Posted on 03/18/2017 5:57:37 AM PDT by C19fan
The “gay kiss” in question was actually in “Star vs. the Forces of Evil,” another Disney property, which occurred around the same time, so the mistake was understandable.
However, just because there isn’t a gay kiss in the 2017 movie doesn’t mean it isn’t trying to push the gay agenda. Don’t forget, Bill Condon made it pretty clear that there was a “gay moment” in the film relating to the character of LeFou.
No. Gay kiss or no, the Disney versions of classic fairy tales are awful and miss everything that’s cool about it. Give them a copy of the de Beaumont version instead. And a collection of Brothers Grimm with bookmarks on the Disney ones (Cinderella, Snow White, etc), let them learn real fairy tales with nobody wearing a blue dress. They’ll be smarter.
Personally, I liked the Disney version of The Little Mermaid far better than the original version (I just felt sickened by the mermaid in that fairy tale, and not in a good way. I also hated that she was essentially a karma Houdini regarding her largely selfish actions, many of which she made absolutely NO effort to fix and did cause a lot of suffering. I had a different ending in mind for that story: that the mermaid get a soul from God, yet be sent into the fires of hell for eternity for all the selfish acts she did, with not even her sacrificing her life to avoid killing the prince being enough to make up for them. At least Ariel actually DID clean up her messes. You want a story that actually DOES promote sacrifice? Try Mega Man Zero 4. That’s sacrificing yourself for another done RIGHT.).
And as far as the Disney versions of Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, I thought they were pretty good, to be honest, certainly promoting conservative values. And besides, Cinderella wasn’t even BASED on the Grimm version in the first place, it was based on Charles Perrault’s version, so there was zero need to alter ANYTHING, which, BTW, they really didn’t alter it that much.
I’ve grown to loath the Disneyification of classic stories so much that for me “blue dress” (because they always seem to have one) is a four letter word. Never read the original Mermaid, never saw the Disney either, I was done with Disney before they made it.
I’ll give you Beauty and the Beast (most of the Disney version, with the exception of the curse as well as Belle taking the place of her father, wasn’t even similar at all to the original tale), but the others definitely don’t deserve that much of a rap. Besides, a lot of the stuff in the fairy tales quite frankly isn’t suitable for children, like for example having the Evil Queen dance in red hot shoes or the fact that Aurora was raped by the prince (who, BTW, was the offspring of an ogre) during her century coma. I mean, what, are you going to show your three year old Senator Kelly’s liquification from X-Men? Because that’s what showing all the details from the Grimm fairy tales in animated form is going to result in if Disney does exactly what you suggested. We’ve already got a hint of that with Hunchback of Notre Dame where they had the villagers torment Quasimodo just for the sake of it instead of out of corporal punishment or how they included a Gypsy genocide plot by Frollo that wasn’t even in the original book at all.
Snow White is terrible, and frankly so is Cinderella which ever version they went after. And of course fairy tales are suitable for children, that’s who they were written for. One of the big lessons of fairy tales is that life is rough. I’m not saying they should show all of the details, I’m saying they should burn half the story. They did the same thing with Alice in Wonderland. They take everything that’s interesting in the story, decide it’s too mean or whatever, and make saccharine crap out o the story. What you’d get if they actually RESPECTED the story is good versions that are truthful and interesting, but of course that would keep the original alive, and Disney doesn’t want that. The real reason they sanitize them is for ownership, Disney wants the real versions of the stories to seem foreign and odd, they want you to think exclusively of the Disney version, and pass it on to your kids, because that passes your money, and eventually your kids’ money, to them. There’s a reason why Travers hated the Mary Poppins movie, but of course Disney being Disney they even found a way to sanitize that hatred (Saving Mr Banks has her learning to love the movie, she didn’t).
Disney is actually kind of frightening when you think about they way they take over intellectual property and culture.
Nice!
No hot lesbo action with Emma Watson?
Damn...
Once again, Free Republic fails me.
Let’s see, Cinderella has to deal with living with her wicked stepfamily and being abused by them, she ultimately manages to get to the ball via her fairy godmother after her stepfamily forces her to do an overabundance of chores specifically to prevent her to go to the ball, eventually, the prince tries to find her, she ultimately has the shoe fit in her foot, after her stepsisters failed, and she gets a happily ever after. That’s similar enough to the original tale.
As far as Snow White, again, was treated as a slave by her stepmother who is jealous of her beauty, attempts to have her killed, and then after the huntsman shirks his duty, decides to deal with her personally via disguising herself, and ultimately succeeds, and her prince saves her. Yeah, similar enough to the original tale, barring that the prince just kisses her rather than wakes her up due to tripping while taking her as a trophy.
Sleeping Beauty, the princess still gets cursed by a miffed fairy, and ends up in a coma when poisoned by a spinning wheel, and she still gets awakened by her prince. Similar enough. Probably the only thing different is that the prince not only doesn’t rape her, but actually DOES have a bit of a history with her (oh, and obviously it doesn’t last 100 years fortunately, which was something the main villain Maleficent ironically mentioned).
And if you are so much of a purist that you won’t tolerate any changes to the tale, even when the overall point remains the same, why don’t you voice complaints to, say, the Brothers Grimm for ruining Perrault, or even voice complaints to Beauville for ruining the tale as told by Villeneuve. No story’s going to be 100% the same, after all.
And when the content of those fairy tales are stuff that’s closer to a PG-13 or R-rated movie, no, they AREN’T for kids (and yes, that ESPECIALLY goes towards the Grimm version of Sleeping Beauty where the only reason she woke up is because the prince raped her and she entered labor, and rape is NEVER family friendly material). Besides, what makes you think Disney DOESN’T include those bits in their films? Last I checked, Maleficent isn’t exactly a family friendly character, nor was the evil queen either. And The Little Mermaid by Disney actually has a faustian element to the story that wasn’t present at all originally, AND the villain gets a kind of death that’s very rarely done with Disney Villains, which is a very graphic one. And in fact, Ursula, the main villain, was the source of all nightmares for many 1990s kids.
Besides, if I were to go by your logic, I might as well show my hypothetical three year old X-Men or The Dark Knight, despite it OBVIOUSLY not being geared for their age bracket, simply to show that life is rough, or even Batman: The Killing Joke or The Matrix Trilogy (which are even LESS appropriate than those two because they’re rated R) even if it means having to pay for psychiatry bills for the resulting nightmares as a result. Do you see how much of a problem that is? Besides, it’s not just Disney that does those things, as even Hanna Barbara cartoons and Golden Films have done similar things to their stories. Heck, Warner Bros. did the same thing to the Harry Potter films, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson did similar stuff as well.
That’s not to say I want things to be significantly different from the source material, because if they were significantly different, right down to the overall message, what’s the point in even adapting it. So long as the core message remains the same, they can change things within reason. And quite frankly, if we were talking Beauty and the Beast, I’d agree that they definitely changed far too much from the original tale, several of the changes weren’t even necessary.
Bambi and Pinnochio were pretty disturbing on their own no? The Little Mermaid and BATB (1991) are saved by the songs. The death of brilliant lyricist Howard Ashman shortly thereafter was a huge loss.
BATB, I agree. Not sure about The Little Mermaid, though: The plot itself probably was good enough that the songs probably didn’t need to save it (though the songs certainly helped).
But they were written specifically for children. Saying they aren’t for kids is silly, the problem is OUR SOCIETY has turned childhood into this sacred right where all must be good with the world, when it isn’t.
It’s not just changes to the story, I understand that for different mediums and audience stories must change, it’s BAD changes that turn them into BAD stories. That’s the simple basic problem, the Disney version are all saccharine CRAP, they just plain aren’t good stories anymore. They took great stories and turned them into stupid stories.
Disney kind of started to correct when they did the “dark” wave, but that was in response to others making money in that field, and frankly, their dark versions still sucked.
No that’s not my logic, that’s you erecting a straw man. Those stories you’re lining out actually are NOT for kids. The only problem here is you can’t understand the difference between a fairy tale, written for 5 year olds, and a comic written for teens and adults. Kids SHOULD be able to handle the fairy tale, and if your three your old can’t it’s because you filled their head with fluffy Disney gobbledygook.
The Disney version ARE significantly different, for one thing they’re all stupid.
They have their tear jerking moments, but they always put the fluff in. I hate Disney songs, even if the lyrics might be good with their need to have singing rats and chairs and whatever else they make them dumb. Part of it too is the era I grew up in, when your childhood is in the 70s Disney is Apple Dumpling Gang and Cat From Outer Space. You learn very quickly that the mouse logo = crappy movie coming. Which then makes you start looking at the classics differently. When I look at those I see fantastic animation (it really is amazing) in the service of bad stories that insult their audience. Then I took German and we started translating Brothers Grimm and I found out that many of these stories were once good, and that was it. Disney is an Ugh for me now, and I’m always waiting for them to Disney-ify their properties. Like they’ve already done to Pixar, remember when Pixar meant awesome, now it means yet another freaking Cars movie.
The Brothers Grimm didn’t write anything. They collected German folk tales. Nor did they intend them for children. That was the way they packaged later on.
‘Inside Out’ was great recent Pixar no?
There’s no need to think of them as ‘Disney songs’. They would function in other contexts as well. Before being hired by Disney, Menken and Ashman wrote ‘Little Shop of Horrors’. Who else would write a couplet like ‘I thrill when I drill a bicuspid. It’s swell though they tell me I’m maladjusted’
Three of their songs made it into Aladdin. This is much funnier as a demo than anything in the film. The lyrics are hilarious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R2yyr7atrA
As Borges said, most of the fairy tales were NOT for children, that came later (and besides, Brothers Grimm never actually wrote anything, they merely collected). And besides, are you seriously going to tell me that rape is kid-friendly material at ALL? Because the Brothers Grimm stories had plenty of that (like Princess Aurora being raped by that ogre prince, or how about Snow White being woken up because the prince in his haste to have a literal trophy wife dropped the coffin which gave her just enough force to spit out the poisoned apple jammed into her throat). And for the record, most Disney stuff AREN’T saccharine crap. Do I really have to point out that the very first full-length animated movie by Disney involved a Stepmother trying to commit infanticide against her own stepdaughter just because she was more beautiful than her (And Disney even opted to make the woman as evil and serious as possible, and not a comical bumbler which was what was originally planned)? Or how about the story of Cinderella [which was based on the Perrault Version, NOT the Grimm version] where Cinderella was the victim of parental and sibling abuse for most of her life. Even Sleeping Beauty had Maleficent actually attempt to KILL Aurora with zero remorse simply for not being invited (in fact, the ONLY reason it was merely a coma instead of death was because the three fairies softened the curse, and based on the fact that Maleficent had left, we could easily assume that she still thought Aurora was DEAD by the time the curse set in) and was practically Satan incarnate, which was significantly different from the original fairy tale where she actually DID intend to just put her in a coma. And The Little Mermaid? Aside from including an element of racism that wasn’t in the original tale via King Triton, a large part of the story involved a faustian deal between Ariel and Ursula, and Ariel actually trying to clean up her mess. And The Lion King actually had a very dark villain in the form of Scar who was perfectly willing to off his own brother and nephew just to become king, and then turned the Pride Lands into a wasteland of near extinction once he got it. That doesn’t even match up with saccharine crap. You want “saccharine crap?” Try Barney & Friends or Teletubbies. THAT’S “saccharine crap.”
And no, they WEREN’T significantly different, and I even explained how similar overall they were to the fairy tales. The only ones that actually WERE significantly different were the Jungle Book and maybe Beauty and the Beast, oh, and Aladdin as well.
They were totally meant for kids. First Brothers Grimm story I ever read was Die Scherer, about a big scary guy with huge scissors who cut off the thumbs of kids who wouldn’t stop sucking them. It was a lesson for kids, targeted at kids. It was a different generation of kids, not coddled like ours, the folk tales existed to remind kids it was a dangerous world, and they needed to get their act together.
As soon as there’s dancing rats and chairs, it’s a Disney song, and I don’t like it. Like I said they could stand up on their own, but once they’re in a Disney movie with all the Disney crap I don’t like em.
“They were totally meant for kids. First Brothers Grimm story I ever read was Die Scherer, about a big scary guy with huge scissors who cut off the thumbs of kids who wouldn’t stop sucking them. It was a lesson for kids, targeted at kids. It was a different generation of kids, not coddled like ours, the folk tales existed to remind kids it was a dangerous world, and they needed to get their act together.”
“Coddled”? That’s what you describe what Disney films as doing? “Coddling” them? I could get Barney and Friends or even Teletubbies being described as “coddling” kids, but not Disney, because depicting familial abuse, a person outright trying to MURDER their child, not to mention making the wicked fairy actually attempt to MURDER a child rather than just leave them in a coma for not being invited is not exactly my idea of “coddling” kids, nor is films that show villains being outright killed (and not simply falling down a ravine, I mean. Actually, with Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent was actually KILLED by Prince Phillip by throwing the Sword of Truth straight into her heart, and in The Little Mermaid, Flotsam and Jetsam as well as Ursula were killed in such a manner that you almost thought you were watching Dragon Ball Z than a Disney film, and Dragon Ball Z was multiple-levels dark, and I doubt most people would think it “coddles” kids, especially when the original versions had them not dying at all, and in the case of Ursula wasn’t even a villain.). And for that matter, nor is entering a faustian deal with the villain and nearly losing your soul as a result. All of which, BTW, were actually IN Disney films. Maybe you should rewatch them with those specific things in mind.
And there is such a thing as giving people TOO much darkness in kids tales, and that will have kids growing up to be so cynical that they can’t even conceive of good. Like child soldiers in Africa, for example.
They WERE for kids. They were how kids were taught that world was a scary place that played for keeps. Don’t go into the forest alone, don’t talk to random traveling, stop sucking your thumbs. Those were, and in ways still are, lessons for kids.
For the record, they ARE saccharine crap. There’s hints at bad stuff, but they never dwell on it, and pretty soon there will be singing rats to make it all better. Not only are they saccharine crap, they’re the template for saccharine crap, if somebody wants to take a “scary” story and make it “safe” they Disney it.
They ARE significantly different. I’ve seen the saccharine crap movies and I’ve read the stories. The movies are vastly different, vastly inferior, and frankly suck.
That’s what American society does. We hide reality from kids as long as possible, then we have the audacity to be shocked when kids finally get a taste of the real world and can’t handle it.
Depicting family abuse is real. That’s how things work in the real world, it’s terrible, but it’s real. And one of the things that allows it to continue is that we deny it. We hide from it, we pretend it doesn’t happen, we pretend there’s some other reason for those bruises, we add singing rats and make it all go away.
I’m not rewatching crappy saccharine movies to remind myself how crappy they are. The problem here is you know the story they’re HIDING and pretending they actually put it on the screen, I remember the story that’s on the screen where all that stuff is at best hinted at and quickly shunted aside for the happily ever after.
Kid soldiers in Africa aren’t getting any stories, they’re drafted, bad example.
Face it, we’ll never agree. I have loathed Disney movies for 40 years. You like them, good for you, I hate them and I hate the company that made them. Best plan here is for you to pretend you never saw this thread and go on enjoying those movies. While I will go on avoiding them like the diabetes causing plague they are. We disagree, we’ll never agree, I wish you good health.
“They WERE for kids. They were how kids were taught that world was a scary place that played for keeps. Don’t go into the forest alone, don’t talk to random traveling, stop sucking your thumbs. Those were, and in ways still are, lessons for kids.”
No, they were not for kids at all. Anything that shows rape is NOT kid friendly, PERIOD. Even people back then did not do those kinds of things.
“For the record, they ARE saccharine crap. There’s hints at bad stuff, but they never dwell on it, and pretty soon there will be singing rats to make it all better. Not only are they saccharine crap, they’re the template for saccharine crap, if somebody wants to take a “scary” story and make it “safe” they Disney it.”
Never dwell on it? Last I checked, Snow White nearly got killed, and it was a very near villain victory near the end. Same deal with Cinderella where Lady Tremaine not only locked up Cinderella in her room specifically to ensure she cannot get the glass slipper on, or how Maleficent tried to outright MURDER Aurora, not just put her to sleep, and even made every effort to sabotage any chance at the curse being removed. In fact, with Sleeping Beauty, it was made very clear that Aurora was constantly in danger of the curse, to the extent that when it seemed as though the curse was going to be outright averted, the narration even stated they rejoiced at the possibility. The Little Mermaid had Ariel have a time limit just to get the prince to kiss her, the sea witch actually sabotaging her attempts at success, and nearly losing her soul and actually working to redeem herself by fighting Ursula AND her minions. And Ursula and Maleficent, for the record get on-screen, very much family-unfriendly deaths (the former died from having a sword thrown straight into her heart, and the latter had a ship rammed into her, electrocuted, and disintegrated, with our even seeing the body parts on-screen immediately afterward). I can tell you this much, you certainly can’t see that stuff in Barney or Teletubbies.
You want real “saccharine”? Try Barney and Friends, or even Teletubbies. When do they actually ALLUDE to bad stuff, let alone show it? All of the stuff I mentioned in the Disney versions WERE bad stuff (in fact, in the case of Maleficent, it was arguably even WORSE than the original tale, since the original tale didn’t have the wicked fairy actually try to kill the child, while in the Disney version she explicitly attempted to do so).
“They ARE significantly different. I’ve seen the saccharine crap movies and I’ve read the stories. The movies are vastly different, vastly inferior, and frankly suck.”
I gave you a listing of how the films turned out in general, and also even stated just how similar they were to the original tale. Those were bit by bit, so yes, they WERE similar, not significantly different. You want significantly different, try comparing Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid to, say, PBS Super Why’s rendition, that was significantly different. Or how about “Naked Lunch”’s film adaptation or Eragon’s film adaptation.
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