10 Darkly Disturbing Disney Movie Theories

By Helen Jones / August 27, 2017

When you’re but a young whippersnapper, there’s nothing more enchanting than a wholesome Disney flick. And to a young, innocent mind there’s usually nothing more to Disney movies than bright colours, talking animals, impossibly beautiful princesses and vaguely interpretable moral lessons.

But faster than you can say ‘Jiminy Cricket’ those young, once innocent Disney fans are soon old, jaded adults forced to take a second look at their childhood movies of yore in a wholly different light. Incorporating all the crap that makes adult life depressing to the background of their analysis, those fans find harrowing realities like drug abuse, rampant racism and psychopathic killers, for example, in amongst the joy.

Yep, depressing as it may be several fan theory enthusiasts (a.k.a. jaded old bastards) have reassessed our favourite Disney movies in a way that pisses all over the parade of their original, innocent magic.

You thought Disney movies were all about friendship, love and living happily ever after? Think again: these downer Disney fan theories are about to ruin any happy memories you have of Disney movies. Our condolences in advance.

10. Who Framed Roger Rabbit Is About Racial Segregation

The most revelatory thing that’s come out about multi-Oscar-winning Disney-Touchstone animation Who Framed Roger Rabbit in recent years isn’t that it features a sneaky nude crotch shot of Jessica Rabbit but rather that it’s probably a thinly-veiled metaphor for racism and racial segregation.

Set in 1947 during the height of Jim Crow-era segregation, the film focuses on Toontown – an animated neighbourhood of Los Angeles where cartoons reside segregated from their human counterparts that’s at risk of destruction at the hands of Judge Doom who plans to replace the town with a freeway for LA’s wealthy human inhabitants. A plot not too unlike the gentrification of predominantly non-white neighbourhoods in many Western societies.

Then we have Jessica Rabbit, the most humanlike of Toontown’s toons, who private detective Eddie Valiant finds very attractive despite his self-proclaimed hatred of cartoons which according to the theory symbolises the confused desire many white males felt towards women of colour despite viewing them as lesser.

And there’s the evil Judge Doom who, it turns out, is actually a cartoon disguised in human form – an Uncle Tom type sell-out who betrays his own in order to benefit from his assimilation into human society. The difference is that there’s a happy ending in Who Framed Roger Rabbit whereas some parts of the US are still racist cesspools today.