I understand the problem-a stag in the real world wouldn't be caught caring for his young-but Bambi's gender politics become a little weird just the same. At face value, the movie's depiction of family is fairly noxious, with the mother being left behind to care for her newborn while the father goes off and does manly things, like strutting through the woods with his chest puffed out as all the rest of creation looks on with admiration and wonder. The process by which human qualities are imputed to animals has become known as "Bambi-ism" for good reason, and because the film insists on depicting Bambi as a reflection of a human child, parts of it take on suspect qualities. Their efforts are undermined somewhat by the film's relentless anthropomorphization-there's a bit of cognitive dissonance when Bambi's beautifully-realized mother suddenly parts her lips and starts talking like Donna Reed (the actress in question is actually Paula Winslowe)-but there's an awful lot to admire in the way they balance observational drawing with the more exaggerated Disney style of character design. Instead, it's that he's drawn so expertly by a team of Disney artists energized by the challenge of animating an animal with attention to how a real one moves in nature. Bambi himself is charming, though the appeal isn't that he mugs shamelessly or speaks with a slow drawl (courtesy of Son of Frankenstein's Donnie Dunagan, later a Marine drill sergeant!). It turns out that the new "prince" is Bambi, an expectedly awkward, predictably adorable fawn born to a doting, attentive mother and a conspicuously absent (but badass) father.īambi's forest buddies include bunny Thumper and skunk Flower, whose conceptions provide much of the requisite sickly cuteness to satisfy the Disney formula.
The film opens on what's always seemed like a weird note: the animals declaring that "a prince is born" and gathering to witness the apparently miraculous event always has me wondering if I'm witnessing some weird Christian allegory that I lack the theological chops to decode. If Uncle Walt can do them the favour of taking them on a quick walk up and down Cold Facts Avenue before they have to discover the world's awful truths for themselves, bully for him.īut Bambi never really did the trick for me, in part because, at its abbreviated length, it never works up the head of narrative steam that would make me care what happens to any of these enchanted woodland creatures. (Exhibitors, one story goes, got into the habit of reupholstering their theatre seats on a seven-year schedule that coincided with the re-releases of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which quite literally scared the piss out of youngsters.) I say that while he may have been a sadist, kids could use a good scare every now and then. Some say that Walt Disney was a sadist who enjoyed scaring the daylights out of little kids.
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