BAMBI
Finally, we’re on to the movie that marked an end to Disney’s Golden Era; 1942’s Bambi.
Bambi is a great movie. For my money, it’s the film in the Golden Era of Disney animation with the greatest depth of character and the strongest themes. Like earlier entries into the animated filmography of Disney, it’s also beautifully animated, somehow though, it still falls short of the original story in terms of subtext and messaging.
Bambi was written by Siegmund Salzmann, an Austro-Hungarian Jew in 1923. Salzmann’s Bambi was a story that is understood to be a parable of the dangers, persecution and heartache that the Jews faced in Europe at the time of publication. In fact, Adolf Hitler had banned Salzmann’s books in 1936 just two years before Nazi Germany had annexed Austria causing Salzmann’s family to flee south to Zurich in Switzerland where he’d later be laid to rest.
Now, I haven’t read Bambi, but I think that the fact that Hitler had it banned is an indicator that we might be missing something from the Disney version.
And I’m not a Jewish person but when I watch the Disney version of Bambi, there is nothing in there that makes me think that this is the story of a persecuted people, and frankly, that’s alarming to me, that what may be seemingly the crux of the whole story is just missing.
You know in the 1960’s Stan Lee wrote the X-men comic series; it’s first run anyway. The X-Men was a story written at the height of the civil rights movement in America, and it too is a story about a persecuted group of people. There have been many iterations of the X-Men but something that is baked right into the DNA of it is that it’s about oppressed groups trying to fight for their freedom. Whether the writer at the time used that to tell a message about how black people were being treated in America, or Jews in Europe or LGBTQ people, you know right up until modern times, that message is still always there.
Imagine if in the year 2000, Bryan Singer brought out the live-action feature film of the X-Men and it had nothing to do with X-Men or Mutants, being persecuted. Really, it wouldn’t be a faithful adaptation, because it’d be missing the core of the thing, you know the nucleus.
This is a reasonable concern to have for Bambi also. Have we experienced the story of Bambi the way it was originally intended? No, I don’t think so anyway. That’s a real shame, now, like I mentioned earlier, I really admire the Disney Animated version of Bambi, but I feel like we need this original version also. The thing is as well, most people don’t even know that Bambi is based on an old novel from the 20’s. A novel that at the time was banned by European fascists. It seems to me, to be a big part of literary history that has just, unfortunately, faded into obscurity.
I was watching Guillermo del Toro’s new Pinocchio film there a while back, as I already mentioned. That came out in 2022 and it was really well received. It won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature that year and I loved it, I remember thinking though, in this era of poor live-action remakes of Disney classics that Pinocchio was just a breath of fresh air and I’d love for it, that instead of Disney bringing out all of these lame live-action remakes, that instead, filmmakers out there could tackle these iconic stories, (especially the ones that aren’t original Disney stories) and adapt them with a greater admiration and respect for their source material.
Imagine a remake of Bambi in the vein of 2022’s Pinocchio that actually acknowledged the original message and parable of that story. It’d be even better if they got a European Jew to do it because they might bring something unique but also super meaningful to a story that is about the history of their people.
So that concludes the Golden Age of Disney Animation; five movies in five years, all but one are Adapted from European texts. It’s clear at this time, that Disney were interested in fracking the fertile grounds of European folktales and children’s tales.
This isn’t anything to be ashamed of, there are so many rich stories that come from that part of the world. On one hand, it’s flattering I imagine, that Disney admired these stories so much to make movies from them but on the other hand, especially in today’s context, there’s something sad about it, isn’t there?
Maybe I’m biased, but the idea of this multi-billion dollar American multi-marketing global multi-media mega-corporation getting their paws on all of these humble stories is a bit depressing, and it doesn’t end when the credits roll, these original stories are taken, and Disney build theme parks about them and you can buy t-shirts with the likenesses of these characters on them, or play games with these characters in them, or collect ornaments or play with toys, and so on, and so on, forever, it seems. Disney isn’t going anywhere, I wonder if are we witnessing or have witnessed the monopolisation of the “Fairy Tale”.
Up next, I’ll be discussing Disney’s Wartime Era.
Good luck.
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