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More specifically the underlying themes or imagery of their movies you never noticed as a kid. I was listening to some Disney songs (again) today. The idea to make this thread came to me when I was listening to "Hellfire" from Hunchback of Notre Dame Like...dang man! As a kid this movie was about a deformed man finding love and acceptance. He befriends Esmeralda, the Captain, and becomes a Hero from a horrible "Christian" man who burns down parts of Paris to find her in order to keep Quasimodo in a tower. This scene was really above my head somehow back then xD

most disney music from before he died is pretty messed up if you pay attention

Well...in the original story, no one saves the girl...and the hunchback joins her corpse, just laying there until he dies as well. So Disney toned it down a bit.

Hunchback of Notre Dame was after he died though...although yes before he died they can be messed up. More specifically I think of the Black Cauldron. That is the darkest one ever...and I'm told by someone the only movie where blood is shed? Never tried to confirm this.

Can you give me an example aside from the obvious I just mentioned?

@Yokuutsu: They toned down and tweaked (for better or worse) several stories...like all of them. I heard this from someone else. Did Quasi die by lying there (so the book had a romantic ending) or was he also mortally wounded at that point so it was more brutal as well as romantic? I am assuming the book was romantic. I am thinking of Romeo and Juliet ^^;

To my knowledge, he was being a creepy necropilliac and just laid there until he died of thirst/hunger. He did not even try to save the girl at all. So it's kind of crrepy.

At least that's what I've heard.

And I do know that wasn't the only one, but it's the only one that came to mind.

Ah Disney...the things I could tell you.... There's a lot of books about the studio and the man, and it wasn't all mice and glass slippers.

As to a few things already mentioned:
Blood is rarely shed in a Disney movie, while violence is not taboo, that was to an extent. This is why when Disney was looking to purchase Studio Ghibli rights they put out Princess Mononoke in hopes that it would be too bloody for the company's taste. That being said, you'll occasionally see a bit of blood in a few other Disney films, but not much, a cut, a scratch, maybe a drop.

The other thing to remember is that Disney movies are all based on fairytales, and they often have to 'dumb them down' to make the really children's stories. Cinderella? The step sisters cut off part of their feet to fit the shoe, and birds remove their eyes on the way to the wedding. Snow White? The prince is a bit of a necrophiliac in that story. Sleeping Beauty? A kiss isn't what woke that princess. Little Mermaid? No happy time with ehr prince, she's sea foam at his wedding. So, really, the stories are all a bit...modified by the time Disney adds in it's own bit of twisted.

Lyrics, yeah, Hellfire is one of the more risqué songs out there. Even when I watched it I was like O.O Wow disney said 'hell'.

I also love that Disney's not so subtle issue with women is always manifested by a dead disney mom. It's a rare disney movie with a living mom/queen.

Not to mention all the innuendos in the backgrounds of their older movies. Little Mermaid for example; the underwater castle was purposely drawn in a way that if you look at it well lets just say you can spot some "naughty parts" on those towers. Also if you look closely at the original copies of the movie, the priest has a stiffy.

While I never noticed it, apparently in Beauty and the Beast, one of the pools of water actually has the word "sex" in it.

Pretty much anything we saw as children had been seriously "censored" compared to their original story but still had innuendo all over the place. Several times I've watched some of the movies I did when I was a kid and thought "...That wasn't there when I was a kid was it? o_o"

Disney and its subtext makes me lol so hard. Apparently, the word 'sex' shows up A LOT in Disney, but they claimed it was actually 'SFX' (hok)
some of the lyrics in Hunchback are pretty extreme, and I was really surprised at the violent death of Scar in the Lion King

but... oooo disney.

Looks like "SFX" in The Lion King to me since the bottom part of what would be an 'E' is missing.

Disney has been griped at for lots of things, frontrunners being Racism, Patriarchy, maintanance of the status quo, etc. There's a phrase about Disney that makes a good point I think that being, "the frog only turns into a prince if he was a prince before." To their credit Disney (the company) is getting better though. Mulan is argued as their first move into active female protaganists and for once she's not after a husband, though she gets on in the end anyway. ;). And she has a mom!

Things like The Lion King and Aladdin reference the whole status quo thing. Challengers to authority are bad guys, ie Scar and Jafar. Add in the racism card with Jafar looking dark and non-cucasian and hero Aladdin who is suspiciously white looking. All is well in the end when the usurper bad guys are offed and the proper person assumes authority or is granted authority by someone with a right to do so.

I personally thing Disney got a bit gunshy after The Lion King with the gripes about it being too violent. The older movies are much more dramatic really, like Maleficent's death scene in Sleeping Beauty. There is blood there but it's purple, and I do think that Prince Phillip is among the more manly of the succession of Disney princes ;). Older kiddy stories were outright nasty sometimes, but people tended to die a lot more of things that modern medicine considers minir so death wasn't as big a shock, I don't think.

Disney does mangle a lot of stuff but I suppose it's not necessarily worse than other movie interpretations of stories. Folk tales like Sleeping Beauty are up for grabs though, given there are no original pieces to go back to. Fairy tales like The Little Mermaid that actually have an original literary source do get messed up though. Take pretty much everything from The Little Mermaid and reverse it and you pretty much have the original story. King Triton doesn't run things, his mom does. The Little Mermaid (not named in the story) is the only one of her sisters that doesn't decorate her garden with human things from shipwrecks, and she waits patiently until she's 16 when she's allowed a special trip to see the surface. She's not after a man either. Prince Eric is a guy she sees and happens to like. Her real goal is an immortal soul, which Mermaids don't have. They live for 300 years then die and all that's left of them is sea foam. The Little Mermaid though, is offered the change to get an immortal soul by wandering as an air spirit for 300 years. She peeks in windows and watches children and if they are being good she smiles and a year is taken off and if they are bad she weeps and a year is added. Lengthy convoluted method of telling your kids to behave.

All that said, Disney was a pretty amazing guy, if a little quirkey. The technology the came up with was fancy stuff, like the multi-layered camera with different painted images that gave an animated film a 3D look, ie. the beginning of Pinnochio.

Surprised me when I learned that Disney actually did a collaborative work with Salvador Dali. Never heard of Disney as a surrealist but apparently cartoons about a talking mouse were something of an oddity at the time.

-is being educated by other Trisphites-
O:

I don't think I'll be able to retain half this stuff but it's fascinating for sure! x3

@Quiet: Aladdin looks white? ...Um no they all look Arabic to me...with exception to the Sultan. My sympathy for him came from his background. Where he was a good person Jafar who presumably clawed his way up to position from a similar poverty Aladdin was gave me sympathy for the villain as well. Strangely I thought this as a kid, and who knows maybe I'm really stretching to reach that conclusion.

And yes, Prince Phillip is the most manly of princes I think. He doesn't look like a full adult but he has gusto to actually try and kill something. He was surprisingly useful in escaping and killing Maleficent in Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep (if that counts lol).

On the plus side Disney hopped aboard the environmental conservation train and racial acceptance with Pocahontas.

LOL well Phillip was only about 19-20 in Sleeping Beauty, so no, not a full adult yet.

And...don't get me started on what Disney did to the story of Pocahontas...oh god.... Talk about taking a story and spinning it on it's head.

And I do have to laugh, in the first Aladin he wasn't as Arabic looking as he was by the end of the third...or was it fourth...movie. Though by then Jasmine was a giant eyed freak of nature O.O

The gripe against Pocahontas was that she supposedly looked too Asian for a Native American. From what I've heard of the actual events, it's a pretty miserable story.

Arguments against Aladdin included the American accent and lack of beard and the fact that he was lighter skinned than Jafar, or something like that. In the original tale he was apparently the son of a Chinese merchant ;). (That is, if the details in the game "Tales of the Arabian Nights" are correct).

Never thought about things like that, Jurinjo. I think because I usually try not to read too much into a movie and at the time when I first matched most of them it's not something that would have really occurred to me.

Disney gets lambasted for a lot of things, but the do pay attention and try to remedy things. Look! Prince Naveen doesn't even have blue eyes! ;).

Uhm, highlights of my gripe against Pocohantas:
Disney side
~She's 18ish
~She falls in love with John Smith
~She can magically speak English(yes, I know it was so the movie wasn't beyond stupid, but still)
~She wears a snazzy deerskin dress and has long flowing hair

Historically
~She's 12-13
~She is fascinated by the Whites, but John Smith is in his 30s
~Communication between their cultures was super slow, often both cultures didn't have words/concepts for what the other talking about
~As a child she would have had a small patch of hair, and run around in a breech cloth and that's about it.

Most, yes, done so that Disney could actually show it. However, I lived in VA for years and had to learn that stupid story in every grade, I hate when they muck about with real history. Stories are fine, they're just a take on a specific message.

Dont forget going to England and dying of tuberculosis over there. Apparently there was an advisor or such that was named Percy. He appears in Disney's rendition...as a dog.


This is not from the most reliable source I think, but I heard that Greece demanded an apology from Disney for Hercules. I certainly wouldn't be surprised. I was tempted to walk out of the theater but there wasn't really much else to do.

Yeah, that's the sequel... sequels always make me want to beat my head in. I was just nitpicking the first one LOL At least the second one has the right guy in it!


Well, uhm...if Greece did demand an apology they'd first want them to change the Fing name! In Greek mythology his name is Heracles, Hercules is the Roman version of his name. Beyond that...they don't have much to complain about, their mythology has been twisted so many times to end up in some really bad(PJatLT) movies, plays, stories and tv shows.

Reading this thread has made me sad. There is a documentary called Waking Sleeping Beauty and its about all the good Disney movies made between 1989 and 1994. And how Beauty and the Beast was the best movie they made before their amazing song artist died. I suggest any one who wants to know about Disney and its struggles watch that movie.