(On a side note, this is why I'm generally anti-Disney, they have robbed the original tales of most of their meaning.)
I feel much the same way, but I do have to point out two things about Disney and their treatment of two classic stories that aren't quite fairy tales per se: Bambi, and Pinocchio.
Bambi the movie bears so very little resemblance to Bambi the book that I nearly choked when I finally got around to reading the book. The movie comes off as a story about woodland animals and why hunting is Bad. The book? No. The book, while it carries much of that same theme, is more concerned with animals' interaction with human beings, and what the creatures of the woods (and, to a lesser degree, tame animals like dogs) think of the human race. Felix Salten's scene of forest creatures arguing with a hunter's hound over the death of a fox is both thought-provoking and disturbing, and Bambi's understanding of the place of humanity in the cycle of life goes significantly farther than the movie would have you believe. In all fairness to Uncle Walt, he did want to include the scene where Bambi ultimately encounters a human; however, his animators pointed out that the audience would never sit still for it. Nevertheless I would still like to strangle the company for what they did to that book.
Pinocchio, on the other hand, STANK. Stank to the absolute highest heaven. Horrible horrible horrible. I tried reading it on the assumption that Disney had mangled the story the way they'd mangled Bambi, and you know what? As far as I'm concerned, they IMPROVED on Collodi's story. The original book is a mass of heavy-handed didactic episodes about why children should Always Listen and Always Obey. Pinocchio was more annoyingly self-centred and illogical than anything out of the Coyote legends of the American Southwest, and everyone's actions and reactions were so exaggerated as to be utterly unbelievable. Any single episode might have been tolerated as a story on its own, but taken all together Collodi's book is... well, one of the books that gives Children's Literature a very bad name. As tales of immaturity and growing up go, it should not even be shelved in the same library as Peter Pan. Disney managed to make something bearable out of it, and for that I salute them.
Otherwise, though... well, otherwise it's amazing how much they've managed to mangle the other fairy tales they've touched. Though I do have to hand it to them- Maleficent rocked as an Unseelie sorceress.
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Date: 2003-12-24 07:58 am (UTC)I feel much the same way, but I do have to point out two things about Disney and their treatment of two classic stories that aren't quite fairy tales per se: Bambi, and Pinocchio.
Bambi the movie bears so very little resemblance to Bambi the book that I nearly choked when I finally got around to reading the book. The movie comes off as a story about woodland animals and why hunting is Bad. The book? No. The book, while it carries much of that same theme, is more concerned with animals' interaction with human beings, and what the creatures of the woods (and, to a lesser degree, tame animals like dogs) think of the human race. Felix Salten's scene of forest creatures arguing with a hunter's hound over the death of a fox is both thought-provoking and disturbing, and Bambi's understanding of the place of humanity in the cycle of life goes significantly farther than the movie would have you believe. In all fairness to Uncle Walt, he did want to include the scene where Bambi ultimately encounters a human; however, his animators pointed out that the audience would never sit still for it. Nevertheless I would still like to strangle the company for what they did to that book.
Pinocchio, on the other hand, STANK. Stank to the absolute highest heaven. Horrible horrible horrible. I tried reading it on the assumption that Disney had mangled the story the way they'd mangled Bambi, and you know what? As far as I'm concerned, they IMPROVED on Collodi's story. The original book is a mass of heavy-handed didactic episodes about why children should Always Listen and Always Obey. Pinocchio was more annoyingly self-centred and illogical than anything out of the Coyote legends of the American Southwest, and everyone's actions and reactions were so exaggerated as to be utterly unbelievable. Any single episode might have been tolerated as a story on its own, but taken all together Collodi's book is... well, one of the books that gives Children's Literature a very bad name. As tales of immaturity and growing up go, it should not even be shelved in the same library as Peter Pan. Disney managed to make something bearable out of it, and for that I salute them.
Otherwise, though... well, otherwise it's amazing how much they've managed to mangle the other fairy tales they've touched. Though I do have to hand it to them- Maleficent rocked as an Unseelie sorceress.