Ever since Walt Disney and company made “Bambi” more than 8o years ago (1942), despite an early scene in which a hunter kills the fawn’s mother, and subsequent violence and destruction in the forest, to this day most who have seen the movie, or at least have an impression of it, regard it as a children’s story.
And of course it is, but only ostensibly. More so, “Bambi” is a tale squarely for, and about, adults.
The proof sneers relentlessly at us, especially from the book on which the movie is based: “Bambi: A Life in the Forest” (1922), by Austro-Hungarian writer Felix Salten, now re-released with all of the horrific original content and an updated title: “The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest” (with the same intensely ironic nod to the word “Life”).
In countless forest fires and forest razes since 1942, man has destroyed thousands — probably millions — of Bambis and also woodland acres that are crucial for our physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
It is no spoiler alert that in this parable of innocence lost and mankind’s adversarial relationship with nature, nature loses. (And so do we.)