Man I love this conversation, this was probably the nicest made for tv kids' film ever produced by Disney. It's massively flawed, with loopholes, but it was funny, sad, and sweet all at once.
Disney won't release them because they probably don't want anything to do with these films at the moment. I mean the current group of kids and teens today live in a world where adults think it's better to completely detach them from reality. Which is something I'm grateful I never had to experience being born in the 80s. I think a lot of those born in the 80s can totally relate to what I'm about to say.
My mother never lied to me, in fact we watched The Neverending Story and cried together when Artax died. And believe me it's still heartbreaking to me as an adult, how my mother let me watch this as a young kid without giving in and turning the tv off is beyond my comprehension. It's so easy to lie to your kids and make them think life is beautiful, happy, sunny, perfect. You don't want your kids to feel pain and that's the type of demographic Disney is trying to pander to. Disney only does what makes it bucks, they were pandering to kids in the 80s and 90s too, but we were treated differently. We were allowed to explore emotions like tragedy, sadness, pain, humor, and mix them all together.
Disney has not changed, the demographic has changed sadly.
Sure some of the management has changed at Disney, but in reality it's really the parents who have changed the most. Parents won't let their kids see or experience anything anymore.
I can remember when all of this started too, it really started with those born in the late 80s and early 90s. I went to school with kids born a year younger than myself so I noticed a few differences. I recall a lot of my friends telling me things like "I'm not allowed to watch this show or channel" and thinking how crazy that was. The word "not allowed" did not exist in my house. My mother had faith in the fact that I wouldn't do horrendously awful things that would scar me for life, heaven forbid parents should have faith in the goodness of their own kids anymore.
That's what a lot of those born in the late 80s, early 90s had to deal with. A simple lack of faith in their own good morals, which I thought that was bad enough at the time. Now it's morphed into something quite disturbing. Now it seems like parents are afraid to let their kids see reality and now detach their children from anything resembling that. Kids are not allowed to see death anymore in their cartoons and films for fear that seeing Mufasa die on screen would scar or traumatize them for life. They are not allowed to hear the words like sex, crap, damn, etc... for fear that it would traumatize them for life. There's no harm in saying the word damn or crap, it's just a little bit of childish playfulness.
My god, how weird is that...at least the late 80s and early 90s births were only lied to about reality. They were not withheld from it by their own parents like kids today are.
So gone is the spunk and pizzaz that kids' entertainment once had; the ability to laugh and mock your elders, the ability to indulge in a bit of "naughtiness" or playfulness as a small child. Man adult figures are so damn strict today, I can remember my mid 80s born brother mocking his teachers in their own voice in his classrooms. Today he would probably have been expelled.
Gone is the time where kids are allowed to indulge in their own imaginations or even left to their own devices to invent play and mold their own personalities. Parents want to mold the personalities of their children it seems.
That is the role Disney has chosen to undertake simply because Disney is a corporation now concerned with making bucks.
The role that assists parents in molding picture perfect, owellian youth figures, rather one that encourages uniqueness and individuality above all else. I guess you could argue that those values were lost after 9/11, creativity and individuality is no longer encouraged anymore. Now society is just a rotting shell of what it once was in the 90s, only instead of individualism we encourage self service and survivalism.
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