The Disney Corporation...

Me, my parents, and my friends have noticed the "dead parent" trend, but I don't think it's incredibly harmful or immoral as you say it is. First off, Disney can't be blamed for absent parents (usually mothers) in movies like Cinderella, Snow White, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pinocchio and all the others based on fairy tales or classic stories, because those characters had dead parents to begin with. However, in regards to their original stories or ones where parental situations aren't specified, you do have a point. Now, I grew up like a lot of people my age watching these movies, especially the Lion King which was my favorite, and I don't recall ever being traumatized. One big reason is that all these movies have happy endings. Simba's father dies, yes, and he thinks he's responsible but, by the end everything has been cleared up and he's got his mother, a girlfriend and a kingdom. And I think it should be noted that his father's ghost visits him and gives him some nice, supportive advice. The characters of these movies endure tragedy but they overcome it and are fine at the end. And this tells kids that even when bad things happen, it's not the end of the world; they can overcome tragedy in their lives, and even if that's not relevant at the moment it will be at some point. I come from a good home. My family life and my relationship to my parents is stable; we haven't had any deaths or divorces or anything like that. But a lot of families aren't like that. There are kids growing up without a mother or father, or with neither. There are kids who have been adopted and kids with abusive parents. One thing, among others, that can add to that kind of pain is feeling that you're different or abnormal. A main character's trauma could be even inspirational in a way to children like this because a) they feel they can connect and b) again, the characters overcome their tragedy. And regardless of what kind of home a kid comes from, I don't think it's okay to teach a child that everything in the world is nice and sweet. Yes, you want to sugar coat a lot of things because you don't want to disturb them, but sheltering a child too much will make them feel even worse when something bad does happen. That's not to say parents should be overtly blunt or harsh; I think a medium is where it should fall. But I don't think that Disney movies are too harsh. For one, in most of them, the parent's death or absence isn't dealt with directly. Ariel, Jasmine, Belle and few others simply don't have a mother (and it is usually a mother as you pointed out). So do a lot of children who your children will meet. Kids should be used to the idea of single parent families, or pretty much any type of family that is different than their own. As for the others, like Simba, Mufasa's death isn't gory, his reaction is appropriate and normal (crying). It's done tactfully. And on a different level, there's a big difference between real life and movies that kids understand, and these are movies. They're lions and princesses with animated bodies. Even when I'm emotionally invested in something, tragedy in a movie can't elicit emotions that a real tragedy can. So even if Simba is crying on screen I'm not disturbed, just sad. Even children who believe in fairies won't take on-screen grief nearly as much as they would in real life. Whew, that was a lot.