind of actual origin is really abstract. For me personally, I think two books had more of an effect than Disney movies - Charlotte’s Web I think is a common and obvious example. I can’t remember the title of the other, only that the main character was a boy who was a vegetarian, and when he got invited to the house of a girl he liked for dinner he was worried about having to explain his diet issues but was relieved when they served spaghetti. I saw it long after I was a kid, but I could imagine Babe being in the same vein.
At the same time, while I gradually developed an idea of vegetarianism as an ‘ideal’ I didn’t change my own eating habits until adulthood. I think one issue was that except for those whole chickens you get at Medieval Times, most meat doesn’t really bear resemblance to the animals it’s made of. Another is that just like the dichotomy of “animals” versus “Animals” in Wicked, animals with sentience are much easier to emphasize with and for some reason the empathy doesn’t transfer as easily as you’d think. Plus the whole dealing with parents thing.
Yeah, I came in here to say something more like “Charlotte’s Web” or “Babe” would have more of an impact. IANAV, more of a carnivore, and every time I eat bacon or ham my husband reminds me of Babe.
That’ll do, pig.
I saw Bambi when I was seven, and I gladly tagged along on deer hunts just two years later. The cartoon never crossed my mind. Ditto for Charlotte’s Web and eating bacon and stepping on spiders.