Why Does Disney Hate Parents?

[LuckyStrike]

http://vigilantcitizen.com/?p=4840

Last week, as the rain lashed outside, my daughter and I settled down for an afternoon of family nostalgia. The type that Walt Disney films excel at.

The kind that has given Disney a special position in our house. To us, the brand suggests a world of family values and bygone traditions. A place where, no matter the adversity faced, good WILL triumph over evil.

Disney films speak to our heart and embroider the lives of our children with a sense of security in an uncertain world.

So it was, this rain-soaked day, we laughed and cried our way through a hat trick of Disney favourites: the heart-rendingly beautiful Bambi, the gloriously regal Lion King and the eternally charming Finding Nemo.

But later, I realised something else that binds Disney films, other than good old nostalgic charm: an absence of parents.

Bambi, abandoned by his father before birth, experiences the hunting and subsequent shooting of his mummy. A tragedy that still reduces me to uncontrollable sobs four decades after I first saw it with my own mother.

That’s not all. In the Lion King, Simba is implicated in the death of his father and runs away in a vain attempt to escape his misery.

While Nemo - the rebellious fish - is the sole survivor of a violent barracuda attack on his mother and siblings and spends much of the story estranged from his father.

The realisation that these three films all drew on a parent-less theme made me reel. Surely it was only coincidence?

Apparently not. For Disney, that most child-friendly of organisations, appears to have something of a parent problem.

Since its formation in the Twenties, Disney’s output has featured a steady supply of dysfunctional and broken families.

Dumbo, like Bambi, still devastates audiences, as the fatherless baby elephant is separated from his mother after she is locked up for her apparent psychosis.

The moggies in the Aristocats - a personal childhood favourite - are also fatherless. Neither Ariel (The Little Mermaid) or Belle (Beauty And The Beast) have a mother.

Even more recently, fans worldwide have delighted in the final instalment of Toy Story, as Andy - the film’s main character - is raised by a single parent mother.

Not to worry, though, in the total absence of his father, Andy’s key male influence is a wooden cowboy.

And it’s not just Disney’s cartoon output that is subject to this parental peculiarity; its non-animation TV shows and movies are, too.

On Disney’s TV channel, the popular Hannah Montana - played by the precocious Miley Cyrus - learns the teenage ropes from her single parent father because her mother is AWOL.

On the big screen, The Game Plan chronicles a ten-year-old girl searching for her long-lost father after the untimely - although not entirely unpredictable - demise of her single parent mother.

And the Grammy- nominated Enchanted captures Giselle, an archetypal Disney princess, adapting to the harsh environment of New York as a motherless young girl.

By this point in my research, I was becoming increasingly disturbed by the absence of parental role models in the world of Walt Disney. And there was more.

Some Disney characters aren’t even fortunate enough to have one parent and are orphaned before the opening credits are over.

Baby Tarzan was abandoned in the jungle after the savaging of his parents by a leopard. And there’s Tod in The Fox And The Hound and Arthur in The Sword In The Stone, who are left to pursue their destinies without parents.

I wonder, is this distinct lack of parental care in Disney productions used for dramatic effect?

Is it there to give the main protagonist an opportunity to face their personal challenges without the guidance of a parent - or is there more to this?

Might the death of Walt Disney’s mother - and the lifelong guilt this left her son with - be the catalyst for the death of parents in Disney?

In 1938 and riding high with the proceeds from his first big screen movie Sleeping Beauty, Walt bought his mother, Flora, and his father, Elias, a house in LA as a golden wedding anniversary present.

Within days of moving in, Flora complained about the stultifying temperatures coming from the central heating boiler and her doting son arranged for a swift replacement.

Days later, Flora died from asphyxiation caused by the new, poorly-installed, boiler.

Might Walt Disney’s misplaced guilt over his mother’s death have led him to airbrush parents - mothers in particular - out of his works?

And has that motivation, after his death in 1966, become a Disney blueprint?

Certainly, it would explain the types of folk stories and fairytales that Disney has acquired for adaptation, even when there are numerous other traditional tales that feature a mother and father.

The company animated Cinderella (no mother), Snow White (no mother or father, but a wicked stepmum) and The Jungle Book (orphaned Mowgli, raised by a bear and a tiger).

But perhaps most audacious in this regard was the purchase of J.M. Barrie’s epic Peter Pan, where the boy-child not only had responsibility for a whole island of orphans (The Lost Boys) but Wendy’s parents socialised constantly and left their children in the care of the family dog.

There is a third way to explain Disney’s apparent downer on parents.

Might the company - and its output - be a true reflection of our disparate society and the obvious disintegration of the traditional nuclear family?

Or might it be the other way around? Might Disney have played its own part in the demise of family values given that we - and our children - have fallen for this wholesome entertainment for decades?

Have we subconsciously imbibed this airbrushing out of parental figures from its films?

If nothing else, Disney stands accused of failing to honour that most sacred of bonds - that of the mother and the father to their children.

Now, that is hardly family entertainment, is it?

[7th trump]

If you ever studied the struggles of Walt Disney he struggled against, I'm gonna say it.........kennite (jews who call themselves jews but are not of the Father, but of satan) media from the start. Thats start came form the struggles of the great depression. Walts success comes from over coming all odds like losing a right arm or a left eye when you dont need it, a sound parent!
Its an icon that is not taught today but will be a part of everyones life here in the near future, for a short while anyway.

[RJB]

I noticed that when I was a kid. Sitcoms starting in the 80s always had a weird mix of missing moms, two dads etc. Different Strokes, Full House, and a bunch of others that thank God I can't remember. I can't see how this could not be unintentional.

[LuckyStrike]

I noticed that when I was a kid. Sitcoms starting in the 80s always had a weird mix of missing moms, two dads etc. Different Strokes, Full House, and a bunch of others that thank God I can't remember. I can't see how this could not be unintentional.


That's one of the reasons why we weren't allowed to watch sesame street (among other shows) since it was just black females, no Dads to be seen.

[Heimdhal]

Ive noticed this in the great majority of TV and movies, and not even recently. Its been going on for a while.


A big thing we must also remember is that many Disney movies (especialy the older ones), and in actualy A LOT of stories/movies, are derived from old folk-lore and fairy tales. Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, all of these are derived from milenia old, mostly european, folk-tales, many of them Germanic and Anglo in origin.

So I dont think its just that walt struggled with the loss of his own mother or anything. It was a way of life for many for many many years that both parents werent always around. My father died when I was 14, and it has influenced quite a bit in my life. Now go back 1,000 years where single parents werent uncommon due to factors such as disease, or death during child birth, or war. Its going to have an impact on the arts.


Now, however, it is displayed for the exact opposite reason. Its the whole "i can do this all on my own because its what i choose" not "these are the struggles life has thrown my way and I will bear the brunt of them head on!"

[zap]

If you ever studied the struggles of Walt Disney he struggled against, I'm gonna say it.........kennite (jews who call themselves jews but are not of the Father, but of satan) media from the start. Thats start came form the struggles of the great depression. Walts success comes from over coming all odds like losing a right arm or a left eye when you dont need it, a sound parent!
Its an icon that is not taught today but will be a part of everyones life here in the near future, for a short while anyway.


hey 7th glad to see you back :D

Lots of times I hate watching these shows with my daughter, I always zero in on the fact her dad is gone, and I wonder if she feels as I do when she watches, When there are no parents present on the show it doesn't bother me as much.

[Saul Mine]

First let's get one thing straight: there is a big difference between Walt Disney and Disney Films.

Walt Disney insisted on making a high quality product. He would wander through the building after quitting time and pull discarded sketches from the trash cans. Quite often the artists would find some of those sketches pinned to their drawing tables with a note saying "Quit throwing away the good stuff!" Walt Disney used traditional stories that had already survived a long time. He then retold those stories with pictures. All of those stories involved problems, and all of them presented reality with no apologies.

When Walt Disney turned operations over to others, a transformation was immediately obvious: movies suddenly featured idiotic science themes with plenty of flashing lights and not much else. Disney studios has never had the guts to face reality. In Lady and The Tramp the bloodhound gets crushed by a carriage, obviously killed. But in the next scene, lo and behold, he's just fine with only his paw in a sling. No guts, no glory. They don't hate parents, they're afraid of excellence.

[philo beddoe]

In other postings, I labeeled the Ralph Macchio effect ( pushing the idea of blonde girl/dark guy on us)
then the Morgan Freeman effect (selling us the idea of a Blaaaaaack prez, among other things)
I think this phenomenon should be called
The Brady Bunch effect

[dysgenic]

I wholeheartedly agree. I've noticed especially that falling in love with someone else while married or engaged is particularly glamorized. Also, the repercussions of the breakup of the couple are minimized to a ridiculous degree, even to the point of the person being broken up with being happy for the person that was running around lieing and cheating on them.

dys



Ive noticed this in the great majority of TV and movies, and not even recently. Its been going on for a while.

[mightymanx]

Food for thought:

If you destroy the family unit people will turn to the state for parental needs.

The same goes for religion, the State must be the highest place in the person's support structure for the state to have control.

"When times are tough don't turn to your broken family or your corrupt religion, come be embraced by the all encompassing loving arms of the government. We truly are the most important thing, and you could not possibly live with out us my child."

All is going according to plan.

[StackerKen]

All is going according to plan.

Yep

[Glass]

How many of those works are "post" Walt? I think there is a few. Not all but a few. Who did Snow White? Did she have parents?

[LuckyStrike]

Here is an article entitled Walt Disney vs. The Hollywood Jews from the CDL Report

It's kinda lengthy but a worthwhile read IMO

http://www.truthinourtime.com/2010/07/walt-disney-vs-hollywood-jews.html

[Fortyone]

I noticed that when I was a kid. Sitcoms starting in the 80s always had a weird mix of missing moms, two dads etc. Different Strokes, Full House, and a bunch of others that thank God I can't remember. I can't see how this could not be unintentional.


That's one of the reasons why we weren't allowed to watch sesame street (among other shows) since it was just black females, no Dads to be seen.



I must be older than you, When I was a Kid,Sesame Street had just come out,It was almost all muppets then, with no children at all.except a random group that sang and danced,like a class in school.You had the married black couple that lived in the building with oscars garbage can out front,Mr. Hooper, the storekeep. and another white guy, I remember. When I got older, they had started the Spanish shit heavily, and the muppets got less and less.

[RJB]

Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, all of these are derived from milenia old, mostly european, folk-tales, many of them Germanic and Anglo in origin.

Now go back 1,000 years where single parents werent uncommon due to factors such as disease, or death during child birth, or war. Its going to have an impact on the arts.

Don't try to tell me this is based on the classics or arts ;D http://weblogs.cltv.com/entertainment/tv/metromix/full%20house.jpg

[Heimdhal]

Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, all of these are derived from milenia old, mostly european, folk-tales, many of them Germanic and Anglo in origin.

Now go back 1,000 years where single parents werent uncommon due to factors such as disease, or death during child birth, or war. Its going to have an impact on the arts.

Don't try to tell me this is based on the classics or arts ;D http://weblogs.cltv.com/entertainment/tv/metromix/full%20house.jpg


Sure it was. I believe its a reincarnation of Zeus and his battle against his father and the Titans for control of Olympus. See, Bob Sagget....


are shucks, I cant even come up with a witty joke on that one, that show just sucked! lol ;D

[Saul Mine]

I noticed that when I was a kid. Sitcoms starting in the 80s always had a weird mix of missing moms, two dads etc. Different Strokes, Full House, and a bunch of others that thank God I can't remember. I can't see how this could not be unintentional.


That's one of the reasons why we weren't allowed to watch sesame street (among other shows) since it was just black females, no Dads to be seen.



I must be older than you, When I was a Kid,Sesame Street had just come out,It was almost all muppets then, with no children at all.except a random group that sang and danced,like a class in school.You had the married black couple that lived in the building with oscars garbage can out front,Mr. Hooper, the storekeep. and another white guy, I remember. When I got older, they had started the Spanish sh*t heavily, and the muppets got less and less.


They try to present a society that conforms to whatever they are aware of in real life. Sesame Street's biggest failure is that it is based on a study of what distracts children of a certain age. They noticed that kids especially loved short skits and pixelated motion, so they built the whole show on that. But short skits and pixelated motions don't expand a kid's awareness at all, and the kids keep watching long after they have passed the target age.

Disney on the other hand, or rather the company that uses his name, did the same thing except they didn't bother to find out what actually appealed to kids. They just assumed that kids were stupid lumps who liked flashing lights, inane antics, and thin plots. Sesame Street is a high quality poison, Disney is a turd sandwich.

[madfranks]

When Walt Disney turned operations over to others, a transformation was immediately obvious: movies suddenly featured idiotic science themes with plenty of flashing lights and not much else.


Have you ever seen Disney's The Emperor's New Groove? 90 minutes of pure attention deficit disorder.

[madfranks]

I must be older than you, When I was a Kid,Sesame Street had just come out,It was almost all muppets then, with no children at all.except a random group that sang and danced,like a class in school.You had the married black couple that lived in the building with oscars garbage can out front,Mr. Hooper, the storekeep. and another white guy, I remember. When I got older, they had started the Spanish sh*t heavily, and the muppets got less and less.


My kids aren't allowed to watch Sesame Street. I watched it when I was a kid and it's a totally different program today. Sesame Street today is nothing more than a flagrant promotion of Mexican culture; they speak Spanish along with English, and now there are permanent Mexican muppets which have taken the spotlight. It's not the same show that it used to be.

[SLV^GLD]

Outstanding Counter-Example that immediately came to mind:
The Parent Trap

Granted, the film begins with a broken family but the family is ultimately reunited.

[shakinginmyshoes]

You know what movie I liked? The River Wild.

Not by Disney, true.
But a story of a family pulling together.

The married couple is in the midst of one of those rocky times which are inevitable in marriage which, if it's to last a lifetime, must survive.

But when the family is endangered, the Dad, who fools the bad guys into thinking he's dead so he can set a trap, uses his wits to save his family, and the married couple rediscover their love.

It's one of the FEW movies released in past decades where the Father character is not portrayed as a buffoon, a wife beater, or a wimp, but smart and strong and brave and heroic, and marriage is treated with reverence.

Gail has a few, brief moments of attraction to Wade, because she's angry at her husband, but QUICKLY casts those thoughts aside without acting on them in a way that would do permanent damage to the marriage.

So a kid gets saved by his own Dad and his mom and dad stay together. What a wonderful ending!

[StackerKen]

Good TV show

http://www.ioffer.com/img/item/125/082/669/Ju2pdzah6ytmu8K.jpg

[MAGNES]

Masonic imagery is promoted by Disney too, a lot of it is hidden.
Lots online about this, I don't watch Disney sh*t and never will.

The Beast likes to sign it's work, and that is what the placement of
masonic imagery is about, they are becoming more and more blatant
too, all over MSM too.

There is a good thread here, Disney and the Jews, put up by Nordic.

MUST READING ! Great find Nordic.



Here is an article entitled Walt Disney vs. The Hollywood Jews from the CDL Report

It's kinda lengthy but a worthwhile read IMO. [ MUST READING, IMO read it or be ignorant. ;D ]

http://www.truthinourtime.com/2010/07/walt-disney-vs-hollywood-jews.html

[MAGNES]

Reading the whole thread carefully,

PATRIOTISM

patri, pater, father, in many many words, that is Greek

Honoring your fathers, father, that is the direct translation
in Greek, that is what it means, I heard this in church many
times too, "honor your parents", "your father, your mother",
by Greek priests, nothing about Jesus walking on water or
even politics, that is the one thing I remember most.

ZOG works against the family to destroy us.


@ ZAP, it is all Marxism being employed here,
I noticed your comments on here a while ago and
didn't say anything, most people here recognize
what I am stating as truth.

---------------------------------------------

on a side note, lol
Something in this thread is out of place, lol, one of these things
is not like the other. See that you little cockroach bitch, f*ck off.
UlikkiesDikkies commie cockroach.

[steyr_m]

In other postings, I labeeled the Ralph Macchio effect ( pushing the idea of blonde girl/dark guy on us)
then the Morgan Freeman effect (selling us the idea of a Blaaaaaack prez, among other things)
I think this phenomenon should be called
The Brady Bunch effect


Hey, Morgan Freeman is the Numinous Negro.

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Connelly-Freeman2.html

I’ve just finished researching and writing a long essay on a two decade-old phenomenon in which the film image of African American males has improved dramatically. It now rivals that of white males, who outnumber blacks by about seven to one. (We might also mention that it was white males who ruled and largely built the nation we know as America.) Like others, I do not believe this process has “just happened.” Rather, I believe it is the result of a determined effort of elites to displace whites—especially males—from positions of status and power, if not to eliminate them altogether.

J.B. Cash, who is associated with the website Caste Football, describes this process about as well as anyone:

There are various names for the ideology of the elite. Some call it “political correctness.” Others call it “Cultural Marxism.” But the labels don’t matter as long as one understands what is going on: the ruling elites are waging a cultural and racial war against Western values, Western civilization, and particularly Western man, i.e., the white man. In the name of the feel-good mantras of diversity and multiculturalism, all the values of traditional white civilization have been declared bad and everything opposed to them declared good. Every idea, attitude, and institution that protects the white race and promotes its continued existence is being destroyed, as a precondition for the physical destruction of the race itself. No arena of life is spared this agenda’s icy grip. Every movie, television show, news story, book, and sermon must advance it, under the watchful eye of an army of censors and snitches demanding unyielding fidelity to the agenda. No argument or evidence is allowed to challenge it.

(For those so interested, William Lind’s Who Stole Our Culture adds further useful discussion.)

As my main area of academic research is film and its influence on society, I am naturally interested in the changing portrayals of various ethnic, racial, and gender groups in American society. Toward this end, my recent research involved the image of the noble black man, or, as Richard Brookhiser dubs him, the Numinous Negro.

Brookhiser tells us that the word ‘numinous’ is a Roman term for "the presiding divinity . . . of a place." It also means "spiritually elevated." According to Brookhiser, the Numinous Negro presides over America, “and contact with him elevates us spiritually.” The most obvious example comes in the person of Morgan Freeman in films such as The Shawshank Redemption, Deep Impact (U.S. president) and Bruce Almighty, where he plays, well, God. Though Brookhiser adds that “the Numinous Negro need not be a man — Toni Morrison and Oprah are Numinous Negroes (Ms. Morrison is a seer; Oprah is a sage)” — the vast majority of recent films featuring the Numinous Negro star male characters. I’ve already written about Denzel Washington, another excellent example of the genus.

Previously, I had done more work on the films of Washington than those of Morgan Freeman, so my latest essay saw me delving into the filmography of Mr. Freeman. Though I’ve emphasized how positive the Hollywood version of the Numinous Negro has become, even I was surprised by how extensive Freeman’s oeuvre is in that respect.

My general understanding was that Freeman’s public emergence as a Numinous Negro came in 1989 as the aw-shucks chauffeur in Driving Miss Daisy and was cemented by his role as the redeemed prisoner in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Of course, film critics point out the irony that the tall Tennessean’s first big role in film was as the cruel pimp Fast Black in Street Smart (1987), for which he was nominated Best Supporting Actor. This exception aside, the point remains that Freeman’s characters have marched in lockstep with the multicultural ideology that increasingly elevates blacks in the American imagination.

I could easily go on to describe how by 1998, when Freeman played the role of kindly U.S. President in Deep Impact, his film persona was fixed as the intelligent moral center of each of his films. Steve Sailer, the film critic for The American Conservative and VDARE’s special Sunday columnist, aptly dubs Freeman America’s “Spiritual Presence-in-Chief.” Just go to the Wikipedia page on Freeman’s filmography to confirm this.

For example, a year after The Shawshank Redemption, he played brilliant police mentor to Brad Pitt’s rash character in Seven, followed by his role as savant Dr. Alex Cross, a forensic psychologist, in Kiss the Girls. Having written tomes on the psychology of (presumably white) serial killers, he is unusually expert in following ambiguous clues. Freeman reprised his role as Dr. Cross in Along Came a Spider (2001), where once again Cross is an agent of deliverance to a young white woman.

In The Sum of All Fears, Freeman played Director of Central Intelligence to Ben Affleck’s young white Jack Ryan character (is anyone noticing a pattern here?) A year later, in 2003, Freeman appeared as God in Bruce Almighty (the 2007 sequel was Evan Almighty).

The following year saw Freeman team up with Clint Eastwood in the drama Million Dollar Baby, where Freeman won Best Supporting Actor for his performance as former prize fighter Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris, a washed up, blind-in-one-eye boxer who manages to get by with a job as janitor at a local gym.

While Freeman’s main persona in Hollywood films is that of the wise and kindly mentor, generally to the young white star, in Batman Begins (2005) he is also elevated to the pinnacle of technological sophistication. Playing Lucius Fox, he is a scientist in biochemistry and mechanical engineering, supplying Bruce Wayne with the fabulous equipment he needs as a flying crime fighter. (He reprises the role in the 2008 sequel The Dark Knight.)

(Steve Sailer unravels the opening Hollywood conceit in Batman Begins, referring to the opening murder of Bruce’s parents: “As an old Chicagoan, I can assure you that one aspect of Batman Begins is standard-issue Hollywood hokum: the murderous mugger is blond. Blond bad guys are a lot more common in movies and television than in real life.”)

I could go on, but this is a mere website column, not a book. After all, by 1995 Freeman was starring in about two films a year, increasing to an average of three by 2005. In any case, my attention during my research turned in the other direction, to what Freeman had been doing in the decades prior to his Hollywood stardom. My discovery there was a surprise.

Freeman did not simply emerge fully formed as a great actor in the late 1980s. Rather, he honed his skills as a main character on the children’s educational program, The Electric Company, which was a product of The Children’s Television Workshop and ran on the Public Broadcasting Service. Clearly, this was a concerted effort at social engineering, following as it did the earlier success of Sesame Street. Funds came from the usual cast of liberal suspects, such as the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Corporation For Public Broadcasting, and the Office of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Both Sesame Street and The Electric Company were the very models for what was to become multiculturalism in America, introducing the tolerant cast of mixed races and genders that later became the official norm throughout the country, as NASA did with space shuttle astronauts, etc. etc.



Freeman’s roles included Easy Reader, a “smooth hipster who loved to read at every opportunity and every printed thing he saw.” (Ironically, in the 1989 Academy Award-winning film Driving Miss Daisy, Freeman’s character was originally illiterate.) He also did Mel Mounds, a hip disc jockey who introduced songs, where his signature phrase was "Sounds righteous, delightious, and out-of-sighteous! Heavy, heavy!" Vincent the Vegetable Vampire was another of his roles.

So for most of the Seventies, millions of American children were made to feel comfortable watching a dark African American with an afro sing ditties and spell words. Then, over a decade later, when he had aged and his hair grayed somewhat, he becomes America’s “Presence-in-Chief.” Interesting.

I may be reading too much into this, but the whole process reminds me of what author Jeff Gates discusses in his new book Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War. (I reviewed it here.) On matters far more serious than spelling, Gates outlines a strategy where a target audience is prepared for accepting future beliefs. This “preparing the minds” allows a displacement of facts with beliefs. The result is that the audience can be manipulated by inducing self-deceit, and pop culture plays a large role.

While I don’t believe that back in 1971 someone consciously set out to prepare Morgan Freeman to be, say, Dr. Alex Cross the brilliant psychologist, it would still be true that his appearances on The Electric Company succeeded in “laying the mental threads” of the image of a helpful and non-threatening black man.

What I am talking about, then, is sophisticated propaganda. One of my favorite accounts of the effects of propaganda come from Jacques Ellul’s ground-breaking 1965 work, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, where he states that

once the individual has been filled with and reshaped by propaganda, the smallest dose now suffices. It is enough to ‘refresh,’ to give a ‘booster shot,’ to repaint, and the individual behaves in striking fashion — like certain drunks who become intoxicated on one glass of wine. The individual no longer offers any resistance to propaganda; moreover, he has ceased to believe in it consciously. He no longer attaches importance to what it says, to its proclaimed objectives, but he acts according to the proper stimuli. The individual is arrested and crystallized with regard to his thinking.

An obvious example, used by Gates and many others, is the propagation of the media image of a threatening Arab. Using our Electric Company illustration, we see that even that “educational” show featured a stereotype of the evil Arab. As media scholar Jack Shaheen tells us in his study The TV Arab, there was a character known as the evil Spell Binder, “a short, grubby-looking villain who resembles those turbanned Arabs in the escapist Arabian Nights’ films of the fifties and sixties.” (He also notes that most other children’s shows had negative images of Arabs, too—Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo, Speed Racer, Tennessee Tuxedo, Jonny Quest . . .)

Shaheen is wise to point to the selective framing of Arabs and the repetition of that framing. “You cannot deny the reality—there are people who really want to kill Americans. But those are basically the only images we see." Naturally, such repetition has a goal, one captured in an old Arabic saying: “Al tikrar biallem il hmar. By repetition even the donkey learns.”

The donkey in this case is presumably the American people, who, as we all know, are pliable to sustained manipulation.

The real world consequences of Hollywood’s image of Morgan Freeman is obvious: We have our first black president. Given the long history of depicting black presidents as “calm, earnest, utterly decent and way, way cooler than white presidents,” who is surprised at this outcome?

Freeman continues apace in his work. Rumor has it that he has long wanted to do a film based on Nelson Mandela. Now that dream has come true, as Freeman again works with Clint Eastwood, who will direct the Mandela bio-pic titled The Human Factor. Tough guy Clintwood used to stand for the average white man, but lately he’s gone multicultural on us, especially with his latest, Gran Torino, in which he mentors a Hmong youth. Thus, I suspect that watching Freeman as hero Nelson Mandela will not exactly make my day.

[Ponce]

Welcome to the "Matrix".........

About "Bambi".......I was unable to go to school for a week.

[sirgonzo420]

You know what movie I liked? The River Wild.

Not by Disney, true.
But a story of a family pulling together.

The married couple is in the midst of one of those rocky times which are inevitable in marriage which, if it's to last a lifetime, must survive.

But when the family is endangered, the Dad, who fools the bad guys into thinking he's dead so he can set a trap, uses his wits to save his family, and the married couple rediscover their love.

It's one of the FEW movies released in past decades where the Father character is not portrayed as a buffoon, a wife beater, or a wimp, but smart and strong and brave and heroic, and marriage is treated with reverence.

Gail has a few, brief moments of attraction to Wade, because she's angry at her husband, but QUICKLY casts those thoughts aside without acting on them in a way that would do permanent damage to the marriage.

So a kid gets saved by his own Dad and his mom and dad stay together. What a wonderful ending!



I always liked that one too.