Walt Disney and the politically correct: all the crimes of the animated classics

Let’s start with a necessary premise. The confusion created by Entertainment Weekly in reporting the opinion of a reporter from SFGate, an online magazine in the San Francisco area that many of you have probably never heard of until today, has been totally unchecked. If there is something fair, on the other hand, that is chaos, as Heath Ledger also said born The dark Knight, and actually the proof we have had in these days. In Italy, few have refrained from reporting the hype of the story, because the clamor of the cancel culture it belongs to us and we cannot not ride it.
The reconstruction of the event is that the kiss the Prince gives to Snow White is non-consensual, being the dead girl or, if you prefer, forced into an eternal sleep after having swallowed the Witch’s apple. An aspect that frustrates one of the most genuine and fascinating works of Walt Disney for the production cycle, but which gives us an interesting starting point: if we wanted to evade the magic of twentieth-century fairy tales and place them in a current, modern, real context , how many other crimes would we find, especially when compared to the often itchy Italian bureaucracy?

The necessary and necessary disclaimer is that this article, from here on, addresses the issue with an ironic vein. We do not believe in any way that everything we will say below can be real and we trust that none of our readers can in the least think of it as such.

The three Little Pigs

In 1933 Jimmy, Timmy and Tommy become protagonists of a crime that in their time was not yet so deeply rooted in international culture. The three little pigs are the forerunners of illegal building, a problem that hit Italy after World War II, creating an important chaos, which resulted in law 47 of 1985.
If in the Burt Gillett film, produced by Walt Disney, justice was entrusted to Ezekiel, armed with a powerful breath ready to break down illegal activity, the Italian law would have intervened with a fine of up to 10,000 euros, but there being a lack of a building permit and the illegal subdivision of land for building purposes, for Jimmy, Timmy and Tommy it could also have come to two years of arrest and a fine of up to € 51,000.
Ezekiel saved them from a long process, from which perhaps they would have been saved thanks to the clean criminal record and the empty prison decree. Home care for one year, fine in installments and lessons learned. Of them, in any case, the worst is definitely Jimmy, who had built the house with bricks.

Pinocchio

In 1940 a man in his fifties, dressed in Tyrolean style and passionate about carpentry, owner of a cat and a fish, he decides he wants a child. He responds to the name of Geppetto, lives in Italy, but does not know that in asking Mastro Ciliegia for that piece of wood he is about to commit an illegal act.
The law in Italy does not allows for adoption by singles, unless there are special cases, such as the mother’s non-recognition of a child who would therefore remain without a family, or there is foster care for minors in conditions of family hardship.
Geppetto not only cheats the adoption lists, but he even decides to make this baby himself. In addition, in the third Disney feature film, there is also a second crime: the abduction of minors by the barkers of the land of toys.
As for their transformation into donkeys, the Italian jurisdiction is not yet updated, but it seems that the Conte government had activated with a DPCM in order to avoid that in the future someone could turn someone else’s children into donkeys and go unpunished.
Unfortunately, the premier’s resignation has nullified the work in progress. On the other hand, nature has already thought of making them pay for the Cat and the Fox.

Peter Pan

London, early twentieth century. Among the biggest scams operated in the Disney universe we certainly find that of Peter Pan, who is tainted with the crime of circumvention of incapable persons.
Article 643 of the Criminal Code, on the other hand, underlines that anyone who abuses the needs, passions or inexperience of a minor person is punished with imprisonment from two to six years, plus a fine of up to 2,000 euros. to make a profit for oneself or others.
Lost children needed a mother, Peter Pan needed some company, Wendy was looking for an adventure: the needs crossed and the scam served.
Among other things, the same article also talks about people who are in a state of illness or mental deficiency and I challenge you to argue the opposite for lost children, forced to dress like fools, with animal furs and using makeshift weapons. They are also malnourished and mistreated. So big as a crime to be able to overshadow the fact that Standing Bull has administered drugs to minors. And then we take it out on James Hook.

Bambi

Here the victim is undoubtedly only one: Bambi. The hunter who deprives him of his mother, the only one who could provide him with a guide towards a normal and peaceful life, without continuing to associate with disreputable rabbits and skunks not at all able to support him in any path of professional and human growth, is clearly a poacher.
The offense that occurs is that of aggravated theft to the detriment of the state, in addition to the illegal carrying of weapons, regulated by article 699 of the penal code. On the first aspect, it must be taken into account that the unavailable assets of the State are protected in the interest of the national and international community, therefore the aggravated theft materializes in the killing of the fauna by the poacher, who at this point is also accused of damage. Nobody can argue that the death of Bambi’s mother did not cause serious damage to the assets not only of the state, but to the biological and psychological one of all of us, that as children we grew up with trauma not seen, not shown, but only felt. Infamous hunter, give us back our sanity.

Alice in Wonderland

Did you think the Queen of Hearts was the greatest criminal in Wonderland? Mistaken. Let’s talk about the Mad Hatter. First hold a dormouse inside a teapot from which you pour a drink is absolutely not hygienic: on this, however, the competent authority will intervene.
What interests us is embezzlement, regulated by article 646 of the criminal code, which punishes anyone who appropriates a movable property of others to procure an unjust profit for themselves or others. And let’s face it clearly: take possession of the Bianconiglio spring onion, then break it clumsily and give it back to it ruined and destroyed, also causing biological damage to the owner, it is right that he should be punished with imprisonment from two to five years.
In addition, we are not entirely sure that Biagio Lucertola, the chimney sweep with a ladder, practice the profession with a regular license: his luck is that he finds himself being sent into the clouds by a sneeze from Alice, otherwise the imprisonment from six months to three years and the fine of up to 50,000 euros pursuant to article 348 of the penal code did not take it away from even the Queen’s husband of Hearts. He would have gone out of the way too Captain Libeccio, who favors illegal work, as well as the Carpenter, who, in order to please the Walrus and a group of ostriches, builds a house on the state property that is clearly illegal and without authorization. The Three Little Pigs have taught nothing.

The sword in the Stone

That North Tower, esteemed Sir Ettore, is clearly not up to standard. Using it for guests is not a crime, but it is certainly a senseless gesture. That said, Gaius is no different from the poacher who takes it out on Bambi’s mother, given that it definitely doesn’t have a license to go around shooting arrows at deer.
But let’s stay focused on Ettore, who we doubt could have claimed to have hired a maid in the house, who among other things, where was he while Merlin was casting the curse on his kitchen? How does he notice it after all that time?
The black payment of a maid currently provides for a first penalty that goes up to 500 euros, secondly, if continuous illegal work is triggered, it can even reach 12 thousand euros. Money we doubt Ettore has, given the way he runs his castle and Semola’s education.
About that, not sending minors to school is a crime, especially if elementary school is eliminated. Since 2010 in Italy the parent who does not send the child to middle school has not been sanctioned, and Semola at 12 should be in middle school, so Ettore would only be saved thanks to this ratification.

Aladdin

Too convenient to be the law and to be able to change it for your own benefit, dear Sultan. Meanwhile, however, Aladdin is guilty of any type of crime possible, from theft to embezzlement, but I would say that these aspects are the basis of the leitmotif of the entire film.
Abu is no exception, if we are to be honest, up to the greatest criminal in the whole of Agrabah: the Genius. Article 544 ter titled as “mistreatment of animals” states that anyone for cruelty – but above all without necessity – goes to cause an injury to an animal, subjecting it to fatigue or work unbearable due to its characteristics, is punished with imprisonment from three to eighteen months, up to a fine that can reach 30,000 euros.
It is clear that there was no need to turn Abu into an elephant and put him at the head of an unauthorized procession, forcing him to labor that is not in the nature of a small chimpanzee. To save the genius there would be only having discounted ten million years of imprisonment in the Lamp: we dare not imagine what the previous crimes had been.

We could go on for a long time, as you have guessed, finding within the Disney universe a tide of legal problems that would lead those involved in very long and cumbersome processes.
Do you think that among other things we wanted to avoid going into the merits of that fox Robin Hood, champion of the crimes listed here.
In closing, leaving out the ironic vein we talked about, it is clear that the intention of this article is to put under everyone’s nose that fairy tales must remain in the world of fantasy, that it will not be a cartoon to instigate us to do the same actions listed here and which in reality cannot be adopted as daily actions.
Let’s leave fairy tales where they are, let’s not tarnish the memory of a visionary like Walt Disney, who with Snow White achieved a miracle. People are not used to miracles, as Disney himself made Alberto Sordi say in the concluding monologue of Music Master, in the segment of Gianni the whale, but at least every now and then we could try.

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