Tarzan
dir. Chris Buck & Kevin Lima
Disney

Disney's Tarzan is the most visceral, thrilling movie I've seen so far this summer. It sets a new standard in integrating traditional cel animation with computer-generated elements, and the realization of the character of Tarzan by animator Glen Keane is truly mindblowing. The scenes of Tarzan's education, which show his fascination with human accomplishment even though civilization is entirely foreign to him, suggest a somewhat stirring kinship among those engaged in the human experience. The voice talents are all very able, and Phil Collins' music suffices.

That's it. That's the Tarzan review. There's nothing more to critique because that's all the movie proffers that's the least bit unfamiliar. Unlike Scheherazade, who had to tell a different story each night for 1,001 nights to preserve her life, Disney's animation division has had to tell only one.

Since the division's reinvigoration in 1989, that story has become more than just the stuff between "once upon a time" and "happily ever after." It has become its own industry, each iteration a self-described "masterpiece" that finds few dissenters.

And it's far, far too reductive to brush the phenomenon off with an "Ehh, it's just cartoons." According to the Internet Movie Database, the front line of Disney animated features (not including films like The Rescuers Down Under or A Goofy Movie, which were conceived outside this mindset, or Toy Story and A Bug's Life, made somewhat independently by Pixar) have, since 1989's A Little Mermaid, made $1.25 billion domestic box office — that's before international theatrical play, video sales and merchandising. (The Lion King's domestic and international box office alone pulled in more than three quarters of a billion dollars.)

The insidious part is that I suspect Disney's animated features, more than any other subset of cinema, are rewatched more often than they are originally watched. What a vicious circle: "If they'll watch the same movie time and again, then we'll just offer them the same clichés with different dressings, and they'll watch that one time and again." It's a perpetual notion machine.

Doesn't it follow, then, that grown-ups should be not dismissing but dismantling this machine, this übernarrative? The morality of its message may be subject for debate, but there's no doubt that it's been candy-coated into confectionary perfection, and since the kids are the ones with the remote control and time to kill, it should at least be acknowledged.

So pick a film.

Here, then, is the generic story, gendered male because this is supposed to be a review of Tarzan: The young hero, who is headstrong and guileless, has some trauma in his past that results in his disadvantage relative to his community in the eyes of that community. He comes into contact with a party of more privileged people, of which one is the love interest and of which another may be the villain, who will be motivated jointly by greed and pride. The hero, egged on by an anthropomorphized something and a catchy tune, wants to win favor in the eyes of both his community and that privileged party and therefore must mature and assimilate or overcome this perceived disadvantage.

He does overcome and does win favor, but becomes so comfortable in these new trappings that the villain is able to make some critically villainous move that threatens the community from which he first came. Using the lessons of his maturation, he forsakes the fruits of inclusion to combat evil. With no small amount of help from the nonvillainous members of the privileged party, who have come to realize that the maturation he underwent on their behalf was in response to some form of immaturity on their part, the villain is defeated. The hero rises into a position of respect and often power relative to his original community, and he always gets the girl.

It's not a bad story. Of course, there's still more: Doesn't every protagonist have a to die-for physique and a perfect American heartland accent? Isn't every villain European — Western for the boys and Eastern for the girls? Aren't technology and progress always synonymous and always bad? Where are all the mothers? and so forth. In these details, many might find things they object to, elements with which they don't wish to indoctrinate their children; many may decide these are trifling matters that won't really affect their child's judgment or values; God bless them both for putting thought to the matter.

Setting those specificities aside, consideration of the basic story-structure itself shows that it values inclusion, sacrifice, friendship, interdependence, a superficial kind of selflessness and a pretty simplistic depiction of romantic love. There are certainly worse things than all of those.

But there are better things, too, and that's the real damage. There are better things — deeper and more resonant themes, and more complex and more enriching ideas — which can't or shouldn't be shoehorned into this inflexible storytelling model. Take a stopwatch to any recent-era Disney film; time how long it takes until the hero first gets into trouble. How long until the villain shows up. How long until the musical number about growing up, and then, within that montage, how long until you see the hero fail at a difficult task, and then how much longer in the same montage until you see the hero succeed at the same task.

To my mind, it's not arrogant or imperious for Disney to want to dramatize in a cartoon the life of Pocahontas or the legendary poem of Mulan, but it is arrogant, imperious and dumb of them to think that they can do adequate service to them all in the same rigid format. Pocahontas needs a talking tree? Mulan needs Eddie Murphy? Come on.

But Disney won't deviate from it. As earlier stated, it feeds that cycle of watching and rewatching that not only primes these consumers for the next Disney merchandising-extravaganza-cum-film, but creates lifetime members to the Disney experience.

All the cross-promotions and the theme parks and the whole bit–that's only part of it. There are better things than the Disney story, but what if overexposure affects a person in such a way that they can't do narrative that doesn't contain its elements? Don't just predispose them to musical numbers and happy endings, saccharine sweetness and toothless humor, guaranteed inclusion and guaranteed love for everyone but the meanies. Limit their narrative input such that no other story resonates with them but this one, and everything else is then inferior by definition.

And when they're are ready to move on from cartoons, Disney is there for these lifetime members, now well-conditioned for the studio's "serious" live-action films (click through for anecdotal evidence). These share the cartoons' emotional texture but with different (though not so different) stories. Think Mr. Holland's Opus, Jack, Dangerous Minds, Simon Birch–or, as I'm sure they'd prefer, don't think.

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)