Starting in 1923, The Disney Company has been an active participant in the lives of children across the globe. Disney has hidden positive life lessons and has delivered them through movies for many years. Movies such as, The Lion King, teach us that we can’t let our past hold us down, instead, we must learn from it and become the best version of ourselves. Not every child grew up in a perfect world, and not every child lived through heartache either, but in this great mess of life,  kids need to be able to recieve a positive influence. Disney is able to send out positive messages through their movies, not only life lessons, but also in the world of environmental awareness, safety, and equality.

In the movie, Toy Story, the message is that when we work together, we can accomplish anything. When Buzz

Lightyear says “To infinity and beyond,” he is inspiring children to never give up. These messages can apply to children and adults just the same. Another example of a life message is in, Beauty and the Beast. It is quite obvious, now that we are older, to see that the message is to treat someone the way you want to be treated, but as a child it was just a lovely tale about a beast of a man getting the girl. A more recent movie message is in the movie Up. The message is to not let an event stop you from living your life. When Ellie, on her deathbed, says “Thanks for the adventure. Now go have a new one.” Yes, it broke all of our hearts, and this is also where all of the waterworks started to pour out, but in the end she is right! When one chapter of our lives closes, our book can’t just end! We need to “Just keep swimming.” (Finding Nemo).

Disney not only has life lessons down, they also have touched the area of environmental awareness with the movie Wall-E. Wall-E is the small robot who is left on the world to clean up after the human race. It shows one possible future of the globe where it is covered in trash and garbage with no way for human life to be possible. To add to the trash filled planet, the people that live up in the new life-sustaining spaceship are all morbidly obese and lack intelligence. By watching this movie, children are able to pick up the signals that this could be what the world is coming to and that the first step to changing it is to change yourself.

Disney also sends the positive message of safety. In Pinocchio, the boy leaves his dad and ends up lost and kidnapped. In The Little Mermaid, Ariel leaves her dad and she loses her voice to a sea witch and almost turns into a shrub. Children then learn the importance of listening to your guardians, and staying safe.

Finally, Disney shows the power of equality. By creating many princesses and characters of all different types, they

encourage children to accept people for who they are inside. They have done a good job with creating princesses of all racial backgrounds like Jasmine and Aladdin from the movie Aladdin, Anna and Christophe from the movie Frozen, and Mulan and Shang from the movie Mulan, and to add to the diversity, there is a rumor going about that they are working on a pacific islander princess that’ll come out in 2018. Disney shows the same sort of storyline with characters from other places in order to emphasize the fact that things happen to people of all races, religions, and backgrounds.
Disney movies can teach us a lot about how to live our lives and make the most of them. These movies have the ability to make a person laugh or cry no matter what age the viewer is, and that is what makes Disney such an important factor in our lives. It is not only the lessons that you learn, but it is also the feeling that you get when watching a Disney classic.