Disney - Closeup

Well what can I say, the inner child I spoke about in my first post was crushed by this lecture. It was very harsh in my opinion. To sum it up Disney films can be interpreted in different ways. To me Beauty and the Beast was always nothing but a happy love story in which good triumphs over evil, and the witches curse is broken due to Belle’s love for the beast. However, according to our lecture this is a story about an abusive relationship, and is teaching young girls that if you stick with an abusive man you’ll find his inner ‘prince’. They backed this up with interviews with American children, which I personally found quite disturbing. I could go on but I won’t shatter your innocence. Although maybe the perception of innocence in these films isn’t quite as innocent as it seems... I decided to go further and have a look at some anti-disney websites to see why other groups feel Disney isn’t ‘all it’s cracked up to be’.

The first site I found was the Catholic League. Although this isn’t so much about Disney films as to the Disney owned company Miramax and Disney owned channel ABC. It shocked me to read that so many groups in America have signed a boycott against Disney. And here I thought Disney was loved by all. The problem these groups have, as far as I could see, are how Disney represents the Catholic faith. I wanted to look into the relationship between Disney and religion further and found this site. This gave me more information on why people have a problem with Disney animations in relation to religion. Some of the examples I found quite shocking.
They spoke about offensive sexual messages:

-”In Aladdin, there is a scene in which Aladdin is said to have uttered the phrase “Teenagers take off your clothes.””
-”In The Little Mermaid there is a scene in which a priest becomes aroused while presiding over the wedding.”
-In the Little Mermaid again ”there is a phallic symbol as one of the towers in the castle on the movie cover”

-”In The Lion King, there is a scene in which Simba lies down at the edge of a cliff and the dust that rises in the air spells out the letters SEX (Havoc, 1997)”


I decided to go and look up other opinions of these ‘facts’, and nearly all can be argued equally against, except for the image on the little mermaid cover, apparently that was a mistake and later changed in newer releases. I guess these things are a matter of perception. If you ‘see’ the word sex written in dust in the Lion King then you will have a different feeling towards the film. On the other hand if you just see it as dust you may feel this is all just hype and a reason to cause arguments. If you look closely enough at the tower on the front of the Little Mermaid promotional material and see a penis then your perception of that film will differ. However, I personally feel, that if you look that closely at a video cover you just want to find something to complain about. I can see how people would be offended if so many people around you are saying that these are ‘bad influences’. I mean we are talking about children, and parents are likely to worry if they feel inappropriate messages are being conveyed to their children via supposedly safe medium.
This brings me back to an earlier blog in which I spoke about religions place in our society today. I have been reading the book “The Gospel According to The Simpsons” and I think I have a few corrections to make on some points I made on that blog. I guess The Simpson isn’t as ‘blasphemous’ as I’d thought. It puts across some really good points:

-When something goes wrong the characters turn to God and pray out loud and usually get a response or an action e.g. Bart prays that school will be cancelled and his prayer is answered : “I asked for a miracle, and I got it. I gotta study man!” and when he passes he acknowledges why: “Part of this D minus belongs to God”
-Bart always speaks openly to God, he admits his flaws and voices “faith in Gods ability” : “I know it’s asking a lot, but if anyone can do it, you can!”
-Lisa represents Christianity as envisioned by modern day believers. She focuses on the moral side of life. The right and the wrong. She also tried to meld science with belief, in her own way.
-There is representation of God, the Devil and angels.
-Most characters believe in the physical existence of heaven and hell.
-They attend Church every Sunday and say Grace before their meals.

From my first impression of The Simpsons I dismissed the religious references as humor, that they show Christianity in a bad light. However now I’ve read this book and looked closer I can see how wrong I was. Even bad boy Bart is an example of a faithful Christian. Some of the results of surveys I found quite interesting. According to one study a full third of all episodes include at least one religious reference. Another study of 30% of the episodes saw 70% containing religious references and around 10% had religious themes for the whole episode. I guess religion is more prominent in TV than I’d first thought. Maybe religion is still sewn deep within our culture, it’s just hard to notice because we are used to it. Maybe the Simpsons have helped this; Treating religion as an everyday occurrence, a part of our lives and by not making a big deal about it. Maybe religion can prevail.

My new information about Disney can be related to these cartoons. At first I brushed over a lot of the themes shown in Disney as I did with the Simpsons, my excuse being I was four when I saw my first Disney, however as I grew up and learned about Walt Disney’s belief systems I saw some of the more obvious references. I can see how Snow White has racist references. I can see how the Lion King can be claimed to be racist, as you have two tribes of different colours fighting for survival; the lighter tribe winning and out-casting the others. However I don’t think either of these films convey these morals to children. I grew up with the Lion King, and even have the DVD in my room as I speak, and it never conveyed any ideas of racism to me. Personally I picked up on themes of family, loyalty and friendship. As Simba and Scar are related I can’t see how they can be considered as different ‘races’, they share the same blood line. As they say in the Lion King 2 “we are one”, speaking about the relationship between Simba and his daughter, and also between Simbas tribe and the remainder of Scar’s followers. Also the beginning song for the lion king is the ‘Circle of Life’. Mufasa, Simbas father, speaks of how “we are all connedted in the great circle of life” therefore he is speaking of the unity not of division. Then again it’s obvious I am biased in my opinions. However I do feel that this and, most likely, all other controversy surrounding the animations can be argued for and against with equal ferocity. I feel the problem is more about individual human perception and how we decide to take things. I guess it all comes down to the usual ‘two sides to every story’. There is no right and wrong answer as to whether Disney is morally right or wrong.

However I do worry about the fact that Disneys deal with Ladybird prevents any version of fairytales, other than Disneys own, from being published. Ladybird is the largest children’s book producer in the UK according to our lecture, although I could only conclude that it was in the top ten from my further research. This means that what children are exposed to from a young age is controlled by a huge multinational company. If children have little choice as to which version of a story they get to read then they will grow up with a much more biased and narrow minded view on the world, I feel. Every child has the right to hear different versions of stories and make up their own mind. It’s not so much about multinationalism as freedom of knowledge. I think I have rambled a bit on this blog but I had so much to say and wasn’t quite sure how to put it across.