While I’ve touched upon it in several recent entries into this series, I haven’t really listed fully the extent of the “no parents/no mothers/evil mothers” theme that runs consistently through a large portion of Disney’s animated vault. Without belaboring the subject, I’ll simply list the theatrically released animated films Disney has put out that feature a no mother/evil mother arrangement, or a bad parents/dead parents arrangement that plays a role in the story. I’ll do it chronologically for your convenience:
No Mother/Evil Mother
01. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs:
Evil mother, the queen, who tries to kill her daughter.
02. Pinocchio
No mother. Mostly because he’s a wooden boy.
03. Bambi
Spoiler alert, Bambi’s mom is shot dead in this one.
04. Cinderella
Evil step-mother, maybe the most famous evil step-mother in Disney history.
05. The Little Mermaid
No mother, but also Ursula acts as an evil mother figure
06. Beauty and the Beast
No mother, just her bumbling father
07. Pocahontas
No mother figure
08. Tangled
Raised by an evil mother figure.
No/Dead Parents
01. Peter Pan
Neglectful parents
02. The Sword in the Stone
No parents (orphan)
03. The Jungle Book
No parents (orphan)
04. The Rescuers
Evil parental figures (orphan)
05. Fox and the Hound
No parents except an old lady that abandon the fox.
06. The Black Cauldron
No parents, they seem unnecessary
07. Aladdin
No parents, just a street rat.
08. Hunchback of Notre Dame
Evil father figure (orphan)
09. Tarzan
Dead parents
10. Dinosaur
No parents (orphan)
11. Lilo & Stitch
Dead parents
12. Brother Bear
No parents
13. Home on the Range
Stolen parents
14. Frozen
Bit of a spoiler, but dead parents
I’m actually not overly critical of this, but it is interesting to see how often this plot device is used throughout Disney’s history. Some of these are really good films, and on their own, out of this context, there’s no reason to question the choices made in regard to what’s going on with the parental figure characters (or lack thereof) in these movies. But, when almost half of your theatrical animated releases have this common thread, one has to wonder to what degree this is intentional, and for which films.
NOTE: It’s been a little while since I’ve seen some of these, so, there is a remote possibility there was a parental figure in some of these that I’m just totally forgetting, at which point I guess that would imply that they were too unimportant to even remember.
The Glass City 