How DVDs have ruined Disney

This doesn't have much to do with France in particular. It's just a plea to bring back for some purposes the trusty old VHS.

Perhaps I'm just prejudiced because I grew up in a VHS household, and some of my best and earliest memories are accompanied by the whirring sound of a tape being played, rewound, or fast-forwarded. It's not that I spent my entire childhood planted in front of the TV watching movies, I was practicing for my future.

With Lumiere I rehearsed the kickline from Beauty and the Beast in that eternal classic song, "Be Our Guest". About twelve years later, there I was onstage doing it. Michael Flatley and my little brother had tap-off show downs during Riverdance and Lord of the Dance. I learned my love of Celtic music, singing, and dancing from those same shows. The Tin Soldier convinced me that I wanted to be a ballerina. Without The Snow Queen, I never would have learned to perfect my icy glare when I performed the title role, forcing my father to guess who I was before I would say hello to him when he came home from work.

But back to the original purpose of the story.

Yesterday in lieu of wandering off to visit the wonderful sites of Paris, I was asked to keep watch over the three-year-old daughter of my host family. What's the best way to entertain children? Disney.

She selected that old classic Bambi. I myself have never been a huge fan, the mother dies, humans are horrible to animals, there's fire, and death, and it just doesn't seem like a kids movie. Anyway, she chose it so we popped in the DVD, she also selected the English version so bonus points for her and more difficulty tuning it out for me. The movie rolled along like it should, perhaps with slightly better picture and less fuzzy sound, Bambi's mother got shot and the little girl turned around to explain it to me in French. Just in case I didn't get the gist just from watching, or the fact that it was the English version.

Still bumping along, I'd managed to hold back my tears and I'm still proud of myself. Then came the climax of the movie, young adult Bambi runs away from the hunters and has just heroically saved love interest Faline from a pack of hunting dogs. He runs, jumps a ravine and we hear the bang of a gun as he spasms in midair and then falls unable to stand on the other side of the ravine. At this point, the DVD froze and then took us back to the main menu. Worst place ever to freeze, now this poor little girl thinks Bambi is dead! She won't know the ending! I tried to go fix it, but the little girl just stood up and walked away, humming a song to herself. When I asked if she wanted to see the end, she just gave me a look that told me I was crazy, though that might have been due to my poor attempts at French.

So as far as I can tell, this child thinks that the movie ends with Bambi getting shot by hunters. Bang, he's dead, end of story. While I'm sure it's much more realistic, since when has classic Disney been realistic? I'm disturbed by this outcome and it just proves that we should all go back to VHS. They could never take you back to the menu to make you think it was the beginning, you have to rewind it, and you'd fee the film wasn't run out, and you'd know there was more of the story to be had once your dad got home and fixed it.

And just to prove my point about Disney not being realistic, I give you this.

The Disney photo had to be doctored color-wise to make it fit.