Has anyone watched The Fox and the Hound recently? You know, that early 80’s Disney movie about the fox and hunting dog who become best friends when they’re little and then their circumstances and natures get in the way . . . but friendship.
It has been over two decades since I’d seen the movie and I confess I remember very little of it. But my grandma, Nana — my dad’s mom, frequently tells the story of us watching it together when she’d look after me. I was three or four and would insist on watching it over and over again — at least one time that meant three times in one day. So much for my parents’ permission that I could watch only one show . . . grandmas are great like that.
Last night we watched it again. My dad’s idea, and I was reluctant. You think that I would be jumping at the chance to watch a movie I was supposedly obsessed with as a toddler (I mean, I do still like kids’ movies a whole lot), but I couldn’t shake this sense that it was a sad movie.
Spoilers ahead.
IT IS A SAD MOVIE. Or at least, it’s really fucking dark. My mom and I have long tried to trace that bit of darkness within me that bled into Barbie stories. And I think we found it last night.
Of course, it has that classic Bambi style opening where a mom fox is carrying her baby running from hunters, hides him, and then is promptly shot (twice, TWO GUNSHOTS) just offscreen. But that’s expected. What’s a Disney movie without some dead parents?
But this innocently G rated movie kept the threat of death upfront and loud throughout the movie, with our little fox’s (Tod) new best friend Copper being raised as a hunting dog just across the road. Copper’s owner frequently shows off his guns, his animal pelts, and most of the plot revolves around him trying to murder Tod with Copper’s help. And Copper at one point helps him! There’s also a scene of Tod’s owner abandoning him in the wild after her crazy hunter neighbor tells her he’s going to keep trying to kill our baby fox. So she abandons him far away LIKE THAT WOULDN’T INSTANTLY KILL A DOMESTICATED ANIMAL.
There’s also threat of death by fire, a murderous black bear with red eyes, and animals generally being threatened . . .
I mean there are some deep messages here. About war and social conditioning and otherness and empathy . . . and it’s clearly an anti-hunting story. Like, wow, the number of times they had Tod look at piles of animal pelts was obscene.
And it also DOESN’T HAVE A HAPPY ENDING.
Like, I guess Tod and Copper are both okay and it might be implied that they can go live good lives now (they gave Tod a completely unnecessary love interest at the end like the whole plot didn’t revolve around him and Copper being in love *huge eye roll*). But they do not become friends again! Those innoncent days of ‘best freinds forever’ are firmly over at the end of the film. I guess because life doesn’t always have happy endings???
But also, fuck that.
Anyway, I am so confused about why this was my favorite movie when I was little. I remembered next to none of it now, but this was a movie that was thrust upon my developing mind over and over again, at my own insistence! Did I not understand everything that was happening? Surely. But there are very few happy moments in the film (there are lots of long ambling scenes and dated music, but very few joyful scenes outside of a short best friends montage that’s quickly interrupted with that nasty threat of “your best friend’s master wants you dead“).
Did this normalize dark stories for me? I am a person who likes happy endings, no matter what, so maybe I learned something from all those times watching it not happen. I am also a person who really likes the enemies to lovers trope (or friends to enemies to lovers) . . . maybe this was the first origin story? I am certainly a person who hates hunting so they made their point there.
Other observations welcome. I can’t figure this one out.
With Love,
Natalie