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The original “Bambi”

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Re: The original “Bambi”

#61

Post by ineedasername »

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…

Well, off the top of my head from Grimm:

--Cinderella: mean deceptive people might get their feat chopped off & eyes pecked out. (In short, Karma. though unfortunately the world doesn't quite work that way, but there's still a bit of "the world can be ugly" too)

--Cat & The Mouse: Never forget that the nature of a predator is predation

--Hansel & Gretel: Don't take candy from strangers. Also, if something looks to good to be true, it probably is. And also that maybe little children are delicious? I mean, the witch had to have her reasons.

--Rumpelstiltskin: Okay, there's some mixed messages here. Lying father, malicious greedy king, deceptive girl... Rumpelstiltskin comes out looking like a hero, saving the girl's life 3 times but then get's cheated out of his last payment & kills himself. But he also wanted her baby. She agreed, but still... anyway no one really comes off smelling of roses but Rumpelstiltskin is the only one dead.

--The Peasant in Heaven: Truly good rich people are very rare

--Snow White: Alright, maybe this one shouldn't on the list. Could be there's a lesson about jealousy in there, and also that maybe you should try the Heimlich maneuver on someone that keels over while eating, but in the end it kind of boils down to some fairly creepy borderline necrophilia.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#62

Post by drakonka »

I have just realized that I may not have seen the Bambi movie I thought I saw as a child, because I could swear I remember seeing some of the scenes this article claims never made it into the film. I remember the oak leaf conversation from somewhere, as well as some of the harsher scenes they said were cut from the Disney version. I wonder if I read the book and forgot about it.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#63

Post by DocTomoe »

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…

Watership Down is mostly traumatising as a cartoon. I've read the book last year, and it feels a lot more as a deeply mythologic piece than a psychedelic horror. It's essentially a shorter Lord of the Rings, with bunnies. Highly recommended.

(Also, the recent Netflix adaption of the material is a lot closer to the source material than the 1980s-era cartoon).

Re: The original “Bambi”

#64

Post by photochemsyn »

For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the horse) knows what's going on.

Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable.

However I disagree with claims that these kind of works 'traumatize' young readers. It's just an introduction to life's realities - everyone has to die, nature is beautiful but also violent, and humans can be crueler to each other than any animal ever could. Kids aren't traumatized by reading, or by playing video games - if trauma occurs, it's due to things like war and poverty and neglect and abuse.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#65

Post by pjc50 »

sentrysapper wrote: post #5
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…

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

The problem with the university of life is it gives the test first and the curriculum afterwards.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#66

Post by mariodiana »

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…

I'm traumatized merely from reading the Wikipedia entry!

Re: The original “Bambi”

#67

Post by vanderZwan »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #25
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.…

I loved a cartoon growing up as a child, called Alfred J. Kwak [0], a Dutch / Japanese series about a duck and his adventures; I believe a lot of it is on youtube if you want. The first two episodes are about two anthropomorphised ducks that meet, fall in love, move into a clog and have a spawn of babies, happily ever after until the whole family but Alfred get killed by a car. That was err. a pretty brutal thing for…

> etc.

This "etc." includes the aids epidemic, North/South Korea-like country, and environmental topics like whaling and the seas being overfished, acid rain, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Yeah the show was A Lot and I love it for that.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#68

Post by DocTomoe »

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…

> (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 cauldron full of vipers?)

That's the variant I got told in my childhood (1980s West Germany). It always amuses me that these simple facts seem to be cruel and horrific to Americans.

Also, "Hänsel and Gretel" is a tale about parental abandonment, stranger danger, cannibalism, and burning old women alive, then forgiving said parental abandonment (but only after the kids bring back treasure).

And "Red Riding Hood" is essentially about sexual child abuse.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#69

Post by ineedasername »

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…

>"Requiem for a Dream"

Well, if we're thinking about the moral messages of some of these old tales, I've always thought Requiem could be a good movie to show tweens+ as a cautionary against drug abuse. If Disney threw in an evil witch selling smack, a few catchy songs, a handful of dead parents, and a handsome prince to kiss Harry's arm back to life then I bet they'd have... well, maybe not a hit. But it would be something, and I'd watch it.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#70

Post by isolli »

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…

Children's songs are also often cruel. "Il etait un petit navire" tells the story of a young sailor about to be eaten because the ship ran out of food. "Sur le pont du Nord" tells the story of a brother and a sister who ran off to a ball without their parents' approval and die when the bridge collapses. "Il etait une bergere" tells the story of a young shepherd who kills her mischievous cat in anger. These are examples from French folklore, but I would be surprised if it was different in other cultures.
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