The Disney Dilemma

When you hear this quote, “Daddy I’m sixteen years old, I’m not a child anymore!” it sounds like a bratty, selfish, disobedient little princess. That is probably due to the fact that is exactly who said it. This is a quote from the beloved Disney classic, The Little Mermaid (Clements). It is no mystery that Disney is responsible for some bad morals of today’s youth. The question is how? With so many great lessons in the original content and many others wasted on the antagonist, they somehow ended up with some terrible morals in the final product. How did Disney mess up their morals? The original content in Disney movies may have presented better morals than the movies themselves. Had Disney followed their original content more closely, they could have avoided being called responsible for the issues in a lot of youth today. The majority of Disney movies can trace their stories back to the German tales of the Brothers Grimm. As many people know these tales can be pretty gory, it is understandable that Disney modified them to be more suitable for children. However as many modifications were made for the better, there were plenty made for the worse. The best example of this is Disney’s Cinderella. In the original Grimm Brother’s tale, Cinderella’s “ugly stepsisters” were actually very beautiful with ugly, wicked hearts (Grimm). This really changes the entire story of Cinderella. It can easily be argued that in the Disney version Cinderella was able to win over Prince Charming with her looks and that is why her sisters failed to do so, because in the Disney version the sisters were ugly and clumsy as well as wicked (Geronimi). In the Grimm brother’s tale it is obvious Cinderella’s charm was found in something besides her beauty, explaining why the Prince fell in love with her and not her stepsisters. It removes the mentality from today’s youth that ugly people are bad, the stepsisters were as beautiful, but not on the inside like Cinderella. This isn’t the