Dean Ford's List: Mythbuster

• Aladdin (1992)

   

  “Good teenagers, take off your clothes.” Exsqueeze me? Baking powder? Can such illicit filth really have been disseminated via a Disney movie? This one is a little muddy: as Aladdin goes to see Princess Jasmine, he is forced to try and wrangle with her tiger and, off-screen, he does seem to utter the offending line cited above.

• However, it is also claimed he says something along the lines of “Good kitty, take off and go.” Whatever the truth of the matter, the potential for misinterpretation was enough for Disney to nix the line for the movie’s DVD release.

   
• A tired and dejected Simba drops to the ground, causing a cloud of dust to spray up from underneath him. But the dust particles behave oddly, swirling to form letters that appear to spell out… spell out what? ‘SEX’?! Crikey!

• With outright denial not an option, the animation team pleaded a defence of misinterpretation, claiming that the letters were actually ‘SFX’, and that the subliminal message was simply an expression of acclaim for the movie’s special effects team. And if you believe that, you’ll believe that The Lion King was indeed Disney’s first feature with an original story, and did not in fact feature some non-too subtle lifts from Osama Tezuka’s Kimba the White Lion.

   

2 more annotations...

• Another popular one. Long has been the debate over the dust cloud in The Lion King. In the scene just before Simba meets Rafiki, he tiredly flops down on the edge of a cliff, a cloud of dust rises which allegedly for a few frames spell the word S-E-X. The debate is that the special effects team put it in intending it to read S-F-X to leave their little mark on the film. I say judge for yourself but it looks like ‘sex’ to me (as in indicated in red in the picture above).
• The scene in Aladdin on Jasmine’s balcony in which the hero is trying to brush off the growling tiger Rajah, he can apparently be heard whispering “Good teenagers take off your clothes”. The script says that the line is “Good kitty, take off and go”. The clip sounds like somebody else other than the Aladdin voice has whispered the line in but no matter which line is actually spoken, this allegation got Disney in hot water with the American Life League who used it to try and get Disney films banned, claiming they had been sneaking sexual messages to children over the years.

• After a Virginia-based anti-abortion organization complained that the word "sex" appeared spelled out in a cloud during the Disney animated film "The Lion King," a spokesman for the organization said yesterday that the word was so difficult to detect that it might not be construed as a word at all.

  "It's kind of iffy," said Rodney Miller of the American Life League, which is based in Stafford, Va. "Some people see a cloud, kind of wavy lines. It's hard to see even if you slow it down."

  On Thursday the league called for the Walt Disney Company to remove the best-selling videocassette of the film from stores because of the scene, which, Mr. Miller said, was noticed by a 4-year-old boy whose aunt reported his observation to the league.

  He said that he and other league officials then studied a tape of the scene looking for the word, whose letters allegedly take form in a cloud of dust raised by Simba, the lion, when he jumps off a cliff.

• The animation crew at Disney reportedly defended the "sex" stars in "The Lion King" by claiming that the letters were actually "SFX," short for the special effects team.

• The generally accepted explanation is that the letters were slipped in by a special effects group (to form the abbreviation "S-F-X").

• Good kitty, take off. Down kitty. (He takes off  his turban to brush RAJAH away.)
• Good kitty, take off. Down kitty. (He takes off  his turban to brush RAJAH away.)

• Good kitty, take off. Down kitty. (He takes off  his turban to brush RAJAH away.)

• The figure for Tinker Bell was modeled after Margaret Kerry who played Tinker Bell in the live action version of Peter Pan.

• Sometimes   you get lucky - you're in the right place at the right time. And lucky   I was back in early December when I had the chance to sit down and chat   for a few hours with Margaret Kerry, the original reference model for   Disney's beloved character Tinker Bell.

• Margaret Kerry (born Peggy Lynch, May 11, 1929, Los Angeles) is an American actress, motivational speaker and radio host best known for her 1953 work as the model for Tinker Bell in the Walt Disney Pictures animated feature, Peter Pan. 

• No, this video from 1946 isn’t perfect as far as feminism goes but I have to say, I’m surprised to find it so…not 1946? Though I guess I’m even more surprised Walt Disney Productions made a video about our periods at all. 

   

  The animated film is about ten minutes long and was sponsored by Kotex. As you may have guessed, it was shown in American schools. (Presumably only to girls because boys are not supposed to know periods even exist.) That being said, it’s quite the film.

   

  According to Wikipedia, “Gynecologist Mason Hohn was hired as a consultant to ensure that the film was scientifically accurate. Hohn was hired to increase the likelihood that school doctors and nurses would allow the film to be shown. Hohn’s involvement led to a stronger emphasis on biology than other marketing by ICCC [International Cello-Cotton Company]. The Story of Menstruation increased its reputation when it received the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.”

• The story of menstruation begins, as the motherly narrator informs us, with the pituitary gland - a gland at the base of the brain that sends hormones throughout the bloodstream that order growth. When a girl reaches an age somewhere between 11 and 17 - the average is 13 - the pituitary gland sends maturing orders to the ovaries, which in turn order the uterus to create a thickened lining, filled with watery fluids and blood. If an egg is fertilized it will remain within that thickened lining for nourishment. But if the egg is not fertilized, the body has no use for the extra nourishment, and it passes out of the body - which is the process called menstruation. The narrator proceeds to disprove taboos against bathing or exercise during menstruation. She advises that girls should keep a calendar that keeps track of the number days between periods. And she notes how good posture, healthy foods and positive attitudes can affect the menstruation cycle. Written by J. Spurlin

   

• But there's one animated short from 1946 that you might not have heard of. It's called "The Story of Menstruation," and no, this is not a joke.
• This, obviously, is not standard Disney fare.

• The Story of Menstruation is a 1946 10-minute American animated film produced by Walt Disney Productions. It was commissioned by the International Cello-Cotton Company (now Kimberly-Clark) and was shown in a non-theatrical release to approximately 105 million American students in health education classes. 

   

• This wasn’t simply cruel opportunism though; the footage was shot in Canada, not by the Arctic Ocean – with the decidedly non-native lemmings imported by the Disney crew. The film-makers basically treated these adorable rodents as neglected plush-toys, tossing them over cliffs, coercing them down steep, rugged terrain, and placing them on a rotating platform – leading directly to the great blue beyond below.

   

  It took a 1982 report on Canada show The Fifth Estate to uncover the ruse; while researching animal cruelty in Hollywood, journalist Bob McKeown discovered the footage had been pieced together and manipulated to look natural. Regardless, the film is yet to be stripped of its Academy Award, and the lemming still has to deal with the daily occurrence of well-adjusted rodents stressing that “the clouds will lift any day now man, you’ll see”.

• According to a 1983 investigation by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation producer Brian Vallee, the lemming scenes were faked. The lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off a cliff by the Disney filmmakers. The epic "lemming migration" was staged using careful editing, tight camera angles and a few dozen lemmings running on snow covered lazy-Susan style turntable.