Did our favorite childhood animated movies seem as bizarre back then as they do now?
The first movie I will mention is “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” For those of you who haven’t seen it, let me sum it up for you. The movie is about a man with hunched back who gets locked in a giant tower because he is physically disabled and is shunned from the world. Remember, this movie is for kids.
If that isn’t bad enough, the hunchback carves little figurines of the people he sees while he stalks them from the tower. Later in the movie, there is a catchy musical number about a man who wants to have sex with a girl so badly that he is either going to have sex with her or light her and the entire city on fire. Stalking, sex, and murder. Disney is just a bunch of perverts.
Why is it that the Disney Corporation is constantly trying to emotionally scar us for life? There are movies like “The Lion King” and “Old Yeller” that can still make me cry. Nothing tugs at a kid’s heartstrings like a dad’s death or a boy who has to shoot his own dog.
Almost every child’s movie has at least one trippy moment. These are the kind of moments that make you wonder, “What just happened?” And most of the time, they have nothing to do with the movie. The one that I remember the most is a song called “Pink Elephants on Parade” from the movie “Dumbo.” The moment happens when Dumbo the elephant and his little mouse friend drink alcohol and start to see pink singing elephants walk around the room. The song used to scare the holy Jesus out of me as a child, but now it just has me wondering, “How much acid did I just drop?”
Why is Dumbo drinking? I feel like most of the cartoon characters we grew up with were on some kind of drug. Think about it. Garfield is always hungry. Pooh is the happiest person in the world. Speedy Gonzales is on some sort of amphetamine. Don’t even get me started on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It’s a bunch of teenagers who hang out in a sewer and talk about nothing but pizza. That sounds a little shady to me.
And people wonder why our generation is so messed up.
Ryan Lina can be reached for comment at [email protected].