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The original “Bambi”

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Re: The original “Bambi”

#31

Post by jihadjihad »

senko wrote: post #6

Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story. Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more grisly than the adaptation. Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cau…

Don't forget about Pinocchio, who in the original Italian children's book is tortured and hanged for being such a "bad boy" [0][1].

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio#Fictional_character_...

1: https://slate.com/culture/2011/10/carlo-collodi-s-pinocchio-...

The part of the movie where all of the boys on Pleasure Island begin to turn into donkeys always freaked me out as a kid.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#32

Post by kumarsw »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #27
spanktheuser wrote: post #20

It wasn't the first horror film my children saw (they watched Jaws, Alien, and Stranger Things) but the most terrifying and traumatic experience they've seen was the shipwreck scene in the Black Stallion. If you want to frighten children, murder what they love while they watch: their parents and animals. Coincidence both Bambi and the Black Stallion were written during or in the immediate aftermath of world wars?

One thing I've really noticed is that a lot of people - children and adults both - have no qualms about depictions of violence and murder of people in media, but they get really squeamish when it's (cute) animals. I wonder what causes that, is it just a kind of desensitization? Or a built-in kind of justice that bad people dying is fine but innocent animals isn't?

This is a pretty well-observed phenomenon that the relative sadness of humans and cute animals dying in movies and real life is (presumably) reversed. Someone had even coined a term for it - “dog-dying-in-movie sad.” I’m at a loss to explain why, but it feels like Peak Internet Discussion so hopefully someone here will feel like expanding on it.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#33

Post by youngNed »

vanderZwan wrote: post #12
Ralfp wrote: post #2

I’ve grown watching „The Animals of Farthing Wood” (1993 cartoon). It has episode showing family of mice struggling to survive and worried about future for their babies. In following episode we get shot of same mice family impaled on needles by birds going to eat them. https://www.wykop.pl/cdn/c3201142/comment_EkpfJKfyX8WRKQnr7H... Entire story is told around forest dying out and animals struggling to survive in it.…

> It was once called „that animals cartoon that traumatised generations”. Although I can imagine this being quite horrific, I also don't recall that this cartoon was all that upsetting me when I watched it as a child. Then again I grew up in the countryside so maybe it was less shocking to me because I already knew what nature was like. When it comes to animal cartoons I think Watership Down and The Plague Dogs were…

> The Plague Dogs

I think a LOT of UK school kids were truamatised by this, a lot of teachers, saw it thought 'oh, same author (Richard Adams) and director (Martin Rosen) as Watership Down, lets stick the kids in front of this while we do something else.

Man, that film was harrowing.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#34

Post by shrikant »

Semaphor wrote: post #23
senko wrote: post #6

Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story. Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more grisly than the adaptation. Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cau…

The Brothers Grimm already toned the horror down. Sleeping Beauty was based on a tale called Sun, Moon, and Talia [0] which has the prince having sex and impregnating her while she sleeps, and she only wakes up from her newborns sucking the splint out of her finger when she can’t find the breast. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun,_Moon,_and_Talia

My mind is blown -- that is quite some story (all of it, not just the bits in your comment!), thanks for the link! :-O

Re: The original “Bambi”

#35

Post by dijit »

circlefavshape wrote: post #9
brobdingnagians wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been split on this. On the one hand it is a bit unpleasant and can be traumatizing, and we tend to shy away from unpleasant things, but on the other hand lots of generations grew up on Grimm's Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and learned a bit about how difficult life can be and the consequences of moral failings or lack of hard work. It is important to prepare children for the fact that life…

> learned a bit about how difficult life can be and the consequences of moral failings or lack of hard work I don't remember anything about consequences of moral failings in the old fairy tales, just random violence and chaos. In Sleeping Beauty the prince's mother turns out to be an ogre who tries to eat Beauty's children, but luckily the prince returns in time and kills her. Where's the moral lesson there? Don't mo…

> Where's the moral lesson there?

The moral of the story is that monsters live deep inside even the people we trust most.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#36

Post by russellbeattie »

senko wrote: post #6

Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story. Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more grisly than the adaptation. Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cau…

Trying to imagine the boiling cauldron full of vipers. Were they magical vipers that could live in boiling water? Would Maleficent really be able to feel any snake bites as she was being boiled alive? Huge plot hole. 17th century writers didn't think this through.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#37

Post by whywhywhywhy »

spanktheuser wrote: post #20

It wasn't the first horror film my children saw (they watched Jaws, Alien, and Stranger Things) but the most terrifying and traumatic experience they've seen was the shipwreck scene in the Black Stallion. If you want to frighten children, murder what they love while they watch: their parents and animals. Coincidence both Bambi and the Black Stallion were written during or in the immediate aftermath of world wars?

Parents being murdered is in plenty of kids movies. I don't think it has much to do with war I think it's more just you're writing a story with kids as the protagonists. How do you build a plot where they can overcome things if their parents are still in the picture.

Don't think its much deeper than that.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#39

Post by fellowniusmonk »

lm28469 wrote: post #21
sentrysapper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life will give those hard lessons out for free - why build a curriculum for it?

Because you can go decades without any kind of serious events in your life, living in a perfect bubble until shit hits the fan. That's when you learn nothing prepared you for that and no one cares or knows how to behave. That's kind of the main reason we started to write stuff down, to learn things from the past through other's experiences, so that you don't have to feel alone going through every traumatising events…

The hardest part about being involved in a life altering event/catastrophe is that even having the preperation you're often blindsided by someone's or some groups avarice.

My father who was financially devastated by people close to him passed on one insanely strong piece of advice that is superior to any fairy tale and saved me.

1. Always have a legal agreement at the start even/especially if it's friends and family.

2. Always have that legal agreement reviewed by your own attorney.

Years later I'm finally getting over the sudden violence and the hostility, but the law made sure their plans to intimidate, force, steal and defraud came to nothing.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#40

Post by buro9 »

jihadjihad wrote: post #31
senko wrote: post #6

Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story. Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more grisly than the adaptation. Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cau…

Don't forget about Pinocchio, who in the original Italian children's book is tortured and hanged for being such a "bad boy" [0][1]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio#Fictional_character_... 1: https://slate.com/culture/2011/10/carlo-collodi-s-pinocchio-... The part of the movie where all of the boys on Pleasure Island begin to turn into donkeys always freaked me out as a kid.

Ah, this reminds me of a review of the book I stumbled upon recently that is eye opening... eye opening as it shows how the context of the reader is imprinted on their experience of the reading.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R1JOT49B5OUAL0/...

Even the opening of the review is... something:

> To be honest, I struggled with this book. I found the main character incredibly frustrating. He almost always did the wrong thing. I mean, almost ALWAYS. Well, people sometimes do (including me!), but what he does is also almost always incredibly stupid. Well, again, people do stupid things (including me!), and the main character is, after all, a puppet who is only moments old at the beginning of the book, so how is he to know better? Fair question, but still, I found the book hard work. He just did not seem to learn from his mistakes.

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