Master of Puppets

A few years ago I purchased the movie Up for a friend's child as a Christmas gift.  A few weeks later, Chris and I watched Up for the first time and cried all the way through it.  The next time I saw my friend, I apologised profusely. He told me not to worry and that he and his wife pre-screen any movies or books for their children before they give anything the green light.*  I commented that this was a good idea and asked if they had always done this.  He said no, that they had started it after reading the original Pinocchio to their child and discovering some unpleasant surprises about "The Real Pinocchio".

Fast forward a few years.  Chris and I acquired an Disney-free version of the book Pinocchio, I heeded my warning to Chris, but we eventually decide to read it to the minions anyway at bedtime over several days because although the minions love story time, they aren't exactly the most attentive audience. Essentially, they are still a little too young to absorb the full Hunter S. Thompson nature of this puppet's journey and we decided to figure out why this classic story had my friend on amber alert for inappropriate bed time stories.

You can purchase your own copy of Pinocchio at Amazon

 

SPOILER ALERT - If you want to find out how utterly bizarre Pinocchio is without my sarcasm, don't read on, just grab a copy of the book.

Here are the highlights of a puppet's journey to become a real boy that Walt Disney didn't want included in the movie (according to Wikipedia because Walt decided that the Real Slim Shady is an unlikable jerk and that they needed to nice him up for audiences):

• Pinocchio isn't just a liar, he's a dirty liar, with a sanctimonious demeanour. (Whoa is me, I believed there was a money tree and got tricked by robbers!)
• Pinocchio kills the little cricket who tries to warn him of the dangers of being a selfish moron by throwing a hammer at him.**
• The puppet boy is later haunted by the ghost of the above-mentioned cricket.
• When Pinocchio lies to his Fairy and his nose grows big, it doesn't just shrink down after he's come clean, it's pecked down to size by a flock of wood peckers.
• The Land of Toys (or Pleasure Island in the Disney version) are both fairly equally terrible, where bad boys literally turn them selves into donkeys for slave labour.
• After the puppet has been donkified, he turns back into a puppet when cannibalistic fish eat his donkey flesh.
• The whale that Geppetto and Pinocchio are eaten by in the Disney movie is actually a ferocious mile long shark with three layers of teeth.
• Little boy Lampwick randomly dies as a donkey with no real explanation.
• At one point Pinocchio is hung in a tree to die.***

Suddenly letting your five year old watch Team America doesn't seem so bad!


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*For the record they also cried like crazy during Up.
**Jiminy Squish it.
***Unfortunately the little monster keeps coming back to life, like some sort of evil marionette zombie.