Yes, folks, our March Madness is over and now we’re on to our next installment of Dirty Disney! Ah, Dirty Disney. Where I destroy your childhood by taking an innocent Disney film and show how it’s filled with as much repressed sexual meaning as The Making of Me.
This week…Bambi.
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Yup. Bambi.
You balk. You say, okay, Bambi may have emotionally scarred me for life and is the reason I hate MAN and all other forms of carnivorous creatures, but it’s not dirty. Is it?
What if I told you Bambi had an explicit ten minutes all about young boys’ sexual awakening which was then followed by an attempted rape?
Oh. It’s there. You don’t even have to over-read it to find it.
One word for you: twitterpated.
Two birds fly by our heroes, Bambi, Flowers, and Thumper, and are fluttering about in a flamboyant manner. “What are they doing?” Our innocent pubescent heroes ask. “They’re twitterpated,” Friend Owl responds.
Now, the traditional, kid-friendly interpretation is that ‘twitterpated’ means ‘in love.’ Look at those two birds going all crazy, they’re in love! And then we watch as Bambi, Flowers, and Thumper all find their true loves.
Right? Survey says…
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Wrong. Roll clip, please.
Did you see it? The sexualized, overly curvy bunny? The phallic implications of Thumper going stiff and erect, then suddenly floppy again once his Jessica Rabbit touches him? And make what you will of the last ten seconds…
Did that kill you inside just a little bit?
Don’t think that was explicit enough for phallic imagery? Check out Flowers once he meets his lady love.
That’s not photoshop, my friend. That’s a freeze frame from the movie.
To top it off, Friend Owl says that everybody gets twitterpated in the spring time. Translation? All animals pair up and mate during the spring time. So, sorry, those birds weren’t flittering about because they were in love, kiddies. They were doing the nasty.
Mommy will explain when you’re older.
So where does the rape come in?
Roll next clip. (You only have to watch the first minute)
Mommy, what does that scary man deer want to do with Bambi’s girlfriend? And how did Bambi win when he’s clearly the smaller and weaker of the two?
In the wild, fighting over a doe would be no big deal. Except, Faline is crying out for help. She doesn’t want this angry deer to mate with her, and it doesn’t look much like she’s gonna have a choice in the matter. She calls out for Bambi, who then saves her. From being raped.
Oh, Disney.
Still think I’m reading too much into it? Dust off your VHS and watch the roughly ten minute ‘twitterpated’ section for yourself. Fair warning: once you’ve seen it, it can not be unseen.
Have a magical day!
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