Disney

Home video became available at the end of the Seventies, so I grew up at a time when you had one shot to see a great movie, and then, if you were lucky it'd be shown on ABC, NBC, CBS or PBS at some indeterminate time after that: at least a year or two.

The good news was that there was "The Wonderful World of Disney" on ABC on Sunday nights. Of course, that only worked until we got into fundamentalist Christianity BIG TIME and our Sunday evenings were booked up.

We were Wesleyans, which I happened to be proud of (though not proud enough to actually proselytize for). Wesleyans are an offshoot of Methodists who broke away because we couldn't abide the thought of slavery. We were abolitionists, whereas those who continued under the name of Methodist were content to await some sort of accommodation via the government. Those who weren't finding rationalizations for slavery in the Bible, that is.

I'm a Lutheran now, but I wouldn't be, if I could convince my wife to go to the local Wesleyan Church in Fridley, MN. (Just south of I-694, between Central Ave. and University Ave.) I wouldn't accept Lutheran teaching if I found it incompatible with the way I was raised, but the fact is... It's good. I've enjoyed all the sermons of all three of our pastors (so far), especially the new guy! I really like the way he sticks to the Biblical text, only diverging into personal tales about their application in his own life.

Whoa!! That should have been a separate post. The only reason I don't do it now is because I doubt that I'll get this material into a post later.

I was talking about Disney movies. Was Winnie the Pooh a Disney movie? I could find it here - I've probably stomped on it 10 times in the past month - but it's not worth it to look for it now. That was the first movie I remember seeing. And, I'm told, I spent half the movie crying in the lobby. I suspect "half" was an exaggeration, because, when we bought the Video, I remembered almost all of it.

But, alas, Winnie the Pooh was pretty much the last of Walt's efforts. I remember people bitching about what he did to weaken the morals of "Little Red Riding Hood" and others of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, which were all about avoiding wild animals, perverts, rapists and mass murderers (especially if they lived under bridges). But what Disney produced in the Seventies would have driven Walt to homicide himself. Look at Rescuers: the art is almost as bad as Hanna-Barbara. The actors who played the voices are fine: Bob Newhart, Zsa Zsa Gabor, a bunch of people I would have recognized at first utterance in 1976, but have completely forgotten now (except that I know I knew them then), et al.

I mean, For God's Sake! How in the Hell did anyone think that this movie belonged in the same genre as "Sleeping Beauty?"! I mean, it's not completely awful, like, say, "Morons from Outer Space," but it's nowhere near the quality of a "Pocahantas."

The advent of "Star Wars" was very much welcome after all that dreck, and I still feel enough gratitude that I will see the last prequel of that series, with the memories of the "heroes" and anti-heroes of early- and mid-Seventies movies and TV as my comparisons.

Steppenwolf? F*** me to tears!! I'll take Luke Skywalker any day!