Posted on 11/14/2019 5:46:51 AM PST by Enlightened1
The Little Mermaid, despite being made by Eisner, was actually pretty dang close to what Walt Disney wrote for the film. In fact, apparently they even noted the coincidence a while back about how the changes they made were the same ones Walt made. Of the ones Eisner made, The Little Mermaid and possibly The Lion King probably will be timeless. I know Beauty and the Beast certainly wouldn’t have been timeless, though (of course, in that case, BATB’s rendition was more due to Jeffrey Katzenberg and not Eisner. Actually, if anything, Eisner backed Jim Cox’s rendition and loved his treatment enough that he hired him to make a full-fledged screenplay. Unfortunately, Katzenberg axed that one, ultimately in favor of a feminist propaganda film that barely had any connection to the original story.).
But I definitely agree, Walt’s stories were better ultimately.
I’m not saying Eisner-era stuff isn’t “good” - as in quality (largely, post-Walt was rather weak quality). But in “goodness” - not shoving agendas down the throat, including questionable characters of PC relevence, etc, this era rather stinks.
Personally I love the Beast and like Mermaid - they are actually least agenda-driven if at all (yes Beauty is somewhat feminist but the worst part to me was the unnecessary Gaston which dragged down the story). Lion King is FULL of PCness including homo characters, and “Africanness” (and I didn’t care for some of the brattiness in there). Overrated on all fronts. Never mind Aladdin, the 1st real agenda-driven and SPASTIC (another thing I hate about modern kids’ stuff) characterizations.
Actually, I’m not sure Timon and Pumbaa were homosexual at all. I saw far more hints of homosexuality between Djali and Hugo in Hunchback than I EVER did with Timon and Pumbaa (Besides, Lion King’s Timon and Pumbaa makes it pretty clear that they’re straight, with Timon even deeply considering going for a female meerkat.). Not to mention their “Hakuna Matata” viewpoint wasn’t exactly treated as a positive (Simba needed to overcome that bit, not to mention his blaming himself for Mufasa’s death, to even challenge Scar.). As far as Africa, to be fair, Lions generally live in Africa, so not like we can avoid that.
Besides, Conservapedia did give a pretty dang good explanation on why The Lion King was conservative (if anything, Scar is pretty much your typical far left democrat, and a good standin for Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, any leftist dictator you can mention. If anything, he’s a more realistic depiction of a dictator, not to mention the Hyenas made a good allegory for why open borders is NOT a good thing. Even comes across as somewhat biblical at times). It’s certainly less PC than Pocahontas was, or for that matter Hunchback of Notre Dame (which race-swapped Esmerelda for no real reason, not to mention REALLY demonized Christianity.).
As far as Beauty and the Beast, yeah, actually, that film was arguably what really started the whole agenda-driven stuff, not to mention extremely spastic. Ignoring how Belle was depicted as a feminist, by Linda Woolverton’s own admission I should add, they also had Beast essentially being “reformed” by Belle essentially castrating him and ultimately turning him into a beta male who can’t even defend his own servants and castle, let alone himself from a murderous mob led by Belle’s jealous suitor unless Belle was physically present (say what you will about Beast before changing, at least he was fully demonstrated to be very protective of the castle and presumably his servants by that time). What’s even worse is that such was an explicit betrayal of the lesson he needed to learn, that he ought to care about others other than himself (last I checked, no matter how heartbroken he might have been, if he truly learned his lesson, he would have made absolutely sure to defend his servants from possibly being killed rather than saying “just let them come”). Oh, and marriage was depicted in an extremely negative light, since aside from Gaston’s antics (and he pretty much slowed down the film, I agree with you there, and he was very poorly written, too much of a Saturday morning matinee villain, nowhere near as threatening as, say, Maleficent, Evil Queen, Ursula, or even Jafar or Scar or Shan Yu.), there’s also how the only three girls who actually liked marriage or at the very least had genuine respect for the institution, the Bimbettes, were treated very poorly in the story, making THEM out to basically be dumb blonde bimbos who fall for the town hunk (oh, and what’s worse, a blatant womanizer like Lumiere is implicitly depicted as being a good man, same goes for his floozy featherduster. Seriously, and this movie was meant for kids? And it says a lot where a featherduster who’s heavily implied to be in a friends with benefits relationship with a womanizer is treated in a better light than three blondes who at least did genuinely respect the concept of marriage.), failed to give them even a slight amount of inner ugliness beyond crushing on Gaston (seriously, couldn’t they at LEAST depict them as being murderously jealous of Belle? If anything, they supported the marriage and couldn’t have been jealous of Belle, certainly not to murderous levels), and the whole village was just demonized to prop Belle up. And Belle just came across as a smarter-than-thou leftist (in fact, to be honest, I actually FEAR Belle currently, fear she’ll become a Jacobin due to drinking too much of Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and Sade’s kool aid and backstab Adam in favor of the French Revolution when that comes about). Oh, and what’s worse, the whole reason Belle was made into a Simone de Beauvoir feminist was because Jeffrey Katzenberg demanded for a feminist twist to the story, even hiring that hack Linda Woolverton, largely thanks to some idiot critics who claimed Ariel was “cloyingly sexist” simply because she actually WANTED to go for Prince Eric at all. Oh yeah, and you want Spastic characterizations? You can’t get any more spastic than Gaston outright gloating to the entire village that he’s planning on throwing a man he knew full well was a harmless crackpot into the loony bin so he could blackmail Belle into marrying him. Can’t get any more spastic than that. Not to mention the only reason the curse got eliminated at all was due to sheer dumb luck twice, which is yet another indication of it being spastic. Doesn’t help that barring Beast (and it’s a darn good thing he got genuine depth as a character, even if it DID end up wasted in the end), most of the characters, yes, even Belle, the “brainy brunette,” were blatant stereotypes. And Belle also behaved like a complete jerk to Gaston when refusing him in the movie, shoved him in mud and then smirked and gave a mocking wave goodbye (yes, Gaston himself was a jerk in that scene as well, but what Belle did was just inexcusable, especially when she actually was free to say no, unlike with a similar situation with Jasmine or, heck, even with Merida, and I consider Merida to be even worse.). In fact, if I must be honest, barring maybe Merida, I’d argue the anti-marriage messaging was even WORSE in Beauty and the Beast than in Aladdin, Pocahontas, or to a lesser extent Mulan. At least those movies had them essentially having a gun to their back regarding an arranged marriage as why they were unwilling to marry. Belle didn’t even have that. Believe me when I say this, Aladdin was absolutely NOTHING by comparison regarding agenda driven aspects, nor was The Lion King for that matter. Besides, Aladdin kept some negative aspects of Islamic culture intact and made clear they were pretty bad aspects of their culture (like for example, the shopkeeper nearly amputating Jasmine’s hand, or trying to kill Aladdin just for stealing bread that he clearly needed just to survive, and knowing how Muslims generally treat their wives or any women [like honor killings and throwing acid into the faces of schoolgirls], I actually sympathize to a degree with Jasmine not wanting to marry initially, which was much more than what I got from Belle).
In fact, how about I show you what Conservapedia said about why it’s considered one of the greatest conservative films, Lion King I mean:
“Based mainly upon the Shakespearean play Hamlet, the main message of this box office smash hit is about the power of the individual and the triumph of faith, friendship, hope, and heroism. The Lion King also features subtle Christian messages, such as honoring one’s father and reconciliation.
Its story takes partial inspiration from Scripture, particularly the stories of Joseph and Moses. On a side note, the film features the power-hungry main antagonist Scar, who kills his own brother, the ruling king Mufasa, to usurp the throne, then manipulates his nephew, Mufasa’s young son Simba, into thinking that Simba is responsible for his father’s death and forces him into exile. Scar is a model liberal because, once he becomes ruler, he favors Communistic/fascistic big government, pushes liberal values, and lets their Pride Lands territory fall to ruin. In addition, when rallying up the Hyenas to aid him in killing Mufasa, he vows that they will never starve under his rule, mirroring what various Communist and other leftist insurgents often vow when trying to get people to aid them in taking over a government. The song “Be Prepared” also shows the Hyenas goose stepping past Scar as he looks down from a cliff in a clear reference to Nazism. On a similar note, the Hyenas also act as a subtle condemnation against illegal immigration and the concept of open borders, as once the Hyenas merge with the Pride Lands and take it over upon Scar becoming king, it is heavily implied that they forced the Lionesses to overhunt and that ended up causing the Pride Lands territory to become a wasteland by driving out any remaining animals, with Scar indicating that they should “eat Zazu” if they want food.
At several points in the film, Scar delusively believes he is still a very good king, even claiming “I’m ten times the king Mufasa was!”, which is similar to liberal delusions of their own skills in governing (i.e., Obama’s later claim that he would have “won” reelection into a third term if he was able to run again, despite never being legally qualified to run in the first place, not to mention his being legally barred from running for a third term even if he were legally qualified to run in the first place per the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution). He unsuccessfully attempts to orchestrate the assassination of Simba by using hyena minions and even attempts to kill him himself, to ensure that he will be king and remain so forevermore, but he is thwarted by Simba once the cub reaches adulthood. Simba effectively becomes King and restores the Pride Lands after Scar, who tries to save his own skin by blaming his minions for everything he orchestrated himself, has the hyenas turn against and kill him.
There is a slight condemnation towards anarchy in the film as well: during the song “Be Prepared”, the hyena Shenzi, upon learning that Scar is planning to kill Mufasa and Simba, entertains the possibility of a kingless society before Scar sternly tells the laughing hyenas that he intends to be the king. Finally, the film condemns hedonism, as the misfit meerkat and warthog comic reliefs Timon and Pumbaa, while depicted as genuinely heroic at times, engage in a philosophy of “Hakuna Matata” (”No Worries” in Swahili), which is shown overall to be negative.
In addition, the film proved to be a massive runaway hit despite having a completely new production team working on it due to then-Disney Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg believing it to end up a flop due to it featuring “talking animals” while he thought the Worst Liberal Movie Pocahontas, which he helmed with the usual production team, would be the financial hit and Oscar winner (in reality, Pocahontas got mixed reviews and did fairly badly at the box office).
The movie spawned two direct-to-video sequels and two TV series, as well as a broadway musical that retained much of the same themes as the movie. A photorealistic remake was released in July 2019, directed by Jon Favreau due to his success with the 2016 remake of The Jungle Book.”
And Conservapedia, as you can guess by the name, is explicitly a conservative-backed encyclopedia.
What’s sad about this is that I actually DID like Beauty and the Beast when I was younger. Unfortunately, that love evaporated due to some horrid years in college where I was nearly brainwashed by leftist professors (not to mention researching the French Revolution), and Linda Woolverton and Don Hahn’s comments certainly don’t help. Heck, Paige O’Hara’s comments don’t help either.
We can definitely agree that The Little Mermaid was not agenda driven, or if it was, it certainly was the least agenda driven. Heck, if anything, I thought Disney’s rendition was a LOT better than the book.
Oh, and I forgot to mention one other thing: Linda Woolverton explicitly stated that the messages she intended to push in Beauty and the Beast were the exact same messages that she tried to push in that awful Maleficent movie about five years ago. That if anything shows it’s EXTREMELY agenda driven, arguably even MORE agenda driven than The Lion King or Aladdin ever were (probably on par with Pocahontas, which is the closest thing to an adaptation of Howard Zinn’s anti-American textbook). Here’s the article: http://time.com/2798136/maleficent-beauty-beast-writer/ That’s another thing that dashed my love for Beauty and the Beast.
Before Redd Fox, there was Amos’n Andy:
You didn’t think I was going to say it, didya?
Because I know you white SJWs!
Wait, what does Redd Fox or Amos’n Andy have anything to do with this? And I’m not a white SJW. Actually, if anything, I hate SJWs, as they ruined a LOT of stuff.
Disney’s “Song of the South” movie contains great Brer Rabbit cartoons that I loved as a child.
Here is a book by Disney telling the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. That story was turned into a cartoon about the Tar Baby in the movie.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2qbghu
Joel Chandler Harris wrote about the old African American stories about characters like Brer Rabbit that he heard in Georgia in the mid 1800s. They are great stories. Some of those stories are featured in “Song of the South.”
They should put the Chipmunk Adventure on there. The left will have a meltdown over the “racism” in that one.
Yes! And they might even learn something about times past (and realize that there were real people living back then, some even smarter than they are!).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.