That's Right, Walt Disney's "Fantasia" is Demonic!

Image from http://www.disneydreaming.com/2010/09/02/fantasia-and-fantasia-2000-special-edition-blu-ray-and-dvd/

Last week, I posted how Walt Disney's Pinocchio had very strong Christian connotations.  This week, I'll examine Walt Disney's Fantasia, which was released during the same year (1940).  Unlike Pinocchio, it is NOT Christian... not in the least!

     Before reviewing Fantasia, however, here's a brief note on the follow up, Fantasia 2000, which wasn’t much of a movie:  It clocks in at a mere 75 minutes, and that’s even with a replay of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from the original film (poorly introduced by Penn and Teller, I might add).  Despite some stunning animation at times, such as the sequence with the humpback whales flying through the Aurora Borealis, not even the animators seemed to be making such a big deal about it all.  After all, you can find stunning animation all over the place these days.  It is no longer such a great thing.  The first Fantasia was full of a bunch of pomp and circumstance, but Fantasia 2000 manages to introduce the animated pieces like some retrospective you might find on some awards show or one of those TV specials where they count down the best commercials or best big screen kisses.  Steve Martin jokes all the way through his presentation.

    And in retrospect, it makes the original Fantasia seem not all that great either.  The one thing I kept thinking about the original Fantasia while watching it was how undoubtedly brilliant this early animation was, light years ahead of the “Silly Symphonies” Disney had already done or the “Merrie Melodies” over at Warner Brothers, and with just Snow White and Pinocchio having been released as animated features at the time Fantasia was released.  At the same time, I was thinking how much of a polar opposite it was to Pinocchio on a purely spiritual level.  While I easily gave a Christian reading of Pinocchio (last week, linked here) I’m afraid Fantasia would come off looking very poor by comparison. 

Some of Fantasia's more Demonic, Pagan, Racist, and Evolutionary Darwinist Elements

      The main sequence, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” shows Mickey Mouse performing what looks to be questionable black magic in a sorcerer’s dungeon, and those multiplying brooms with arms are actually quite creepy if you think about it.  In fact, almost every sequence could be considered questionable from a Christian perspective:  The Faeries in the Tchaikovsky piece, or the heavy emphasis on the gods and creatures of Roman myth, with Zeus throwing lightning bolts at defenseless creatures on the ground (aside from the horrid black stereotypes they had to edit out for the DVD release), or the “Rite of Spring” sequence that implies, the same as Darwinists, how life evolved from nothing by chance.  Even back then, there was no way for them to explain how these era’s came about, and were reduced to creating a “mud screen” in the water which would clear and show the next explosion of life.  Evolutionary science has followed this same path all these years.  There are an unbelievable number of “mud screens” in which nothing has ever been explained.  The only large sequence to escape this, by the way, is the humorous “Dance of the Hours”, with dancing ostriches, hippos, elephants, and crocodiles.  

Scenes from the well animated but ultimately demonic "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence

     The worst offense, of course, is what is generally considered the film’s high point:  “Night on Bald Mountain” with the skeletons, ghosts, hellish demons, and the dark figure who looks surprisingly like an interpretation of the devil in all his evil.  

     He is vanquished in this film by church bells, which give way to “Ave Maria” which ends the movie, with figures moving quietly through a picturesque countryside with glowing lanterns, but this sequence is so slow and languid, it comes off as very inferior to the dancing demons and scary skeletons of the previous sequence.  That’s not the best compliment you can give to an old animated movie, and probably one reason Fantasia isn’t quite as adored by generations of children as Disney’s other films have been.  I think you’d find that Fantasia is probably mostly appreciated by adult animation aficionados only, and they probably aren’t Christian.  I am, and although I bought it, merely because I am also a bit of an adult animation freak, I am having reservations about doing so after having watched it again.  Despite the early achievements in animation blended with classical music, there is no continued narrative to hold the whole thing together, and it is about as interesting today as watching an old block of pretty good music videos.  It’s just not the same as a good narrative movie, especially with all these spiritually questionable elements!