Disney's Urban Legends
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URBAN LEGENDS:
Aladdin tells teenagers to take off their clothes.
Claim: In the film Aladdin, the hero whispers, "Good teenagers, take off your clothes."
Status: False.
Origins: This
quip occurs during a scene in which Aladdin, in the guise of Prince Ali, flies up to Jasmine's balcony on his magic carpet to convince her that he is not just another self-absorbed, empty-headed prince. When Aladdin steps onto the balcony, Jasmine's tiger Rajah threatens him and backs him up against the railing. As Rajah growls, Aladdin tries to shoo him away with his turban and then supposedly whispers, "Good teenagers, take off your clothes."
What is actually going on with the soundtrack at this point in the film is difficult to determine. Disney claims that the script calls for Aladdin to say, "C'mon . . . good kitty. Take off and go," while the closed captioning has him uttering, "Good kitty. Take off." However, neither one of these phrases seems to match what is heard on the soundtrack. A close listening to the audio track reveals Aladdin speaking the words "C'mon . . . good kitty," and just as Aladdin says the word "kitty," a second voice begins to whisper, "Pssst . . . take off your clo . . ." Who this second voice is, and exactly what he says, is a mystery. There is no other character in the scene who could conceivably be speaking: the tiger doesn't talk, the voice is male (eliminating Jasmine), and both the genie and the rug are below the balcony and off-screen. Perhaps the overlapping voices are merely the product of bad editing, and some stray bit of chatter (or a piece of dialog that was supposed to have been clipped) was accidentally grafted onto the soundtrack. Whatever is being said, to the casual listener the resulting phrase can certainly sound like the "Good teenagers, take off your clothes," although the phrase is clearly the combination of two different voices speaking in two different tones. Once people have been told what they're "supposed" to be hearing, however, they find it difficult to maintain objectivity and therefore swear that Aladdin couldn't possibly be saying anything else.
The "take off your clothes" rumor started soon after Aladdin was released on home video in 1993. A garbled and whispered portion of dialogue that could barely be heard in the theater was being replayed over and over in millions of homes but was difficult to distinguish. Someone came up with a salacious phrase that sounded somewhat like the original portions of dialogue, and the power of suggestion took over. People began to hear what they were being told they should hear, much like Beatles fans eagerly sharing backwards-masked Paul is dead aural clues.
The Aladdin rumor spread by word of mouth during 1994 and was eventually printed in Movie Guide magazine, an Atlanta-based Christian entertainment review. Due in part to that article, the controversial phrase was brought to the attention of the American Life League, a religious organization which had been boycotting Disney films since the previous April as a protest over the movie Priest. The American Life League gave new prominence to the rumor in September 1995, when it claimed the phrase was yet another piece of evidence that Disney had been sneaking "sexual messages" into their animated films (the The Little Mermaid being the most notorious example) for the past several years. -
A minister becomes aroused during the wedding scene in The Little Mermaid.
Claim: The minister officiating at Ursula's wedding ceremony in The Little Mermaid displays an erection.
Status: False.
Origins: In the film's first wedding scene (the one in which Ursula, having taken the appearance of Vanessa and the voice of Ariel, attempts to marry Prince Eric), as the bride and groom are approaching the minister, the side-profile shots of the minister allegedly reveal him to be sporting an erection. The minister is dressed as a bishop (wearing a tunic and tights) in this scene, and the triangular bulge claimed to be an "erection" is actually his knee sticking out from under the tunic. The minister's bandy legs and the blending of the tunic and tights make it difficult to distinguish his knee in some frames, although it is clearly visible in others.
This rumor gained renewed prominence in September of 1995 when the American Life League, a conservative Christian organization based in Stafford, Virginia, offered it an example of the "subliminal sex messages" Disney had been planting in their films and urged their supporters to boycott Disney. The rumor (along with others about the video cover of The Little Mermaid and the word 'S-E-X' in The Lion King, for example) was widely disseminated by the media over the next few months, leading an Arkansas woman named Janet Gilmer to file suit against The Walt Disney Company and Buena Vista Home Video in Washington County Circuit Court, claiming that:
Through its marketing efforts, the use of the Disney name, and a 'G' rating, the defendants represented to the public that 'The Lion King' and 'The Little Mermaid' videocassettes were suitable for use and viewing by young children.
Furthermore, the defendants never stated or suggested to the public that these videocassettes contained drawings and animated scenes that depicted sexual messages or other material that was unsuitable for young children.
[ . . .]
Consistent with the explicit sexual message displayed on the package of The Little Mermaid, Disney included a visible sexual message in the movie itself. During a scene in the movie where two of the characters are to be married by a clergyman dressed as a priest, the movement of the priest's garments in the area of his crotch suggests that the priest is getting an erection as the bride and groom approach the alter [sic]. The depiction of this 'event' is visible at regular speed on the home video, but is even more noticeable when viewed in slow motion or frame-by-frame.
[Complaint in Gilmer v. The Walt Disney Co.]
Gilmer dropped her lawsuit two months later. -
A phallus was drawn on the video cover of The Little Mermaid by a disgruntled artist.
Claim: One of the castle spires on the cover of Disney's The Little Mermaid home video was deliberately drawn as a phallus by a disgruntled artist.
Status: False.
Origins: One of the castle spires in the background of the The Little Mermaid promotional artwork bears an unmistakable resemblance to a penis, so much so that many people are unwilling to dismiss the drawing as mere accident or coincidence. Rumors started circulating shortly after the release of the videocassette edition of The Little Mermaid that the phallic object had been deliberately drawn as a last act of defiance by a disgruntled Disney artist who was miffed at being notified that he would be laid off at the conclusion of the project. The plain truth is that the resemblance between the castle spire and a penis was purely accidental, and it was drawn by an artist who was neither disgruntled nor about to be dismissed.
First of all, the artist who created the video cover art did not work for Disney itself, thus he was neither "disgruntled with Disney" nor "about to be fired." We questioned the artist, who also drew artwork for Little Mermaid theatrical advertising, pop-ups, greeting cards, Happy Meal boxs, and CDs. The theatrical posters were done before the original release of the film, but the video cover art was not created until a few months before the home video version hit the market. Rushed to complete the video artwork (featuring towers that were rather phallic to begin with), the artist hurried through the background detail (at "about four in the morning" ) and inadvertently drew one spire that bore a rather close resemblance to a penis. The artist himself didn't notice the resemblance until a member of his youth church group heard about the controversy on talk radio and called him at his studio with the news. The later laserdisc release of the film was issued with a cover containing an altered version of the infamous spire. Contrary to common belief, the phallic-like spire did not make its first appearance with the cover to the home video version. The same background drawing of the castle, with the same spires, appeared in promotional material and posters that accompanied the film's original theatrical release. The video cover does differ slightly from the original version, but the castle shown in the background is the same in both versions. (Later versions of the laserdisc cover were altered to remove the offending spire.)
The alleged "phallic symbol" in The Little Mermaid's artwork went undetected by the general public for about a year while the film was in the theatrical release. Shortly after Entertainment Weekly ran a story about the offending artwork in mid-1990, the rumor became widespread when Michelle Couch of Mesa, Arizona, complained to Disney and a Phoenix supermarket chain (Bashas') about the phallus on the cover of The Little Mermaid. Bashas' pulled the videos from their shelves (but returned them less than 24 hours later), and the story of the "penis" cover was soon widely disseminated by the media.
View The Little Mermaid video cover art
View The Little Mermaid video cover art (close-up) -
Letters spelling the word S-E-X are formed by a cloud of dust in The Lion King.
Claim: The letters S-E-X are formed by a swirling cloud of dust in The Lion King.
Status: Undetermined.
Origins: About halfway to three-fourths of the way through the film, Simba, Pumbaa, and Timon are lying on their backs, looking up at the stars. Simba arises, walks over to the edge of a cliff, and flops to the ground, throwing up a cloud of dust. Eddies of dust form and dissipate in the roiling cloud, and at one point the various curves and angles in these eddies appear to form the letters S-E-X. It takes a bit of persistence to see specific letters in the shapes formed by the swirling dust clouds, even when the video is played in slow motion.
Whether the image of the word "SEX" was deliberately planted in this scene or is merely a product of the power of suggestion is unknown. The letters seem readily apparent to those who know what they're supposed to be looking for, but persons unfamiliar with the rumor rarely make them out even after being told to look for a word in the still-frame images. The generally accepted explanation is that the letters were slipped in by a special effects group (to form the abbreviation "S-F-X").
A 4-year-old boy from New York (or Louisiana), viewing the video with his head tilted to the left, supposedly noticed the appearance of the letters S-E-X and told his mother (or aunt) about it. (How a mere 4-year-old could both spell and understand the significance of the word "sex" remains unexplained. When you want to charge a huge corporate conglomerate with slipping nasties into its supposedly wholesome children's films, however, it's best to pretend an unwitting child made the discovery. This method increases the outrage factor -- if a 4-year-old found the word "S-E-X" in a video all by himself, why, then anybody's child might see it, too.) His mother (or aunt) in turn notified a religious organization called the American Life League, who claimed this was yet another occurrence of Disney's deliberately inserting hidden images into their animated films. The American Life League, which had already been boycotting Disney films since the previous April, made this rumor the highlight of their September 1995 publicity campaign against several Disney videos allegedly containing "sexual messages."
Still frames of Simba and the dust cloud. -
way to go lilo..!!
thanx for yr info..
ooohh..nv noe tt there's so much in disney huh..?
ermm..double meaning..?
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These rumours could have been started by people who are disgrunted of Disney's success, in a bid to topple them perhaps?
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WahahahahaOriginally posted by Angel^_^:ermm..double meaning..? 
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kekekeke..learnt few thingy today..especially double meaning huh..?
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/wink winkOriginally posted by Angel^_^:kekekeke..learnt few thingy today..especially double meaning huh..?
wahahahahaha
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like..piak..? poke..? tissue..? teh very sweet..?Originally posted by PaJeRoMiNi Ver 1.0:/wink wink
wahahahahaha
still got a lot man..1001 double meaning nite..
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stand up....don't drip.....and many moreOriginally posted by Angel^_^:like..piak..? poke..? tissue..? teh very sweet..?
still got a lot man..1001 double meaning nite..
wahahahaha -
anymore??? thats very interesting
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whahaha, the night of a thousand meanings
hahahahahhaa -
No wonder American teenagers nowdays all so bloody fuc.ked up in their head one. All tio mass propaganda brainwashed.
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The personalities of the dwarf characters in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs represent the seven stages of cocaine addiction.
Claim: The personalities of the dwarf characters in Disney's animated film version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs represent the seven stages of cocaine addiction.
Status: False.
Origins: Our fascination for associating wholesome, innocent icons of popular culture with hidden depravities and unsavory backgrounds seemingly knows no bounds. Thus we have tales that nature-loving pop singer John Denver was a Vietnam-era sniper, that genial children's TV host Fred Rogers served as a Green Beret, that the actor who portrayed geeky Paul Pfeiffer on TV's popular The Wonder Years grew up to become shock rocker Marilyn Manson, and that the host of Nickelodeon's preschooler favorite Blue's Clues died of a drug overdose.
As the epitomical producer of popular children's fare, Disney comes in for more than its fair share of such rumors: scandalous tales about both Walt Disney himself (e.g., that he was booted out of the military, that he was a Nazi sympathizer, that he was an illegitimate child) and many of the films produced by the company he founded.
A common motif among Disney legends is the claim that various Disney animated films were drug-inspired; that Disney and his band of animators were users of hallucinogens such as LSD, and their experiences with drugs formed the basis for such fare as the fantasy world of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the colorful visual interpretation of musical themes in Fantasia, and the surreal psychedelia of Alice in Wonderland.
On a literal level, not much can be said to address these rumors other than to cite a litany of negative evidence. Walt Disney and his principal animators are well-known figures about whom much has been written, and no one who knew or worked with them claimed (or even suggested) that they partook of recreational drugs. And although drug abuse was enough of a social concern to prompt didactic scare films such as Reefer Madness and The Cocaine Fiends back in the 1930s, the "drug" of choice in Walt Disney's era was far more likely to have been alcohol than anything else. (Recall that the hallucinatory "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence in 1941's Dumbo is triggered when the diminutive pachyderm inadvertently imbibes a tubful of champagne.) As for LSD, it wasn't even brought to the USA until 1949, too late to have been the driving force behind Disney's classic animated films (although alternative hallucinogens such as mescaline were certainly obtainable.) Of the notion that the imagination displayed in Disney's animated films was drug-induced, animator Art Babbitt, who drew the dancing mushrooms in "The Nutcracker Suite" portion of Fantasia, said: "Yes, it is true. I myself was addicted to Ex-lax and Feenamint."2
Drug rumors were undoubtedly fueled because Fantasia and Alice in Wonderland received mixed reviews upon their initial releases, and neither was much of a financial success until their re-releases (and availability as rental films) in the early 1970s drew crowds of college students who found the films' melding of color, light, music, and imagery made them ideal psychedelic "head" flicks. So much so, in fact, that Disney's marketing began to pitch these films to those audiences:
. . . after [Fantasia's] 1969 rerelease proved a cult hit among college-age kids looking for a hallucinogenic experience, conservative groups began picketing movie theaters for screening Disney's animated "drug fantasies." Hippie-era moviegoers liked to sit in the front row, even on top of each other, smoking pot and offering advice to Mickey.
The company asked the theaters to promote the film not as typical Disney fare, but "now you sell Fantasia as you did Easy Rider. Hip youngsters come to see it as a special kind of trip."
Disney didn't exactly discourage the connotation. Psychedelic posters and other ad materials featuring Chernobog and the dancing mushrooms called it "The Ultimate Experience," while the promotional kit quoted one underground review: "Disney's Fantasia: A Head Classic: Representation of sound as color does resemble tripping on STD, LSD, THC and various other letters of the alphabet."1
and
Long afterwards, fans continued to ask the animators if they were "on something" when they made [Alice in Wonderland]. It's not such an odd question, considering that all the things in the book and movie that suggest drugs: Alice ingests potions, wafers and mushrooms that change her size or alter her consciousness, her perspective constantly changes, she loses track of time, space and her own identity. There's the hookah-smoking caterpillar. In fact, the entire story, a dream framed by the "real world," might be seen as a hallucination or trip.
So, it wasn't surprising that in 1971 Alice in Wonderland was the top renting 16mm film in every college town across the country, playing to capacity crowds in heavy smoke-filled fraternity houses, university theaters, discos and private homes, where it sometimes ran over and over again for an entire weekend.
After the smash cult revival of Fantasia, Disney withdrew the 16mm prints of Alice and targeted a 1974 theater rerelease. The studio prepared ads with copy such as "Down the rabbit hole and through the talking door lies a world where vibrant colors merge into shapes of fantasy, and music radiates from flowers," "Nine out of ten Dormice recommend Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland for visual euphoria and good, clean nonsense," and "Should you see it? Go ask Alice," a reference to Jefferson Airplane's song "White Rabbit."1
Also of significance is that all the plot aspects of Alice in Wonderland that "suggest drugs" were present in Lewis Carroll's original work; Disney merely adapted them for the screen.
As for the original example, Walt Disney didn't "invent" Snow White, of course -- the film was based on the European fairy tale collected by the Grimm brothers over a century earlier. Disney did flesh the story out to feature film length, though, and he was the one who created names and distinctive personalities for each of the seven dwarfs. But the suggestion that the dwarfs' names correspond (intentionally or otherwise) to the symptoms of various stages of cocaine addiction is bunk. Cocaine addiction might be considered to have identifiable stages, but no standard set of physical symptoms accompanies each stage. Many types of drug abuse (and physical or mental illnesses) can produce symptoms such as changes in sleep/wake patterns (sleepy), mood swings (happy, grumpy), alteration of personality (dopey, bashful), and allergies (sneezy) -- eventually necessitating a trip to the doc. -
Donald Duck shouts a racial epithet at Daffy Duck.
Claim: In the "dueling pianos" scene of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Donald Duck calls Daffy Duck a 'nigger.'
Status: False.
Origins: In
the 1988 mixture of live action and animation Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Disney characters interact with other famous cartoon characters from other studios such Warner Bros. and MGM. One evening at the Ink and Paint Club, Disney's Donald Duck and Warners' Daffy Duck engage in a memorable piano duet. At one point the dialog between the two characters allegedly takes a nasty turn:
Daffy: I've worked with a lot of wise-quackers, but you are dethpsicable!
Donald: God damn stupid nigger! I'm gonna WAAAAAAAAGH!!!
Daffy: This is the last time I work with someone with a speech impediment!
So, is this the real McCoy, or just another case of the power of suggestion influencing us to hear ordinary dialog as something else? (See the pages about the film Aladdin and The Lion King talking toy for similar examples.) At first listen, it's easy to hear what we're told to hear, "god damn stupid nigger." The closed captioning on the film claims that Donald calls Daffy a "Goddurn stubborn nitwit," but what Donald is actually saying here is almost certainly the same thing he shouts in nearly every Donald Duck cartoon: some variant of "Why you doggone little . . . I'll . . . WAAAAAAAAAGH!"
Donald is rarely easy to understand, and people have supposedly heard him say all sorts of risque things. In 1995, a 1937 Mickey Mouse cartoon called "Clock Cleaners" contained in Walt Disney Cartoon Classics series' video "Fun on the Job" made the news because it allegedly included a frustrated Donald Duck shouting "Fuck you!", leading Wal-Mart to pull the video from its shelves. Funny how nobody ever noticed this until the cartoon was nearly sixty years old, though. Is our hearing that much more sensitive these days? Or is this claim perhaps the result of a combination of our distrust of the type of mega-corporation Disney has become and our ability to spread these kinds of rumors much farther and faster? Whatever hidden messages we may think Disney is tucking away in their films these days, Walt would never have allowed a product with his name on it to get out the door with an expletive like this in it. Maybe the real answer is that if you're convinced you're supposed to hear something, you'll hear it. -
ooohh....
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Managed to dig up this old thread..