Disney’s “Pinocchio”? Proceed With Caution

Disney's Second Animated Feature - 1940
I’ve shared my thoughts on Disney’s first animated feature, Snow White and found it still has a lot to say to today’s kids. In this installment, I look at Disney’s second feature, Pinocchio, released in 1940 and based on the 19th century Carlo Collodi tale of a marionette who becomes a real boy. I can sum up my reaction with a 19th century nursery rhyme: when it’s good, it’s very, very good. When it’s bad, it’s awful. This is not for young children, at least unsupervised. By today’s standards, I’d give Pinocchio a rating of PG-13 at least.

Why this stern warning? It's because there are segments in this film so scalding and dark, they’re disturbing even to an adult audience. And there is no kid-friendly, understandable context for characters’ evil actions nor is there any justice or comeuppance for the wicked. Call me the one-woman Hayes Commission of children’s film, but it’s no wonder to me that this movie failed to find an audience in its day, even though it was released on the heels of the mega-hit Snow White. To its credit, Pinocchio is at times adorably wholesome with its charming, child-voiced main character, Pinocchio and its crowd-pleasing cricket, Jiminy. It features several wonderful and memorable songs, like “Give a Little Whistle,” “An Actors Life For Me,” and “I’ve Got No Strings.” And it features the most famous Disney song of all, “When You Wish Upon a Star,” that has become the Disney corporation’s theme song. Its animation is particularly stunning, especially the under water sequence when Pinocchio battles the whale Monstro to bravely save his father, Gepetto.

Where did this story go wrong? Italian satirist Carlo Collodi’s original story of Pinocchio was a slapstick tale, heavy on the slapping. The moment Collodi’s child-hating Gepetto finishes carving Pinocchio’s feet, the puppet starts to kick him, an ironic statement on the “joys” of parenting. The original character of Pinocchio was an obnoxious wild child who played many thoughtless, nasty pranks and was punished harshly in return. It’s a perversely comic 19th century time capsule reflecting a world where children (and adults) were often unfairly and savagely punished for misdemeanors and felonies alike. Compare this to Snow White, whose script took great pains to show how twisted and wrong the Evil Queen’s choices were, the Queen eventually paying the ultimate price for her wrong doing. There certainly is drama in Collodi’s source material, but when Disney’s Pinocchio team created a main character too similar to Collodi’s tough, willful wooden boy, Walt Disney himself had them revamp him into a sweeter, more innocent Pinocchio, which is probably where everything started to go wrong. This soft kid can’t fend for himself like Collodi’s wise-guy. The audience naturally feels protective of this softer, more vulnerable Disney Pinocchio and rightly so.

In Disney’s Pinocchio, a con-artist fox, J. Worthington Foulfellow, has only a chance at meager profit as his reason to betray and sell Pinocchio to puppet show impresario Stromboli, a rather chilling character motivation. And the smarmy way he tricks the hapless boy is just this side of sick-making. When sweet, innocent little Pinocchio is led away by the Fox, it reads like a modern toddler abduction. In contrast, the Wicked (would-be murderous) Queen in Snow White makes her jealousy and evil intentions clear, but the Fox, Stromboli, and an evil Coachman are malevolent for reasons that are never made clear, except for a suggestion that they’re “in it for the money.” Yet they behave more like characters who enjoy being evil for its own sake. These scenes are good illustrations of why children should NEVER talk to strangers, but there’s got to be a better way to teach that lesson.

And don’t get me started on the perverse sequence of the “bad boys” on Pleasure Island or as I see it, Entrapment Island. They’re spirited away by an evil Coachman (with the help of the Fox again) and actively encouraged, even enabled into misbehaving. They are then punished for their misdeeds by being morphed into donkeys as their pathetic, frightened cries for “mother” disappear into brays. Then they’re stripped of their clothing and tossed into crates marked with signs suggesting faraway destinations like “sold to salt mine.” As the boys’ crimes were smoking, drinking, and playing billiards, the sarcastic message seems to be, “You REALLY have to wait until you’re twenty-one to do these things or—trust me—you won’t like the consequences.” But in truth, it again feels more like every parent and child’s worst nightmare of abduction and permanent disappearance, the boys literally silenced as they weep for mother and plead for mercy. Once more, the context and circumstances of the abuse are allegorical, deeply cynical, and not easily understood by a child. Even an adult could find these scenes haunting. And the appearance of the Blue Fairy with the power of life and death neither honors nor negates religious belief; it merely confuses the issue. Simply put, a child should not approach this material alone.

There are some wonderful sequences in this film, too. And the animation is nothing less than stunning. The Disney creative team took the techniques they pioneered during Snow White and pushed them even farther to create a visual masterpiece in Pinocchio. But when I find myself using the word “perverse” to describe a cartoon, I suppose what I’m really saying is what I said up front: proceed with caution. Adults and older kids will find an ambitious, sometimes sweet but often dark piece of animation. If you’re okay with that, you’ll find a visual and emotional stunner in Pinocchio. But parents should see to it that younger kids give this a pass.