The Disney Corporation...

"Twas' not intended for adults, it is rated G. I will assume that that was a mistake." It was, I meant to type and if in there. "The kids are not clueless of what is going on…it is still the same message…it has the same exact subliminal effect. It makes little difference for the children…who have positively magnificent imaginations. I have observed small children become very concerned with such scenes. It does not makes VERY little difference between seeing the death and seeing the shadow…and hearing the screaming agony of death…as a living entity is eaten alive by hyenas. They may not be psychologists, but there sub-conscious brain definitely picks up on this, though they may not immediately, consciously, think about it." You said in a previous paragraph that children are "alien to death". In some ways they are; as a toddler I knew what death was but I had never experienced it personally so I had no concept of the pain that it actually entails. Therefore, when I saw a villain die I didn't think in terms of what that death would fully mean, so I didn't think of it as unnecessarily painful or cruel because I didn't know better. "'"The difference between PG-13 and R movies is often not how a character dies, but if that death is shown." Very true…but the lion king is NOT pg-13…its rated G. 2 year olds even watch it." But it can also be the difference between PG and G. "Are you kidding? You can not justify putting these horrible scenes in a movie, simply because the ending is "happy". It does not go away…there subconscious mind keeps it there…it lingers. You can not relieve those feelings so fast. " Okay, if I may use myself as a case example, having seen the Lion King at age 3 when it first came out. When Mufasa died I was sad for Simba and angry at Scar- although I wouldn't say that I ever felt disturbed- but at the end when Simba defeated Scar I felt avenged, that justice had been served, and even though his father was gone he had his mother, hid girlfriend, his friends, and his kingdom. And if those scenes were truly horrible than you'd have a point, but they're not. "Disney movies are meant to be traumatic…and that feeling is a lot stronger than any sense of happiness that the bad guy was murdered." Disney movies are not meant to be traumatic. I'm pretty sure the writer's don't sit around and think "Hey, what would be really disturbing to small children?" Especially since if enough children were actually being traumatized by these I think parents would have started complaining by now. "(on a sidenote, though this is slightly irrelevant...what if they don't see the ending?)" (I'm not sure, though that could be a little disturbing because they would care about the characters) "It makes them feel detached from their parents." How so? "NO…it is not real…it is a nightmare more than reality…in reality, 2 year olds don't need to concern themselves with wars, slavery, or homicidal lunatics throwing their father off of a cliff in hatred, to have the father trampled by stampeding animals…and dying in an extremely gruesome way." I said earlier that kids wouldn't be traumatized because the characters weren't real, and you responded saying that the characters were real to them. I concede on that point, and my point then was that a fantasy movie and historical fiction (or just plain history) can be compared at the same level if the child believes them both to be real. I don't think I ever truly believed talking lions existed, but I did believe the historical stories I would read, which contained stuff on par with the Disney scenes in question. I wasn't traumatized by the things I felt were real, or the things I felt were fake. "HA! You used Aladdin as an extremely soft example. Regardless of Disney's purpose, it is still traumatic…I have been speculating on the purpose for a while…the most plausible is that it is for their own commercial appeal." Actually, I just thought I'd get away from Lion King examples for a while since we're talking about Disney movies in general. If you want, I'll say that there's no correlation between Simba's dead father and toys. Except, maybe, that the movies are good and kids like them a lot so they demand toys. Again, I doubt there's a capitalist conspiracy behind this, and I doubt even stronger that they intentionally try to disturb kids. "And once more, for weeks after my cousin saw the tigger movie, he was shouting that he "was gonna go find his real family"…so do you really think that there is no effect on the child's mentality?" Of course they affect a child's mentality, as all good movies should, but those affects aren't necessarily bad. Your cousin is one example, but I watched all those movies as a young kid, so did most of my friends; and I can't recall any negligible effects. My friends little sister (3 years old) and one of my teacher's daughters (2) are both Lion King fans. "Did he imitate a father reluctantly forced to whip his son's back into a bloody mess, as punishment? That sounds like so much fun, doesn't it? " You've wonderfully missed the point. They were good movies, and my whole family loved them. "So…please answer me: Why do you not care or ignore the fact that almost every single recent Disney movie, has a plot that mainly circulates around the idea of being hopelessy distant from parents? Would it not seem obvious that they are trying to exercise the point of being detached from parents?" No, it wouldn't. They're detached, but none of the characters celebrate being away from their parents, or if they do initially they'll get into trouble and have to reconcile. Ariel and Jasmine who run away make up with their fathers, Simba learns to take responsibility and so forth. I think Peter Pan is the only one where absence of parents doesn't some how come back to bite them, and that was already a classic book by the time Walt got around to it.