Movie Review

The Fox and the Hound is not only one of my favorite Disney movies, it is one of my favorite movies in general. I grew up on this movie and I used to watch it as a little kid. However, it didn't strike me as a great and powerful story until a few years ago when I rewatched it. I am not known to cry in many movies, but this is one of those movies for which I could not hold back the tears. There is this one scene that always gets me, that gives me that anguished feeling in my chest, and makes me want to scream angrily aloud about the unfairness of the world. For those of you who have not seen the movie, you probably don't know what I'm talking about, but basically I was angry about how the innocence of the main characters was destroyed because of the environment in which they lived.

We all have to deal with becoming less innocent and childish and free of worries when we get older, but it can also be a painful process. In the beginning of the movie, a fox, Todd, and a hound, Copper, are very young and playful little animals who are the best of friends; however, as the movie goes on, their unbreakable friendship slowly crumbles due to the societal projections about what their relationship should be. Even having been best friends when they were younger, Copper and Todd are told as they grow up that they should be enemies and that friendship was not possible.

What really touched me was how "enemies", the hound being the one who hunts the fox for his hunter, could be friends, and that they were taught to hate each other. They didn't see each other as another animal but rather as a friend. Hate for the other was conditioned into them by their environment. Going beyond the plot of the movie, we can look how it relates to our society, racism being a good example. I wonder if a black baby and a white baby see the other as different kind of people. I am sure they would play with the other just because the wanted a playmate. They would not really care about the color of the other's skin, would they? However, race is something, as they get older, that is taught to them and is a force that tears them apart rather than unifies them. I am not advocating that we should act like children, but it goes to show how their innocence is destroyed and how they don't see forces that would separate us as humans.