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Dat Ole Disney Magic

Most new parents start out with firmly held convictions about certain things they will never allow to be a part of their children's lives, such as spankings, toy guns, or sad clown faces painted on velvet. Although Julia and I have disagreed on some issues, one area where we share a mutual fear and loathing is children's entertainment produced by Disney.

I know, I know. Blasphemy, hogwash, reactionary drivel. Yes, we both grew up (well, aged, anyway) receiving consistently large doses of Disney product, with no directly linkable side effects. So why the aversion? Well, let's just say that, to amateur pop- culture-bashers, Disney presents a pretty big target.

It's one thing to endure their shameless pimping of the classics (Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame), their perky revisionist history (Pochahontas), or their endless variations on the helpless-but-stacked-heroine-defies-the-odds-and-gets-noticed-by-the-rich-guy plotline. To then have to dodge the metric tons of associated merchandise aimed at your kids is adding insult to injury.

We were doing a pretty good job of Disney-screening, or so we imagined, but it's like trying to avoid getting the flu by thinking good thoughts. During a visit to the face painter at the amusement park, Emma surprised us by selecting, by name, Ariel, Disney's Little Mermaid. Thanks to articles of clothing, board games, dolls, posters, and daycare word-of-mouth, she already knew the whole story.

That's the old Disney Magic. It finds you. Granted, it's helped along by an annual marketing budget the size of Venezuela's GNP, but it's not polite to discuss money where magic is concerned.

About a week later, a friend delivered a shopping bag full of videos which had been outgrown by her kid, including, you guessed it, The Little Mermaid. Emma was bug-eyed with anticipation. What could we say? You can paint it on your arm but you can't put it on your TV screen? She's going to find out soon enough that we're idiots; no sense in rushing things. I don't have the guts to tell her that it's several years old and already has a stable of sequels and spinoffs.

That was a week, and at least a dozen screenings ago. To my horror, The Little Mermaid is number one with a bullet on Emma's Hit List. I used to complain about the Wizard of Oz, but I didn't know how good I had it. At playtime, at least I could count on being the Scarecrow or the Tin Woodman, instead of Sebastian the Crab, a crustacean Stepin Fetchit with a cheesy Hollywood-Jamaican accent.

Dorothy, for all her brow-furrowing and lip-biting, is a hands-on kinda gal, and when push comes to shove, she personally terminates the Wicked Witch with the icy self-righteousness of a newly-appointed CEO . Ariel, on the other hand, is an aqueous airhead; a deep-sea bimbo of the lowest order. All she wants is a nice set of gams, the better to land herself a rich, handsome prince. Dorothy just wants to go home, while Ariel needs a good plastic surgeon. She pushes her father, Triton (no Homedaddy himself), to the brink of ruin before Mr. Prince Wonderful bails her out. At the end, she sits on a rock, pouting, till Triton finally caves in to her wishes.

The moral of the story: If you put your father through enough trouble, he'll eventually give up. I'll admit, this may indeed be the way of the world, but isn't three years old a bit early to start hammering the message home?

Still, it's important not to spoil Emma's fun, so I try not to register too much disapproval. Any aggression I feel toward Ariel and the rest of them is kept in check until we get to the sushi bar, where it can be easily mistaken for hunger.

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.