What Walt Taught Me: Bambi

Last updated on: August 10, 2015 at 10:36 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

What Walt Taught Me: Bambi 2015-08-10T22:36:22-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Is Bambi a girl?

This is the question that will separate those who have not seen the film, a group too numerous, from those who have seen it.

This is the most gentle film ever made. The pacing is slow, but not slow as in boring or stupid, slow as in unfolding like a flower. Many of us may no longer be capable of a gentle film. World War II was raging while it was made and it changed us.

Bambi recaptures the pacing and hopefulness of a world before we knew of Auschwitz, the gulags, and the atom bomb. A group of brilliant men sat watching deer for hours and got their motions right. . . if deer turned out to be sentient.

At the time of release, hunters were offended by the film, but they should not have been. For someone who approves of sustainable hunting, like I do, Bambi is a reminder to care for nature and not to be cruel. No good hunter would shoot Bambi’s mother. No good hunter starts forest fires.

Contemporary critics did not like the film. Walt meant “magic” and “fairy tales” to them and Bambi was viewed as a nature film. Of course, the animals talk, have a society, and a Prince of the Forest (Bambi’s father) and this “fantastical” element escaped the critics. Message to critics: animals cannot talk and sing.

That hunters and critics could be offended by a fantasy film and think of it as a “nature” film is a credit to Walt’s creative crew. They made the fantastic seem so natural that some forgot it was fantastic. The world as we know it (whatever it once was) depends on birth, life, and then death. The life cycle includes some animals preying on other animals. If Bambi is in danger from the unseen “Man,” then Bambi is also in danger from the forest.

What did Walt teach me?

Walt reminded me of a lesson CS Lewis would reinforce: animals are to be loved and not abused. Neither Walt nor Lewis were vegetarians, but both hated animal cruelty. Who would shoot a faun? Who would kill a doe with her children? Only Man, men would never do so. The 1940s were full of Man as men forgot their limits. Man would break the atom and control the world. Man would cleanse the race and make things better. Man would dispense with Nature and build a better world through Man’s Science. Don’t believe me? Watch the horrible destruction of Nature in the film Things to Come that 1930’s Man thought was a good act!

Walt and Bambi attack Man and so redeem men. We are limited and we are part of Nature. There is beauty in the natural world and paving over all of it, using it all as our sport, and burning it down through our carelessness is wrong. It breaks the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. Hitler and Stalin must have hated Bambi.

Mother can die. For such a slow paced film about growing up, Bambi also has one of the toughest, unflinching death scenes ever filmed. I still cry when Bambi’s mother is shot down by Man. On a later re-release I sat near a kid who thought that the scene was funny and I suspected that this kid would grow up to be a super-villain. I know now that “laughter” is one way kids release tension.

World War II was real and it taught a generation that Mom can die. This lesson is needed because life is not cruel, but our sinful, broken world is. Things are not always as they should be and the “circle of life” is broken when Man breaks the rules. Mom can die. This possibility, a reminder from Walt of the truth, is unpleasant . . . but only shocking for Americans cossetted by two oceans from much suffering.

Reminder: that generation saw plenty of Daddies die off in the Pacific, in Normandy, or over Germany. What do you do when tragedy strikes? Life goes on and love and goodness make the sacrifices and death of beloved family members bearable: never good but bearable.

Love keeps life going and love is connected to childbirth. That is the most subversive part of Bambi today. Mother and Father have Bambi and Bambi grows up to have children of his own . . . and the first cause it “twitterpation.” Stuffy folk, like the Owl in the film, may warn against it, but twitterpation will happen because it is for something in nature: having babies. This must frustrate libertines who watch this deeply virtuous film.

Of all the movies the studio made before World War II ended their ability to make movies, Bambi is the one I liked least as a child and most as an adult. It was too slow for my 1970s childhood. Television had transformed childhood . . . given us the inability to watch things much longer than the 30 minute show. Even then Gilligan needed a pratfall a minute to keep us watching. Imagine Bambi to a kid raised on YouTube videos!

As an adult, however, Bambi rings true and I enjoy the pacing. Perhaps I am just old, but I think also I am wiser. This is a Nature film, not because it is about nature . . . animals still can’t talk, but because it is about the deeper Nature we have as creations of God. As creatures we are more like the deer than like God Himself. Deer are not in His Image as we are, but then deer are creatures as we are and God is not! Bambi reminds me of this Nature and so is deeply true.

And Bambi is a male deer.

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