Nov. 20, 1998
Contact: Elaine Justice (404) 727-0643, [email protected]
DEATH HAS ALWAYS PLAYED A CENTRAL ROLE IN MOVIES, SAYS EMORY PROFESSOR OF "DISNEY WAY OF DEATH"
Contrary to widespread opinion, the popularity of death in movies didn't begin with "Meet Joe Black," "What Dreams May Come," or "Beloved," says Emory University's Gary Laderman. Walt Disney's early films, among the most popular in moviemaking history, are every bit as obsessed with death as any 1990s blockbuster.
After reviewing films produced by Walt Disney studios during the 1920s-50s, Laderman points out that death plays a central role in a host of these animated offerings, from "Fantasia" and "Snow White," to "Bambi" and "Pinocchio." And because these films were and are so widely watched and acclaimed, what Disney says about death speaks volumes about 20th-century American society, its world view and even its religious attitudes.
According to Laderman, "the Disney way of death":
o is obsessed with mortality and seeks to "suspend the animation of life" (remember "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty"?);
o shows no interest in capturing "moral gradations" of life but portrays a world of "absolute good in battle with absolute evil" ("Bambi"), with death as a justified fate for evil characters (the malevolent Queen in "Snow White");
o embraces a world that associates death with evil ("Fantasia" with its "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence);
o believes that death can be overcome (as in "Snow White" and "Pinocchio"); and
o embraces the return to family and equates it with stability and happiness (as in "Pinocchio" and "Cinderella").
The Disney way of death also includes portraying the gut-wrenching response to the loss, or apparent loss of a loved one. While Bambi's mother gets brutally murdered off camera, and the young fawn's reaction is "blacked out," says Laderman, "many in the audience experience the trauma, are impressed by its filmic reality and its familiarity in their own psyche, and remember the moment for the rest of their lives."
More than just commercial vehicles, these Disney movies "can be understood as important cultural myths clothed as fairy tales that give expression to a range of popular values and meanings," says Laderman. Scholars call these values "American cultural religion," a loose set of beliefs that are embraced-consciously or unconsciously-by a majority of Americans.
While death occupies a central role in these films, what gives them their "mythic power in American culture," says Laderman, is the happy ending. Bambi overcomes the loss of his mother; Snow White and Cinderella ride off into "domestic bliss"; and Pinocchio is reunited with his "creator/father." But even in the end, death contributes to the happy outcome.
"In many Disney films, death is a rite of passage for the hero that leads from, in many cases, an alternative, temporary even broken family to the promise of living in the midst of an eternally loving, transcendent family unit," says Laderman (as in "Pinocchio" and "Cinderella").
The presence of death in Disney films is important, says Laderman, because "it conveys moral messages to children about so many of the bare essentials of life, including sex, kinship, transcendence, suffering and misfortune." The dialogue, he points out, definitely needs to continue.
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For more information from the Office of University Communications, go to: www.emory.edu/central/news.html.
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