Bambi and Me

As part of my AMERICAN FOUNDATIONS unit at Sydney University we're studying a module on Disneyland.  One of the discussion topics of our on-line first assignment asked this question: How have you made Disney scripts your own in the course of your lives?

Here's what I wrote in response:

SPOILER ALERT if you’ve never seen Bambi.
 

In 1961, my mum and dad took me to the movies as a birthday treat to celebrate me becoming four. Naturally enough, they chose Bambi made in 1942 (when they were 11 and 12 respectively and probably saw it for the first time themselves). It was showing in Aberdeen, Scotland, where we lived at time, on one of its cleverly marketed periodic theatrical re-releases in the days before a family like ours owned (rented actually) even a black and white television; when video was still a thing found only in science fiction.

Apparently, in the deathly hush of the darkened cinema, at the point where the hunter shoots Bambi’s mother and she lay dieing, my barely-four me stood up in the cinema seat – mum one side, dad the other, pointed at the silver screen then cried out in the darkness … “don’t go – don’t die Mrs Bambi.” I am told that there was not a dry eye in the house. I obviously believed that what I was watching was real.

I mention this moment from a Saturday-morning showing almost exactly 50 years ago (my birthday is mid-April so I can place it almost exactly) for two reasons. The event has become part of that embarrassing family folk-lore we are all subjected to. At some stage in any relationship, when I brought home a new girl-friend, my mother or father would get round to me and Bambi’s mum at some point. Maybe my empathy as a four-year old might mark me out as a solid marriage prospect. Even when there was no girlfriend, from time to time when our extended family gathered for Christmas or New Year meals or birthdays some member of my mother’s generation would start again with the Bambi thing. It was one of many family tales, which, like Disney(land) itself, constituted part of a nostalgic, family-friendly evocation of something re-assuring about our mythologised and idealised past. Disney was, is and always will be part of our family’s safe territory of a past that was not always problem-free or without loss.

We had our first television by 1963. I know this only because I recall the UK’s monumentally huge, leading Children’s TV programme, BLUE PETER, interviewing a UK military police officer like those on duty for the State funeral of JFK. We were invited to wonder at the precision of the dog-handling, I suppose, which would have taken our 6-year olds’ minds off the assassination – the first of the TV era. 

My related point is that I probably started watching Disney on telly aged five, which means that with TV runs, programmes like Disney Hour, the Wonderful World Of Disney and theatrical releases and re-releases of Disney movies (from Snow White to Treasure Island and the original Herbie films, starting with The Love Bug in 1968) like many kids of my generation I probably saw every Disney cartoon or movie made until the early-seventies. Maybe it just seems that way but I think I may actually have seen most, if not all.

I’ve owned a Mickey Mouse watch, a Davy Crockett jacket (the Bartsow children were born in the decade before me), Donald Duck pencil cases. God alone knows how much marketing we’ve spent our family income on. There were three boys to satisfy in our family.  This is true - I had a Davy Crockett jacket years before my grandparents had a lavatory inside their house.  Our family was just like most Glasgow families so what kind of weird set of social norms does that belong to?

Disney just is. It’s part of my background; part of my growing up in much the same way as was one’s first train set, two-wheel push bike or fishing.

And Disney remains with me today. In the past year or so (I’m 54 remember) I’ve seen A Christmas Carol, The Princess and The Frog, Up, Toy Story 3, Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time and Alice In Wonderland (all Walt Disney or Touchstone Pictues).  I've seen serious, grown up movies too and have a proper grown-up's job but Disney is still with me.  I don’t own a television but I’ve seen Disney Channel programmes when I’ve stayed in hotels when I’m on business and have access to cable. Next time I go to California I’ll make a point of visiting Anaheim because in my other visits to LA I’ve been too busy for Disneyland. Even now, even me; I kind of feel that I won’t have done America properly until I’ve been to the Magic Kingdom. I know it’s all smoke and mirrors but I’ll still buy the ticket and enjoy the ride. It’s Disney after all, part of my life story for good or ill.

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