This Is Why Disney Characters Rarely Have Moms

[Disneyliscious]

I never knew this but found it really interesting. Article is pasted below:

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This Is Why Disney Characters Rarely Have Moms

Producer Don Hahn reveal’s a secret about Walt Disney’s past.

Ever notice how Disney characters—especially Disney princesses—rarely have moms? Their moms are either died, have gone missing, or are otherwise unaccounted for? Ariel didn’t have one. Cinderella didn’t either (fairy godmothers and evil step-mothers don’t count). And while recent characters like Merida and Tiana did have moms, Frozen looped it back around, with not only Elsa and Anna’s mom dying at the beginning of the movie, but their dad too.

Glamour recently had a chance to sit down with legendary producer Don Hahn, who worked on The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, as well as executive produced the Angelina Jolie version Maleficent and ask. Here’s why:

“I’ll give you two stories that are the reasons. I never talk about this, but I will. One reason is practical because the movies are 80 or 90 minutes long, and Disney films are about growing up. They’re about that day in your life when you have to accept responsibility.

“Simba ran away from home but had to come back. In shorthand, it’s much quicker to have characters grow up when you bump off their parents. Bambi’s mother gets killed, so he has to grow up. Belle only has a father, but he gets lost, so she has to step into that position. It’s a story shorthand."

“The other reason—and this is really odd—Walt Disney, in the early 1940s, when he was still living at this house, also bought a house for his mom and dad to move into. He had the studio guys come over and fix the furnace, but when his mom and dad moved in, the furnace leaked and his mother died. The housekeeper came in the next morning and pulled his mother and father out on the front lawn. His father was sick and went to the hospital, but his mother died. He never would talk about it, nobody ever does.

“He never spoke about that time because he personally felt responsible because he had become so successful that he said, "Let me buy you a house." It’s every kid's dream to buy their parents a house and just through a strange freak of nature—through no fault of his own—the studio workers didn’t know what they were doing. There’s a theory, and I’m not a psychologist, but he was really haunted by that. That idea that he really contributed to his mom’s death was really tragic.”

“If you dig, you can read about it. It’s not a secret within their family, but it’s just a tragedy that is so difficult to even talk about,” Don explained. “It helps to understand the man a little bit more...To me, it humanizes Walt. He was devastated by that, as anyone would be.”

https://tv.yahoo.com/news/why-disney-characters-rarely-moms-233500060.html

 

[Jennasis]

1. It's a story telling device as old as time. Disney was not the first, only or last to use it.

2. This isn't theme park planning or related and belongs on the CB.

 

[Maleficent Dragon]

I have a 2 hour DVD on Walt and the story about his parents death is absolutely true. I do not know, however, if this is the real reason Walt wrote parents in/out the way he did or if it is speculation. I could certainly see some deep-rooted psychology there.

 

[Maleficent Dragon]

2. This isn't theme park planning or related and belongs on the CB.

Neither are 20% of the other posts that get placed here. That is one reason why we have mods.

 

[Mikie]

I never knew the details of the Walt story, although I knew his mom had died early. I often joke, as a mom, about feeling slighted by Disney movies, although the dads who remain are often quite bumbling and I don't know if I'd want to be them either!

Of course it's not an original literary device, but it sure is ubiquitous in Disney movies! As kids with a mom, do my children have no hope of growing up and having adventures? (my 9 year old would REALLY like to become a mermaid!)

 

[minnie mum]

Its a literary device that isn't unique to Disney. And I believe that the motherless princesses, and quite a few other characters, predate Walt by many, many years if not centuries. The death of Walt's mother is tragic, and I'm sure it had a lasting effect on him, but I doubt that is the reason for so many single parent or orphaned characters.

And why the angry face on the thread title?

 

[Disneyliscious]

And why the angry face on the thread title?

Honestly, by looking at it I thought it was a sad face

 

[surferdave]

I often joke, as a mom, about feeling slighted by Disney movies, although the dads who remain are often quite bumbling and I don't know if I'd want to be them either!

Maleficent was quite the Father's Day treat.

 

[stinkpickle]

Honestly, by looking at it I thought it was a sad face

It's that "I'm sad for have forgotten my sunscreen" look.

 

[TinkSassy]

I just finished reading a Walt biography and those close to him talked about how he felt guilty for his mother's death. It is an interesting story and not one I had been familiar with until recently.

 

[MakiraMarlena]

as most of the Walt-era Disney films are based on established stories or fairy tales and the rest were written after Walt's death, I don't know if I buy that one. It could be why he chose some of the fairy tales he did. It's pretty well known that if you are basically doing a coming of age story, the loss of a parent (or both parents) provides conflict and rapid growth opportunities for the protagonist.

 

[KimberlyE]

I agree that many of the tales used as bases for Disney films are much older - sometimes centuries. The main reason so many classic old fairy tales have motherless families is because it was a very common occurrence for women to die in childbirth. In fact if you read many of the original stories in their very early forms, most allude to if not plain out state, that the mother died giving birth. That is also my guess for why the father's sometimes appear to be so clueless - they were left with a newborn, no helpmate, a farm/job etc., and possibly other children to attend to.

As for Walt's parents, what a very sad story. I am sure that he was haunted by guilt over losing his mother. Most people would be - even though it was a tragic accident.

 

[bumbershoot]

1. It's a story telling device as old as time. Disney was not the first, only or last to use it.

Its a literary device that isn't unique to Disney. And I believe that the motherless princesses, and quite a few other characters, predate Walt by many, many years if not centuries.

as most of the Walt-era Disney films are based on established stories or fairy tales and the rest were written after Walt's death...

to all of the above, absolutely. Most of the stories are based on old old fairy tales. Fairy tales used the death of a parent to further the growing up of the character, to put the character into new and difficult circumstances.

If Cinderella had her own mom, the story wouldn't have happened. Same for every other fairy tale based story out there.


I used to rail against Disney using this plot device. Then I lost my mom. And grew the heck UP. And my whole life story changed forever. And then I realized why it's a literary device. Because it's SO true. You change forever and you are never the same. It's something we all will go through (if we don't die first), and you don't understand it until you've experienced it.


He might have gravitated towards fairy tales for that reason, but he wasn't *creating* the stories all on his own. He was adapting them from ancient tales.

 

[bumbershoot]

Honestly, by looking at it I thought it was a sad face

It's that "I'm sad for have forgotten my sunscreen" look.

The name of the emoticon is "angry". But the OP might not have meant it like that.

I always want to use the "rolleyes1" emoticon to indicate "my bad" or "silly me" and things like that, but the name "rolleyes" indicates sarcastic or rude. So I don't use it.

 

[OKW Lover]

By coincidence I just saw on Snopes a pretty good counter-argument to this storyline.

 

[3Gsandme]

I have a 2 hour DVD on Walt and the story about his parents death is absolutely true. I do not know, however, if this is the real reason Walt wrote parents in/out the way he did or if it is speculation. I could certainly see some deep-rooted psychology there.

To be honest, as a PP said, the literary technique of a child being without their parents is kind of, well, a tale as old as time. It's a very easy adversarial situation that children can understand. It's something they can relate to. Additionally, it frees the child/character to be able to adventure in a way he or she couldn't under the watchful eye of two parents.

If Belle had a mother, would she have had to journey into the woods to find Maurice at the Beast's castle? Probably not, so there wouldn't have been a story.

Had Cinderella a mother she wouldn't have been a servant to her Stepmother and Stepsisters and wouldn't have needed the help of a fairy godmother to sneak off to the ball. Would the Prince have noticed her in that pink dress?

Snow White's mother surely wouldn't have let a huntsman lead her off into the woods to cut our her heart.

If Nemo's mother had lived, Marlin wouldn't have been so neurotic forcing Nemo to assert his independence causing him to be caught by P Sherman.

If Bambi had remained with his mother, he wouldn't have been taken in by his father giving him the ability to become the Prince he was.

And Dumbo wouldn't have ever flown.