Can You Objectively Watch Disney’s ‘A Christmas Carol’?
The world wide media clamoring for Disney’s new release of “A Christmas Carol” is marketing for a movie like few of us have ever seen. Not only has the train been criss-crossing North America for six months but now they have hijacked the flip switching of London’s Christmas lights as well. Seriously, Disney has a lot riding on this movie.
What’s to worry about?
Disney is, afterall, the king of movie messaging. Hardly a tale is told without some kind of family-friendly point. Forget the fact that nearly every princess or family depicted in every Disney story comes from some sort of dysfunction (Snow White lives alone with 7 little men? Where is Ariel’s mother? Goofy has a son but no wife? Think of every Disney movie and you’ll see things amiss).
They are billing this new Christmas movie as Disney’s Christmas Carol.
And that, my friends, is the worry.
A Christmas Carol is a beloved tale. It is a tale of redemption. It is a Christmas story full of ghosts and absent of much of the flash of the season. It is pure Christmas.
Disney can do purity but sacred ground isn’t exactly their strong suit. After all, it was Disney who gave us Song of the South.
Can they capture the essence of Dickens? Can they avoid the commercial that was the Santa Clause trilogy, the hollowness and coldness of The Polar Express or the crassness of Fred Claus?
A Christmas Carol has been done before and done well. If folks don’t like the new telling by Disney, they have plenty of stand-bys to turn to in years to come.
Yes, Disney has a lot riding on this movie. Where there is great revenue potential there is great responsibility. They cannot make this movie a joke.
The question then becomes — can you watch it objectively? Will you buy into the hype? Will it be sold to you?
A Christmas Carol isn’t a tale to trifle with. I’m watching with a wary eye. I’m not sure they’ll get it right. And judging from some early reviews I fear my skepticism is justified.
I saw the movie and noticed Disney stuck closely to history and the Dickens text, except in one instance, where they changed history surprisingly and unnecessarily. For some reason, a woman asks Scrooge “are there no workhouses?” while behaving slutty. This not only makes the movie less appropriate for children, but removes the important history lesson of what “workhouses” were back in those days. Many of Dickens’ tales regard workhouses, because he spent time in one as a youth. The tale of Oliver Twist begins with the boy in one. He’s not a prostitute, he’s an orphaned boy victimized by the Poor Laws, subject to slavery. I assume Disney did not confuse this deliberately, because portraying a child toiling while a slavemaster held a whip would have been more acceptable imagery in a movie for kids.