A Bambi Question

The Sentimental Disney Cartoon Cemented the Myth That Man and Nature Can’t Coexist

By Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann | April 19, 2016

Perking up her ears, the dog was the first to notice them, just a few blocks from our homes in east-central Illinois. One-by-one the does strolled from the woods into the meadow. They eyed us without lifting their tails, seemingly habituated to this neighborhood. Their appearance awed us but also prompted different responses. Joseph recalled long past hunting trips four miles south in a tree stand overlooking a soybean field and tried to pick out the fattest doe in the group. But Robin remembered watching Bambi at a theatre birthday party at the age of six. That brought her, the birthday boy, and the other female guests to tears, wondering if our mothers might be next.

These contradictory responses suggest the lingering strength of the Bambi myth, the lasting legacy of Walt Disney’s 1942 cartoon about that big-eyed fawn. Seventy-four years later, Bambi’s worldview still animates debates over animal rights and environmentalism: Should we save Bambi or save the earth?

Sharon Olds, "Elder Sister"

This poem still chokes me up. It makes me think both literally and figuratively about the paths my sister and "sisters" made for me, making my walk through life so much easier:

Elder Sister
by Sharon Olds
In The Dead and the Living: Poems by Sharon Olds. Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

When I look at my elder sister now
I think of how she had to go first, down through the
birth canal, to force her way
head-first through the tiny channel,
the pressure of Mother's muscles on her brain,
the tight walls scraping her skin.
Her face is still  narrow from it, the long
hollow cheeks of a Crusader on a tomb,
and her inky eyes have the look of someone who has
been in prison a long time and
 knows they can send her back. I look at her
body and think how her breasts were the first to

rise, slowly, like swans on a pond.
By the time mine came along, they were just

two more birds in the flock, and when the hair

rose on the white mound of her flesh, like

threads of water out of the ground, it was the

first time, but when mine came
they knew about it. I used to think
only in terms of her harshness, sitting and
pissing on me in bed, but now I
see I had her before me always
like a shield. .I look at her wrinkles, her clenched

jaw, her frown-lines--I see they are
the dents on my shield, the blows that did not reach me.
She protected me, not as a mother
protects a child, with love, but as a

hostage protects the one who makes her
escape as I made my escape, with my sister's

body held in front of me.

English Studies Student Conference, Eastern Illinois University, April 7 and 8, 2016

Pre-Conference Events

Thursday April 7 in Witters Conference Room, Booth Library 4440

4:30 – 5:15

We Need Diverse Media!

with Dr. Robin Murray (Coordinator, EIU Film Studies minor)

Come for a lively discussion of diversity in contemporary film.

Stay for a chance to win one of twenty DVDs in the raffle.

Refreshments will be served between events

5:45 – 6:45

Social Justice Teacher Panel

featuring EIU Alums

Nico Canaday, Mt. Zion Public Schools

Kathy Decker, Champaign Public Schools

Lisa Nuku, Monticello Public Schools

English Studies Conference

Friday April 8, Third floor of Coleman Hall

Presentations, readings, panels, and workshops by EIU students—a celebration of the rich variety of academic, professional, and creative activities in English Studies.

Conference Schedule

9:00     Registration opens

10:00   Sessions

11:00   Sessions

12:00   Free Lunch + Poster Sessions

1:00     Keynote Address by Dr. Melissa Ames (see below)

2:00     Sessions

3:00     Sessions

Keynote

1:00 Friday April 8 in Lumpkin Hall Auditorium

“Funhouse Mirrors: Culture’s Distorted Visions of Gender”

Conference keynote by our own Dr. Melissa Ames, author of How Pop Culture shapes the Stages of a Woman's Life: From Toddlers in Tiaras to Cougars on the Prowl.