Ok a silly thing I was just thinking of... In all Disney movies.. all the moms are killed or missing

[southernleftylady]

lol
just was watching Finding Nemo with my son and watched as the mom got eaten.. then i was thinking in Bambi the mom gets shot..
Little Mermaid... no mom
Cinderella .. Mom died and there is an evil step mom
Snow White...
etc etc ect..
why in fairy tales all the moms are killed or MIA? lol
just a silly thing i noticed

[geiger]

1. & if u go 2 Disneyworld w/ your kids, there r 1000 others yelling, "mom, mom"

not dad, dad.

Was Lion King a Disney movie. A dad got kilt in that one (I remember coz it was the first movie my oldest ever watched, when he was two; I have regretted it ever since, even being a mom)

[southernleftylady]

3. very true very true :)

[Deep13]

2. Dumbo

The Lion King broke with tradition and killed of the father instead.

Don't know, but it happens so regularly in their films that it has become a joke.

[southernleftylady]

6. aww. i forgot about dumbo.. which she is called crazy ;) lol

[Left Is Write]

30. The 15 Dalmatian puppies have their mom and dad too.

Though the other 86 they adopted apparently didn't.

[Coventina]

4. That's pretty standard for children's literature (and now movies)

You have to dispose of the parents in order to get the child (or baby animal) into the interesting situations and adventures.

[sniffa]

5. sexist buLLshit

LittLe mermaid? cutting her off her tongue to siLence her.

[Left Is Write]

31. The original story didn't end with her marrying the prince either.

[JackBeck]

7. It's part of the gay agenda.

Since us homosexual men harbor a deep hatred for our mothers and since Hollywood, or anyone in the arts for that matter, is gay, it's been our plan for centuries to do away with the feminine role models in society.

Uh oh. I've said too much.

[southernleftylady]

8. lol

[billyskank]

9. Remember Disney didn't write all those stories

Cinderalla and Snow White are certainly not theirs, although I'm sure they'd like you to think they are. They may have altered the standard stories, so I'm not sure which parts are original and which parts are Disneyfied. But anyway. It could have been that way in the originals.

[southernleftylady]

15. i did say "fairy tales" in the op but i was just thinking disney because i just got finished ...

watching one of their movies :)

[SteveM]

36. Neither is Bambi. "Bambi: A Life in the Woods" is by Felix Salten.

Salten was a literary critic from Austria who fled to the U.S. as he saw the rise of fascism in his country. His short novel is a fairly accurate rendering of the Red Deer of Europe. This was jiggered by Disney to fit the bio-fantasy of some sort of deer in the U.S. Many critics have seen Disney's spin as a parable on the "absent father" sociology of modernizing U.S. culture. Interesting, since the distant almost absent nature of Bambi's father in the novel is how deer are: once they spread their seed (promiscuously to a fault), males cut out and hang with other males. Salten's accuracy with the life of the Red Deer owes to his experience as a deer hunter: he owned his own hunting preserve on the outskirts of Vienna.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

37. I read one of Felix Salten's short stories

It was in an old collection of fiction published in Esquire magazine. Totally weird too.
Musta been an interesting guy.

[noonwitch]

10. Sleeping Beauty had a mom

and a dad. Her dad had a name (Stefan), but her mother had no name.

[flamingyouth]

11. Yeah, that used to freak me out as a kid

I always preferred the wacky Warner Bros. cartoons instead. :D

[_testify_]

12. Know what else?

Steve Buscemi dies in almost every Coen Bros. movie he's in!

[ghostsofgiants]

14. Donny was a good bowler, and a good man.

He was one of us. He was a man who loved the outdoors... and bowling, and as a surfer he explored the beaches of Southern California, from La Jolla to Leo Carrillo and... up to... Pismo. And he was an avid bowler. He died, like so many young men of his generation, he died before his time. In your wisdom, Lord, you took him, as you took so many bright flowering young men at Khe Sanh, at Langdok, at Hill 364. These young men gave their lives. And so would Donny. Donny, who loved bowling. And so, Theodore Donald Karabotsos, in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, which you loved so well. Good night, sweet prince.

[_testify_]

21. !

:rofl:

[ghostsofgiants]

23. ...

:D

[NewJeffCT]

13. I think it's to show the overcoming of tragedy

There is something about youth overcoming the death of a parent or parents - look at the popularity of Harry Potter.

But, there are recent movies that are different -
both parents are in "Mulan" and both survive the movie (and, the guy she falls in love with has his father die in the movie);

In "Lion King", it was the father that died;

"Aladdin" seems to be an orphan, though Jasmine has only a father;

"The Incredibles" has both parents, and both survive the movie;

For many children, losing a mother might be a greater tragedy to overcome than losing a father. Though, there are a ton of exceptions and both are terrible events.

[Left Is Write]

33. In Toy Story, there's a mother but no father.

Of course, that one is not based on a fairy tale or other old story.

[applegrove]

16. Drama for children. Wasn't it Bambis father who died? I cannot remember.

Very manipulative. But soo too in children's books and films..the drama involves the family. Harry Potter, the Railway children and on and on. Seems there must be a conflict/fear/drama in movies to catch the audience and hook em. Films are no different for adults.

[Left Is Write]

29. Bambi's mother gets shot. Bambi is one movie I'll never buy for my kids.

Between the shooting and the forest fire, the movie traumatized my mother so much when she was a child in the 1940s that she didn't go to movies for years afterward. She still remembers how horrified she was.

[applegrove]

34. I don't know that I ever saw the whole movie. Just scenes. Glad I missed it.

[applegrove]

17. Who could forget Dumbo's mom rocking him, with her truck, from jail!

[southernleftylady]

18. lol sorry sorry lol.. but she was locked away for being "mad" lol

[applegrove]

19. I know. Jail!

[tigereye]

20. it's a pretty typical Disney thing

goes way back, probably all the way to Grimm's fairy tales and beyond, when you think about it.

And then the only ones who can help the kids are animals....

[pitohui]

22. it's a common childhood fantasy

it's playing to that old child's fantasy of how great life would be if mom were not in the way saying "no" all the time

i'm sure freud had something to say about it, or maybe jung

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

24. Oh, I don't know if it's that.

I'd think the concept of a world without a mother is terrifying to small children. It establishes mood.

[Left Is Write]

32. I think that's part of it too - the absence of a mother (and in some cases both parents)

represents the lack of a "protector" for the child in question.

Hansel and Gretel didn't have a mother either.

[mzteris]

25. I seem to remember

reading somewhere along the line, that Moms told those stories about "evil stepmoms" so their kids would still love them, the mom, and not the "new mom".

Women died A LOT way back then - during childbirth, etc. So having a stepmom was pretty much the "normal" order of business.

[southernleftylady]

26. very good point

[Shine]

27. Well, in Lion King it was the Dad who got killed.

Having a dead parent adds more drama to the story. I think it's just that simple. Disney knows the drill.

:hi:

[Left Is Write]

28. The Little Mermaid II had a mom - Ariel herself. :)

Too bad it wasn't as fun to watch as the original.

[CBHagman]

35. I think only Lady and the Tramp has two-parent families.

Canine AND human! Got to love it.

For what it's worth, I understand they considered giving Aladdin a mother and actually wrote songs for her, but eventually it was decided the character didn't work or something along those lines.

And something like The Three Lives of Thomasina (live action, not animated) manages to have it both ways on the parent issue. See it and see if you don't agree.

[Whoa_Nelly]

38. Women are a threat

Therefore, women are evil!




And to prove it, am adding this pic because I AM AN EVIL WOMAN!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[The Traveler]

39. That's easy

All these stories are about character overcoming adversity. What greater adversity than the loss of a parent? And, to a young child, the mother is the more significant parent and her loss represents the greatest adversity.

[Art_from_Ark]

40. I remember reading Disney comics in the '60s

based in the town of Duckburg--
There were NO mothers, save for one-- Ma Beagle, the leader of the Beagle Boys crime family.

And no fathers, as I recall-- only uncles.

[skygazer]

41. Well, the concept of the fairy tale is very old

Which is where most Disney stories have derived from. And they originated as cautionary tales - if you really disect them, they're very unpleasant stories. Hansel and Gretel are abandoned by their parents because they can't afford to feed them and then a witch damn near eats them. Dreadful. Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother is eaten by a wolf who almost eats Red. And on and on.

Over the years, they've been tweaked and rewritten but the main thread still runs through them. And even "modern" fairy tales like Nemo tend to follow the pattern.