‘Bambi’ or — Fawn Porn?

(Warning — contains massive spoilers regarding the fate of Bambi’s mum plus sexual imagery)

It had been so long since I’d last seen ‘Bambi’ (1942) that I had completely misremembered it. For example — for the last forty odd years I assumed Bambi’s mum died near the start and on camera. But no. Revisiting the film last week it turns out she dies just after the halfway mark (allowing the bond between mother and son to be firmly established) and she is shot off camera… thank god! So why did I remember it differently? Sometimes the emotional impact is more lasting than the visual one I guess.

My other concern was the story. I was dreading ‘Bambi’ was going to be nothing more than matricide followed by Bambi, Thumper and Flower arsing about the forest for 70 minutes and generally getting on my nerves. Again, this was far from the case with the story to ‘Bambi’ being so simple it’s nothing more than an exhilarating, and potentially terrifying, truth — we’re born, we have sex, we die. Even the arsing about is there to emphasise this point.

So Bambi is born and there’s a sense of wonder amongst the woodlands animals along with the worrying air that this is going to be some sort of Christ analogy with theological overtones to soften the blow of mortality. But again, no. There might be a possible pantheistic reading to this film but not a theological one. Indeed, it feels heavily atheistic — animals live and die and aren’t we animals too? If you accept that reading ‘Bambi’ has more in common with the anthropological films of Shohei Imamura than, say, the animated work of Tex Avery or Chuck Jones. It also has a style that’s surprisingly naturalistic, almost enforced documentary if you like, so it’s more in the realm of William Freidkin than escapist fantasy.

In fact, ‘Bambi’ has nothing to do with woodland animals, deer or rabbits and everything to do with the human condition. This is a film made by human beings, for human beings about human beings. Why do I think that? Because I’m pretty certain a deer wouldn’t make a film like this for one thing. How would it hold the camera?

Anyway, Bambi grows up, learns that the world is dangerous, loses his mum, is sort of consoled (but also not really) by a distant father figure before spring arrives and EVERYBODY starts fucking. Wow! Why have I heard nobody talk about this element of the film?! It’s more shocking than Bambi’s mum dying, that’s for sure and trust me, there is a lot of sex in ‘Bambi’; at one point even the water is stiff!

Once Spring arrives the sex gets completely out of control with the wise old owl informing the three young friends (all of whom are completely naked incidentally) — Bambi, Thumper and Flower (possibly the most sexually coquettish character to ever appear on screen — he’s nothing more than a throbbing, moist, open orifice with eyes) — that not only does sex exist and that they might get to have sex but that sex is going to happen to them whether they like it or not! Incidentally, Flower’s reaction when the owl tells him that, yes, it will even happen to him too is one of the finest, most emotionally evocative pieces of animation Disney Studios have ever done and I adore it. Then again, don’t we all look like that when we’re told we’re fuckable?

So off into the woods these three friends go, dismissing the warning words of the wise bird, only to immediately be… accosted? sexually seduced with ravenous unstoppability? by a female skunk, female rabbit and female deer in turn. Flower is the first to go and is hit on by a sexy skunkess hiding in a flower with such intensity that he turns into a massive, red-hot, throbbing erection. His friends wonder what’s happened to him to which he just giggles over his shoulder as he is led off to what I can only imagine is some of the most kinky, explicit, X-rated sex imaginable. They won’t just be doing it missionary, that’s for sure.

Thumper is the next to go. His fate is even more outrageous than Flower’s as the innocent bunny is stunned into stasis by a female rabbit so sexually on display, so erotically drawn that even the cheeks on her face are a set of tits. She makes Jessica Rabbit seem like a nun. This rabbit is so extremely sexually forward that poor Thumper has almost no say in any of this, but boy, is this one turned on bunny! Thumper’s horny thump is fantastic and filthy as hell (it’s the noise his foot makes that’s as erotic as the animation), something made even more sexual by how the female bunny reaches out and touches his… nose. The effect of this is too much for the poor rabbit to bear and he immediately collapses into a state of sexual arousal and psychological helplessness. Bambi and we leave him getting his ears fondled as his foot thumps away like a jack-hammer and fuck knows what happens after that. It was at this point I’d totally forgotten about Bambi’s mum and had the hunch this film might also have something to say about moving on from the grieving process but I’m still mulling that one over.

Bambi is the last to get waylaid, with the emphasis on the “laid”, but he kinda gets the short end of the stick sexually as, being the hero, it’s all about romance for him. But his seduction scene is a lovely sequence before, out of nowhere, life and conflict again intrude. From here on it’s about survival and maturation and all expressed by some of the most beautiful animation and design to grace the screen.

And that’s pretty much about it. No evil Queen to kill, no princess to save, no diabolical baddie to destroy — simply life and that it continues. ‘Bambi’ has nothing to do with “animals” and everything to do with us, human beings as animals. By projecting ourselves safely onto them it allows us to experience events we might not want to deal with otherwise. I think that, for me, is where the emotion and profundity come in.

‘Bambi’ also looks gorgeous. This is easily one of Disney’s most beautiful films with everything from the rain, the leaves, fire, and sky pushing the border of the realistic so far it becomes a captivating dream. The scene of Bambi frolicking in the snow, for example, is insanely well done as is the climatic flight against encroaching destruction.

‘Bambi’ is practically perfection. It’s easily one of, if not the, best Disney film and it’s certainly his most mature. Although I’m wary of any film that leaves me wanting to go out and fuck a rabbit.