I saw a lot of the classic Disney movies when I was really young (including The Jungle Book and a re-release of Snow White when I was three and Peter Pan when I was four) and didn’t get freaked out by them. I always knew the villain would be defeated and everything would turn out okay in the end. Also, the fact they were animated probably made me feel a bit more detached about what I saw on screen than I would have had they been live-action. Thus, while I can certainly understand why some people object to Disney movies as being too scary for little kids, I just can’t feel it.
Okayyyy… but sometimes I just want my kid entertained, not primed for death.
My three-year-old has a story book version of The Lion King, a movie I very much enjoyed as an adult when it first came out. I sat down one night to read him the book – a very simple version of the story intended for kids his age, with lots of pictures – and immediately realized I had to make up a story instead of actually reading it to him. It was essentially a story about the young lion’s father being killed by his uncle, with the help of some nasty hyenas, and then the younger one killing the uncle in the end. Even when I made up something else, the pictures were all dark and scary, frigthening images.
Of course, I could have just read the story to him and let him learn about death. Then I would have gone downstairs and the conversation with my wife would go like this:
Mom: Is he all tucked in?
Me: Well, we read The Lion King. He’s crying and hiding under the blankets now.
Mom: But doesn’t it have a happy ending?
Me: Sure, a page of happy ending after 15 pages of terror.
Mom: What’s he so scared about?
Me: He thinks my brother Bob is going to come kill me, and then he’ll have to kill Uncle Bob.
Mom: Hmmmm. Well, at least he’s learning about death. I’m sure he’ll stop screaming before long.
Me: Yeah, a few more Disney stories and he’s really going to be ready when Grandma goes.
Um, except Lilo and Nani’s parents? OK, that was offscreen, but the entire movie follows from the aftermath of their deaths.
Heh. I was going to post about that scene. I’ve mentioned that scene in other Disney threads. It’s one of the most awful, brutal moments I’ve seen in ANY film, not just an animated cartoon. It’s pure evil, distilled. Any no one dies … it’s just a ripped dress.
I think it’s funny that some people complain that Disney films are too emotional and others complain that they are too bland. Each film is its own thing, with its own narrative imperatives. You can argue on a case-by-case basis about how individual films could be improved or destroyed by different creative choices, but its pointless to try to apply a blanket edict to them all.
And misogynistic. The lesson of Little Red Riding Hood is “little girls who disobey their parents and speak to strangers deserved to be raped and murdered.”
You were scared of the Care Bears movie villain?
Well, it takes all kinds I guess.
I also know some people who, to me, are inexplicably terrified of the Child Snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, (not a Disney film BTW)
OK, so read him a Sesame Street book, or a Dora the Explorer, or any one of the hundreds of feel-good happy books that are out there. Disney isn’t the be-all-end-all of children’s entertainment. (In fact I think their *books *are absolutely horribly written and should be avoided almost at all cost.)
Has this really happened, or are you afraid it will happen? In my experience with dozens of kids over the years (as a nanny and a mom), even little bitty kids can and should take a lot more complexity than we give them credit for.
Thank you!
I think it depends on what you’re looking for in a movie, and how old your kid is, and his level of sensitivity. Little Cinnamon takes after me, and tends to get absorbed in stories and empathize right to the pinnacles of joy and depths of despair. (Hell, I still have a certain terror of *Old Yeller * type movies - I don’t need to be put through that wringer.)
Also, she’s three, and going through a “I must be physically attached to Mommy 24/7, even Daddy is evil, Mom-mom is my universe, my alpha and omega” stage. You think I’m going to let her watch Bambi?! There is a huge difference between acknowledging Mr. Hooper’s death on *Sesame Street * and manufacturing a plot that tells kids, “Guess what! Your mom could be snuffed out in the blink of an eye, leaving you all alone. Enjoy your popcorn!”
I almost had a stroke when my husband let her watch The Land Before Time (not Disney, but same trope), but luckily her Freudian defense mechanisms kicked in and her interpretation of the story is that Littlefoot gets separated from his mom, but finds her again at the end.
BTW, my interpretation of the absence/killing of mothers in so many stories is that in our modern mythology, the mother figure represents near-insuperable comfort and protection. With a mother in the plot, the peril of the main character would be greatly diluted. So for older kids and adults, the dead mother is necessary to dramatic tension. But that doesn’t mean it’s a great way to “ease” a preschooler into the concept of death!
I was too. It’s easy to make the villain a mean, ugly old man… the idea that a innocent-looking little boy could be so angry and cruel was, I thought, pretty chilling.
Of course it didn’t really happen. I was making a point.
Complexity? Sure. My kid amazes me with how much he can understand at this age. But I also know that he’s three years old and he doesn’t like to be scared just for fun. I’m sure he will in a few years. But as his father I know that it wouldn’t be funny to jump out of the closet in a monster mask and scream, because he’s three years old and by the same token, it won’t be entertaining to talk about mommy and daddy dying.
It’s obvious that I can pick and choose other books/movies for him that don’t deal with such dark subjects, but I think the point of the OP was that Disney makes entertainment for kids, including three year olds, and so it’s a little incongruous that you would have to screen it so carefully.
Oh, I never saw it as a kid. My best friend had an ancient VHS copy she got somewhere, and her (older, 8yo) daughter was watching it. That was a couple of years ago.
So, I take it you never saw The Fox and the Hound, eh?
Oh, and I too was terrified and remain traumatized by the Care Bear movie. Thinking about it even now, I may pee myself.
OOH. That! That was what I read in my “My Book House” edition from approximately the 50’s, complete with detailed engravings.
Wonderful set of stories. I’ve told my brother never to throw out the set because I want to keep them, thanks very much.
Hmm. Terrifying bits. I think there was a bit from one of those Disney math shorts where Donald is sneaking along, pauses like he’s being tapped on the shoulder, and promptly gets turned into an orange block figure that goes marching merrily along. That involuntary transformation terrified the snot out of me, and still creeps me out today even though I *know * it’s irrational.
And that marching elephant series from Dumbo, where the pink elephants are marching along from left to right on the screen. “GAH! It’s the Rise of the Elephants! Flee for your lives, you fools!”
Oddly enough, the character death didn’t bother me when I was watching all those movies.
I sort of like the emotion-stretching aspect of fairy tales, although like Diddledog I use the illustrations as talking points while I make up a story more suited to their comprehension. Little Red Riding Hood? Stay on the path and don’t go around telling your business to strangers. Goldilocks? Ran out of the bears’ house and all the way home to her Mommy, and never wandered around the woods by herself again.
The only Disney we’ve gotten through so far is Fantasia - at first the dinosaurs in the “Rites of Spring” freaked them out, but now they know the Tyrannosaurus is just looking for some lunch.
OTOH, Elmo in Grouchland deftly plays scary segments against reassuring ones. And Mandy Patinkin’s eyebrows, they’re poetry in motion.
The way to handle Disney movies is to keep two things in mind:
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Kids have VERY short memories; they forget the bad stuff by the end of the movie.
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As a parent, you can explain things they have trouble understanding or accepting, and, if need be, can prepare them in advance. That does NOT mean communicating your own unreasonable fears of having your children see something “awful” or “scary.”
We don’t let kids see enough of the real world these days…
Nobody forgets bambi’s mother dying. The rest of the movie, maybe, but when asked “What happens in Bambi?” nine out of ten people will reply “his mother gets shot, right?”
I appreciate that kids enjoy movies with dark moments as well as good… I guess when I watched Lady and the Tramp I was just too aware that before the end of this movie, SOMETHING AWFUL IS GONNA HAPPEN. Here’s a list of things I thought was gonna happen:
Lady (as a puppy) was going to be thrown out of the house for barking too much.
Lady (grown) was going to get neglected and thrown onto the street when the baby arrived.
The baby would grow up and be really awful to Lady, and she’d bite him, and get sent to the pound.
The Tramp was going to get put down.
The Tramp was going to get badly bitten by the rat and die.
Two awful cats, both racist stereotypes, would show up and sing a catchy, if racist, song, and I would hum it in an innapropriate setting, such as a chinese restaurant, and get dagger-looks from the staff. Actually, that did happen.
Ok, so the dogs all survived the movie, almost; The bloodhound gets hit by the truck at the end and is presented as dead… then LO!! Here he is alive. We tormented your young’uns for NO GOOD REASON. Bambi’s mother dying, or Mufasa dying… they all were essential plot points in their respective movies; this was just mean spirited. So I guess my point is that Lady and the Tramp is a mean film, and Walt Disney was a big mean doody head.
It’s hardly, of course, just Disney. Remember all those great books you read when you were a kid about animals? Disney didn’t write Old Yeller. In Sounder they kill the dog TWICE. And shall we discuss Where the Red Fern Grows? The Yearling, which isn’t even about a dog? Black Beauty?
The first time I saw Fantasia, the multiplying brooms and buckets of water scared the crap out of me. I don’t really know why. And The Lion King does have a pretty good reason for killing Mufasa, since it’s kind of integral to the work upon which it’s based…
Movies never really bothered me - it was books that did the trick. I read Where the Red Fern Grows? once and I will never, ever read it again. Same with The Young Black Stallion. Although I did once catch Flowers in the Attic when I had really bad insomnia (13,14?). Now that movie…ugh.