Disney should not only set the record straight about the fact that lemmings do not commit mass suicide, but the multi-billion dollar corporation must also apologize for its actions in the 1950s documentary and immediately donate funds to create Arctic refuges for lemmings and other cold-habitat mammals. An auto-edit of Disneys White Wilderness, the film that started the myth of lemming suicide. Their tundra habitats are at great risk as the planet continues to warm.ĭisney has made money off of portrayals of animals for decades “and it is time it takes responsibility for this most dangerous and false one. However, this particular myth is based on some actual. Instinct, it is said, drives them to kill themselves whenever their population becomes unsustainably large. But these adorable, short-tailed voles are threatened by climate change like so many other arctic mammals. But there is one myth that has held on tenaciously: Every few years, herds of lemmings commit mass suicide by jumping off seaside cliffs. In reality, the tiny animals were being forced off the ledge and plunged into icy water where they would slowly drown.
#Lemmings jumping off cliffs disney movie#
Using its grotesque movie magic, Disney was able to make it look as though hundreds of lemmings were intentionally jumping from a cliff to their deaths. But the phrase has nothing to do with actual lemming behavior, and became widely circulated after a dangerously misleading 1950s nature documentary, White Wilderness, faked the mass suicide of these creatures to draw attention and make a profit.
#Lemmings jumping off cliffs disney full#
Read mostly around a table in an unremarkable conference room, “A Public Reading” is relevant and engaging despite this unusual construction and abrupt, staccato dialogue full of unfinished thoughts and sentences.Demand Disney Take Responsibility for Its Horrific Massacre of Lemmings, and the Myth It Spread to Cover it Up!Įver heard the phrase “don’t be a lemming?” It generally means to not follow the crowd, and make decisions for yourself. The play is presented as a screenplay written by Disney and read by actors playing Walt, his daughter, son-in-law and Roy (the real Disney died of lung cancer in 1966). He wants to build not another Fantasyland but a real city, a dream that turns out to be more difficult than he imagined. Instead, as imagined by the terrific Peter Galman, he’s a megalomaniacal businessman determined to leave a serious legacy, something more substantive than cartoon mice and ducks (though he’s swaggeringly proud of them, too). Whiting Award-winning playwright Lucas Hnath, who grew up in central Florida, uses dark comedy and a highly stylized structure to mine the depths of a Disney who isn’t exactly a bright-eyed, kid-friendly Uncle Walt.
“A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney” is a stark and riveting examination of a different set of Disney values: ego, empire building and the quest for immortality. For the 1958 Disney nature film White Wilderness, filmmakers eager for dramatic footage staged a lemming death plunge, pushing dozens of lemmings off a cliff. The latest production by Thinking Cap Theatre is all about Disney, but don’t expect singing animals or mermaids or princesses. Walt Disney (Peter Galman) confronts his daughter (Gretchen Porro) whil his brother Roy (Jim Gibbons) looks on. An auto-edit of Disneys White Wilderness, the film that started the myth of lemming suicide.
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