One of the selfish joys of parenting is introducing your kids to stuff you love. You get to see something you love, you get to see your kid enjoy it… or you get to see your kid cast it aside as not worth their time.
The Bug’s earliest introductions to movies were all Pixar and Miyazaki. Yes, I am an animation snob. I love them, and if I have to sit through kid-friendly entertainment it might as well be something I enjoy.
Now that Graham is older and starting to branch out, he likes to have a wide variety to choose from. So I try to scout out things that will appeal to his current interests. Or things that will distract him from his current interests.
So I would love to tone down the trains. I hate Thomas. Not just because it’s all trains all the time, but because all the trains are big fat jerks who are all mean to each other. The simplest alternative is animals. The Bug can make all the animal sounds and is getting better at identifying animals by name.
It was with this mindset that I figured I’d try introducing the Bug to Dumbo. I’d grown up with it. It has all kinds of animals. And (bonus!) there’s a train. Oh, and there are lots of baby animals. We are really pushing “baby” right now. Since we’re expecting one and all. The Bug has learned that there is a baby in my belly and he will pat it and say, “Hi, baby.” He points at babies he sees and says, “Baby.” He has a baby doll and one of his programs in therapy involves hugging and kissing the baby doll. So Dumbo is perfect, right?
Not so much.
If you haven’t watched Dumbo recently, let me fill you in.
It’s only an hour long and it goes basically like this.
2 minutes of credits
1 adorable song with storks and all kinds of baby animals that is soul-meltingly sweet
5 minutes of stork delivering baby elephant to Mrs. Jumbo.
And then there’s far too many minutes of gut-wrenching awfulness.
Elephants are mean to Dumbo.
Black workers sing a song about working and then wasting their money. They don’t have any faces. Ah, Disney racism.
Kids are mean to Dumbo.
Dumbo’s mom is taken away.
Dumbo cries.
Dumbo destroys the elephant act at the circus and is officially rejected by the elephants.
Dumbo is sad.
Dumbo gets brought in to the clown act. The clowns are mean to Dumbo.
Dumbo visits his mother who is chained up and cannot see him. Mothers everywhere sob their eyes out.
More clown mean-ness.
Dumbo gets drunk and hallucinates for 10 minutes. (A BABY gets DRUNK. BABY! DRUNK!)
The hungover Dumbo meets some crows, who are yet another example of classic Disney racism. The crows are mean to Dumbo.
And then for 5 minutes Dumbo flies and is happy.
So basically, you’ve got maybe 15 happy minutes in a 60 minute movie. (And that’s a stretch.)
But I haven’t been able to cut the Bug off from Dumbo.
Because he calls it, “Baby.” It is too adorable. I must give in.
The moral of the story is don’t trust your memory. All I remembered of Dumbo was storks, babies, flying elephants, and a circus. You may want to invest a little time in those movies you remember so fondly to re-watch before you find yourself subjected to them constantly.
What have you introduced to your kids that you regretted?
Related Posts:
8 Responses to Elephants Never Forget, But I Do
Leave a Reply
Find the Mess
My Life’s a Mess and That’s Okay
Jess is a procrastinator, a former working mom who is suddenly staying at home, a Dr-Dr's wife, a non-practicing lawyer, an Autism Mom, a devoted reader, a penny pincher, a coupon clipper, a new New England-er, a low-key agnostic, a nice girl, a top-notch speller, a hardcore blogger and a Twitter fiend.
The blog covers everything from coupon tips to Autism support to adorable toddler pictures to hilarious tales of my daily grind with the occasional review & giveaway thrown in for good measure.
My Networks
We recently bought lion king because I remembered it as bright colors, lots of animals, and fun songs. Turns out the majority of the movie is dark, dreary, and full of threats of murder. We may not be watching that one again for a long while…
Yes! Graham only likes that one for about 10 minutes. Then he’s done. Not surprising, what with all the murdering of a father in front of his kids, the scary Nazi-like hyenas, the elephant graveyard, etc.
The girlies (who are now 14) and I recently watched Beauty and the Beast and I was shocked at how scary some of it was. That castle is dark and that Beast can be really grumpy! I did NOT remember it being that way.
PLEASE go to youtube and watch “Mickey Mouse Monopoly”. It’s a 50 minute documentary in 5 parts that discusses the racism, sexism, classism, etc. propagated by Disney. I’m not saying I agree with all of it- but there’s some crazy stuff in there.
cidago recently posted..Elephants Never Forget, But I Do
I had the SAME feelings after watching Dumbo with my kids, and we haven’t watched it since. Although I’m starting to think that ANYTHING would be better than the CONSTANT run of Bubble Guppies that is currently on our television!
Kristina recently posted..NaBloPoMo
My daughter was about Grahams age when she started watching Dumbo and she loved it. We had to do everything Dumbo for a while and it is still one of her favorites at 10yo! The song disturbed me but it is garbled enough that she never understood them. I have always been disturbed by the amount of violence in Disney movies.
Kat recently posted..Travel Life List
My heart always breaks for Mrs. Jumbo – everyone laughing at her poor non-perfect baby, then having him taken away when she tries to protect him from the abusing mob… She loves her baby so much.
If By Yes recently posted..It’s Noble. We’re Supporting the U.S. Economy Or Something. Not Greedy. NOBLE!
[...] I’ve written before about Dumbo and how awful it is. Bambi isn’t so great either. Also included, Up, which still gets me in its initial sequence. [...]