Walt disney movies....

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 05 Feb 2003, and now archived in the Forum Library.

HOLMES	05 Feb 2003
I watched a lot of walt disney movies.. and so some people praise the name of walt disney, and some curse the name. so here is my question. which walt disney movie has affected you spirituly. ? live and amimated included. just to name a few i guess since i am starting the thread. i like to ask you all who reply to stay constructive, and respectful of each other :O) as given to our spirital natures. as a boy i remember these cartoons of disney most vividly. 1.robin hood. 2. sword in the stone, 3. a christmas carol. 4. fox and the hound. 5.petes dragon. as an teenager, to adult. little mermaid beuty and the best. aladdin lion king. cinderalla, sleeping beuty. bambi. darby o gill and the little people and adult. snow white, bednobs and broomsticks. mary poppins, and id id find mulan, poco huntus enjoyable yet my favourite was hunchback and tarzan. now to address the natures of each spiritual that affected me. kid. 1. robin hood i just enjoyed the songs, old frair tuck i remember cheering him on when lost it and was swinging the staff then getting old sad whe he was arrested. and they were going to hang him. (intersting thing is when i was studying disney music and got best of disney 1 to 6, there was a song there i remember but coudn't place but i remember hearing it when i was a kid until i saw robin hood as a adult.) 2.sword in the stone was good for me for the one reason of the wizards battle it was the first time i seen it done so well. and thinking merlin could of won at any time but he was trying to play in the rules. 3. a christmas carol at the end of it i was suprised to see pete as the devil saying "why yours ebenzer" and kind of like wow. and seeing ebenezer trying to stop himself from falling into hell 4.fox and the hound,, i like the fox and bear battle, and the way copper stopped in front of the bear (we used to have this pictured record of the songs of fox and the hound we listend to a hundred time me and my brother ,, funny i cant' remember nothing now ) my brother favourite movie cried like a baby and gets all emotional now when he watches it , he is two youngers then me so we were at differnt stages when we saw it. 5.i loved this for the part of pasmodquody, song and every little piece song. i dont' know how it affected me but i remember one thing vividly ( i was gee must of been 7 or 8 at the time, and i had this miserable babysitter, and *and to be truthful i wasn't away from my mom that much ehhe* so that day we watched it , she give me a smack in the face for i was crying for my mom after when i got heck for something and i returned it saying you dont' hit me. that was the last time i was there ) ((remember thinking too bad i dont' have a dragon like pete)) teenager to adult. 1. little mermaid, that came out in 87 , we got it on tape and i watched that bugger all the time. i cant' think of nothing spiritual impact but thinking cartoons came a long way . 2. beuty and the beast watched tons of time, i was surpised by the bad guy who couldnt' stand to lose and they actually showed him stabbing the beast in the back and i was thinking kill him beast kill him, ( i know blood lust , but hey he was stabbed) ((tale as old as time really got me the first 5 times, i didnt' see it in theatres but wiated for it on video tape)) ((came back to say i also enjoyed the wolves battle with the beast)) 3.alladin, it had good songs i surpised that robin williams could sing. (it was memorable to me for my cousin and me and her son went to see it together) 4. cinderella was funny and i was thinking of the meaning of the fairy godmother, (problay lead me to opening up to guides ) ( saw a differnt cartoon with the same story where the mother who was alwasy mean to her saw her with the prince and said "i sure raised her right" and i was like you good for nothing,, and my brother who was younger then me crack up laughing i was like 16 and he was 14) 5. the sleeping beuty i loved as a teenager for the sword of truth strike evil dead and the sword goes flying from her hand into the dragon who was the evil i forget her name now. (first movie that showed spiritual fairies could have a personality like the blue fairy, and the famous blue, red battle. they were never going to win the battle, *intersting to note while battlin they gave away their postion to evil, symbolic or no ?* if i was the green fairy i would of stepped in look it is going ot be green eheh) 6. bambi four parts affect me. 1. of course bambi mom dying, kind of makes you think ,, was disney against hunting ?(couldn't she of died to wolves) but he probaly has a point we kill more deer then wolves do. and so he was orphan having to fend for himself all winter. that is the true nature of life in the wild, some call it tramatic, i love it though. 2. bambi fight aginst the other deer for his girlfirend, i was like go bambi, 3. bambi little gallop around the forest with his girlfirned, and the song (at the time i was wishing i could gallop with the girls i like, like that) 4. and when bambi get shot and the king tells him get up bambi. get up. you must get up . 5. and the king deer walking away from the herd (i always wonder he would go ,, to another forest to make another heard ? or in deer years is he too old?) 6. darby o gill and the little people ,, i love it for the fiddle music he plays in the little people gran hall, and he plays for the king of the little people. the coach devour and darbie o gill get in, and the banshee calling forth the couch devour and the couch devour can not return empty and hwo the king saved him at the end. (one of sean connery first roles) (i had a dream about this time ,, that it came to the road and said edward get in,, (that was my sick grampa at the time) but it was my other grampa who had a heart attack and died ) snow white as a adult i watched it , thinking to myself how in the world did they get away with such a evil character in the early 1900s eheh. my favourite is doc telling dopey get the soap and they do grumpy up all cute, and they say isn't he cute ? i did like it when snow white is laying there in the coffin,, that grumpy turns his head and cries ,, it shows that everyone cries. bedknobs and broomsticks i like that due to the songs in there, one i never got into as a kid but at the time i was going through a tominlinson study and so i watched it for him and got to like portbello road. damn i got to go ,, didn't even get to the lion king battle (i liked how my friend clifford learn forward in his chair to see it like he was watching a good movie)

Woof	05 Feb 2003
As mom of a 9 year old girl I've watched lots of Disney. Not much spiritual there let me tell you! If there is anything it's hidden under so many layers of gloss and varnish you have to practically mine for it! Yes I liked some and I also hated some. Will not let my daughter watch Mermaid (the idea of a woman who gives up her voice to win a man makes me sick!) or Hunchback (on second hand reviews from someone I trust). We own our share of them on video or DVD. I personally love Mary Poppins and like lots of others. But I look for spiritual inspiration elsewhere. Woof

rota	05 Feb 2003
Regarding Disney films and their possible crossover with ongoing spiritual growth... It's worth talking about, since these movies are everywhere. Disney/ABC/et al. has a virtual lock on what's shown and what's not shown on mass media, since they're the biggest kid on the block. You can argue about whether that's right (I think it's manifestly wrong), but it's still a fact at this point. And growing children see these movies, from their first day onward. It takes strong parenting to balance these films with deeper, realer stuff. The fact that Disney films are technically well-done and broadly unobjectionable makes the job that much more difficult. So, we've all seen these movies as kids, and we've all pulled from them things we felt worth keeping. I can list two off the top of my head. One was the film 'Thomasina', about a girl and her cat. I thought at age eight or so that the scenes of the cat entering cat heaven were fairly compelling, and got me thinking about spiritual notions. Another one was a tv piece called 'The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh', about a guy dressing up in a scary outfit to battle the bad guys. Naturally, this reminded me of Batman and Zorro... But what got my attention was that the 'bad guys' were the agents of the English king, and the 'good guy' cackling in rags on horseback was the quiet parish preacher (Patrick McGoohan of 'The Prisoner'). This got me to thinking about questions of real vs. unreal, appearance vs. substance, good vs. bad. Oddly enough, I admire the animated Disney films for their technical achievements, not for their stories. I go to them with an artist's eye. The live action Disney stuff (which I coldly loathe as being too easy to do for them, given their depth of expertise... they seem calculated for profit.), paradoxically, is what I actually remember. In fact, I still think Hayley Mills is hot.

jlbvt	05 Feb 2003
Disney makes me retch. uggghh! My one year old sits and watches MASH and will not sit for a craptoon. Maybe it runs in the family?

Mystick Dragon	05 Feb 2003
Personally, the Lion King is my favorite. I just love the "remember who you are" thing. And Beauty and the Beast, appearances can be decieving... Each one has it's own little moral type thing... --Mystick Dragon

HudsonGray	05 Feb 2003
There are very few Disney films that I like, Lion King--Mulan, I've got those on tape. They don't reach for original stories, they always take the safe way out & do what others have written, most of which was done a LONG time ago. (And if you think the Lion King was original--look to Japan's 'White Lion' that came out a decade ago). On the plus side, they bought the rights to show Princess Mononoke over here and did an excellent job with the voice overs, but cut Nausicca to pieces.....that was disappointing. Tame stuff for kids, nothing too spiritually deep there for me either. Their 'buy our products' tie in with all the characters even before a movie opens really interferes with my enjoyment of the films. I know 90% of the profits from a Disney movie hinge on the marketing of the junk, t-shirts, figurines, watches, toys, games, books, etc. But come on!

rota	05 Feb 2003
It's true: one of the Disney organization's great sins is theft. 'Lion King' really did rip off 'Kimba', and lately 'Atlantis' ripped off another Japanese property with exactly similar characters and plot points. Let's hope they don't do a movie based on Tarot...! But the point of this tirade for me is the disservice they do to children's development. Parents are only too willing to sign off on their teaching duties, and replace their presence with Disney films, because it's so much easier. Children learn almost nothing from a cuddly, colorful Disney film; they'll learn better if we reclaim our right to teach spirituality to kids. Disney can't do it. It's not even clear that established religion can do it.

Dark Inquisitor	05 Feb 2003
I think the only Disney movie that might have had an effect on me was Peter Pan . Based on an excellent old book , of course. But there are some associations in it for astral travel, other realities, & fairies. I haven't seen any of the modern ones , but the style seems to have deteriorated . The people look distorted physically to me. Tarotphelia

Dragon of night	05 Feb 2003
the reason they look distorted is because they are now trying to draw them like real people. I like disney better when they try to draw their characters like characters, not off of models, but out of their imagination. also, if you think about it, Peter Pan hints at bending reality by having a story come to life. but my favorite disney movie iis Sleeping Beauty. the way that Meliphysent turns into a dragon, that is a very old trick, most people don't remember how to do it anymore.

Diana	05 Feb 2003
It's not Walt Disney that added spirituality into any of his movies. I mean Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and such-like were not his creations. So if there's any spirituality - it's not in the movie, but in the story that existed before the movie. It's in spite of the movie, not because of it. Many Japanese anime are far more spiritual - some of them really get you to think. I plonked my kid in front of Dragon Ball Z, for instance, at an early age - now that made him think of parallel worlds; different time dimensions (past, present, future); spirits - evil and good; life, death, reincarnation, etc. etc. The animals are not just animals that talk - they are really part of the universe and are not just cutesy little things that make you go "ooh and ah". Walt Disney explains things mostly in terms of good and evil - but there are never any shades between that. "The axis of evil", "If you are not for us, you are against us" - I suspect that George Bush was fed on Walt Disney movies as a kid. But Holmes, if it can make you feel any better, I loved Mary Poppins because she could fly with an umbrella, go up bannisters, and when she clicked her fingers, the room tidied itself. Now that was magic!

zorya	05 Feb 2003
i love the 'art' of the earlier disney movies, but don't think they are appropriate for young children. i don't care for the messages many of them carry. many of my criticisms have already been mentioned so i'll keep this short. i strongly dislike that all of the 'bad/evil' characters have dark hair and large noses. my children have only seen two of them, the original fantasia, pretty pagan film;), and mary poppins.

Dark Inquisitor	05 Feb 2003
Quote: Originally posted by Dragon of night [b] the reason they look distorted is because they are now trying to draw them like real people. I don't think they look real- I think they look like Barbie & Ken meet some playboy/gay fantasy comic. Tarotphelia

HudsonGray	05 Feb 2003
Actually they took that style from Japanese animators. Japanimation (yes, it's a term, there are even conventions for showing it off) borrowed heavily from Disney in the 1970's & 1980's then started surpassing Disney, doing a ton of stuff for adults only (their Children's fare is very, VERY different than what they do for adults), which in turn came full circle back to Disney when the new animators borrowed the eye/mouth/look techniques from Japan again. I believe Little Mermaid was the first movie they did this with. It came out heavily in Hunchback & Beauty/Beast, I don't think they're going to drop it because it's pretty ingrained now. Style changes got sort of 'permanent'. There have been a FEW Disney characters that are bad but good (the sidekicks mostly) but I too dislike how they went back to using non-good-looking people as evil again. They had gotten away from that for a while when parent groups complained, but the last few movies seem to indicate they went back to cliche's. I like the stuff out of the Don Bluth studios better. He used to work for Disney, then went off on his own & is doing some quality work there. The messages in some of his movies are much better than what Disney studios shows. Anyone see Titan AE? Good flick. Oh, has Disney EVER done any animated movie that didn't have a 'pet/animal side kick/cutsie tag along' involved to entertain the below 5 crowd? *Gag*

Alex	05 Feb 2003
"bad" people often look ugly no matter how beautiful their facial expressions might be, or might have been one day. Ugly people look beautiful when they radiate good energy. May be most of the ugly bad people are old too, in these movies. Reason? They've made themselves ugly with time. Lot's of Disney's "clichés" aren't just "clichés". People meant to look appealing, naive and pure have big eyes because young mammals have big eyes in proportion to their heads. Adult mammals of the same species recognize puppies by the proportion eye/head size, and avoid attacking them. A common way women of our species use to soften male's aggression is by holding the eyes wide open and looking defenseless. Look at how big are the nice girl's eyes in Disney's movies, and how often they bring their hands and finger close to their mouths. A lot of what is depicted in these animations are caricatures of human behavior. There's truth to a lot of it, as much as there is truth to a lot of folk fairly tales that these movies expand on. By just negating these truths and subjecting Disney's productions to a set of minorities' requests, we are not solving any problem, but perhaps making problems where there are none. We could simply start observing human and animal behavior a bit closer and learn, too, to appreciate some of these truths.

lunar_rabbit	05 Feb 2003
I don't have a ton of input on this one, despite the fact that we have most of the older Disney movies and I look for spirituality in most things. But I do like the Lion King in it's message about the circle of life. I also like how "earthy" it is in respecting life, and speaking to elders in the sky and all that stuff :-) I already have my 2 year old talking to the moon when we see her at night -g-. Today we went out to lunch and she said, "Where is the sun?" (yes, another mucky day in Michigan) and I told her that sun was behind the clouds. She said "The sun need a blankie?" I laughed and said yes. She said, "The sun need a nap. She tired!" LOL... My little girl :-)

Diana	06 Feb 2003
Quote: Originally posted by Alex "bad" people often look ugly no matter how beautiful their facial expressions might be, or might have been one day. Ugly people look beautiful when they radiate good energy. One of the reasons why some pedophiles are so successful, is that they look so nice and children trust them. I have seen photos of Nazis and SS who looked like angels. I myself grew up in a country with a few million racists (the worst kind) and many looked like they had been raised on milk and honey. One cannot judge a book by its cover. Disney doesn't teach kids this.

Aoife	06 Feb 2003
Diana, [as usual!] you are so right - I entirely agree. Some of the most dangerous people I have ever worked with have the sweetest of demeanours. They study 'normality' and seek to ape it in its most positive forms - they know the 'words' to perfection but have no ability to comprehend the 'music' or the 'rhythm'. They cultivate a veneer of charm and sophistication, appear entirely sincere, yet behind the mask - beneath the veneer there lies an empty space wherein it becomes possible for them to do the most monstrous things to others. In this world obsessed with image - I worry. Wisdom imparts a different kind of beauty - which goes unrecognised and undervalued. And so the young are denied access to the rites and passages which lead to self awareness and powerful self-protection. They remain easy prey - many, throughout their lives. There were many before Disney who stole the tales of our ancestors [the powerful lessons to guide the uninitiated to awareness] - used and abused them, leaving little of value.

HudsonGray	06 Feb 2003
The baby faces being 'innocent'..... I live in Milwaukee & worked less than 3 miles from where Jeffrey Dahmer lived. My sig other was actually in his apartment complex & smelled something 'funny' when going to another of the units to fix a vcr--he was as horrified as I was to find out what this guy did. Jeffrey D. looked pretty young innocent for having the kind of heart that he had. Those kind of lessons are pretty scary. Pretty does not = good. Well, geez, this started out as a nice cheerful spread & it's gone in the other direction. Sorry! I do like the Lion King a lot, and Simba's Pride, the spin off, was good too. I have to admit that I cried when Mufasa died, the first time I saw it. (I tear up at movies, evern at the end of Ice Age). Ice Age is a nice movie for kids, it shows group effort, individuals who are very different working nicely together, people making changes in their lives, and sticking to what they start out to do. We got it on video soon as it came out.

Logiatrix	06 Feb 2003
i don't truly see spirituality in the cinematic faire of the disney machine. i do agree that disney movies attempt to depict morals and idealistic social standards, especially the more current productions. the older animated movies, usually based on fairy stories, are cautionary tales to convey lessons, such as the literature from which they are derived. for me, these movies have been entertaining, and even momentarily inspirational. however, i have not achieved the apogee of awakening i consider to be spirituality. :)

HOLMES	06 Feb 2003
http://animated-movies.squareworld.com/News.html this url has their own review of several disney and non disney movies with history and why they did some stuff, included is reviews of don bluth movies and pixar i was sad not to see flight of the dragons, the chipmunk adventure, the hobbit, or the last unicron on the page. http://www.evernotice.com/movies.html this one deals with rumours, urban legends, and debates about disney movies, with the links provided i just wanted to share where they were coming from at the time.. a differnt age, differnt morals of the family. that is why snow white is so radically differnt then let says beuty and the best. why they changed the huncback of notre dame (poor cindi lauper , she was so looking forward to being a statue. ) i noticed nazism mentioned,, and i wanted to bring up a little point i was suprised as well to see all these hynes goosestepping like nazais in the lion king. i was more surpised in the hunchback of notre dame when the darn i forget his name all the sudden. he sings about making emeralda burn or choose him.. and all those spirit in red robes show up to tell him how wrong he is, and he was running down the path saying it's not my fault. if you listen closely to the song by emeralda god help the outcasts, she reminds people that jesus was once a outcast, which i think many forget . i personally like the good and evil stories told, for in the end,, that little gray line doens't exist at some point and gives the children a basis for the world ahead with some moral, if not spirital (don't our morals effect our spiritality ) 1. the rite of passage, bambi mom dying,, and even more we as humans killed the deer. 2. beuty and the best,, beuty can exist in uglyor unconventional things. example , beast,, quasimodo, 3. alantis is the prime example of the one person you didnt' expect to turn bad can be bad all through the movie (i thought the major was more like adult character) 4. the natives and the settlers in pocohauntus as a native i would happy to see them coming to understand each other. (lots of the people on the res didn't like the movie alas) 5. dumbo was differnt yet his differnce made him special. 6. i forgot what little disney short it was.. but there was a little elephant ,, mouse side who fought a mouse and won the admiration of all the elephants who were scared of mouses ( lol a real elephant would look at a mouse and step on it, and shrug) 7. mary poppins taught that parents who are busy and such can really love their children (and taught adults that children need to know that ) oh but there is sure some stuff wrong with disney ,, their formula, their marketing.. lets face it ,, they are selling to our children morals, and such. i just wanted to show that disney wasnt' all bad . (though i can't bring myself to watch their one movie of all time,, old yeller) i just can't )

amyel	06 Feb 2003
Quote: Originally posted by Tarotphelia I think the only Disney movie that might have had an effect on me was Peter Pan . Based on an excellent old book , of course. But there are some associations in it for astral travel, other realities, & fairies. Tarotphelia WOW! I feel the same way about this movie, T'phelia! When I was a young girl - maybe 4 & 5, I had an imaginary friend who I called peter Pan, probably because I had eiter recently seent the movie or had the book read to me. Except, in my life Peter was real - I could see him and talk to him and yes, he talked back. Now, I know it was probably a ghost child, but I didn't know that then. Next for me was Pinnochio.

Logiatrix	06 Feb 2003
[quote]Originally posted by HOLMES "i personally like the good and evil stories told, for in the end,, that little gray line doens't exist at some point and gives the children a basis for the world ahead with some moral, if not spirital (don't our morals effect our spiritality )" well, perhaps... conversely, i believe it is our spirituality that shapes our morals, should we achieve said spirituality. it is entirely possible to establish a paradigm of behaviors based on "right" and "wrong" without maintaining a foundation of spiriuality. a thoroughly moral individual is not necessarily a spiritual individual. consider maslow's hierarchy of needs, where the apex of the pyramid is self-actualization. according to maslow, should our lower, temporal needs be met, we transcend to a higher level of function where moral values are established. but here's a glitch: more current models of maslow's hierarchy of needs expand this concept to include SPIRITUALITY above self-actualization on the pyramid. this, however, was not abraham maslow's original theory, so he may be rolling in his tomb... nevertheless, i agree with both ideas. i believe that a fully self-actualized individual is capable of a functionally moral existence, without acknowledging a spiritual path. i also agree that spirituality is a higher level of need. :)

Karenwhe	06 Feb 2003
I love practically all Disney movies. As a mother of 3 kids, I also own most of these movies and my kids watch them often. I also wished I had such movies to watch when I was a kid. But there is one movie that I like particularity that wasn't mentioned, Eldorado (did I spell it correctly??), the music in it is also wonderful, stunning, great, etc., etc. I also like Monsters Inc., Bugs Life, Toy Story, Ice Age (I don't think they are made by Disney I could check but I don't care who makes them). Oh, yes and Titan AE, great absolutely great (I also don't know who made it, if it wasn't disney). I think they are all great fun to watch, and I also think that as adults often forget to have fun and take things to literarily. I don't see what is wrong in watching those movies and letting the imagination go free. From my point of view, the more the better. Even the kids know it is a movie and they differentiate between the movies and reality...... why don't we? All these movies by the way got my 9 year old interested in computer animations of all kinds.

HOLMES	06 Feb 2003
aye i make my nephews get off the xbox (and they are 5 and 7 lol when i was that age all i had was old atari) and make them sit down with me to watch family movies like last unicorn, you could check easily, and also find out some great background information on the link to my last reply i posted. el dorado it was good it was don bluth last movie ,, everyone is hoping for the dragon lair movie, though aye ,, kids should be kids as long as they can. my nephews love watching the 70s show, and i was surpised when the next day the oldest and youngest started to say to me "last night someone ran over big rhonda" and laughed their heads off. and their favorite line from scooby doo "someone spiked my root beer last night , talk me down man talk me down" right now they are going around saying, "godspeed spiderman" and "die jedi die" (when the robot had cpo head on and was walking saying that then commenting what did i just say) aye, for me i like to think disney affected me postively but not just disney though that is hwere i started this thread. but the smurfs, dungeons and dragons, tranformers, (was an avid cartoon watchers for years) heaven look at charlie brown even :O) wow tell him to go for it,, i can't for the life of me remmeber what i was doing when i was 9 but watching cartoons, reading comics, watching wrestling, and playing atari, much like i do now wonderful career there for him,, making video games, movies, (look at attack of the clones all the war at the end besides the main actors was all blue screen there wasn't a stormtrooper around )

Alex	07 Feb 2003
Oh, me too. And of course watching Star Treck. It's funny when I talk with my boyfriend, who grew up in the US whereas I grew up mostly in Brazil: we used to watch the same cartoons, movies, Disney animations and had ataris ... I'm not sure whether it's good or bad but it seems like there's but one culture out there we all grow up in? Where did you grow up, Holmes, Canada? Alex. Quote: Originally posted by HOLMES wow tell him to go for it,, i can't for the life of me remmeber what i was doing when i was 9 but watching cartoons, reading comics, watching wrestling, and playing atari, much like i do now

HOLMES	07 Feb 2003
i was born in the town of dryden and stay inbetween there, and oxdrift for 5 years then we moved alllll the way to edmonton alberta. that was about a year. then we moved alll the way to fortmacmurray where i stayed from 6 to 10 about.. which is about 1980 to 84ish. from there i went all the way to winnipeg from 84/5 to 90/91 since then i moved back to dryden,, once in winnipeg for 2 months but the rest of the time been in dryden area, or the reserves, and that was all in canada :O) i am kind of a nostraglic person.. i do research into tv shows that interested me when i was young for example. when three company e true hollywood story came up i droped what i was doing to watch it. eheh i researched buddy holly, chuck berry, jerry lee, spice girls even lol i like to disect what they were goign through, why they did the song, the tv show, the movie that they did. what it meant to them then and now. an example of researching that surpised me. alec guiness begged to be killed as he couldnt' stand the lines they gaved him. (yet he came back for the other two espiodes no one says why ,, money ?) so they had to figure out who would train luke hence the birth of yoda. and that leads me back to the topic, was there any spirituality in disney movies, cartoon in general (learned a lot from dungeon and dungeons cartoons,, they were my favourite *looks back kindly*) especially since most people watched disney when they grow up. yet i like to bring up a little scene from adam family values. wensday had to go and watch postive movies in order for the counselors to try to get her out of her dark mode. she said we will be ok.. and her little nerdy boyfriend said "are you sure, it's disney"? and she put her head up high as if to say "bring it on,, do your worse" i laugh my head off at that . for there is that time in everyone live for that time period they are tired of disney,, cant' stand it.. and so we know how that goes. (example of nostraglia.. I CHEERED LIKE HELL WHEN HULK HOGAN CAME BACK :o) and i cheered like hell when george forman won his second world title at the age of 45, i looked at my friend stood and cheeered he did it)

DarkChild	07 Feb 2003
i enjoy disney movies, but i think thats mainly because i don't whatch them to really 'learn' anything, i watch them for their animation, art, stuff like that. don't get me wrong, ive learned a few things by watching them, but thats not my intention when i sit down to whatch them. some of my favs. are little mermaid- i love the water, and always thought it would be cool to be one...i know its kinda stupid, but i always thought it would be cool. Peter pan- due to all the fantasy type stuff, flying, faries, and other such things. pinoccio (spelling?)- it used to scare the hell out of me when i was little, but when i got a little older i understood it and it 'taught' me i shouldn't lie..mulajn (spelling?)- can't really tell you why i like that movie, but its one of my favs. i 'moves' me i guess. ice age, monsters Inc. (which were both disney)... i cant name all of them but thse are just a few. i think that their moves (not animated, but real people) are better if your looking for more of the moral/spirituality type stuff. i think those movies are ment for the older kids when they are beggining school and are faced with certian things; where as the animated ones are ment for the little kids and are 'simple' enough for them to understand and allow them to beleive that good will prevail and everything is happily ever after. the newer non animated movies, and TV shows, i think are more focoused on morals and everything isn't so 'perfect.' a few things i don't like about them though is: with the TV (and some movies) is that all the storie plots are the same, either they steal them from other shows/movies, or the other companies steal things from them. no matter what your whatching, most plots are the same! no one is really ever original. ther was somthing else, but i don't remember what it is right now. the thought ran away from me. :( Pete's Dragon is still one of my all time favs.!!! non disney movies: Tittan AE The Never Ending Story (all of them) ((who made those??)) the newsies (i think might be disney, but im not sure) theres was more, but thoughs keep running away from me, so ill just stop here...

DarkChild	07 Feb 2003
my thought has returned to me!! after reading a thread about merlin!! :) another thing a don't like about disney is that they change history, and facts in their movies to make it better, or to make the story not as "harsh".. anistatia (spelling?) is a perfect example!! anistatia was killed with her family, they even have her 'remains' and know for a fact that it is her. there were 5 children in the family. there were four girls and one boy who was the youngest and had a disorder. (i don't remember what its called right now, but i know that it thins your blood. so when you cut yourself or somehow start to bleed you won't be able to stop; and back then it was deadly, where now its treatable.) its his 'remains' that they have yet to find, not anistatia's! they have done this type of thing more then once, but this is the one i always remember.....

HudsonGray	07 Feb 2003
And Pocohantas was a 12 year old girl, John Smith was short & dark haired, and when Pocohantas was kidnapped by the English & taken to England, she died there of disease & was buried in England till just recently when her remains were brought back here for burial. Most of the people in her tribe died of diseases brought to the new world by the British. Mulan is from a very popular legend in China, Disney altered the story enough to cause the Chinese concern that they'd played with the events too much. They did NOT like it over there. What they did to Tarzan would have Edgar Rice Burroughs rolling in his grave. (To name just a few).

zorya	08 Feb 2003
...and it wasn't a simple kiss that woke sleeping beauty :laugh:

WolfSpirit	08 Feb 2003
Jungle book has to be my favourite disney cartoon, Lion King and good old snow white are also great - I enjoyed many disney cartoons but I don't really look for the deeper meaning. But let's not forget disney also made a lot of other movies mostly with brave animals dogs etc. I really loved those but they also made me cry sometimes. Well just last week they showed a movie here about a man going to a lonely place where he got in touch with a wolf and came to adopt the wolves characteristics - no it was not kevin costner, it was a disney movie and it was quite good, had a great sense of humour in it as well and different from other disney movies I've seen.

truthsayer	08 Feb 2003
i really don't like those glossy commercialized movies that have come out in the last 10 years. the toys hit the shelves before the movie comes out. i prefer the old ones like bambi, snow white and ol' yeller. anybody cry when bambi's mama got killed by the hunters? or cry when the boy had to shoot ol' yeller? a lot more spirituality and real life in those imho.

Musie	08 Feb 2003
Winnie the Pooh! Friendship, helping others, childhood, love, joy. It helps me find my inner child. I could be busy cleaning, feeling grumpy, but Pooh bear lifts my spirits. If Christopher Robin were an ugly monster, it wouldn't matter. Pooh would still love him. What is inside counts. A good spiritual lesson.

Logiatrix	11 Feb 2003
yes, "winnie-the-pooh" is wonderful; so is "old yeller", "the hunchback of notre dame" and "the jungle book"... they are all GOOD BOOKS! ;)

ihcoyc	11 Feb 2003
My nieces watch Disney. Personally, my reaction to the lot of it is somewhat more negative than the Southern Baptist Church's. The one I can't abide is Bambi, which is probably one of their better creations, but its heart is anti-human, anti-male, and anti-carnivore. Talking animal shows, especially when humans are the enemy, are something I would never allow a child of mine to watch. The early ones like Snow White and Fantasia are much better. The newer ones are too obviously sanitized and painfully politically correct. Somebody should do -real- adaptations of all the Brothers Grimm stories. I understand that Tezuka --- the fellow who started animé, and who made Astroboy and Kimba the White Lion, got the whole bug-eyed business from early Disney animations; when he started it in Japan, it turned into their national style.

HudsonGray	11 Feb 2003
Ihcoyc, what do you think about Mononoke? It had messages too, but I think they were much deeper than anything Disney even attempts, plus it gives the good with the bad.

ihcoyc	12 Feb 2003
Princess Mononoke was, in fact, one of the things that started me thinking about Disney's standard take on "Nature Good, Humans Bad." Lady Eboshi was a sympathetic character, while the animals were dangerous.

HOLMES	12 Feb 2003
i think the movies refered to mostly is bambi, the fox and the hound, and the movie pocohuntus. 1. in it, it was the story of little deer who goes up in the forest. the hunters killed his mom. it isn't necessary to say that is bad,, though from bambi point of view it was, (imagine if they added in a picture of a little boy saying did i do it right ? as his dad cheers him on ? lol given today nature,, perhaps a mom and a daughter?) though it could of been better to see a pack of wolves to take out bambi mom .. or perhpas just old age and her dying in the woods out of hunger?. 2. the fox and the hound is another movie where the mother of todd gets killed blown away by a hunter. 3. and pocohuntas a people connected to the nature vs a person who was after gold and land. /shrugs on that one i shrug as that is a issue still for many people. ( after many of us lived pasts lives in the indians wars) .. remember that movie my cousin vinny where mari tomsei says i ask you do you think the deer will care what kind of pants you got on ? she also was giving a little better speech before that but i havne't seen my cousin vinny in a while. i haven't seen princess monoke just pokemon for japanese amition i did like in the first pokemon movie how ash died stopping the pokemon wars and they brought him back to life. i just saw secret of nimh , a don bluth production where it was 1. the family of mice were being threatened by a farmer plowing his fields. 2. the smart rats were victims of research facility called nimh. 3. nimh was coming to look for the rats towards the end of the movie 4. they even had a rat sword fight just nature emulating man. (a kind of warning really about how we mess around with nature and we will make big changes) yet i found nicodimus or however his name is spealt a quite cool character. the great owl eheh. i also found the ending pretty cool where mrs fisby used the stone to save her children. here again do you see the man vs nature aspects shown from a rats points of view. yet in an other don bluth movie the american tale it was mice vs cats so you start to see a change there. does anyone remember watership down ? yet again a cartoon about rabbits vs man, and no one probaly saw the cartoon done by them. it was about two dogs who escaped the research facility . 1 one dog had a hole in his head. 2. the other dog was killed time and time agian by drowning, in the end the army was trying to capture them on a beach so they started to swim and they were going to drown out there and it ended. so the nature vs man theme isn't just done by disney, it is one of the great stories theme taught in school i vaguley remember man vs man, man vs nature, man vs supernature like gods , and man vs self.

HudsonGray	12 Feb 2003
I saw the Plague Dogs movie, here I thought it was just an animation movie...not having read the book. It was a 7 kleenex ending (do NOT let children see this movie!). The research scenes where they keep drowning the large dog are horrible, and the ending is a pure heartwrencher. (And the fox gets killed). The whole movie is about two escaped research dogs who are trying to find an honest home & person to love, yet they were subjects of research so the researchers labeled them with a 'plague' title to cover up the abuse they were doing with the animals, hoping people would kill them (getting the entire countryside in a frenzy over the two). Heavy watching, adult themes. Plus the 2 were coping as best they could as animals with animal perspective. The ending hurts, they drown as they're swimmng to 'paradise' just out of sight (the big dogs knows it's not there, but the small one needed it as a goal).

The Walt disney movies.... thread was originally posted on 05 Feb 2003 in the Spirituality board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Spirituality, or read more archived threads.