The boundary between reality and fantasy is porous and unstable; everything, including inanimate objects, is alive and responds magically to wishes and fears. There are mysteries and secrets everywhere, as in the lives of children, who are kept in the dark about fundamental realities – sex, death, money, and the whole complex mystery of their parents’ desires and disappointments – Elizabeth Dalton, from the Introduction to Grimm’s Fairy Tales, published 2003 by Barnes & Nobles Classics
Disney is a staple to American cinema. The name itself is a brand, hailing nearly fifty animated theatrical releases with its recent film, The Princess and the Frog, its 49th, and another unveiling this fall, Tangled, its golden 50th.
But these recent films come nowhere near to the dare and darkness of some of the original Disney animated films, the fears evoked so deeply by fairy-, folk- and morality tales. Yes, they began the tradition of integrated musicals into animation that lasted for decades until arguably the turning of the 21st century, but these films – from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty – are in a class of their own, films that will likely stand the test of time because they tap into the subconscious of our childhood that we will never fully understand or ever let go of.
My mother watched the classic Brothers Grimm inspired Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Vietnam when she was a little girl, and relayed to me how scary the experience was – thrilling, but traumatizing. There was the sudden turn of the forest’s mood – from charming and inviting to mysterious and dangerous in an instant – and the evil Queen, the devilish witch who was something else: vain, proud, selfish, jealous, and most terrifying of all incredibly human. She was something tangible, something we could see happening in real life, and by all means she shook your sense of security that much more. Feasibly, the evil Queen embodied the rage of the maternal figure that as children, we all feared would unleash and unveil amidst her soothing comfort and maternal care – a motif often embodied by evil stepmothers in collected stories of the Brothers Grimm like in Cinderella (interesting enough, the Brothers Grimm edited a lot of the original stories in a second publishing of their collected stories; one of the changes they made was to charge the evil doings of maternal figures to that of stepmothers, for in most of the original stories it was actually the birth mothers that committed such atrocities. However, they felt these details were too shocking and unappealing in the original publishing, and amended such changes in later editions).
We looked to Snow White as the character we wanted to succeed, to rise above the injustice bestowed upon her evil stepmother; her dark hair only made her skin even lighter, a literal embodiment of her own purity and namesake. The friendly dwarfs were, in a sense, an extension of us, the audience: various emotions personified, each dwarf was a supportive beam to dear Snow White as she struggled to make ends meet. These dwarfs set the stage for later DIsney films, in which there is the straight-laced protagonist followed by a group of bubbly side-characters who interject interludes of humor and relief, something the audience wanted during long periods of narratives that are otherwise intense and dramatic. And the Prince – the blessed, angelic Prince – was the savior at the end of the day, the one who could bestow upon the kiss that awaken Snow White from her slumbering nightmare. He was that God-like entity that we wished to sweep down kindly upon the righteous and pious Snow White, the happy ending we believed she so deserved after all such trials of her strength of character. With that kiss, Disney generated the origin of the classic Disney series of fables that we still identify easily today – the classic Princess lore.
Following Snow White immediately was Pinnochio, based on the beloved fairy tale of Florentine writer Carlo Collodi. Arguably, Pinocchio is Disney’s most Christian morality tale to date: a young puppet, brought to life by the God power of the Blue Fairy, embarks on a coming-of-age adventure in which he must distinguish between good and bad before he become a full-fleshed, pure human boy; his only aids for understanding such distinctions are his consciousness, embodied and personified by a chirpy Jiminy Cricket, and his nose – if he lies it will grow longer and longer until he tells the truth, and only then will it stink back to normal size. Symbolically, Pinocchio’s growing nose represents the increasing pressure and weight of accumulated lies on one’s subconsciousness; if the nose becomes long, Pinocchio will lose his balance and fall over, unable to proceed forward in life towards becoming a human boy, symbolic of a barrier on one’s progression towards moral purity.
There is a scene where upon strolling to school – a symbol of enlightenment – Pinocchio is stopped by a wily Fox and Cat, ironically named Honest John and Gideon, who convince him to become an actor (a entity of the theatre, a realm traditionally deemed as one of heathen debauchery) in Stromboli’s puppet show, where he is initially lauded but immediately imprisoned by the greedy puppeteer, an iconic representation of the greedy show producer and entrepreneur. And though Pinocchio escapes his predicament of a life chained to entertainment exploitation, he is tricked once again by Honest John and Gideon to saunter off to an even greater vice, Pleasure Island.
There is one scene in Pleasure Island that is particularly jarring. After the crowd of boys have indulged in their various pleasures – sweets and fats, rides and games, shooting pool, beer drinking and tobacco smoking – the island becomes eerily quiet, foreshadowing to a horrific episode that is disturbing even by today’s standards: Lampwick, Pinocchio’s companion, slowly begins turning into a donkey, and his horror and panic he begins screaming for his mother as a last resort for salvation. But it is too late, and we see his human shadow transform into a donkey, a beast no longer acceptable by human standards and now doomed to work in the salt mines like all the other naughty, sinful boys who have also turned into inarticulate jackasses. Pinocchio escapes this predicament too, but barely and scarred: he is marked by his donkey tail and jutting ears, indicative of the peril one encounters if one gorges for too long on immoral pleasures.
The climax is arguably the most Biblical, alluding greatly to the tale of Jonah and the Whale: it is when Pinocchio goes to rescue his beloved and all-good father, Geppetto, who has been swallowed by the wicked giant whale, Monstro. Monstro represents a turning point in Pinocchio’s character, where he casts aside all selfish desires to pursue a seemingly suicidal but ultimately altruistic quest out of love; and in being swallowed by the beast, he conceits an ingenious plan to escape an untimely death. The pinnacle moment, when Pinocchio saves Geppetto at the cost of his own life, is the ultimate Christian message: a self-sacrificing feat out of pure goodness, a complete disregard for one’s own life, is what draws the Blue Fairy back and grants Pinocchio the ultimate form of pious virtue – human flesh and blood, a sense of human mortality that is forever more.
If Pinocchio is arguably the most Christian fable in the Disney legacy, then Bambi is the most emotionally devastating. Based on the book Bambi, a Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten, the film plays off one of the greatest fears children could possibly have – maternal loss.
There is a cold objectivism that Death heralds. It abides by no favoritism, and silently collects those whose times have ended. In Bambi, Disney enraptured our hearts and twisted it into a great, big knot at the height of tragedy: Bambi, while feasting with his mother, is forced to flee at his mother’s warning, hearing only a gun shot in the far off distance; when he comes back to find his mother, she is nowhere. Death has kissed her brow and has left Bambi behind, orphaned and alone.
There’s a reason why children cry often at this scene: Bambi is them, still adolescent and unknowing, and the cruel swiftness of Death from an external, uncontrollable factor has left him abandoned and unguided. It’s a terrifying feeling, to feel abandoned; as a child, I used to panic when I didn’t see my mother for long periods of time, feelings of abandonment and helplessness taking over like a icy cancer. Bambi’s famous scene highlights this childhood fear, a cinematic extension and narrative realization of a childhood insecurity that haunts us all in the subconscious. The rest of the film is one of healing and growing up, of finding a path by one’s own accord and establishing oneself in the vast, vast world.
Bambi is a terrific feat in the coming-of-age fable, where he is comforted only by his remaining paternal figure (whom he strives to become, and eventually does after trials of adolescence) and his bubbly friends. Sexual awakening, flirtation, aggression, territorial pride, and a last encounter with the same external, uncontrollable factor that took away his mother and traumatized him as a child, mankind – all of these elements of one’s development are present, and ingeniously narrated by lush colors, fluid animation and by tapping into one of the great fears of childhood. Bambi is a great demonstration of the sacred bond shared between mother and child, and by narrating a tragic loss it echoed how essential such a relationship is, and how psychologically traumatizing it is to the child when the relationship is cut prematurely. Once something is gone, only then do we realize how important that something was, and such is what Bambi narrated so famously.
Last in the line of Disney’s classic and haunting fables is that of Sleeping Beauty, first published by Charles Perrault in Contes de ma Mère l'Oye (Tales of Mother Goose). The Disney adaptation borrowed heavily from Peter Tchaikovsky’s 1890 ballet – in fact, the entire soundtrack is Tchaikovsky’s composition, save the chorus and lyrical addendums in the songs “Skumps” (the Drinking Song) and “Once Upon a Dream” – and the story is more inspired by the German variant collected by the Brothers Grimm, titled Briar Rose.
Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is striking in its explicit and implicit symbolism. On first glance, goodness is embodied by the three colorful fairies – the pink Flora, the green Fauna, and the blue Merryweather – and evil is embodied by the dark purple, black-draped and olive skinned Maleficent. Even their living quarters are drastically different: the fairies take refuge in a inviting and lush, maternal-like forest tree while Maleficent resides in a dark, phallic tower. These are the two competing forces of good and evil, two supernatural and majestical entities that compete for power and authority in the human realm.
What is interesting is the subtle implications of the Brothers Grimm-inspired story, in which a infant Princess Aurora is cursed by the evil Maleficent, who is spiteful for receiving no invitation to Aurora’s christening. Aurora, named after the Roman goddess of dawn, is symbolic of the beginning daylight and its associated goodness and hope; yet instantly she is clashed by her polar opposite entity, Maleficent (translated “evil-doer”) who embodies the evils and gloom of a moonless, pitch black night. Already polar opposite entities clash with the birth of a new dawn, and the fairies come to the Princesses defense after the malevolent entity has placed her wicked curse. In an effort to deter Maleficent’s hex, the fairies take Aurora into refuge and rename her Briar Rose, and the King burns all the spinning wheels in the country.
This is a particularly striking scene because it is allegorical of a paternal figure’s protection of their daughter’s virginity. The spindles of the spinning wheels are representative of temptation and lust, burned in a fiery precaution; additionally, the fairies sweep the Princess into a nunnery-like sanctuary, ironically naming her Briar Rose in lieu of her father’s symbolic actions. That is, the name Briar Rose is one of virginal temptation, a beautiful rose that is desirable but must be clipped (essentially deflowered) in order to be handled by anyone who desires such. It’s interesting that the fairies chose such a name in conjunction with her father’s protective measures, which together (the actions of the King and fairies) could be construed as representing a protective measure for ensuring virginal and sexual purity before his daughter is to be wed to the betrothed Prince Phillip.
Alas, Briar Rose has her first sexual encounter with the charming Prince Phillip, and as they rendezvous in the forest we can see that she is, in a sense, no longer pure: that with her first encounter with a man her romantic fantasies have been realized, and that her sexual desires are not blossoming in full bloom. She is a nymph, now caught up in the worldly affairs of romance and chivalry, and is no longer the adolescent and innocent girl as before. The fairies, upon realizing this, are grateful that it is the day they must return her to her rightful throne to be wed – a symbolic move that again reaffirms their desire to keep the Princess pious and pure until her wedding day. Unfortunately, though, the fairies’ lapse in judgement (after using magic to create presents and a cake for Rose’s birthday) causes Maleficent to see their plan, and she is able to concoct a hypnotizing spell that causes the Princess to prick her finger on one single spinning wheel, upon which the Princess (and subsequently, the Kingdom) falls into a great slumber and not death (thanks to the protective powers of the good fairies).
The spindle is a particular symbol of sexual awakening. In pricking her finger, Rose begins bleeding – the beginning of female menstruation. That she essentially dies from this encounter is equally striking in symbolism: in experiencing premature sexual awakening, Rose is no longer a virginal figure since she has given into the hypnotic temptation of the spinning wheel, influenced by none other than the evil and sinful Maleficent. The ensuing slumber induced by the fairies is a last resort attempt to preserve the Princess’s piousness, a way to ensure that she no longer pursues other (symbolically) sexually driven encounters before she is to be wed.
In a strange way, we could easily construe Maleficent as a defender of feminine independence while the good fairies are defenders of the patriarchal norm. Yes, Maleficent is a wicked entity that wreaks destruction on the kingdom, but consider this: the monarchal system is patriarchal, and in disrupting its order Maleficent is essentially disrupting the patriarchal norm. On the latter fold, the fairies are trying to guide Aurora to wed her betrothed, essentially reestablishing the feminine subservience and adherence to purity before her first real sexual experience with her future husband. In cursing Princess Aurora to die by upon the spindle’s prick, Maleficent is allegorically discouraging the young royal from engaging in the fancies of men’s company; furthermore, she imprisons Prince Phillip, a effort symbolic in hindering any chivalric attempt to arouse the slumbering, virginal Princess. She ridicules the young Prince, essentially breaking norm in asserting her feminine independence above his masculine birthright, psychologically taunting him of his finite existence as a mortal male in the scheme of time. Lastly, there’s the climatic scene where Maleficent covers the kingdom in thorns and transforms herself into a monstrous dragon to defend her domain – it’s incredibly sexual and phallic in symbology.
The thorns, like the spindle, are prickling and hindering in Phillip’s attempts to get to Aurora’s sleeping place, and are an ironic allusion to the virginal namesake of the Princess, Briar Rose: that is, in order to fully appreciate the beauty and sexual appeal of the young woman, Prince Phillip must essentially pluck her, and will only be able to do so when he destroys all the prickling thorns of the path (representative of a flower’s stem) before he encounters the sexual appeal of the blossom; he receives help from the three fairies, whose actions are very symbolic of the patriarchal ideals they conform to – that Aurora should be sexually awakened by none other than her betrothed, the chivalric Phillip. However, when he has nearly cleared away all the inhibiting thorns, Maleficent transforms into the dragon, a last ditch effort to prevent the advent Prince from asserting his patriarchal authority over the sleeping beauty.
This distinctly protective gesture is interesting: while most interpret it as a evil force deterring a noble and heroic effort to restore the natural balance, it must be noted that Maleficent transforms into a mythological creature that has distinctly reptilian qualities – the flickering tongue, the scaled skin, the segmented belly – and, in a sense, is almost androgynous in its physical quality. There is no explicit physical attribute that indicates gender in regards to dragons, and Maleficent’s dragon is just as indistinguishable save its booming, feminine voice. She viciously attacks the patriarchal embodiment of Prince Phillip, a effort that further demonstrates her scathing spite against patriarchal rule as she reaffirms her feminine authority. Only when she is pierced in the heart by the Prince’s sword does she die, a attack from the Prince that is arguably phallic and representative of patriarchal authority; that is, only when Maleficent is directly stricken by the phallic sword (essentially raped) does she die and relinquish her feminine control of the kingdom, and thus order and normalcy of the patriarchal monarch is restored, and everyone lives happily ever after.
Scholars and philosophers have argued about what stories like these are actually representative of, and what values they endorse. Jack Zipe, in his Marxist analysis of the Brothers Grimm and their work, focused on the social and historical context, and the consciousness of the Brothers Grimm themselves; he believed that children were being indoctrinated by bourgeois ideals:
The male hero learns to be active, competitive, handsome, industrious, cunning, acquisitive. His goal is money, power, and a woman (also associated with chattel). His jurisdiction is the open world. His happiness depends on the just use of power. The female hero learns to be passive, obedient, self-sacrificing, hard-working, patient, and straight-laced. Her goal is wealth, jewels, and a man to protect her property rights. Her jurisdiction is the home or castle. Her happiness depends on conformity to patriarchal rule.
– pg. 57 of Zipe’s Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion
Zipe’s pessimistic views of fairy- and folklore contrasts sharply with the more optimistic interpretation of Bruno Bettelheim. Bettelheim was not concerned with the historical or political context, instead focusing on the tales’ timeless and symbolic representations of childhood:
By dealing with universal human problems, particularly those which occupy a child’s mind, these stories speak of his budding ego and encourage its development, while at the same time relieving preconscious and unconscious pressures.
– pg. 6 of Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment
Whatever the Grimms actually intended for interpretation we will never know. But what is true of their collected and likewise authors is that these stories, these fables are striking and classic because of the various explicit and implicit nuances of symbols and implications they open up. The Disney Renaissance of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King drew from similar roots, but not quite as hauntingly as their predecessors achieved. These are the reasons why the four Disney movies I’ve mentioned – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Bambi and Sleeping Beauty – are amazing feats of cinematic storytelling and have remained classic staples in the Disney legacy still to this day.