Why Do the Parents Have to Die in Disney Movies

It's tragic but thankfully rare for a young child to lose a parent. Only about five percent of kids will suffer the death of a guardian before reaching adulthood. But if aliens were to study our society based solely on Disney properties, they'd deduce that society stood at best a 50/50 chance of surviving once we procreated. That's because, from 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to 2020's Onward, more than half of Disney/Pixar feature films use the death or disappearance of the protagonist's mom or dad as a major plot point. Parents aren't spared in the studio's live-action movies, either, especially now that those include Marvel, Star Wars and what used to be Fox Searchlight titles. But why is Disney obsessed with death?

Walt Disney's own parents lived to see old age, but still, his mother's death is said to have affected him for the rest of his life. That trauma may have worked its way into his art. In the wake of the massive success of Snow White,Disney bought his parents a new house, but shortly thereafter, his mother died from a gas leak. Though her death was accidental, he blamed himself -- a theme that recurs throughout the Disney canon. However, many movies that tackle that theme, like The Lion King and Frozen, weren't made until decades after Walt Disney's passing in 1966. In fact, the animation auteur was only alive long enough to shepherd 18 of Disney-branded feature films to the screen.

The immense pain that five percent of children experience surely stays with them forever, and maybe Disney should be commended for helping them navigate their grief. However, a quick flip through the Disney+ catalog reveals that, with few exceptions Lilo & Stitch, the movies are rarely about the mourning process. The vast majority of orphaned characters, especially the trademarked princesses, seem mildly bummed out to utterly nonplussed about their situation. Most of the Disney princesses have lost their parents, but it's not an event that shape their character. That makes one wonder what the point of killing parents is if not to give emotionally traumatized kids something to identify with.

To find the answer, one has to go back, not just to the start of the pantheon of Disney stories, but to the fairytales and fables upon which many of them are based. Dead and missing parents are actually an essential component of children's literature. Classics, old and new, likeThe Secret Garden , Tom Sawyer, Anne of Green Gablesand The BFG, plus things like Harry Potterand The Hunger Games all have them, and that short but notable list doesn't even scratch the surface. It might seem like Charles Dickens and J.K. Rowling are as fresh out of original ideas as is the Walt Disney Company, but there are reasons why authors depend so heavily on what is really more of a literary device than subject matter.

As has been established, most kids have parents, and happily, most of those parents are effectively responsible in the grand scheme of things. But stories are all about conflict and problem-solving, and if our young protagonists had parents, their problems would be solved entirely too quickly and easily. Thus, to make a hero out of a child, the author must separate that child from the adults that would otherwise be watching over them, preventing them from getting caught up in trouble in the first place. Even a halfway decent mother would've stopped the events of most Disney movies from proceeding beyond the second scene. With parents, Mowgli and Tarzan grow up to be regular men in society, and Arthur always knows he'll be king.

Untimely death isn't the only way to rid a juvenile main character of their parental figure, though, and one could argue that some of the best of both classic literature and children's movies find creative ways to avoid resorting to it. Roald Dahl's Matilda and Pixar's Inside Outare perfect examples.

But dead parents aren't just a literary device in disguise. They're also a too-convenient way to raise the stakes and elicit emotional reactions from audiences. What's sadder than a kid who's lost the person who loves them the most in the whole world? What's scarier than a vulnerable child left alone to fend for themselves in that world, complicated and cruel as it can be? It's easy to imagine that near a century of exposure to Disney movies has left several generations subconsciously afraid that their dear mothers and fathers might be plucked away from them at any moment.

Surprisingly, psychology contends that kids actually like living vicariously through these tales of tragedy and danger. Kids whose parents fix their problems for them don't feel very powerful. They probably aren't allowed to go on unsupervised adventures, either, or spar against sociopathic villains. Orphaned fictional characters are necessarily independent, and often imbued with much more power and purpose than your average tween. That's exciting for younger readers and moviegoers, who long just to make basic decisions for themselves.

Except, without the fun of the adventure and the big personalities of the pint-sized heroes, death-as-a-plot-device can feel overdone, and can get in the way of what the story is supposed to be about. With Onward, Disney may have played the dead parent card one too many times. The movie is well-meaning in its depiction of brothers growing up without a father, but its premise seems like it wants to explore themes of acceptance and of not depending too much on technology, and for that, Onward didn't need to involve a disembodied pair of legs. Much more egregious examples are Disney's recent live-action releases The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, Dumbo, and Mary Poppins Returns. Here, writers created dead mothers out of thin air, where there were none in the source material. When the death of a parent is used as a manipulative shortcut to manufacture tears, kids know it.

Artemis Fowl will hit theaters soon, and it appears from the trailer that Disney may have killed off yet another mother for no good reason. The studio, with its practical monopoly on pop culture meant for kids' consumption, is certainly capable of telling riveting stories that have to do with death. The heartbreaking losses of Ellie in Up and of Bing Bong in Inside Out welled up more genuine tears than many adults have cried at actual funerals. When it comes to using the writer's tool that is dead parents, most of the time Disney gets it right by either barely acknowledging it (Cinderella) or making the most of it in every frame (Coco). Let's just hope that, from now on, Disney only takes aim at the endangered species that is loving parents when it has to.

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About The Author

Rita Dorsch (314 Articles Published)

Rita is a film and TV writer for CBR, and freelance writer and author. She teaches writing and theatre for Penn State and Kent State Universities. She studied writing and theatre at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She lives and works out of the Greater Pittsburgh area.

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Why Do the Parents Have to Die in Disney Movies

Source: https://www.cbr.com/disneys-dead-parent-problem-explained/

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