the disney dilemma

Ed's been collecting Pixar and Disney animated movies for a while now, so we had quite the stash even before the little man was born. It's been a while since I've seen many of them with the exception of some of the recent Pixar movies.

Up until a short while ago, Elian couldn't really make it past a half-hour show. Gradually, we starting easing him into a few movies. I think Lady and the Tramp may have been the first one. Followed by 101 Dalmatians. Then Cars. Or something like that. All very innocuous movies (save the fact that Cruella Deville wants to skin the puppies for fur coats which luckily went over his head). All was well.

It used to be that he wanted to watch the same movie 1400 times. Now when he wants to watch a movie, he'll dig through the drawer, pulling them out one-by-one to find one he hasn't seen yet. Recently we watched "The Lion King." He sat very still and watched as Simba's father Mustafa was killed, while I secretly blubbered away behind him, thinking that just moments ago, he had no concept of what "killing" was.

The other day he wanted to watch Pinocchio. Have you seen that movie lately? There's a scene in Gepetto's woodshop when all of the coo coo clocks go off -- one un-PC clock at a time -- the drunk guy, the man chopping off the turkey head, the dude shooting at a bird, the woman spanking the bare bottom her kid -- one after the other. We didn't make it all the way through Pinocchio. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to explain all of the kids getting drunk and smoking cigars.

So then yesterday, he's rifling through the DVDs. I brace myself. It's the motherload. He says he wants to watch Bambi. BAMBI!!! Before we start the movie, I explain what hunters are -- how they kill animals to eat -- and that something very sad happens in the movie. Maybe I'm flattering myself, but I thought it could be quite devastating to the kid. So we get to the part when Bambi's mother is shot and he doesn't even flinch. Seems very non-plussed by the whole thing.

So what exactly is an appropriate age for a child to start watching these movies? And why does every Disney movie have to have guns in it? I must say I do like the length and the pace of the older movies. They feel a lot slower and will spend about 5 minutes on animals just doing animal things in the forrest -- not trying to pack every joke in a minute that they can (no wonder so many people have ADD). Also, they're a more reasonable length for kids. I think Bambi was like an hour long.

And this concludes Amy blabberfest.