Jim On Film
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Elective Surgery
Disney Style

In my younger years, I clearly remember watching a cartoon on television. In it, two hillbilly families battled against each other using guns, eventually killing almost everyone in both families. I found this so inspiring that as a young adult, I bought my first gun.

I’m now serving a life sentence.

Of course, the cartoon above is the The Martins and the Coys segment taken from Make Mine Music, Walt Disney’s 1946 animated feature. I really didn’t find it inspirational; I found it funny. And I’ve never been to jail--not even to visit--let alone prison. But, apparently, that’s what Disney is worried about happening.

For Disney fans, when Make Mine Music was finally released on DVD and video in 2000, it was with bittersweet joy. Sweet because it was one of the two Disney animated features that had never been released for purchase on either video or DVD (Saludos Amigos, the other one, was released the same day), meaning that after years of waiting, their collection of the Disney cannon was finally complete. Bitter because, as complete as the titles were, Make Mine Music was just one of the several of their classic films to go under the knife. Martins and the Coys had been completely removed from the film, the editors going as far as to have any reference of the performing talent digitally erased from the opening titles. This has been only one of the bizarre edits to the Disney animated classics that drive Disney fans nuts, like dirt under the fingernails.

In 1989, Disney characters entered a new generation and, for the first time to any considerable amount, female neck lines dropped. Ariel’s clamshells were more Malibu Barbie than Snow White, Belle’s ballroom dance gown was inspired by high school prom dresses, and Esmeralda wore flames. Even in the live-action arena, Disney took hits from family audiences concerning dress in some of their live-action family films, such as The Three Musketeers and Mr. Magoo. The logic is then lost as to why Disney digitally erased lines from a female character in the All the Cats Join In segment, where she gets ready for a trip to the malt shop by hopping in and out of the shower, covering herself with a towel. If one were to complain, the girl in All the Cats Join In would be the least offensive of the examples above. One must wonder who authorized the change, and what logic they were using in doing so. After all, Make Mine Music probably did not sell as many copies as those films, maybe even including the live-action ones.

In the late 1990s, when Disney finally released Melody Time on video, it was in a beautiful edition proclaiming "fully restored" on the cover. A cigarette and a line in the song referring to the offending cancer-causer were removed from the film (though Joe Carioca got to keep his cigar). Strangely enough, when Disney released the Gold Collection DVD, not only did the packaging not make any reference to the edit (the edits in Saludos Amigos and Make Mine Music were both acknowledged in small letters on the back of the case), but it showed a picture of Bill and his cigarette on the back. Of course, as Disney fans know, the DVD is, indeed, edited. Fortunately (for Disney fans at least), the Native America caricatures remain in Pecos Bill and the drinking of alcohol centered in Blame It on the Samba remained as well. Furthermore, nobody seemed to care that the same hero, Pecos Bill, swore in the live-action film Tall Tale: The Unbelievable Adventures of Pecos Bill. Once again, logic seems absent in deciding what is offensive.

Since 1985, Disney has released three PG-rated films from their Feature Animation department. Among them is the hilarious Lilo and Stitch in which the cute alien creature of the title wields a gun. In Atlantis: The Lost Empire, the ending is gun-laden, including guns turned against our heroes, Milo and Kida. If one is to be offended by this, they would probably choose to be so more with Atlantis: The Lost Empire, but either way, the guns do not glamorize violence. When Stitch has his gun, it is in his destruction stage, and the guns are used for bad in Atlantis: The Lost Empire. If this logic makes sense for these two films, then it does not explain the absence of The Martins and the Coys from Make Mine Music. While it is humorous, the presence of guns in this piece does not glamorize violence (after all, only two characters survive). If violence is in question, then many Disney classics could be edited, both live-action and animated. Oliver & Company, The Lion King, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame all contain a considerably larger amount of violence and intense action.

Perhaps the most understandable of all edits is the much-discussed deletion from Fantasia that was done by Walt Disney himself. Originally created at a different time, included in the Pastoral Symphony were black characters who were servants to the light-skinned characters. This in itself would probably not be enough to warrant edits; however, images printed on the Internet show grotesque African stereotypes, complete with over-sized lips, ratty hair, and mindless expressions. This, it must be remembered, is a film created in 1940 when such stereotypes were socially acceptable and were used by all animation studios for humor (it could be compared to the depiction of Native Americans in Peter Pan). Walk into any antique store and one can see figurines, salt and pepper shakers, and dolls from the era created in similar images. Though surely not why Walt Disney allowed these characters into the film, these once-popular stereotypes were originally created by white supremacists to dehumanize the African-American back into slavery. Keeping this in mind, the edits made to the film seem more than just when considering the large child population who watched the film. But that doesn’t mean that educated adults can’t handle the original, complete version of the film, which would also restore the music edits that had to be done when the offending images were excised (according to printed articles and Internet sources).