• Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
        391·
        4 days ago

        But that’s also true for the older ones.

        Take the first 3 of the list:

        • Snow White: Stepmother being jealous of the young princess and trying to kill her
        • Cinderella: Again stepmother and stepsisters tormenting the girl - talk about dysfunctional patchwork families…
        • Sleeping Beauty: Perhaps not quite so depressing, but centering around an arranged marriage at birth. Well…
        • AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          16·
          4 days ago

          I think the point is that the emotions of the family trauma are more focused on.

          • Snow White in the movie seems like just this kid who this lady really wants to murder. You don’t really see much indicating that she’s been through a rough childhood till that point.
          • Cinderella does go deeper into more prolonged torture, but it doesn’t feel like they are family at all. She’s not being gaslit by family members she wants to trust, she’s literally just a slave to these assholes who stole her house.
          • Sleeping beauty is more about forbidden love than generational trauma. Both of the dads seem pretty alright if a bit short tempered lol (I need to watch the movie again just for that fight)

          This is in contrast to

          • Brave focuses on the misunderstanding and miscommunication between parents and children where both can cause each other significant pain/stress without noticing and then those emotions can lead to rash actions damaging relationships
          • Moana is similar to brave but also with more added stress of trying to discover who you are when you’ve been repressing that part of yourself due to family pressure
          • Frozen is much more focused on that latter emotion but also shows miscommunication between loved ones leading to significant problems neither wanted to cause

          Point is there’s a difference between saying something traumatizing happened and focusing on the effects of that traumatic experience. I mean look, half the Disney characters have dead parents so there’s trauma there but that’s not the same as making that trauma a main focus of the story.

          Aladdin and Jasmine have dead parents but the film focuses on their desires for “freedom”. Whereas, in Treasure Planet, it shows Jim growing up with an absent father and how that has affected both him and his mother. It also shows him growing fond of a surrogate father figure which becomes a source of internal conflict because that surrogate father figure has significant flaws. The former movie has family trauma; the latter is about family trauma.

          • tomenzgg@midwest.socialEnglish
            7·
            4 days ago

            Treasure Planet and the Hunchback of Notre Dame sort of make this much more than just 5 years, though (also, Treasure Planet came out in 2002, going fuck)

  • rImITywR@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    4 days ago

    Am I too cynical for thinking it’s more likely everyone at Disney knew their target audience was going to a specific type of therapist, and is just pandering to them?

  • ButteryMonkey@piefed.socialEnglish
    17·
    4 days ago

    Honestly the majority of animated stuff that’s any good from the major studios is about trauma of some variety. Write what you know, I guess.

    My “catharsis day” movies are nearly all Disney and Pixar these days.

    Up - loss Encanto - generational trauma, tho the ending is kinda bullshit… Inside out 1+2 - major life event trauma Frozen - accidental damage to loved one and ostracization trauma Onward - growing up/life event trauma Brave - also sort of generational trauma Elemental - racism Soul - death and regret

    I’m sure there’s more I’m forgetting, but overall their best works, imho, of the last 15-ish years, have been about trauma. And that’s probably a good thing. It’s a lot more relatable than fairy tale princess stories, even if you’ve never experienced either one.

  • ruuster13@lemmy.zip
    8·
    4 days ago

    Or perhaps as therapists and psychology as a field started to better understand generational trauma, Hollywood shifted to better portray reality.