When Bambi was released that year, the social impact was almost real-time, turning the "hunting movement" that had been part of American culture into a cultivar, so much so that the second year of the film's release was reflected in official statistics: the number of deer hunted in the United States plummeted to half of the previous year. Disney presents an idealistic world in which there is a clear line between the human and animal worlds (although occasionally singing and dancing in the woods with Snow White), but in the absence of the real world, the human deer is almost impossible.
South Korean director Bong Joon-ho's 2017 film Okja Tamako uses sentimental elements to provoke self-doubt about the carnivore lifestyle. This isn't the first time the entertainment industry has triggered a wave of animal protection, as the Disney animated film Bambi Bambi, which came out 75 years ago, influenced an entire generation of ecological perspectives and accidentally ignited the spark of the 1960s environmental movement.
To this day, the beliefs in our minds about cute fawns, abominable hunters, and ecological protection can probably be traced back to the horrific scene in 1942: Bambi's mother died under the gun of a hunter.
The original work of Bambi is not related to environmental issues, nor is it a fairy tale fable written for children.
The author Felix Salten was meant to reflect the rise of fascism at the time, and as a result his books were banned in Nazi Germany. Although Disney's adaptation removes this issue, the plot of the beautiful forest life being invaded by a sudden external force (human) and the instantaneous change of tone corresponds to the panic atmosphere of American society suddenly involved in World War II because of the Pearl Harbor incident, which makes American audiences feel deeply. European audiences, who have long been a battlefield, will not have the opportunity to see the film until a few years later. (Thus affecting Disney's cost recovery schedule)
In 2003, the American Film Institute AFI selected the top 100 villains in film history, and the hunter in "Bambi" - "MAN" rushed into the 20th place. And this character does not say that there is no name, or even does not appear in the picture at all.
Walt Disney originally intended to fully present the hunter's killing of Bambi's mother, but gave up on the possible impact of the violent scenes on the children's audience. So the classic scene becomes that Bambi heard the gunshot of the voiceover as she fled in a hurry, and then panicked in the jungle to find her mother who had disappeared forever.
Disney's calculations are wrong, and the invisible violence is actually more terrifying. The scene became a traumatic for an entire generation, as Bambi, who had fallen alone after her mother's death, triggered a deeper separation anxiety in the depths of the child's psyche. Growing up in that generation, children almost treated Bambi as a horror movie, and novelist Stephen King once said that this horror movie made him frightened for no reason.
The social impact caused by Bambi is almost real-time. The "hunting movement," once part of American culture, has since become a cultist, so much so that the film's second year of release was reflected in official statistics: the number of deer hunted in the United States plummeted to half of the previous year.
Raymond J. Brown, editor of Outdoor Life magazine at the time, called the film "the worst slander ever made against outdoor enthusiasts in america." Hunting enthusiasts demanded that Disney add a warning before the film that it was a purely fictional fairy tale, but Disney refused, saying that their film was never meant to be deliberately aimed at American hunters because the hunters in the original book were actually Germans.
The hunters were now powerless to return to heaven.
With Bambi repeatedly re-screenings implanted in the hearts of entire generations of children, it will be difficult to flip in the coming decades. Beatles member Paul McCartney said that after the hunter killed Bambi's mother, he decided to make animal protection his lifelong career. The environmental movement of the 1960s was the result of the Bambi generation.
In fact, not only children, but also many adults have left a shadow after watching the movie and immediately gave up their love of hunting. Years later, the new term "Bambi Effect" appeared to describe the social phenomenon caused by the film. But the word is not entirely positive.
The "Bambi effect" was quickly extended to an irrational decision-making preference for cute animals. Aldo Leopold, author of sand country almana, a biblical book of ecological ethics and a pioneer of the environmental movement, is the first victim of the "Bambi effect". In the second year of the film's release, he advocated to the Wisconsin government to open up deer hunting to control breeding and maintain ecological balance. His proposal was met with a backlash from public opinion and he was stillborn.
Recent studies have shown that increasing deer populations in forests can lead to a significant reduction in the number of birds that inhabit shrubs, which are one of the deer's staple diets. The birds, who did not have their own blockbuster movies at this time, became victims of the "Bambi effect".
Disney films show an idealistic world in which the human world and the animal world have a clear line (although occasionally singing and dancing with Snow White in the woods). But in the real world, which lacks obvious boundaries, it is almost impossible to go through the path. Shortly after the opening scene of this year's Get Out of Desperate Town, there was a thrilling car accident that killed Bambi himself. In fact, there are 1.5 million deer-related traffic accidents in the United States each year, killing 150 people and injuring more than 1,000 others. In the face of the growing number of Bambis, balanced and harmonious coexistence remains an urgent and life-threatening issue.
The warning that hunters were eager to add to the opening of Bambi now sounds a little more plausible: the film is a purely fictional fairy tale world.