Murdered mothers: The traumatic frames of maternal death in Disney animation

Coined the ‘dead-mother-plot’, Disney has been known to capitalize on the childhood experience of parental death by structuring its narratives around the death of mothers. While analyses have been conducted regarding the frequency of dead mothers in Disney films, little has been written about the specific choices Disney makes in presenting maternal death. As such, this article investigates the primary elements in Disney’s dead-mother-plot. A textual analysis of Disney’s notably traumatic maternal death in Bambi suggests that maternal loss is presented through traumatic frames. Specifically, the coding of maternal death according to three major narrative elements (maternal sacrifice, child development and homicide) may contribute to the audience identification of mediated, maternal deaths as traumatic – demonstrating how and when trauma and loss in Disney become explicitly paired with mothers.