7 Classic Disney Movies That Taught Us Terrible Lessons
Maybe we're too hard on Disney. After all, they simply remake classic stories in cartoon form. What's not to like?
Well, as you'll see, it all depends on just how much thought you apply to it. Here's seven pretty terrible lessons that Disney films taught us, whether they meant to or not.
#7.
The Lion King: To Be Successful, Sometimes People Got to Die
Simba always knew that he was going to succeed his father, Mufasa, as the next Lion King. But fate liked spitting in poor little Simba's face, and his dear old dad got trampled to death by wildebeests. Of course, Mufasa's death was really caused by the evil Scar, Simba's uncle.
Later, all grown up, he reclaims his thrown and Scar suffers the double whammy of falling off a cliff and getting torn apart by hyenas. So after two particularly nasty and horrendous deaths, Simba finally becomes the lion king.
The Supposed Message:
We all have responsibilities we can't ignore. And don't trust that creepy uncle.
The Actual Message:
In order for you to be successful, other people will have to pay. And ultimately, that's okay, because the ends justify the means!
First you have Scar, who knew he couldn't be king of the pridelands until that dick Mufasa and his brat son were out of the way. So Scar did away with both of them, killing Mufasa and banishing Simba, and, as a result, he got to be king for a descent amount of time.
Then when Simba started to grow some balls, he took back his throne... but only after Scar himself took a dirt nap. It's true that Simba didn't intentionally kill him, but you know who did? The screenwriter. After all, the movie doesn't end with Simba convincing Scar to renounce his evil ways, or putting Scar in lion jail.
In fact, Lion Jail isn't even real.
No, the message was sent loud and clear: Simba could not be the true king unless Scar was dead. And they even arranged it so that Simba wouldn't have any of the pesky guilt that would have come with actually doing the deed himself. Everyone lived happily ever after. Except Scar of course, whose body was slowly pooped out by several hyenas the next day.
#6.
Cinderella: Sort of Like "The Secret"
Cinderella is forced by her bitchy stepmother to clean the house from stem to stern every day. The only thing that prevents her from swallowing a bottle of pain killers is her belief that someday her dreams will come true.
One day Cinderella plans to attend a ball thrown by the prince, but the fact that she has a cutthroat bitch for a stepmother completely slipped her mind. She is forbidden from going.
Luckily, it turns out Cinderella has a fairy godmother, who uses her magic to hook Cinderella up with a ride, a beautiful outfit and a pair of what would seem like grossly impractical glass heels. At the ball Cinderella uses her innate flirting skills and rocks the prince's world, to the point that the next day the prince whisks her away to be his princess.
The Supposed Message:
Dreams do come true!
The Actual Message:
If you wait around long enough, the universe will practically hand stuff to you.
"Could you fix my credit score while you're at it?"
No one is denying the fact that Cinderella's life was one big shit stain. But in her state of mind, she actually thought that her dreams would just sort of happen if she sat around being miserable long enough. It never occurred to her that she had the ability to just tell her stepmother to go fuck herself.
Instead she kept scrubbing floors and believing that, if she continued to wish very hard and take absolutely no action, everything would fall into place. And what do you know, the bitch gets a fucking kingdom out of it.
So don't worry, girls. Some kind of "Fairy Godmother" will sweep into your life at any moment, and find you a man to take care of everything. Just keep wishing!
#5.
The Little Mermaid: A Little Deal with the Devil Never Hurt Nobody
A little mermaid named Ariel, who is presumably little in title only since she has one impressively big rack, dreams of living her life on shore and finding her true love. Well, a clearly evil sea-witch named Ursula offers to give the naive mermaid legs in exchange for something she probably might need in the future: her voice.
When Ariel makes it to shore, she realizes the Sea-Bitch screwed her, as her legs work with the grace of a drunken paraplegic and she can't speak. So now she must somehow make Prince Eric fall in love with her while appearing to be either mute or retarded.
By some miracle, the prince takes the bait (again, note the rack) but then Ursula, who in the cartoon seems to be portrayed as a black drag queen, goes after the couple. The prince is forced to kill Ursula by stabbing her with a ship. As a result, Ariel gets both her legs and her voice.
The Supposed Message:
True love conquers all!
The Actual Message:
A little compromise with evil is okay, as long as everything works out okay in the end!
Ariel loved to sing, and she sang pretty damn well. But she wanted to live on shore and find love so bad that she made a "deal" with a "devil" and "sells" her beautiful voice, or "soul" so to speak.
And guess what? It worked. Sure, the writers threw in some complications in the form of Prince Eric having to send Ursula straight to Disney Hell, but the fact of the matter remains that Ariel would never have gotten to meet Prince Eric at all had she not compromised with the evil queen in the first place. She made a figurative deal with the devil, got everything she wanted and came out completely unscathed.
So keep that in mind if you have to, say, sleep with some dude to get that acting role. None of that will matter once you achieve your dreams!
#4.
Beauty and the Beast: Just Because He's Abusive, Doesn't Mean He's Not a Really Good Guy
After a spoiled prince pretty much tells an old beggar woman to fuck off, he is transformed into a beast, as it turns out the beggar is an enchantress. And she makes it very clear that until he learns to love and thus is loved in return, there will be no ladies in his life and it's just going to be him and his hand for a very long time.
As luck would have it, there happens to be a woman out there named Belle with a heart big enough to share with unfortunate-looking people such as the Beast, and she's not too bad to look at either. When her father is kidnapped by the Beast, Belle offers herself in exchange for his freedom.
Against all odds, they fall in love. The townspeople snap and try and kill the Beast, but because Belle admits she loves him, the Beast turns back into a man and the two live happily ever after.
The Supposed Message:
Treat others the way you wish to be treated!
The Actual Message:
Underneath the abusive exterior of your man is a loving heart he's just dying to share with you.
First of all, Belle was a prisoner in the Beast's fucking castle. Nothing says "I love you" like house arrest. Secondly, he wasn't exactly whispering sweet nothings in her ear. The Beast hurled insults at Belle at every chance, and came close to pimp slapping the shit out of her on more than one occasion.
But she ignored all that unimportant trivia, because the Beast had a loving heart! Sure he gets angry sometimes, but that's just how he is. And, in the end, he turned back into a sexy, romantic prince. It's all good now.
Her patience paid off, girls, and it will for you, too! If you just stick with it and don't judge your man too harshly. Or call the cops.
Okay everyone, this is all heavily exagerated for the sake of comedy/entertainment. That much is/should be obvious.
Replywow have you ever even seen any of these movies
ReplyBut doesn't Aurora see the Prince in her dreams and shit? So I mean she was in love with him already, she didn't just jump his bones because he woke her up.
ReplyWell, with Beauty and The Beast, they didn't get together until after the beast started acting nice. If you payed attention to what was going on, the beast changed his ways and stopped acting like a huge a*****e because Belle wasn't taking any of his shit. It wasn't a simple case of Stockholm syndrome or anything like that. They had to learn to respect each other.
ReplyThe Fox And The Hound is fantastic, I think. It serves as a great cautionary tale about prejudice and how it can tear people apart. It wasn't trying to say that they should have been separated or that they shouldn't have stayed friends. It's saying they couldn't because society would not allow it, and that was a bad thing.
The Hunchback of Nortre Dame is actually a very religious movie. It is about hypocrites that claim to be close to God but really aren't.
ReplyNow, before the atheists go and say "It's about how religion turns people into crazy assholes" (As said in another article I forgot the name of.) This is the same movie that features the song "God Help the Outcasts" and the man who claims to be close to God (Frollo) dies. By divine intervention.
Reading into things too much... Plus it ignores that a lot of these things were adapted from other works. Disney can't rewrite every ending.
ReplyOK, it's quite obvious that everyone forgot about the original novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I understand what you feel about the message, but take into account the fact that Quasimodo DIED in the original novel and therefore never ended up with Esmerelda. I'm sure the Disney writers were trying to take that into account. And btw, there was a sequel where he found love. And going through the first heartbreak made him stronger and in the end, he was happy for the two of them. I mean, Pheobus was a pretty good guy. Didn't he nearly die after saving a family he didn't know? I mean, stop assuming that Esmerelda chose him because he wasn't deformed. HE WAS A HERO TOO. And I would like to add again that Quasi finds his soulmate in the sequel.
ReplyIf anything, you should add snow white in there!
"I'm sure the Disney writers were trying to take that into account"
But Quasimodo ended up with Esmerelda in a literal sense in the novel, dying next to her. That is far closer than Phoebus who ended up standing by and letting her be executed for murdering him.
Not that I disagree with the movie's ending (it would have been cliché for her to have a happily eve after ending with Quasimodo, and that's not what happened anyway in the novel. My point is just that you can't really justify it by what happened in the book.
WOAH WOAH WOAH, hold on! Let's take these one at a time:
Reply#7: The lesson is "Life will go on" and I kind of agree with what you're saying, that stuff happens but it does. It's a part of the intended message, that things happen that you can't change.
#6: Good things come to those who wait. It's made to give hope to the kids who are in bad families. It's a huge confidence booster.
#5: Agreed.
#4: Don't judge a book by it's cover.
#3
What the hell happened to the rest of it?! Oh well...
#3: A) Once again don't judge a book by it's cover B) Sometimes it's not all about you and things don't always go your way. He gave up Esmerelda for her happiness. And Disney saw that they had given the message "ugly people die alone!" So, they proceeded to make the second one.
#2: Agreed.
#1: You are way overanalyzing it. It's supposed to be that we can all get along! Even though society may pull us apart, we can still get along.
Good analysis. Nice work AudreyStars.
Having a bad temper does not prove someone to be beyond saving. Sometimes someone can be brought back by calling them out on the bad while appreciating the good, as Belle did for Beast. You talk about "calling the police" but if someone goes to jail, that's going to turn them into a crook forever. (That's typically what happens, at least with American jails.) Someone on Beast's level, on the other hand, plausibly has enough good in them to become a better person through the means with which Belle changed him.
ReplyOf course, whether or not that's WORTH a try is a matter of opinion.
Ah, finally, thank you. You just made the argument I've been trying to come up with ever since someone made the abusive relationship analysis of Beauty and the Beast popular.
I had a friend who's little sister was in LOVE with the hunchback (the movie, not the guy. You kidding me? Just look at him. GHAK!) Evidently, when I saw it at his house as she looked on for the millionth time it was the first time I saw it. They asked me what I thought, and I was brutally honest. "That Quasimodo guy sure got the s**t end of THAT deal."
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesJust think about it, he risks his ass for the girl he has a crush on when she's in trouble, and he's repaid by watching her get it on with another guy. The only other person who would know what THAT'S like is Snape from Harry Potter. Dude. Got. Friendzoned. HARD.
I thought of that too. When I watched it I was thinking that maybe it'll be nice if he gets the girl. You know, after all that he has done. But no, she went for a perfectly normal, non-deformed guy despite his bravery and all, and he has to actually be happy for her?!
I think the worst part is that they made Phoebus so damn NICE. If she had just gone for a douchebag, that would have been bad enough. But no, they took the time and money to specifically make the guy as kind, smart, funny and heroic as possible before giving Quasimodo the shaft. As a matter of fact Phoebus is a lot like Quasimodo in some ways, which makes it DOUBLY apparent to him that the only reason she picked Phoebus over him was that he was ugly.
It could be worse, in the original story Esmerelda dies for the "murder" of the Captain, and Quasimodo just curls around her corpse and dies of starvation himself. All the while, the captain is still alive and has no recollection of the woman in the first place.
What? No. If Phoebus was a jerk, than the statement "the only reason she picked Phoebus over him was that he was ugly" would make sense. She picked Phoebus over Quasi because he WAS so nice. True, she still is the major jerk in the movie, but at least she didn't pick the douche over the only nice guy. Because Disney is fiction.
The writer used the word "thrown" in place of "throne." That pissed me off enough to stop reading.
ReplyDid you miss "descent" for "decent" in the first section? I didn't.
Did you ever notice how hounds be walkin around like "pardon me sir, can you tell me the way to the nearest book receptacle" but foxes be walking like "hey brotha wassup?"?
ReplyI quit reading at "he reclaims his thrown" in #7. Seriously? There's no excuse for that.
ReplyRight! And "descent amount of time" in the Lion King section...ugh!
"Ugly guys don't get the girl, even if they're devoted and awesome. That's just how it works, sorry."
ReplyThere's a word for that; reality.
Oh please. Ugly guys get girls ALL THE TIME. How many wives has Donald Trump had? Or Newt Gingrich? Or Larry King? What about that old dude who married Anna Nicole Smith? Or when Julia Roberts married Lyle Lovett. Give me a fucken break. Guys can be hideous, as long as they have money or talent or something else to offer. If they have nothing to offer AND they're ugly, then yeah, good luck.
On the other hand, hideous women are pretty much screwed. Maybe if they're insanely rich they can get a guy. But women almost always have to be more attractive than the guy.
"he got to be king for a descent amount of time." Decent, not descent.
ReplyYou were a bit off on the Lion King. The real lesson to take home from it is that if you are going to stage a coup, eliminate the entire royal family. Letting the young prince live will just come back to bite you in the ass.
ReplyIn the Lion King blurb, you wrote "descent" instead of "decent".
Reply"The Fox and the Hound" actually had a pretty mature message. It's not about being differen races, it's about being from two completely separate worlds. They each realized that despite the friendship they shared in the past, society wouldn't allow it to continue. It's a very depressing and yet somewhat accurate theme.
ReplyIt's a pretty tragic movie, but I can remember always loving it. The scene where Copper goes between Tod and the hunter, saving him from being shot? *tear*
yeah, but it's also about how people have "their place" and no matter how they're raised that will ALWAYS be "their place" The Fox wasn't raised to be a fox, he wasn't raised in the wild... But he magically knew how to survive there just by virtue of BEING a Fox? It basically says that race determines eligibility for position...
So, if someone kills your father, blames it on you, banishes you, enslaves your people, it is immoral for you to kill him? Putting him in jail only prolongs the suffering, prevents justice and opens opportunity for a sequel? You don't put him in jail, you finish him. So whether Simba needed to kill Scar to regain his kingdom is irrelevant. The fact of the matter was Scar was a monster, and was needed to be put down.
ReplyIf some monster is enslaving people and killing them, it is not okay to remove them from power? The best way to ensure the safety of everyone is to remove him.
I realize this is a comedy article, but that was just a poor observation.
Also, a side note. Even if that was the supposed moral of the film, that is how the world works, anything else would be a fairy tale. It's a cut throat world out there when you are going for the top, to say otherwise is ignorant.
And ugly guys don't get the girl? Mostly true. The exceptions are cases where the ugly person has some kind of talent that makes up for it. In his case all he could do was a ring a bell.
I could go on. But I realize I'm already a loser enough for ranting on about disney movies. ;)
Do...do you need a hug?
I was hoping the Cracked writer would know the difference between descend and decent. FAIL.
Reply