'A Whole New World of Dying - Kid's Films LOVE a Good Death
For four minutes and twenty-one seconds near the beginning of Disney Pixar’s animated film ‘Up’, one of the most emotional, sad and tear-jerking scenes of all cinematic history (yep, I am calling it) takes place. A montage of the film’s protagonist Carl and his wife Ellie’s relationship is revealed to the audience.
We watch as they marry and witness the complete and utter love and devotion for each other, we see their ups and downs and are shown their life dream of visiting Paradise Falls together.
About three minutes into this sequence we observe Carl noticing Ellie struggling as age has begun to overcome her. This prompts him to purchase two tickets to Paradise Falls so they can experience their dream together before it is no longer possible. Unfortunately (as Disney would have it), before they are able to take their dream trip together, Ellie becomes sick and passes away.
After attending Ellie’s funeral Carl walks back into his house, alone holding one single balloon and the scene turns to black.
“Well, f*&^!”
After watching the film, I was left sobbing uncontrollably, snot running down from my nose into my mouth and my cheeks like Niagara Falls style sobbing. There are no other words to describe this scene other than “emotionally savage”. Although I watched the remainder of the film I refuse to ever watch it again, not because it wasn’t amazing but because it really was just too much to bear. Who in their right mind would subject this onto someone, let alone a child?
Well it turns out the answer to that question is Walt Disney. Although he may be dead his legacy sure lives on and so does what apparently is a film convention for Disney to use in their kids and family films. Just like the Disney Pixar film, ‘Up’, the death of a character, usually a main character and quite often a parent is quite common.
From Finding Nemo, Bambi, Lion King, Frozen, Lilo and Stitch, Moana, Tarzan, Mary Poppins Returns, A Bug’s Life, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid…the list goes on and on, Disney definitely has a complex about death.
In fact, the theme of death in Disney films and other children’s films is so prevalent there has even been a major research study into it.
In 2014 a study, aptly titled "Cartoons Kill," researchers compare how often on-screen deaths occur in kid’s movies with their frequency in movies for adults (https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7184).
Researchers compared the top grossing animated children’s movies from 1937 to 2013 with the two top grossing films for adults from those years. They looked at 45 top-grossing animated children's films and 90 dramatic films for adults.
These were their main findings:
1. Two-thirds of children’s movies depicted the death of an important character while only half of films for adults did.
2. The main cartoon characters in children’s films were two-and-a-half times more likely to die, and three times as likely to be murdered, when compared with their counterparts in films for adults.
3. The research revealed that in children’s movies, parents, nemeses and children were most likely to be killed off first, while in adult-geared films the movie’s protagonist was most likely to die first on-screen.
4. Parents of main characters–like the ones in Frozen, The Lion King, Finding Nemo, Tarzan, and Bambi–were five times more likely to die in a children’s movie than in a film for adults.
5. Their sample included three gunshot deaths (Bambi, Peter Pan, and Pocahontas) two stabbings, (Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid), and five animal attacks (A Bug’s Life, The Croods, How to Train Your Dragon, Finding Nemo, Tarzan).
“We conclude that children’s animated films, rather than being innocuous alternatives to the gore and carnage typical of American films, are in fact hotbeds of murder and mayhem,” wrote psychiatric epidemiologists Ian Colman and James Kirkbride in their paper. Hotbeds of murder and mayhem.
Although I see the absolute essential need for children to understand the complexity of life and death from an early age, while I choose to take my children to funerals because I believe that attending these celebrations of life and opportunities for farewell are for everyone not just adults and while I am quite open with the subject of sickness and death with my own children in part because of choice and in part because of circumstance, I still wonder is it really essential for film makers to saturate their films with them?
While many argue that these films are helpful in teaching children and opening but discussions about death and illness or as Elton would sing, “The Circle of Life” I am not so sure. I mean stabbings, gunshot deaths and words like “hotbeds of murder” were not how I envisioned explaining death to my children but perhaps I just need to “Let it Go?”