Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Disney/Getty
This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
Disney’s 1940 animated film Pinocchio is a movie in which a pile of wood comes to life, is tragically separated from his father figure, has his face painfully modified as punishment for innocently telling a lie, is conned into becoming a child actor, is kidnapped, meets a human trafficker that delights in turning boys into screaming donkeys that are then sold into forced labor, is swallowed by a whale, and is stalked by an insect throughout the entire ordeal. And this is meant to be for children.
Being traumatized for the rest of your life by a Disney cartoon is a rite of passage, for which the Mouse House has, with a morbid glee, provided its service for generations. Did watching a lion’s brother murder him while his son wailed in horror as he fell to the ground not scar—heh—you enough? Maybe watching Baby Quasimodo be tossed into a well will do it.