The one thing my Daughter loves more than anything apart from the sound of her own voice is Disney Princesses, even at three years old she has a sound understanding of all the Disney Princesses and gets lost in her story books, colouring books, and all of the Disney movies. To be fair it's been pretty good watching all the old and new Disney movies over the last year and enjoying them with her (although Trolls is becoming a firm favourite in the AKA Daddy household).
The thing is that when you watch them again as a 33-year-old you tend to ask more questions of the stories set out in front of you. For the record I think Disney movies are awesome and won't hear a bad word said about most of them (apart from The Aristocats, that was shite). Life experiences you don't gain until long after you first watch the movies suddenly leave you with more questions than answers when you watch Disney again 20 or so years later.
Ariel from The Little Mermaid is 16 at the end of the the movie and lived those 16 years as a fish, have you seen fish have sex? Me neither, which is why I had to google it. Prince Eric may think he is in for a right royal treat getting to go knacker deep in his new bride, but when the time comes to get it on with Ariel, chances are that his hopes will be shattered when Ariel tries to shit out all her fish eggs all over the floor which she will expect Eric to inseminate all over. Phwoooar hot suff right!? That's the romance gone right out of the relationship straight away. This usually happens when one half sees the other half taking a shit due to them leaving the bathroom door open, not in Disney, it all ends with fishy fish sex.
While we are on the subject of sex, every time teenage Pinocchio gets a bit excited down below does he think he is lying? There are going to be some serious bedtime issues when he becomes a 'real boy'.
Then there is the murder, oh the murder! Mulan for instance, not a film I actually rate highly but probably has the highest body count of all Disney movies*, I know she is a soldier but she is responsible for firing an enemy into a mountain that causes a massive avalanche that probably goes on to trap a whole army in a frozen hell that will suffocate them in a good 5 minutes. Nice. The wardrobe in Beauty and the Beast also dispatches an enemy by crushing him dead using its sheer weight (presumably not Ikea bought as it would have fallen apart quicker than a house of cards).
Another thing I noticed while watching Moana (which is awesome by the way) with Flo at the cinema yesterday is that it is one of the few Disney films where the protagonist's parents are present and well at the end of the movie (not a spoiler). Disney love to either kill or capture parents of the heroes or at least have them go missing. I am sure if you add up the dead, missing, captured or absent parents in Disney you will be well into double figures.
Despite these new found issues I really enjoy Disney and I think they are probably the one constants that many people have between childhood and adulthood and I am happy that Flo has something she enjoys so much (until I bombard her with Star Wars which is now technically Disney). Please feel free to let me know if you remember seeing something slightly off in Disney movies.
*After a quick google Mulan has a kill count of a whopping 1995 people killed. Girl Power.
This article was first published on AKA Daddy