my flatmate naomi and i spend much of our time together, when neither of us is at work or working on college stuff, discussing the problems of the world, where they stem from, and how to solve them... our latest discovery: the issue with children these days -- apathy via Disney.
that's right, it's all disney's fault...ok, not in entirity, but hear me out...
think of the disney films "lion king" and earlier... all the way back to "snow white", the original, i believe... evil is a core presence in disney cartoons... everyone wanted Scar to get his just desserts... Captain Hook killed his own pirates with no regard and threatened the carefree lifestyle of childhood... Malificent is the scariest woman to ever be animated... maybe to ever be portrayed in a movie. ever. they all eminated evil. bad. they threatened lives, cast a dark shadow, scary music followed them everywhere they went, and their sidekicks, whilst they could be comic relief at times, they still had horrible motivations...
disney doesn't do that anymore... maybe they ran out of really really good fairy tales and folk tales and stories of ancient lore to animate... regardless, in one of their latest animations "meet the robinsons", the bad guy stole a time machine or something that threatened the advancement of technology in the future, so the futuristic world wouldn't have flying cars... simplified, but you get the idea: weak....
with definite sides of good and bad, we could identify with the good side (presumably), and actually care about the outcome... we wanted good to win, evil be defeated, and our disney happy ending... and those villains were more evil and heartless than anyone we could ever imagine possibly existing (i hope and again, presume)... without this, we become apathetic... and i think it could possibly affect kids in reality... the line between good and bad is blurred, characters are too "pc", and that carries over... good and bad don't have definition, everything is acceptable, and when you try to say something isn't (like knife or gun violence), they don't care because they can't see that...
if jafar or the evil stepmother were walking the streets, life would be different...
we still get it in live action films (harry potter, lord of the rings, even the first pirates of the caribbean)... good fights evil... evil is defeated, even if its a horrible, gruesome, difficult fight...
if we can't figure out if we're the dragon or prince charming, how is sleeping beauty ever going to wake up? ok, that's a bit airy and philosophical and i could go on forever, but you get the picture...
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