Wild Sentiment: the Theme of Nature in Disney Animation
Wild Sentiment: The Theme of Nature in
Disney Animation
‘Disney’s films are a revolt against partitioning and legislating, against spiritual stagnation and greyness. But the revolt is lyrical. The revolt is a daydream.’
Sergei Eisenstein, Eisenstein on Disney
This book takes a fresh look at Disney animated films, seen from the particular perspective of their engagement with the theme of wild nature. This theme, I shall argue, was of central importance from the moment Disney first ventured fatefully into the form of the animated feature in 1937. Grafted onto the root-stem of fairy tale and linked predominantly to the plotline of maturation within romantic comedy, the theme of wild nature forms the very heartland of Disney’s animated features from their inception in Snow White through to recent films such as Finding Nemo and Brother Bear. Not all of Disney’s animated feature films focus centrally on wild creatures or natural environments, of course. Indeed this provides a useful principle of exclusion, enabling the films considered in detail in this study to be narrowed down to manageable proportions. But the theme is prevalent enough to make a claim for its centrality justifiable and even those films – outside the realm of this study – which feature domesticated animals or humans as their sole protagonists are often concerned with contrasts between the ‘natural’ and the ‘human’ in their assessments of behaviour.
Cruella De Vil is not the only figure in Disney whose characteristic brutality is made to contrast with animals (and animal lovers) who have an affinity with the natural world. In many of the most famous and best loved Disney films, however – such as
Snow White, Bambi, The Jungle Book, The Lion King and Finding Nemo – wild nature figures directly and it is with these films that I shall be principally concerned.
It is not only the prevalence of wild nature as a theme within Disney animation that justifies the focus
Disney Animation
‘Disney’s films are a revolt against partitioning and legislating, against spiritual stagnation and greyness. But the revolt is lyrical. The revolt is a daydream.’
Sergei Eisenstein, Eisenstein on Disney
This book takes a fresh look at Disney animated films, seen from the particular perspective of their engagement with the theme of wild nature. This theme, I shall argue, was of central importance from the moment Disney first ventured fatefully into the form of the animated feature in 1937. Grafted onto the root-stem of fairy tale and linked predominantly to the plotline of maturation within romantic comedy, the theme of wild nature forms the very heartland of Disney’s animated features from their inception in Snow White through to recent films such as Finding Nemo and Brother Bear. Not all of Disney’s animated feature films focus centrally on wild creatures or natural environments, of course. Indeed this provides a useful principle of exclusion, enabling the films considered in detail in this study to be narrowed down to manageable proportions. But the theme is prevalent enough to make a claim for its centrality justifiable and even those films – outside the realm of this study – which feature domesticated animals or humans as their sole protagonists are often concerned with contrasts between the ‘natural’ and the ‘human’ in their assessments of behaviour.
Cruella De Vil is not the only figure in Disney whose characteristic brutality is made to contrast with animals (and animal lovers) who have an affinity with the natural world. In many of the most famous and best loved Disney films, however – such as
Snow White, Bambi, The Jungle Book, The Lion King and Finding Nemo – wild nature figures directly and it is with these films that I shall be principally concerned.
It is not only the prevalence of wild nature as a theme within Disney animation that justifies the focus