When The Going Gets Weird, The Weird Turn Pro

 I don't always succumb to the clickbait. Sometimes I show some mild restraint, but I almost always end up wondering. Like the link that told me they were going to rank the "most disturbing Disney movies." And I wondered if I would have enough time to take that all in.

Let's start with the anthropomorphic rodent who owns a dog and has a best friend who is, we're fairly certain, a dog. 

Need more? How about the number of mothers that don't make it out of the first reel of so many of Disney's big screen adaptations? I mention this because it is important to remember that it was the rare exception that Walt brought an original story to his audience. He seemed to prefer tales of orphans, forgotten and unloved until they proved their mettle. Stories of how he and his brother Roy were beaten almost daily by their father probably paved the way to a wish for a parentless existence, and the idea that one might succeed in the absence of parental support seems like a pretty straight line. Fairy tales lend themselves to such tropes, and all those princesses managed in spite of step parents. 

You want disturbed? How about sitting your five year old down for a dramatic reading of Hamlet? That's what you're doing every time you pop The Lion King into the DVD player. How about picking the story of a woman who wants to turn an entire puppy farm into a fur coat for a holiday release not once but twice? I could go on and on: the ritual humiliation of the ample-eared baby elephant, or the triumph of a knife-wielding juvenile delinquent over the authority of a ship's captain, or the prince of the forest whose mother was sacrificed to set a precedent for the impermanence of life in the thicket, and the psychotropic properties of tea cakes on young British girls.  It just goes on and on.

Not to be diminished, or slowed in any way, the Disney machine gobbled up the saga of the very troubled Skywalker family and all its dysfunction. Then they grabbed a whole bunch of stories of misfits who seem to be as emotionally unstable as their genetics with a propensity for running around in their underwear. 

Disturbing? Comforting for some. Disney stockholders, at least. And if indications from the last few months are any indication, business in this particular oeuvre continues to be good. And don't tell me that the title Parent Trap doesn't make you just a little worried going in. At least in the hands of the disturbed folks at Disney.