Bambi

Not tagging plot spoilers for obvious reasons – the movie did not deviate much from the book, all told: Bambi grows up, lears words, plays with other young deer and other animals with quirky personalities, like the owl who is always happy when people are surprised by it. Adolescence, mother dying, harsh winter, love and rivalry, some more forest society stuff, and finally his father dying and Bambi being all grown up. The works.

But then’s the part where you read with an adult’s eyes, and the knowledge that the author was born as Siegmund Salzmann in 1869 in Budapest, and (being Jewish) fleeing Austria in 1938, and is here writing in a very clearly post-1918 world, and there are a bunch of interesting parts:

• Daddy issues I: Daddy is not home, but he is so grand and impressive and mysterious, and literal fawning
• Daddy issues II: Daddy condescends to talk to Bambi once, in like two words, and it powers his personality for years
• Class issues: Deer are like princes and royalty, both in being admirable and great, and in being so accommodated to the easy life that winter hits them hard, and that the more burgois parts of society love to gossip about them
• War trauma I: A deer is very self-conscious about having been lamed, and all the other deer keep reassuring him that it’s really not noticeable at all
• War trauma II: Humans start hunting more and more, and societal rules start breaking down under pressure: harsher tone, everybody caring for themselves etc
• One deer gets domesticated, returns to the forest and fanboys about the Man, and then predictably gets shot, because he forgot about all the laws of the forest, ignores the others, and then runs towards humans. Surely the author being Jewish did nothing to inform this passage.
• Daddy issues III: Getting shot, but daddy saying “my child” overcomes even a wound, and he heals.
• Gender issues everywhere, of course: Particularly standing out when he sees his old partner/sweetheart suddenly appear “old and grey and like his mum”, hot dang
• Religion (aka Daddy issues IV): Just before the end, daddy teaches him that there is a higher Daddy who is above both humans and deer (even Deer Daddy) – slapped-on moral to get published?

Interesting read anyway, and I grew up on German children’s books of that time, so it felt like coming home.