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Remember “The Bear Necessities” and the cute cartoon animals that made up Disney’s film “The Jungle Book”? Well, Ella’s grandma rummaged around to find my old childhood copy of it this morning thinking Ella would love the songs. After fast forwarding through most of it and watching a few songs, I turned it off. I was shocked by what I saw, now watching it through different eyes.
The first shot of the movie is of baby Mowgli lying in a basket inside a boat that had apparently been damaged. It is immediately assumed that he has been orphaned and is taken in by a caring panther who quickly finds an adoptive family for Mowgli. The wolf mom and dad with their new brood of cubs quickly take to the baby and raise him as part of their pack. Ok, innocent enough, right? Although my thoughts instantly run to where are the baby’s parents? Why didn’t they look for them? What will happen to all involved?
Fast forward to the scene where the league of wolves decide that Mowgli (now a grown boy) must leave and go back to the man village, back to “his own kind” for his own safety. He is tricked into leaving the jungle and when asks when they’ll be returning home is told that he will not be going home. My goodness! Not the best adoption story, is it? So from there we fast forwarded to “The Bare Necessities” song and heard Baloo the bear now refer to Mowgli as “his” cub, and then I pressed stop.
Of course Miss Ella is just a baby, but I was really uncomfortable watching this, and I’m sure I would have been without her in the room as well. To watch a baby be presumed an orphan, raised happily with an adoptive family, then forced to leave his home and loved ones to go back to his “own kind”. No thanks.
I’ve given quite a bit of thought to what we’ll do when Ella’s old enough to want to watch movies with questionable adoption themes. Part of me wants to protect her and not show her anything that could possibly upset her. The other (more dominant)part wants to expose her to different age appropriate stories and points of view and work through her emotions with her. Hopefully we’ll find a happy medium along the road someday. But for now we’ll stick to “The Wonder Pets,” which is what I turned on immediately after stopping our descent into Disney-dom.
More Reading:
My Thought on Adoption Movies
Jean Straus Adoption Films
Elfquest comes to mind. One of the elves raised a human “cub” but when he grew up he had to return to the humans who rejected him for having a mark on his face.
He used what he had learned from the elves to get back into his tribe again, but he also put aside some of their values to get accepted by them.
There’s more and it made me cry, it was a good sad story. Nowadays I am a bit more sensitive when it comes to adoption stories.