They’ve been watched by generations of movie-goers. Children around the world have grown up with Disney movies and, in turn, introduced their own children to them.
The characters, songs, and dialogue of the movies are part of the cultural lexicon. But does this mean quality stories, the raw literature from which Disney extracted such hot movies as Cinderella, The Lion King and Princess and the Frog, have taken a back seat?
Disney is at Turns Praised, Criticized for Animated Adaptations
Disney has copped some bad press for allegedly dumbing down, simplifying and sanitising the literature on which some of the movies were based.
The charge is among other barbs often aimed at Disney movies, including the criticism that it provides poor role models for little girls who might be led to believe that they need to be a beautiful princess to be happy, or the questionable morals of characters tossing everything aside in the pursuit of love, and the alleged racism in early Disney films.
However, in equal measure, the studio has been praised for introducing children to the characters, themes and stories contained in many of the great works that inspired the movies – works that children, and indeed adults, may never have been exposed to otherwise.
Many Disney Kids Films Based on Classic Texts
Without Disney, how many adults have ever gone into the real meanings of fairy tales or considered in depth that they were often instruction in morals and behaviours? Many adults may purely delight in fairy tales as ripping good yarns heard and learned in their youth and want to share that experience with their kids, but it is only when re-watching the Disney versions years later that they cast a more critical eye on the production and messages before them. If the fairy tales were not in the form of mass entertainment, would such analysis, and desire to seek out the original texts of the Disney movies, be as frequent?
Of course, watching a Disney classic fairytale movie doesn't have to be an exercise in analysis. Some of the stories on which they were based were also written for entertainment. It was Lewis Carroll's highly imaginative Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 and later Through the Looking Glass in 1872 that signalled a shift from the purpose of the fairytale from instruction to pleasure. Ironically, Disney's Alice in Wonderland has proven to be somewhat less popular than other more traditional Disney classic fairy tales.
It is interesting to note how many of the Disney movies are based on classic texts and how far they have departed from the original stories. But does it bring any greater satisfaction to the movie-goer if they are aware of the tales that Disney has borrowed from – and how faithful or relaxed Disney has been with the original stories?
The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid (1989) takes pride of place in the list as it is one of the best loved of the Disney fairytales.
Yet the movie is hardly about the quest for an immortal soul and the pain and suffering that causes, as was the original tale.
The Little Mermaid was written by Denmark's Hans Christian Andersen and published in 1836. The Little Mermaid character was so well loved she became the symbol of Denmark and a statue of her sculpted by Edvard Eriksen was donated to the country in 1913 by the founder of Carlsberg beer, Carl Jacobsen. She has been reclining on the Copenhagen waterfront ever since -- except for her current jaunt to the Shanghai 2010 World Expo in China.
The differences between the Disney movie and the original text are quite profound, not only in Disney's jazzing up of the characters, naming them and giving Ariel her buddies Flounder (a fish), Scuttle (a seagull) and, of course, Sebastian (the showstealing crab - or perhaps lobster - who is also the underwater sea kingdom of Atlantica's musical director).
Disney also boosted the role of the evil sea witch Ursula for the movie's pivotal plot of good versus evil.
The biggest difference between the movie and the original however is the ending. In Andersen's version the little mermaid fails to win the prince's hand in marriage - which she pursued to secure a human's immortal soul (Andersen's Christian content) rather than cease to exist at the end of her 300-year mermaid lifespan - the penalty for which she is transformed into sea foam. In Disney, Ariel wins the love of her prince (Eric) and they live happily ever after.
Sleeping Beauty
Without getting into the whole issue of gender roles in fairy tales and whether Aurora's sleep represents passive victimisation, sexual exploitation, achieving self fulfilment (and the connotations of how much self there is in the fulfilment of being beholden to one's rescuer) or being protected from danger by loved ones, the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty (1959) is an alteration on the original French La Belle au bois dormant written by Charles Perrault in 1696.
The movie actually trundles into a much longer tale than the original version.
The good versus evil pitch is also made much clearer in the movie. The bad fairy, Maleficient, is wicked from the start of the movieand helpfully dressed in black, vanishing and appearing in wafts of foul green smoke and more threatening in size than the matronly, jolly good fairies. She maintains her evilness throughout the movie, rather than turning wicked and vengeful after being snubbed by Aurora's parents to a celebration of their daughter's birth.
In the movie, the prince also meets Aurora in the woods before she falls under the sleeping spell, which is perhaps designed to bring more reality into his quest to rescue her (as opposed to the liklihood of a prince being prepared to risk all to save the life of an anonymous sleeping junior royal).
The changes don't alter the general thrust of the fairytale, yet change it significantly enough to illustrate the tone of the 'Disneyfication' of original texts.
The Lion King
Much has been made of The Lion King (1994) and how it has been influenced, or in fact parallels, William Shakespeare's Hamlet: The King of Denmark.
Some claim the story is just a savannah rip-off of The Bard's great work. Others claim one of Disney's most awarded animated feature films is an ode to its classical literature influence that puts a child-friendly facade on a rich story of honour, responsibility and revenge.
Simba in The Lion King is considered a representation of Shakespeare's Hamlet Jr. Simba's father Mufasa (Hamlet Sr) was murdered by his envious and treacherous brother Scar (Claudius in Hamlet), who then banished Simba from the Pride Lands. Scar (and Claudius) are then seen to revel in adn exploit their ill-gotten power, ultimately driving their kingdoms to the brink. Simba meanwhile has been absent while Hamlet Jr monitors the goings on of Claudius through another form of absence -- his madness over the death of his father. Both Simba and Hamlet Jr are inspired to return to take their rightful place as leader after visitations by apparitions of their dead fathers.
What may look to many movie-goers like a new story is in fact connected to a work by one of the greatest writers in history. Can children getting a basic grasp of the story of Hamlet, whether it be in an animated for or about a pride of animals, really be a bad thing at all?
Other Kids Literature That Inspired Disney Movies
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Premiered in 1937. Based on the Brothers Grimm fairytale Snow White.
- Pinocchio. Premiered in 1940. Based on Pinocchio: Tale of a Puppet by Carlo Collodi.
- Dumbo. Premiered in 1941. Based on Dumbo by Helen Aberson.
- Bambi. Premiered in 1942. Based on Bambi: A Life in the Woods by Felix Salten.
- Song of the South. Premiered in 1946. Based on Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris.
- Fun and Fancy Free. Premiered in 1947. Based on First Bongo by Sinclair Lewis. And Jack and the Beanstalk by Benjamin Tabart.
- The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad. Based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.
- Cinderella. Premiered in 1950. Based on the fairytale Cendrillon by Charles Perrault.
- Alice in Wonderland. Premiered in 1951. Based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
- Peter Pan. Premiered in 1953. Based on the play Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up by J.M. Barrie.
- Lady and the Tramp. Premiered in 1955. Based on Happy Dan,The Whistling Dog written by Ward Greene.
- One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Premiered in 1961. Based on The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.
- The Sword in the Stone. Premiered in 1963. Based on T.H.White’s The Sword in the Stone.
- Mary Poppins. Premiered in 1964. Based on Mary Poppins by P.L.Travers.
- Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. Premiered in 1966. (Later became part of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1977). Based on A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.
- The Jungle Book. Premiered in 1967. Based on The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.
- The Great Mouse Detective. Premiered in 1986. Based on Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus and draws heavily on Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.
- Oliver and Company. Premiered in 1988. Inspired by Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
- Beauty and the Beast. Premiered in 1991. Based on the fairytale La Belle at la Bete by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Premiered in 1996. Inspired by The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo.
- Tarzan. Premiered in 1999. Based on the Tarzan of the Apes series by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
- The Chronicles of Narnia. Premiered in 2008. Based on The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.
- Meet the Robinsons. Premiered in 2008. Based on A Day With Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce.
- The Princess and the Frog. Premiered in 2009. Based on The Frog Princess by E.D.Baker, which was based on the Grimm Brothers’ fairytale The Frog Prince.
Katrina Beikoff - I am an award-winning journalist, columnist, editor and media consultant and have just completed my first book -- a travel memoir/social ...
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