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Comment by senko | Hacker News Reader

Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story.

Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more grisly than the adaptation.

Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cauldron full of vipers?)

I bet Disney would be able to adapt even something like "Requiem for a Dream" into a happy hero-coming-of-age story.

You lose a lot if the only version of these classics you've seen (or read, or heard) is Disney's sweet & shiny simulacra.

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The Brothers Grimm already toned the horror down. Sleeping Beauty was based on a tale called Sun, Moon, and Talia [0] which has the prince having sex and impregnating her while she sleeps, and she only wakes up from her newborns sucking the splint out of her finger when she can’t find the breast.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun,_Moon,_and_Talia

My mind is blown -- that is quite some story (all of it, not just the bits in your comment!), thanks for the link! :-O

Sun, Moon, and Talia (Italian: Sole, Luna, e Talia) is an Italian literary fairy tale written by Giambattista Basile in his 1634

Guy was high on some drugs when he wrote this sh%t. Talk about messed up.

It goes farther than that.

"Early contributions to the tale include the medieval courtly romance Perceforest (published in 1528).[4] In this tale, a princess named Zellandine falls in love with a man named Troylus. Her father sends him to perform tasks to prove himself worthy of her, and while he is gone, Zellandine falls into an enchanted sleep. Troylus finds her and rapes her in her sleep; when their child is born, the child draws from her finger the flax that caused her sleep. She realizes from the ring Troylus left her that he was the father, and Troylus later returns to marry her.[5]"

Many children's stories of old had an entirely different moral sentiment than today.

They exposed children to the idea that the chaotic world is outside your ability to control, but you must live in it and navigate it to the extent you can nonetheless. This will not always end well for you, despite your best efforts.

In contrast, the message of modern fairy tales is that life has challenges, but they can all be overcome. If you are noble, persistent and hard working, you can achieve anything. Characters nearly always end up royalty or some variation of happily ever after.

To be clear, folktales like Cinderella or Sleeping beauty were not originally stories for children.

Don't forget about Pinocchio, who in the original Italian children's book is tortured and hanged for being such a "bad boy" [0][1].

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio#Fictional_character_...

1: https://slate.com/culture/2011/10/carlo-collodi-s-pinocchio-...

The part of the movie where all of the boys on Pleasure Island begin to turn into donkeys always freaked me out as a kid.

Ah, this reminds me of a review of the book I stumbled upon recently that is eye opening... eye opening as it shows how the context of the reader is imprinted on their experience of the reading.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R1JOT49B5OUAL0/...

Even the opening of the review is... something:

> To be honest, I struggled with this book. I found the main character incredibly frustrating. He almost always did the wrong thing. I mean, almost ALWAYS. Well, people sometimes do (including me!), but what he does is also almost always incredibly stupid. Well, again, people do stupid things (including me!), and the main character is, after all, a puppet who is only moments old at the beginning of the book, so how is he to know better? Fair question, but still, I found the book hard work. He just did not seem to learn from his mistakes.

Hovering over that link doesn't reveal the title of the book.

Judging from the plot summary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Pinocchio#Pl...), the original Pinocchio book is pretty messed up as a whole!

Wait until you see the Roberto Benigni film co-starring his wife.

I'm not sure "messed up" is the most appropriate expression, if that may refer to a shaky mental status. It's all probably very intentional and lucid. Benedetto Croce - one of the greatest Italian philosophers - would not had taken that book in such high regard otherwise.

It's just about life, explained through metaphors from somebody who had lived it a bit to some who may have lived it less, and could benefit from a few warnings.

Collodi was also a gambler: one night he lost an especially large amount of money, then happened to meet a friend, who commissioned him a literary work so as to help with the payment of his debts. "Le Avventure di Pinocchio" was in a way born out of deeds, to warn against deeds.

>> Don't forget about Pinocchio, who in the original Italian children's book is tortured and hanged for being such a "bad boy" [0][1].

>> 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio#Fictional_character_...:

> Pinocchio's bad behavior, rather than being charming or endearing, is meant to serve as a warning.

That reminds me something I read about "Inuit parenting." They live in a dangerous and difficult environment, so they'd tell kids all kinds of scary stories designed to get them to do the correct thing before they could understood the actual danger.

Here's an Dena'ina example: http://denaina.anchoragemuseum.org/multimedia/denaina/the-st...

For Cinderella, the story also existed in an older version told by Perrault, which is way less bleak than Grimm's tale. Especially as the Disney adaptation is closer to Perrault's tale (cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella#Cendrillon_ou_la_pe...)

I know Disney pretends that "Song of the South" never existed, but Joel Chandler Harris' "The Tales of Uncle Remus" etc., includes a few stories where the animals meet their ends. Disney passed on those tales of course (leaving them as well out of the Disney book that followed the film and included additional Harris tales).

Like the suggestion that "Bambi" is a parable, it has been also suggested that Brer Rabbit represents the slave of the Antebellum South surviving against the toothed and clawed Brer Fox and Brer Bear only by his wits (though in fact Brer Wolf meets his own end at the hands of Brer Rabbit's "wit" ... or boiling water in his specific case).

> (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cauldron full of vipers?)

That's the variant I got told in my childhood (1980s West Germany). It always amuses me that these simple facts seem to be cruel and horrific to Americans.

Also, "Hänsel and Gretel" is a tale about parental abandonment, stranger danger, cannibalism, and burning old women alive, then forgiving said parental abandonment (but only after the kids bring back treasure).

And "Red Riding Hood" is essentially about sexual child abuse.

Trying to imagine the boiling cauldron full of vipers. Were they magical vipers that could live in boiling water? Would Maleficent really be able to feel any snake bites as she was being boiled alive? Huge plot hole. 17th century writers didn't think this through.

Yea, I wasn't sure if this was water or oil with resistant high temperature vipers. Or someone smashed up vipers and boiled it, to be painful and extra gross?

Or both, where vipers were boiled, and new vipers were constantly being added to bite, then turn into boiling viper soup themselves.

IDK about plot hole, I assume the both method will get the job done. But, I do question the efficiency and practicality.

Children's songs are also often cruel. "Il etait un petit navire" tells the story of a young sailor about to be eaten because the ship ran out of food. "Sur le pont du Nord" tells the story of a brother and a sister who ran off to a ball without their parents' approval and die when the bridge collapses. "Il etait une bergere" tells the story of a young shepherd who kills her mischievous cat in anger. These are examples from French folklore, but I would be surprised if it was different in other cultures.

Spaniard here. You could be scared if you paid attention to what little girls actually sang in those songs made to play with hands and such.

Killing depictions, mild sexual jokes... as nothing.

"London bridges falling down."

"Ring around the Rosie... and we all fall down" (refers to the Great Plague of London in 1665)

"Rockabye baby in the treetops" (eventually sent crashing to the ground by storm winds).

Snopes disagrees with the plague theory: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ring-around-rosie/

>"Requiem for a Dream"

Well, if we're thinking about the moral messages of some of these old tales, I've always thought Requiem could be a good movie to show tweens+ as a cautionary against drug abuse. If Disney threw in an evil witch selling smack, a few catchy songs, a handful of dead parents, and a handsome prince to kiss Harry's arm back to life then I bet they'd have... well, maybe not a hit. But it would be something, and I'd watch it.

This description totally reminds me of Trainspotting!

Those two, along with Kids (1995) could definitely be used as cautionary tales for t(w)eenagers.

kids is a cool film, but not much of a cautionary tale. it's more like a 90s urban euphoria, in that the message is really more to adults: "this is what teenagers are actually doing right now".

what (imo) would make requiem for a dream really effective is that it shows the transition from the "honeymoon phase" of drug use to the "consequences phase" really well. I think this is the part that teenagers really don't understand (or at least I didn't). when you're starting out, it can seem like a lot of the anti-drug messaging is just fear mongering (and it is, to an extent). but most people that age don't yet have the perspective to distinguish between harmless fun and a slow motion crisis.

trainspotting is also great, and a bit more realistic than requiem for a dream. but if I had to pick one of the two to show to teens, I'd probably pick the former.

Tween-me would have been wondering what the adult showing me the film was thinking right around the time a grinning man suggested for the crowd "Ass to ass."

The section of the book where he sends Marion off to get money from Arnold, is some of the most haunting writing I've ever come across. The book is truly amazing. I've never come across another novel to so aptly relate the feelings of addiction.

That's why Germans refuse to refer to Disney movies by the names of the original Grimm stories.

Disney/Hollywood version is always Cinderella, and German that closely adheres to the original is called Aschenputtel. The same goes for Snowwhite and Schneewitchen, Sleeping Beauty and Dornröschen.

I wouldn't say this applies as a rule. Both Snow White (Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge) and Sleeping Beauty (Dornröschen) kept their original titles in German. Cinderella is really the only exception which makes sense since it's more based on the Perrault version.

There's even a counter example. The 2010 film Tangled is called Rapunzel like the original fairy tale in German.

"Snowwhite and the Huntsman" kept its original Hollywood name, it was never translated as "Schneewitchen und der Jägger". But you're right, it's “based on” a Grimm story, not a literal story adaptation.

I had to look that film up[1]. It's not a Disney movie so I don't see how that would apply here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Huntsman

If we are splitting hair, note that in my comment you referred to, I wrote Disney/Hollywood, not only Disney.

> Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off

The Disney version of Cinderella is based on Charles Perraults version, which is significantly different. An Perrault is older than Grimm, although both are based on older traditions.

Many of the Grimm tales in their original form were also somewhat bizarre or surreal. I agree with you, but sometimes think the Disney versions were crafted as they were in part just to make sense as much as anything.

The stories were probably much more coherent to the folks living in the cultures they were conceived. At least at an intuitive and visceral level.

There’s a theory that Hansel and Grettel represents a cultural memory of a time of famine where children were abandoned, left to starve.

not just them, look at "thousand and one nights", but not at an adaption, look at something close to the original, these used to be very cruel, also the old Russian folk tales used to be quite cruel.

I think they all used to live in a very different reality, with people dying at an earlier age and much more often then they do now. Also infant mortality was much much higher in the olden days; it was a scary time, altogether.

The olden days didn't have the luxury of clean water, antibiotics and food plenty. These are quite recent inventions...

I think that Bambi is something of a war movie; look at the forest fire scene, there is fire everywhere, it must have been inspired by bombing raids during the battle of Britain. I wonder if some of the artists had first hand experience of these events.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQrqhdU99Ws

Also the father commands his son 'you must get up'; he acts like a commander.

Or bombings of Dresden. If you want fire.

The movie was released before the Dresden bombings happened.

The fictional Tralfamadorians from Vonnegut's books could have traveled in time from 1945 back to 1942, when the movie was released.

I prefer the sequel, “Bambi Goes Crazy Ape Bonkers With His Drill and Sex”

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