My friend Christian Hamaker, knowing that I am a fan of both Disney cartoons and Bible movies, pointed me to this item that went up today at one of the Reuters blogs:
Donald Duck has been expelled from Noah’s Ark.
To be more precise, a Donald Duck film clip has been removed from a replica of Noah’s Ark in the Netherlands. That came after a local church protested that the film being shown to children visiting the ark strayed too far from the Bible story. . . .
“We must always try to stay as close as we can to the word of God,” a spokesman for the local church, a member of the Christian Reformed Congregations, told the public broadcaster NOS. “But that doesn’t happen in the way this film tells the story.” After a meeting with church leaders, the Ark staff decided to yank Donald for the rest of their stay. . . .
The film clip in question is the ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ sequence from Fantasia 2000 (1999), which I have mentioned here before. It portrays Donald Duck as Noah’s assistant, and Daisy Duck as his girlfriend. (Donald’s, that is, not Noah’s.) It’s certainly not as biblically literate as one or two other Disney cartoons I could mention, but it’s pretty harmless. Check it out for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkLzjGTDmT4
Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly.
Incidentally, it appears that this cartoon evolved from an earlier idea in which it was the dove, rather than Donald, who helped Noah herd the animals and so on. The following storyboard reel, called ‘Noah’s Dove’, was included as a bonus feature in the three-disc Fantasia boxed set that came out seven years ago:
Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly.
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