Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 8, 1993 TAG: 9302080253
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DISNEY CAN BE DUMB
BACK IN the good ol' days when the Lee Theater on Williamson Road was still a place you could take your kids to the movies, Papa took us to see everything Walt Disney made.Even then, in the late '50s and early '60s, we were watching re-releases, but we thought them new, all made just for us. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." "Sleeping Beauty." "Cinderella." "Bambi."
Then the wonderful cartoon movies disappeared. Or so it seemed.
I'm not enough of a film historian to know what really happened to Disney's cartoon movies - although I do know that children grow more jaded in their youthful years than at any other time in their lives, and then shun, with cocky sneers, anything that smacks of childlikeness. Even if there were cartoon movies then (and I think there weren't), we wouldn't have been caught dead at them.
But with the more recent advent of my aunthood - and the studio's savvy video re-releases - I've discovered Disney again with this generation's children. "The Jungle Book," which I've never seen in a theater. "Fantasia." "Dumbo." "101 Dalmatians."
And, of course, the new cartoon movies: "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin" - which I and a theaterful of adults enjoyed without a single child among us.
I've loved them all, old and new, those magical worlds in which anything can happen. Although none is without fault: Under a contemporary gaze, "Dumbo" is shockingly racist, "Snow White" laughably romantic, "Bambi" stunningly sexist. But those movies are products of their times; in context, perhaps they can be forgiven and used as teaching tools.
However, the faulty messages in the products of our times - "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aladdin" - are more difficult for me to forgive.
Snow White and Cinderella are beautiful young girls, perfected types of their times: slender and graceful, with perfect white skin and fetchingly rounded arms. Too pretty, too white to be real. But young girls, nevertheless, with princes that look like graceful youths really look.
Aladdin - also, supposedly, a youth - has better pects and biceps than the Terminator. And the "girls" of these three movies sport impossible wasp-waists and breasts that would make Barbie blush.
Must even Disney's cartoons support Madison Avenue's insidious, ubiquitous message that impossibly built bodies are the norm for which we should strive?
Girls and boys don't need yet one more advertisement pushing them towards anorexia, low self-esteem and manic exercise. Cinderella and Prince Charming may be perfect, but they're not impossible; no natural teen-age boy or girl looks like Aladdin and his princess look. To reinforce those images as ideals in children is criminal.
You say I'm overreacting. But had I complained, when they were released, about the crows' characterizations in "Dumbo" or the stag vs. doe depictions of "Bambi" you might have said the same.
We must be aware of the subtle signals we send our children; they receive the subtle signals clearly, too. And the subtle signals of the cartoons, like the not-so-subtle signals of most media these days is this: Your bodies, kids, just aren't good enough.
And the bodies that we hold up to them as "good enough" are, in fact, impossible. This is a cruel, destructive message from any source. But especially from Disney.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.