Bambi's Mom: An Education for Death

There has been some backlash for the apparent plans to not kill Bambi's mom in an upcoming live-action remake of that film, according to Forbes. The movie's screenwriter Lindsay Anderson Beer said “Not to spoil the plot [a joke, presumably], but there’s a treatment of the mom dying that I think some kids, some parents these days are more sensitive about than they were in the past.”

The main defender of this decision is the author of The Case for Cancel Culture Ernest Owens. He says, “We are in a different type of world now, there’s a lot of violence on TV, there’s a lot of grotesqueness, and I think this classic film should be seen with a different perspective for kids." (A guy who wrote a book about cancel culture says that we live in a different world from the past? That's new!) 

This guy is right here, but I've gotta say the shows on TV for kids are not for kids. Gravity Falls (Disney) and Regular Show are shows all kids should not watch. So when was freaking out kids a problem?

The anger is all predictably conservative. Tomi Lahren said “I'm waiting for this Bambi remake to have a trans deer, or maybe the mother dies from climate change.” The YouTube channel The Quartering stated, in my opinion accurately, that “If kids could relate to a deer 80 years ago, they can probably do it now.”

I must say I hate both sides, because both want to silence the other. Left wants to cancel/censor Right; Right wants to cancel/censor Left--all the same. This is not a political blog, so I will say no more (Please no politicking below, because nobody cares if you hate Trump or Biden or whoever). There is also legitimate complaints and desires from both sides, but I want to point out that Bambi has no political or dated agenda whatsoever, which exposes the real reasoning behind the remake: $.

A lot less vivid in reality.

I know that irony is not coincidence, but I feel like saying it's ironic that the death of Bambi's mom is being removed from the story because that's the glue that holds the mess together. Of the first five Disney films, it is by far weakest. Not as weak as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan or Cinderella, but it pales before Pinocchio or Dumbo, animation's two great masterpieces. Good animation can't save a bad story, or--in Bambi's case--no story at all. This will be a strange analogy, but Bambi is kind of like a long Tex Avery cartoon: it's "a deck of cards" that you order from least to greatest and then it ends. With Tex it is perfect because the laughs build up and up and you can't stop, such the case when I first saw Magical Maestro and Northwest Hounded Police. Bambi instead has cuteness or drama instead of gags, so it is instead choppy and tedious. Bambi himself was not a character, especially compared to Dumbo, and he never speaks. I have other problems, but I'll end by simply was not good adaptation material unless a story was added, and one wasn't. Where was Baloo when you needed him?

I don't know about you, but this whole Bambi change sounds like the teacher's story, where it's the rabbit's fault for getting eaten...