Margaret MacKay
2/24/15
Are Disney’s animated films really
kid movies or family films, and is it childish to enjoy them as an adult? As an
adult fan of Disney’s works, this is a question I am quite familiar with.
Simply put, the answer is that the company’s animated movie franchise began as
family entertainment, but throughout the decades, it has been slowly gearing
more towards younger audiences. Since the change in animation styles, there has
been a lowering in the depth of Disney’s animated films.
Though it has been a gradual change
leading up through the nineties, for all intents and purposes, we are going to
say the shift came in 2010 when the Disney Company all but abandoned 2D and hand
drawn animation, leaving it solely for sequels and spin-offs such as Winnie the Pooh, and began their reign
of 3D movies. This change followed the massive box office let down by The Princess and the Frog in 2009, and
lead up to the company laying off nine of their animators (Amidi).The following
year saw not only a change in animation style to 3D, but also a redesign of the
character franchises.
Disney princesses have never really
portrayed realistic female features, but I don’t see how having them turned
into Barbie wannabes helped the cause.
Disney films have always been
geared toward the modern audience of the time, but in more recent years they
have been focusing more and more on a younger audience, children. I am not
saying the new movies aren’t fun for adults, they most definitely are, however the
fun feel of the movies play more on the nostalgic heart strings instead of an
adult’s intelligence. Re-watching your favorite movies as an adult, you tend to
notice a higher appreciation for the underlying humor, many characters make references
to topics no child would understand. Point in case: The movie Hercules contain many examples of the
characters displaying more adult intelligence. Perhaps most memorably when the
demi-god compares his problems to Oedipus the King, hopefully not a context a
child would understand. Today’s characters have been visibly dumbed-down. Yes
this means your six year old will understand absolutely everything, but it also
makes the character less interesting for you. It is clear to see that Anna from
Frozen is a modern, rebellious woman,
but we don't actually know what she does with her time, does she study or cook,
or learn languages, or fish, what does she do besides be a princess and sing to
ducklings? It’s cute and all, but for an adult, this could be kind of boring.
I know many people would argue that
Disney movies have always been intended for kids, after all they have changed
some of the most gruesome fairy tale tragedies to give them happy endings. This
is true but I would say that this argument suggests there is no cross over
between children’s and adult’s stories. Disney movies have a tendency to have a
cheerful finish, however they also manage to keep the balance between what
captures a child’s intrigue and an adult’s. It is also true that older Disney films
have a G rating, the first to receive a PG rating was Black Cauldron in 1985(“Trivia”), and for good reason. I would
challenge people to think of what other reasons there might be for this
particular fact to be true. One may be that all animated movies were rate G
simply because they were just that, animated. Another may be that it was harder
to score a PG rating in former years than it is today. As Forbes contributor Scott Mendelson puts it, “we’ve gone from
animated and/or family films being rated PG for having kid-sized heroes killing
henchmen in battle (The Incredibles) to animated films getting PG ratings for
the equivalent of a fart joke and a few near-miss escapes.”(Mendelson)
In the past, Disney has always
tried to make the leading characters more relatable to current viewers. True
Cinderella may seem somewhat helpless and not too intelligent to the women of
today, but in the fifties being able to attend to so many things such as
cleaning and cooking were highly valuable skills that require brains. And, when
comparing Cinderella vs. Snow White, You can see that though they
demonstrate a similar skill set, the Cinderella of 1950 is far more ambitious
with her goals and more intellectual with her attitude than Snow White, whose
movie was made thirteen years before.
If we turn the tables and put
Cinderella on the other end, we would expect to see much the same results, and
if you compare her to heroines such as Meg from Hercules, Jane from Tarzan,
or even Belle from Beauty and the Beast,
you can see the change in focus as the audience changes, but in a side by side
with Tangled, it is easy to see a
certain shadowing that practically screams nostalgia. Both involve evil step
mothers, however Lady Tremaine is arguably more villainous since Mother
Gothel’s over the top flamboyance makes her feel less like a serious threat and
more like comic relief. Also, songs such as “When Will My Life Begin” and “I
See the Light” though inspirational, echo the tunes like “A Dream Is a Wish”
and “So This Is Love.” So even with Rapunzel and Flynn Rider’s very modern
attitudes, many of the ideals seemed pulled directly from previous decades, out
dating the heart of the movie for its older audience who grew out of such
ideals when they were ten.
So far, when referring to “older
movies” I tend mostly to name movies from the last thirty years. This is, of
course, because younger generations weren’t around when these movies were new.
As a result, the eighties and nineties is now becoming known as the years of
Disney’s “classics.” I explain this distinction now because I am going to talk
about music, this is the time most people associate with Disney Musicals.
During this era, the company was notorious for creating music tracks that were
comprised of great songs, each of which could hold its own against the other.
Today movies are advertised with a hit song, go see Frozen featuring hit song “Let It Go”! Compared to Aladdin which not only had three hit
songs, but also won both at the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards for best
original score, as well as being nominated for best comedy/musical (“Awards”).
Sticking with the Frozen theme, it would be good to notice
that aside from the inspirational award winner “Let It Go”, the other songs
tend to be lacking in the wit department, “Fixer Upper” and “For the First Time
In Forever” are most definitely charming and great fun to listen to, but the
obvious meaning behind the lyrics leads anyone over the age of eight to wonder
if it would have been possible to make the plot any more obvious. Of course
this is not to say that all the songs in the older movies were chock-full of
meaning, some of them were definitely just added for the fun factor, but that
also does not mean that they fall so flat on the quality meter.
I think we can agree that
characters such as Baymax from Big Hero 6
and Pascal from Tangled are meant to
give the movies a more comfortable feel, mission accomplished. But there was a
time when Disney was not afraid to make even the protagonists less perfect.
Older animation was also accompanied by the embrace or scarier content, or at
least darker ideas that would not be understood by children. Take Peter Pan for example, Peter himself is
rather arrogant and narcissistic, not to mention a play boy. If that weren’t
bad enough, Tinker Bell fully intended to have Wendy killed by the lost boys. Alice in Wonderland‘s colorful
characters displayed suggestive signs of drug usage. And let us not forget that
the biggest musical number in Dumbo,
“Pink Elephants on Parade,” was brought about by drunken hallucinations. All these things would not be apparent to a
child.
Here again we see that The Princess and the Frog was a last
revival attempt as it contained more of the darker content that has been
lacking recently. The art style and depth of villainy gave the whole movie a
much scarier, creepier feel, much like the Black
Cauldron, that could arguably be unsuitable for kids. The newer animation villains, though they
maybe destructive, tend to be far less frightening. As mentioned before, Mother
Gothel’s performance as bad guy gets drowned out by her ridiculous behavior
much like the flamboyance demonstrated by King Candy in Wreck it Ralph, not exactly striking fear in the hearts of the
viewer. Big Hero 6 and Frozen
share a similar predicament in that the audience spends most of the time
pretending they don’t know who the real villain is(even though it is pretty
obvious), instead of feeling any amount of anxiety over the evil deeds being
committed.
A comparison: The Black Cauldron’s Horned King and Prince Hans from Frozen
I know the newer bad guys are
designed not to be too terrifying so as not to frighten the youngsters in the
audience, but that change seems to be accompanied by a lack of the character’s intellect.
You may find that as an adult, villains such as Scar or Ursula become more hilarious
and intriguing than their good-guy counterparts. This isn’t because they become
more silly or flamboyant, but because your ability to appreciate their dry
humor and depth of plotting has grown since your childhood.
But what about the goofy bad guys
in older movies? Yes, Captain Hook and Prince John may not have been the most
fear-inspiring evil masterminds, but their short comings in the villain
department are somewhat forgivable since the protagonists of Peter Pan were hardly perfect and Robin Hood has characters like the
Sheriff of Nottingham to supply an extra source of evil-doing.
Before all is
said and done, I want to make it clear that I thoroughly enjoy the newer
movies, as well as the 3D animation. They maintain a fun spirit that is a
credit to the Disney Company. I just find it is disappointing that the
transition of animation styles has led to stories being told with less depth
than their predecessors.
Sources
Amidi, Amid. "BREAKING: Disney Just Gutted Their
Hand-Drawn Animation Division [UPDATED]."
Cartoon Brew. N.p., 11 Apr. 2013.
Web.
Website
"Awards." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web.
Website
Brejan. "Black Cauldron- The Horned King
Monologue." YouTube. YouTube, 7 Sept. 2011. Web.
Website
Disney Movies. "(FROZEN) - Hans Betrayal to Anna."
YouTube. YouTube, 30 Jan. 2014. Web.
Website
Mendelson, Scott. "Disney's 'Frozen' Proves Failure Of
PG Rating." Forbes. N.p., 26 Nov. 2013. Web.
Website
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