Do Bambi and Nemo make kids green?
Love 'em or hate 'em, Disney films exert a huge influence over children's lives the world over. And this may turn out to be a good thing for the green movement if a Cambridge professor's new theory has any substance.
David Whitley, a professor of English believes that films like The Lion King, Finding Nemo and Bambi grant young viewers a "critical awareness of contested environmental issues." Far from finding the films mawkish and sentimental, Whitley highlights the conservationalist themse running through many of Disney's films for many decades.
As well as the more obvious ones like Nemo, he even describes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a lesson in "how humans can protect nature and even bring order to it".
I'm not sure that a 'fundamental respect' for nature is entirely the right choice of words when a large, man-eating feline predator is depicted as cute and cuddly! But I do think there's a lot of truth in the Prof's thinking. By appealing to children's feelings of warmth towards their fellow creatures, Disney (and others in the same game) are helping to bring about concern and care for nature -- even if it can look sentimental to an adult eye.
[Via the Guardian]
