Wednesday, February 24, 2010

what i desire is man's red fire


I developed a new habit recently, it usually manifests when I've had a bit (or a lot) to drink, and am either in my backyard by myself, or somewhere else with one or two other people. I've become addicted to watching clips from old Disney movies on YouTube.

I think maybe everyone in my generation has secret hopes of doing this with our future (unfortunate) babies.

A few points to note: the 3G reception in my backyard is somewhat lacking and can cause these to take quite a while to load, but I persevere. The quality of most of these is low. They aren't actually music videos, and often you have to wait through a few minutes of boring (to drunk me) dialogue to get to 'the good bits'.

Anyway, all of this got a bit embarassing when I got my phone bill** and so to remedy this I have recently aquired the beginnings of what will eventually be a collection of every Disney film ever made.

I had these toys, from a happy meal probably, when I was little
Now, we all know the female characters tended to be over-sexualised, distorted images of femininity while the males were huge, muscular oafs, often with teeny tiny lower halfs. It was weird. I'm using the past tense because I'm not thinking about any Disney movie made since I was 12, though I'm sure their CG heroines were equally wasp-waisted and the good guys equally broad shouldered.

This and all the thinly veiled racist anthropomorphism aside, I loved these movies to death and am really, really excited about watching them again. Particularly those which I've been watching clips from lately, and Beauty and the Beast which was the first movie I saw in theatres ever. That may or may not be a true fact but it's certainly the first I remember.

Wap bop a loo bop, a wap bam boom. Or something to that effect.

I personally intend to watch these films, enjoy their dewey eyes and musical interludes, and possibly engage in some intellectual and/or drunk discussion about Latinos being portrayed as hot blooded and criminally minded chihuahuas on Lady and the Tramp, African Americans as jive talking, scat singing monkeys and crows in the Jungle Book and Dumbo, and French men as CANDLESTICKS and CLOCKS in Beauty and the Beast. Or maybe I'll leave that to other people and just sing along.

Here and here are two other links you should click on.

*I just want you all to know that I watched/listened to these again, as I looked them up for the links, and as I type this am involuntarily nodding my head and tapping my feet along to Bare Necessities yet I am not drunk. It is that good.
*This isn't entirely true, it didn't cost me anything extra on my phone bill, but at some point did become embarassing. Hence why I'm sharing it with everyone on the internet.

3 comments:

  1. Its just me: I have recently been doing the same thing only with musicals F and I watched as kids...perhaps there will be a part 2 to this post...

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  2. I LOVE the teapot! oh the good times when we could watch cartoons without being teased!

    www.amberwhitecliffe.blogspot.com

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