by Sepka » Thu Jun 22, 2006 6:58 pm
<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Films are what they are and the original book is not respected. [...] In Disney's flick, Bambi is thrilled to have his dad be proud of him for kicking ass and Bambi leaves his friends to go off with dad leaving the women behind.<br><br>After Bambi's big fight he does reluctantly smooch 'Faline,' a girl deer but then follows a totally Dad-centric ending.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>You've not read the book, though, have you? The main thread of the plot was how Bambi slowly grew more archetypically male, and more emotionally isolated as he grew older. His father was a distant figure to him, admired but also somewhat frightening. In time, he becomes exactly like his father, without realizing that he's done so, and without ever understanding himself or his father or his mate Faline. Bambi's actions are constrained by the realities of life in the forest, and by the expectations of others.<br><br>Disney breaks the story off early, while it's still happy, and they've cartoonified it and added secondary characters, but the twin themes of Bambi's never really understanding or being comfortable with Faline, and wanting to be like his father are still there.<br><br>Hie thee to the library, good Hugh! Read "Bambi: A Life in the Forest" (Felix Salten; 1923; innumerable editions), then watch both movies, and your perspective on this will probably change. The book is quietly subversive in a cultural sense - social heirarchies and gender roles are carefully observed, but in a way that people who consider them ordained by heaven aren't going to be comfortable with. You're picking up on that, you know. You see Bambi slowly isolating himself from the world, all in the name of living up to male archetypes, and you disapprove. Salten never preaches - he expounds, then lets his audience form their own opinion. Salten was also a noted Progressive, and contributed to most of the prestigious left-wing German and Austrian periodicals of the day. <br><br>If I've run on here I apologize, but you've hit upon one of my grinding axes. Salten seldom gets much attention in the Anglophone world, being dismissed as a children's author, yet IMHO he's fully the equal of Kafka or Mann. He has an absolute touch for picking out the tiny, seemingly insignificant incident that summarizes the truth of the tale, and he can do this in a sentence or two of extremely plain and pedestrian prose. It sometimes fills me with depair to read him, because I know this is a born talent, and not a cultivated one, and I will never have it. <br><br>Also, if it will help settle this, I have acquaintances who are Disney and ex-Disney animators and animation directors. None of them worked on Bambi II ( I already checked) but they'll know people who did. My own personal guess is that "Mena" got named in a storyboard session, and that the name was inspired by "Ena", and everyone thought the name was clever as hell because they'd been using (NAME) on the boards to refer to her, and "Mena" is also an anagram of "name". Perhaps I'll be surprised. Perhaps an edict came down from on high that the doe would be named "Mena". I doubt it, but I'll find out, and share what I learn here. <br><br>-Sepka the Space Weasel <p></p><i></i>
