subliminal sexual messages in disney films

[ThunderIdeal]

i'd prefer if this thread doesn't contain discussion about whether disney films contain subliminal, sexual messages. they do, i'm not even going to provide links.

i'd like to hear theories on WHY. to aid discussion i'll begin a short list of some of the more outstanding messages.

-the lion king has the word sex hidden in many scenes. some may be accidents but some are intentional. rock formation looks like male genitals.

-penis on the cover of the little mermaid (neptune's castle spires). shot of little mermaids bare ass.

-shot of jessica rabbits pussy, and the word sex written in a perfect font (undeniable) between some flowers.

-mouse husband and wife (in danger mouse maybe), wife is holding a rail which is convincing as husbands penis (oversized but same colour as his fur), wife appears to be pretty excited, there is a small picture of a bare breasted woman on the wall not far from the penis-rail.

-questionable: princess jasmin has a shocked look on her face while you can hear genie whispering "good teenagers, take off your clothes"

personally i'm at a great loss but i assume it's motivation lies in the occult somehow

i remember the little mermaid making the news when some messages were discovered. how does disney remain mostly unaccountable for trying to poison childrens' minds?

[FancyPants]

Coincidence? Bored animators? Sexually frustrated animators? Is the natural act of sex and involved bodily parts "bad"? I've seen a lot of natural rock formations that could look anything like penises, vulvas, bums etc.

[random fly]

I am of the opinion nowadays that finding what's wrong with the world isn't gonna help, only self improvement makes a difference....

However, I think I know what's going on there, and it has everything to do with moulding children into ego, sex and material driven consumerism. Isn't that why TV was mass marketed by the US government after the psychedelic revolution of the 60's? After all, Disney is just another huge coorporation with vested interests...

I realise this may be a bit too conspiracy for allot of people's tastes, but as I already said, I do not believe that this line of thinking is of any more use to humanity, we must now start finding how the world can be made right.

Interesting thread though, it's come up allot!

[ThunderIdeal]

fancy pants i don't think any one parent can decide what is bad for all children so for me it's an extreme position to say that it's okay for producers of children's material to secretly insert messages which, i am positive, MANY parents DO find objectionable. bad? maybe not. for you and me to say? not.

as for the ease of genitals occurring in, for instance, a drawing of rocks, yes that works. i've even seen a bunch of art that seems to intentionally have lots of vague sexual triggers, bent over bum looking things mainly, but not so you'd instantly notice. well, the lion king does have the word sex all through it which kinda rules out accident, and if you find the scene on youtube i think it's right in the corner for a split second, as the camera finishes panning (following simba's gaze) and goes to another scene. it's overtly placed and even as a still, it's overtly a rock penis/balls. this isn't the face on mars.... shit i didn't want to get into this kind of discussion.

i like your idea random fly, that we should concentrate on the present to fix things, good thought.

i also thought about the consumerism angle but i wondered, how does disney in particular benefit from an increase in consumerism?

[Neoshaman]

Hahaha I just think its bored/disgruntled animators in saying that however and I do somewhat agree with Random fly Disney and Warner Brothers were some of the biggest propaganda tools to brain wash the young during war time so it would be no surprise to me if they had continued along this path.

There seems to be a theme in western capitalism of over sexualising children through media influence I choose not to speculate where this originates as I'm sure I would be far from right but music , cartoons , movies all seem to share a theme and that theme but it in your face or subtle and subliminal is sex . Before some one accuses of me of having a one track mind lets look at some current social trends

such as clothing the amount of 8-12 year olds walking around in short shorts , mini skirts and knee high boots , lacy knickers and bras targeted at the same age group Society is up and arms when poor Bill Henson artitistically portrays a younger child naked in a portatrit yet a good 80% of parents are more then happy to buy for and dress their young daughters in this shit

Young Girls favorite artist are people like Britney 'I like to flash my filthy cunt in public' Spears , Lindsay the lesbo whore Lohan and the Spread Pussy Dolls yeah great fucking roll models for children these bunch While guys like dopey white boy try hard rappers and wannabe thugs like eminem and 50 cent and a bunch of over sexed small dick fucking tossers with more money then brains who make it seem fine to treat a woman like a piece of fucking meat

And then cartoons well lets see I remember the good old scooby doo and most other cartoons from when i was a kid had some degree of sexual inuendo go hire one or two and watch them now your older if you doubt me but some of the stuff that gets on t.v in general Sailor Moon is one of the earliest ones i can think of but most of the japanese made animation even that centred at younger children ( i'm not talking anime ) is a lot more highly sexualised combine this with efforts like disney's listed above and I don't think the outcomes can be anything positive its funny that we let our children watch a bunch of skantly clad cartoon sluts and disneyy viral porn without complaint yet when Ramjet dropped his proton pill he got banned from TV forever

satisfaction of the libido as oppose to expansion of the mind seems like a warpped corporate take on LeVeyian Satanism not saying that satanism and mass media have any relation but the underlying precepts they seem to subscribe to are very similar on face value.

[ThunderIdeal]

good post, interesting you mention a similar rationale to satanism at the end as satanism is something my mind kept coming to, but then again i've been listening to stairway to heaven backwards for the past few days.

here's another possibility: it is somehow in there to appeal to the adult viewers (they're the ones handing money over to disney, not kids).

[The Dude]

Not trying to over conspiracy theory everything, but sex sells, even perhaps in an undeveloped mind there is an affinity to things that are sexy without necessarily getting a boner from it. Disney is just a private company with their own artistic creations and it'd be a bit insane to think of them as nothing but a propaganda tool...

The first and most influential animation medium targeted at the most malleable of minds seems like a good tool for those keen on social programing. I had watched a doco on disney and the messages they spread to kids being of racial stereotyping, subjugation of women, general pro American bravado as opposed to weaker nationalities and subtle messages sent to childrens' non-critical minds that may well influence an adults current prejudices. Not to mention shopping habits.

If Paris Hiltons and the like are always said to be scum why are they always in the news? Sensationalist crap where the most scandalous thing in some kind of double-speak is directly promoted by these "news" propaganda pushers, even the propaganda of NEEDING such an extravagant lifestyle and the illusion that working hard for your boss can achieve that. And most of all that the only power a woman has is through which shoes she wears and how real her fake titties look, and how fake her botox smile becomes.

Sex / Money / Hedonism / Consumerism are pushed on us from the earliest of ages whether or not we even understand them yet, we all have memories of our favorite cartoons. Luckily for me they aint Disney, I got raised on simpsons and i appreciate their esoteric little easter eggs here and there, instead of poisoned apples. Snow White ref. altho im sure disney ripped that story like the rest of them.

Last thing, I'm of the thinking that the bigger something is (in terms of influence) the more reptillian influences meddle in its "artistic direction" so accidentally or not, when something hits a critical mass it will keep self perpetuating itself through hidden puppet strings that have us unconsciously feeding it. (Why we always despise sellouts; they lose their direction). The will of the all mighty dollar works in mysterious ways.

Disney is not watched by any of us now but the seeds were sewn, it is a long term investment, not for Disney as such but for the entire culture of consumerism, where it would seem that these separate entities whether officially (and consciously) or not, collude to keep us under control, having us always seek sustenance from their cathode ray nipples.

The bigger companies all scratch each others back so there IS something to be gained by Disney for the very fact they mold minds. It would appear that the power of mental programing is as much a form of capital as anything else and I wouldn't be surprised if these circle jerk, golden shower the people, defecate on my face fuckheads exploit these channels to the max through meme and product placement.

We could borrow from Freuds theories, something about the sex drive being the most powerful motivation. To get us hooked onto sexualised products from an early age would provide an inexhaustible mental resource to tap. The idea is to hook right into our most deepest desires and provide them in a pre-packaged product to purchase and as such have us hooked onto that idea of easy and convenient satisfaction rather than any kind of personal creative endeavor.

Edited March 18, 2009 by The Dude

[PD.]

There's a tradition of Disney artists and storymen trying to sneak stuff onto the screen that goes back to the days of the early shorts. This stemmed from Disney's refusal to share creative credit with anyone. The only credited name on any of the shorts was Walt Disney himself (with an occasional credit to Ub Iwerks in the late 20's). It wasn't until the mid 40's, as the result of an artists' strike against Disney, that specific credits began showing up on the shorts. But the insult of being uncredited hurt, and the artists tried to get their names inserted into their work in devious ways. Either Disney didn't notice or didn't care at this point, as his attention was taken up with the feature films. Most notably, in the Goofy sports shorts, you'll find that most of the players' names are the names of Disney artists.

There is also a history of Disney erotica that precedes the idea of Disney purposely adding erotica to its films. One artist was rumored to have produced a picture of a Snow White and the Seven Dwarves orgy back when the film was still in development, 30 years before Paul Krassner published his satirical "Disney Orgy" cartoon. Fred Moore was another suspect. He became well known at the studio, not just for being a first class animator, but for his drawing of mostly naked, nubile young women which became known as "Freddy Moore girls." These drawings became highly collectible even among Disney insiders but the closest they ever made it to the screen was as the centaurettes in the "Pastoral Symphony" sequence of Fantasia or as the girl in the "All the Cats Join In" sequence of Make Mine Music.

(For a more complete listing of the inside jokes in the Disney short subjects, see The Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts, a wonderful site.)

Most of this was innocent, and the so-called "Disney perversions" never made it to film, unless you buy the ideas of Richard Schickel, a Time magazine movie reviewer who found Freudian elements in pretty much everything Disney did. To hear some tell it, things changed in the mid 70's and 80's after Michael Eisner assumed the reins at Disney. The studio had been floundering under Ron Miller, Disney's son-in-law, who took over after Walt died. Eisner brought Miramax films under the Disney wing, which gave the company an outlet for more profitable R and even X rated films such as Kids and Priest. Right-wing Christian fundamentalists, accustomed to Disney as a purveyor of tradtional family fare, apparently saw this as a betrayal of their trust, and began churning out rumors about secret stuff going on in the animated films. A lot of what they saw rightly belonged with the works of Vance Packard or Wilson Bryan Key. Eventually it became a kind of Rorshach game . . . if you want to see it, it's there.

Herewith then, the list of what you should be looking for. Note that I've broken them down into three categories : A--things that were intentionally put in, but unauthorized by the producer; B--things that were intentionally put in by the producer; and C-- things that only people who wear tinfoil hats can see. For more detail on some of these, see The Urban Legend Reference Pages--Disney Films.

1. Clock Cleaners (Category C): Fundy activist Donald Wildmon once claimed that Donald Duck could clearly be heard saying "fuck you" in his fight with a clock spring in the 1937 short Clock Cleaners. This short was featured on a small compilation called "Fun on the Job" and for a short time Wildmon got Wal-Mart to pull the tape from their shelves. Apparently Wal-Mart and Wildmon forgot about it later as the tape showed up in the bargain bins once it went out of print.

2. The Rescuers (Category A): All too true--two frames of a topless model can be seen as Bernard and Bianca take off on the albatross and swoop down through the city. You have to be quick to see it, and you have to have a special copy of the video. The shot was done by a layout artist and a scene planner who worked out the camera moves on the shot. Everyone at Disney knew it was there, but it seemed less of a problem, this being before the days of home video. It was in the original theatrical release and was painted over for its first video release. Either someone at Disney forgot it was there or the new version was made from a different print because when the movie was re-released on video last year, the two frames were there. Disney ended up recalling the entire first run and re-releasing it a few months later with the offending frames cut out. I have a copy of the first release. Ha ha.

3. The Little Mermaid (Category A): A couple of points we should cover here. One is the infamous "penis" cover art that was supposedly done by a disgruntled artist the day before he was scheduled to be fired. This is not true--the artist was one of Disney's top layout artists who has worked on and off for Disney since the fifties and still does. To quote my source, "He did intend for the tower to look like a penis, but when he finished it, he realized it was bit too obvious. (Artists often put hidden images in their work . . . there are a lot of classical paintings with subliminal skulls and sexual imagery in them. It isn't a recent thing at all.) The painter was on a deadline to turn it in, so he didn't have time to fix it. He pointed it out to the production person at Disney and offered to paint it out if they wanted him to. The painting was sent up to a committee of marketing execs for approval. The artist never got a call to change it, so he assumed they liked it with the semi-subliminal penis in it."

The other question is about the "priests' boner" (Category C). During the scene where Eric and Ursula are about to be married, it appears that the priest is getting an erection. Closer inspection reveals that it is only the priest's knee.

Another interesting non-subliminal feature of "The Little Mermaid" to look for: Watch carefully at the beginning when King Triton swoops down over the crowd. After he passes across the screen, below him and to his left Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy can be seen sitting in the crowd.

4. Aladdin (Category C): According to some far-right Christian groups, in a scene where Aladdin is attempting to woo Jasmine and Rajah the tiger is accosting him, Aladin is heard saying, "Good teenagers take off their clothes." It certainly sounds like it if you're told what to listen for. But that's probably not what he's saying. For one thing, it makes no sense to the plot. For another, Disney, who never does anything nowadays without looking at the bottom line, surely doesn't see any market value to their customers in naked teenagers.

Never mind. Let's go on.

5. The Lion King (probably Category A): The word SEX is supposedly formed in the clouds above Simba's head after he watches his father die. Once again, this one you can see if you know exactly what to look for. What the meaning is is anyone's guess. Many have said the letters are actually "S-F-X," which stood for Disney's special effects department. This explanation is less than satisfying, but probably true. The lettering is difficult to make out, even when viewing the still frames. It may just be a Rorschach effect in a random cloud. At any rate, if Disney did it on purpose, and it has some subliminal value as some assert, it's difficult to see any market value in movie-goers heading out to the lobby for a quickie in the middle of the movie.

6. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Category C): Because of the nature of the movie and the overtly sexual nature of a few of the characters, this film has attracted more than its share of suspicion. To begin with, supposedly, during the onstage duel between Daffy and Donald Duck, at one point Donald calles Daffy a "goddamn stupid nigger." Once again, you can hear it if you know what to listen for. If you don't it just sounds like Donald's usual gibberish. Another Rorschach test.

One possible gag (Category A) was the inclusion of Michael Eisner's home telephone number on a wall in ToonTown in the theatrical release. Supposedly it was erased for the video release.

The other issues are with sexuality (Category C). Rumors surfaced at one time that there was a single frame featuring a naked Betty Boop in the original theatrical release that was excised for the video version. The other instance, which is still extant, is the two-frame sequence where viewers claim they can see Jessica Rabbit's vagina during a sequence where she is bounced out of the taxicab. Whether you see it or not depends on how you interpret a small patch of brown ink between her legs in these frames. Could be pantyhose, could be something else.

Disney later made three other Roger Rabbit shorts and issued them on a video entitled The Best of Roger Rabbit. A short time later, the laserdisc edition of this was recalled by Disney due to "adhesive" or "packaging" problems. Some suspect, however, that because of the high resolution of the laserdisc format, people would be able to pick out inside jokes that Disney did not want known (and which wouldn't be as clear on the VHS edition). In one case, for instance, there's a poster of a rather buxom woman riding a chainsaw with the logo "Rigid Tools." There's lot of stuff like that--when Steven Speilberg started the ball rolling, he gave the animators carte blanche to put in as many inside and hidden jokes as possible. It's become a game for some to see how many they can find. Kind of like a cartoon Ulysses. A more complete write up on these, and the reason you'll probably never see a Roger Rabbit sequel, can be found at www.mouseplanet.com/jim/mar2800.htm

Like I said, for most of these, if you want to see them you'll see them. But just to be safe, the next time you go to the theater, keep your clothes on, take your saltpeter, and remember, it's just a cartoon.

— Euty

LINK

[Torsten]

disney films are made by adults. adults from all walks of life, and not necessarily all with their own families. you're bound to get some adult themes creeping in with the volume of crap they produce.

That said, I am not sure why this is such a problem. Kids who don't know about sex are oblivious to the shapes, references and innuendo. And kids who do know about sex have it being shoved in their face 24/7 via TV, radio, recorded music, and most of all SCHOOL.

The problem with kids knowing about sex is really only that parents want to put off the inevitable for as long as possible. That's created a society where th e parents have no idea what the kids already know and both basically deceive each other. That's a great solid foundation for developing a healthy attitude to sex - NOT.

What bothers me more than the subliminal sexual content is the quite overt stuff we see in some kids films. I was quite shocked when I saw the 2003 version of Peter Pan, which is basically a pedophile's wet dream. Quite disturbing.

[Undergrounder]

I haven't seen that film Torsten but as i understand it it follows closely to the original book, not the 'Disney'ed' sanitised versions (not sure whether the 'Disney'ed' adjective holds the meaning it usually does in this thread).

Anyway I gather that the original book was not initially written for children, or at least was adapted from a story written for adults, and so actually deals with quite a few adult concepts. No wonder then that a modern movie 'for kids', following closely with implied concepts 'for adults' might seem creepy. Again i haven't seen it but i gather Capt. Hook abuses some kind of Electra complex to 'seduce' Wendy, which sure is creepy, but maybe if it were a film not aimed at kids like the original idea, it wouldn't be so weird.

[Torsten]

good point undergrounder. I've never read the book, so didn't even think of it as an adult story.

the sexual motives are of young male exhibitionism, ie at the worrying level it would be appealing to gay voyeurism. This might not be so disturbing if the context was one that didn't explicitly dwell on innocence. I mean, 16 year old boys in sexual tension charged USA high school teen dramas are one thing, but innocent children parading themselves [even if they are the same age] are another altogether. Some odd scenes [not in the book or the play] have serious dark hidden interpretations that were picked up by many critics, and the overall amorous context was confronting for some.

When we finished watching the movie I said to Daniel "geez Peter Pan was a horny little toad in this".

[Evil Genius]

Maybe they just like the cock! And they draw it cause they can! If i would be good in drawing, i´d draw porn all day long! But hell yeah, that huge dick on the cover from THE MERMAID was a classic! bye Eg

Edited March 18, 2009 by Evil Genius

[Evil Genius]

[devance]

Yeah, but I don't think its a sexual interest for children but more or of a interest for adults, and could be a subliminal stereotype.

Narrow wastes means a bio evaluation for women as not have had children and young.

Theres a U.S. insurance commercial thats so appealling to me I tried to get the vitual girl as a download but no not happening as there is none..