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# Emma Thompson on the Darkness of Disney

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/4XHUmWfX.m3u8" -->
## Video: Emma Thompson on the Darkness of Disney

[Watch (HLS stream): Emma Thompson on the Darkness of Disney](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/4XHUmWfX.m3u8) (2:09)

![Emma Thompson on the Darkness of Disney](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/4XHUmWfX/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2013-12-04. Actress Emma Thompson talks with TIME about the dark sensibilities of Walt Disney_


---

Jul 27, 2023 3:59 PM UTC

---

## More From This Series

[All Videos](https://time.com/video/)

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### Emma Thompson on How She Would Change the World

[Emma Thompson On Her Past Loves](/video/iczw6dp1/)

### Emma Thompson On Her Past Loves

[Emma Thompson on Motherhood and Her Goth Daughter](/video/wMq7LsBi/)

### Emma Thompson on Motherhood and Her Goth Daughter

---


## Transcript

>> I mean, you must have friends who say, oh you know, who bemoan the Disneyfication in a way that [ unk ] does in a movie of Winnie the Pooh, or of, you know, The Little Mermaid, so what do you say to them?

>> Well, I agree with them. I deplore the Disneyfication of some of it. Some of it, I deplore; but then I look at Bambi, and I look at Dumbo, and Mary Poppins indeed, and think they're pretty-- they have gotten rid of darn stuff to watch those movies because there's tremendous amount of pain in them. I think latterly, it's become a little [ unk ]. And understanding Walt Disney, the fact that he had a very Dickensian childhood actually, so that Disneyland was a way of rendering a world of safe place for himself and for other children. We came-- I came when I was 14, and I could remember my father wondering where I'm going, why do they call them restrooms?

I don't want to have a rest. I want to be much more active than that. I don't understand. And so, there was a sanitation we felt, but if you go slightly deeper than that you understand it's not necessarily that. I think that our tendency as Europeans is to have-- is-- you could see that attitude quite a lot. That the subtlety does not exist; but, you know, read any of the great American writers, and you see that not only does it exist, but it is devastating. Great American writing is, you know, as good as anything as ever been written anywhere. They've gotten better. They could've done, achieved-- I mean, just that for instance.

And also, you know, you think of Richard Yates in a way in which he unpicked and uncovered that dream, the American dream. It's been debunked so many times for so many Americans, I can't understand why you would still think of this place as optimistic.

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