The Sewer that is our Culture

There are many folks who've written about the depravity of our culture much more eloquently and intellectually than I'm able to -- but I have to throw in my 2 cents here.

I was on the train home today and passed a billboard advertising the new DVD version of the Little Mermaid movie. OK, no big deal. The Little Mermaid is just another in the long line of wholesome, family-friendly movies Disney has made for decades -- right?

Wrong.

Somewhere along the way, Disney, like so many of our cultural institutions, went wrong. Instead of providing wholesome family entertainment, they started promoting the hyper-sexualized, virtually pornographic, images that so permeate our culture. This is what I mean.

I don't think of myself as a prude, but is it really necessary for the viewers of this movie -- young boys and girls -- to have the main character so "figuratively" endowed (if you get my drift) and to have that figure displayed so prominently?

I started thinking of this change in Disney characters and did a little browsing this evening. The difference between recent Disney characters and the classic Disney characters is pretty striking. Here is another recent character, "Jasmine".

Compare these two buxom characters -- with their skimpy bikini tops -- to three of the classic Disney characters, Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty below.

Do we really need to be exposing innocent young children to these kind of sexualized images?