Not everything has aged well, but the animator’s storytelling skills still strike a chord with 21st-century childrenPrincesses, overpriced theme parks and a rapacious commercialisation of childhood: these would have been my suggestions if I’d been asked six months ago what I thought were Walt Disney’s legacies.
Which isn’t to say that I’m anti-Disney.
At all.
Every generation has their Disney, and just as I grew up singing along to Ariel in The Little Mermaid and Mrs Potts (so superior to Belle) in Beauty and the Beast, so my children are regularly babysat by Frozen and Encanto.
I watched the films on a VHS, my children stream them, but the effect is the same: just one glimpse of the Magic Kingdom icon at the start of a Disney film acts like a stun gun on them, silencing them mid-argument then pinning them to the sofa.
Read full article