Why Grief Belongs in Animation
Lately, it feels like studios are increasingly willing to cut scenes that show difficult emotions — like grief after the death of a character.
Here’s my take on it:
We all sat through Mufasa’s death in The Lion King — and we still consider it a masterpiece.
And I’m not saying this as someone naive to the hard things in life.
I have literally lived through the sudden, tragic, unpredictable death of my own father — with barely a day's notice that it was coming.
So what if we looked at this differently?
What if scenes of grief in entertainment aren’t “too much” —
but actually practice for feelings that most of us, at some point, will have to face in real life?
And wouldn’t it be better — safer — to practice with fictional characters who don’t even exist?
The truth is, grief is a guarantee of being human.
Even without tragedies, time alone ensures it:
a grandparent, a parent, a pet, a friend, a teacher.
Maybe sheltering audiences was never meant to mean denying the existence of hard feelings —
but teaching people how to hold them.
What if that’s what stories were always meant to do?
What if, while high school teaches chemistry and spelling,
stories — especially in animation and children's media — were always meant to teach how to navigate heartbreak, grief, mistakes, forgiveness, and hope?
And what if, for children,
we simply finish the story with a light in the dark —
a good moral, a pathway through —
so that when life gets hard, they already know:
"I've seen this before. I can survive this too."
Here’s my take on it:
We all sat through Mufasa’s death in The Lion King — and we still consider it a masterpiece.
And I’m not saying this as someone naive to the hard things in life.
I have literally lived through the sudden, tragic, unpredictable death of my own father — with barely a day's notice that it was coming.
So what if we looked at this differently?
What if scenes of grief in entertainment aren’t “too much” —
but actually practice for feelings that most of us, at some point, will have to face in real life?
And wouldn’t it be better — safer — to practice with fictional characters who don’t even exist?
The truth is, grief is a guarantee of being human.
Even without tragedies, time alone ensures it:
a grandparent, a parent, a pet, a friend, a teacher.
Maybe sheltering audiences was never meant to mean denying the existence of hard feelings —
but teaching people how to hold them.
What if that’s what stories were always meant to do?
What if, while high school teaches chemistry and spelling,
stories — especially in animation and children's media — were always meant to teach how to navigate heartbreak, grief, mistakes, forgiveness, and hope?
And what if, for children,
we simply finish the story with a light in the dark —
a good moral, a pathway through —
so that when life gets hard, they already know:
"I've seen this before. I can survive this too."
