![]() ![]() Hold back that criticism in your throat-if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Bambi (1942) makes the story cough up the ubiquitous happy ending: the forest (somehow) grows back there’s a baby to celebrate a patriarchy is romantically restored. Salten’s book originally ends ambiguously, depicting a bleak life in the woods for its animal denizens and their enemy, humans. Disney transformed much of the book, adding Thumper’s little piece of advice, to wheedle out a silver lining. The movie is adapted from the novel, Bambi, a Life in the Woods by the Jewish Austro-Hungarian author and critic Felix Salten. The origins of the phrase are somewhat murky, but its media proliferation begins with Disney’s Bambi in 1942. ![]() The only negativity that is countenanced is fatalistic or conservative. There is perhaps no more American expression than “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” The political versions of this aphorism range from the barbaric dictate that you should never criticize unless you have a prepackaged “solution” to a spectrum of more generalized affirmational delusions. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |