Animated Deer Provokes Debate 66 Years After the Fact
Apr 25th, 2008 | By Rick | Category: Analysis and Comment
Back when I was a child, there were no DVDs or even — and I know this will shock you all — any of those quaint things with rollers called video cassettes. Back then, if you wanted to see a movie that wasn’t playing in the theaters, an older movie, you had to wait for it to be revived, or until it was on TV. That’s how I saw Gone With the Wind: it’s my mother’s all-time favorite film, and she took me to one of its periodic revivals.
That’s how I became acquainted with Bambi as well, and Flower and Thumper and all the others — I saw it i revival sometime in the 50s or early sixties on the big screen. I remember crying at the death of Bambi’s mother, and thinking back, a lot of it was identification with the fawn. As we sat there in the dark, our own mothers by our side, it was all too easy to put ourselves in his place.
In “The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation,” Cambridge University Lecturer David Whitley, argues that Bambi also had the effect of raising environmental consciousness. In her N.Y. Times review of the book, Patricia Cohen notes that the film
was hailed by wildlife conservationists and denounced by hunters when it was released in 1942. An insult, declared Outdoor Life magazine, while the National Audubon Society compared its consciousness-raising power to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
In his book, Whitley argues that the beautiful, pastoral versions of nature in Disney cartoons like Bambi and
Finding Nemo were instrumental in raising up generations of budding environmentalists. Agreeing, Cohen writes that
it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to see the nature-loving themes in Disney movies: hunters kill Bambi’s mother and burn down a forest; Pocahontas sings “The rainstorm and the river are my brothers/The heron and the otter are my friends/And we are all connected to each other.”
But many scholars have taken Disney to task on this very issue, citing the company for environmentally unfriendly policies and the films for candy-coated sentimentalism and distorted views of nature and animals.
And so, there’s a fine line being argued in academic circles: the beautiful, simplified visions in Disney animation, and in nature documentaries which aren’t always all that realistic, inspire environmental conservation on the one hand, but evoke unrealistically simplistic views, and thus solutions, on the other.
As an ex-biologist, I can see the point. In addition to the Disney animations, I also remember as a kid watching those insipid Disney documentaries where Jimmy Dean narrated in his folksy twang stuff like “Uh, oh . . . here comes Mr. Bahr . . . he figures he’s gonna have him some ra-coon supper . . .” And even in today’s much more realistic docs there can be a distressing tendency to humanize “our furry friends” in wholly unrealistic ways. (The latest being the unaccountably large number of movies about penguins).
By projecting our own motivations and fears and foibles on the natural world, especially its animal denizens, we think we understand them, that their motives are our motives. By assigning to them human feelings and thoughts we patronize them, rather than recognizing their innate “animal-ness,” rather than celebrating how they are different from us. Understanding the complex pack hierarchies that drives dog behavior is ultimately more satisfying, and more important to assuring their well-being, than projecting upon them human traits such as “love” or “loyalty.”
The inevitably distorted views of nature found in animated films and documentaries produce distorted environmental protection and advocacy efforts. Yet, is the damage caused greater than the awareness these films generate? Images after all do speak a thousand words, and the immersive, you-are-there quality of film can bring immediacy to a problem that all the printed words in the world could not.
And lest we forget, Bambi, Finding Nemo, and even March of the Penguins have intrinsic value as entertainments which, after all are their primary function. As consumers, we need to be just a little bit more discerning, a little more aware of where their depictions of our natural world might lead.
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Great post Rick.
I always found it funny how people watched these types of films, like BABE, and then, after the film, went and ate pork chops and apple sauce without a gripe.
I am partial to Disney films though. Especially the high caliber productions like FINDING NEMO.
Thanks, Joe … I love good Disney productions, and I respect the place of the studio in film history, especially the history of animation. The studio had heart and personality, even though it sometimes reinforced what I think of as the worst in the American impulse.
These days, as the studio has become an entertainment conglomerate, much of the heart is gone.
I remember a ,as a younger mother, one certain child who was so into Bambi that he had to watch it everyday. I thought I would go over the edge if I heard, “Drip, drip, drop little April shower. . .” one more time.
I’m no fan of Disney but I have some nice memories of the movies when I was a kid. Like you I saw them at revivals in the theaters ’cause that’s how it was; no tapes, no dvd’s, hell no cable even.
Anyway, I read about this somewhere, I can’t remember now, and I’m just not convinced that Disney helped us become environmentalists. Given the overwhelming number of factors in the twentieth century (starting with Teddy Roosevelt preserving public lands to Earth Day to the creation of the E.P.A. to the extremely important “No Littering” campaigns of the seventies, to regulations on pollution, to the banning of CFC’s, to the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring etc, etc, etc) that contributed to environmental awareness, and the fact that in over a century millions have been involved in moving us towards better conditions for the planet, I find it a little insulting to all those people to give the credit to some furry animated animals. David Whitley disrespects the complex and interconnected mechanisms that produced environmental awareness on a semi-global scale to sell a book with a premise he knows will work for many who do not know the efforts made by so many in the areas of resource depletion and land degredation (the dust bowl happened before the Bambi movie and farming methods were changed as a result of that, not because of Thumper), acid rain, pesticides, nuclear testing - none of which were ever covered in a Disney movie.
Sorry if I sound a little pissed, I assure you it’s not with you Rick. It’s with David Witless and his hokey, condescending ideas.
Great insights, Rick. It’s a valid question, and perhaps Disney has provided an answer with the announcement of their “Disneynature” series launching next spring.
Jonathan — Irritating, ain’t it? Oversimplification is a bane of us humans … not having read Witless’ (oops, I mean Whitley’s) book, I can’t say whether he acknowledges the complexity or not. Most folks in this country can’t or won’t see the complexity of our problems. There’s gotta be either this, that, or possibly the other thing at fault, period. Of course, politicians aid and abet it … unfortunately, the way you make academic reputations (i.e., Whitley’s book) often exacerbates the problem (as does the word “exacerbate”).
Daniel — thanks … I read that announcement about “Disneynature” with great reserve. There’s a whole new crop of mediocre nature docs out there, perhaps spurred on by the increasing # of HD TVs (I know I watch more of them on mine). Many of them are just the same old same old, however.