Dirty Disney: Milestones In The Mouse Factory's Move Into Grown-Up Content

On March 16, the Walt Disney Co. DIS set a precedent by putting six programs from its Marvel Defender series on the Disney+ streaming platform with TV-MA ratings.

The programs – “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones,” “Luke Cage,” “The Punisher,” “Iron Fist” and “The Defenders” – were created during the years of the now-defunct Marvel Television and licensed to Netflix NFLX prior to the creation of Disney+. The company regained the rights to the programs last month after Netflix’s license expired.

While Disney has always sought to portray itself as a provider of wholesome entertainment suitable for all ages, it has a curious history of moving cautiously into more mature subject matter, and sometimes trying to retreat back from the edgier realm.

Let’s consider some milestone moment when Disney opted to do something a bit more daring in its content.

Breaking A Language Barrier: As Disney trivia fanatics know, the company is responsible for the first film featuring the word “vagina” in its screenplay. But it was in not a mainstream release, but rather in a 1946 educational film called “The Story of Menstruation” that Disney produced as a for-hire job on behalf of the International Cello-Cotton Company, which later changed its name to Kimberly-Clark Corporation KMB. Because the film was not designed for theatrical release, it was not subject to censorship as defined by Hollywood’s Production Code.

“The Story of Menstruation” does not mention sex or reproduction, and it rewrites the laws of biology by having the menstrual flow depicted as white rather than red. The film was a staple in high school well into the 1970s, and in 2015 the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry as a "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" work, making it one of the very few educational films to receive this honor.

Disney Goes PG: In 1979, Disney made its first steps to what might be considered grown-up fare. In March of that year, Buena Vista Distribution, the cinema releasing arm of the company, acquired the rights to “Take Down,” an independently produced drama about a high school wrestler played by Lorenzo Lamas. The film received a PG rating, but Buena Vista seemed to lose faith in the title and only put it into limited release – most of the country was unaware of its existence, and Buena Vista later sold the rights to another company.

In December 1979, “The Black Hole” became the first PG-rated film released under the Walt Disney Productions banner. The science-fiction adventure was denied a G rating because its characters muttered “hell” and “damn” and one of the characters died in a violent manner. 

Disney had second thoughts about wading in PG waters, removing the mild curse words when "The Black Hole" aired on Disney Channel. The company created a new subsidiary called Touchstone Pictures to handle more mature content, with the Disney banner focusing solely releasing the family friendly G-rated films.

Disney Grows Up: In January 1986, Touchstone’s production of Paul Mazursky’s “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” became the first film from the Disney organization to receive an R rating. Audiences didn’t mind the ribald content – the film had a teenage character whose sexual orientation was briefly, if vaguely, spotlighted, a Disney first - and the film was a major box office hit. 

In 1994, Disney turned up the maturity dial substantially when Hollywood Pictures, another of its subsidiaries, produced Richard Rush’s “Color of Night,” a mystery thriller starring Bruce Willis and Jane March. The film included romantic interludes that pushed the proverbial envelope too far – the MPAA gave the director’s cut an NC-17 rating, reportedly because Willis’ penis made a surprise appearance on screen,

“These were intense sex scenes,” said Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti when asked to explain the NC-17 rating. “If Bruce Willis had stepped out of a shower and was toweling himself, or was reaching for a telephone and there was a fleeting glimpse of nudity, the rating would probably be an R. But if you’re shown totally nude and screwing somebody on a bed, that’s something else.”

Six minutes were cut from the film to enable a theatrical release with an R rating. In 2018, Disney licensed the film to Kino Lorber for a DVD and Blu-ray release that included both the theatrical release and the director’s cut, which marked a rare occasion that Disney would not release one of its own films on its home entertainment label.

Retroactive Censorship: With the launch of Disney+, the company struggled to keep its content as family friendly as possible, with mature productions ferried over to the Hulu platform. But there were a few hiccups along the way.

The 1984 PG-rated Touchstone comedy “Splash” made its Disney+ premiere in 2020, but fans of the film noticed this presentation was somewhat different than the theatrical and home entertainment releases. In this version, a very brief glimpse of Daryl Hannah’s bare behind was covered up with a conspicuous CGI effect (a rather phony-looking hair extension) while slightly racy visuals were omitted through clumsy scene cropping. Disney received a flurry of negative publicity for its puritanical tinkering on a film that didn’t cause it the slightest embarrassment in its earlier releases.

In 2021, fans of the 1987 Touchstone comedy “Adventures in Babysitting” registered their unhappiness when Disney+ bowdlerized a classic dialogue exchange between a gang leader and Elizabeth Shue’s character – “Don’t f**k with the Lords of Hell” / “Don’t f**k with the babysitter” – with the f-bomb defused as “fool.”

WTF, Disney?: In 2020, Disney+ presented a video recording of the Tony-winning Broadway musical “Hamilton.” But the version on the small screen was slightly different from the stage version.

“MPAA has a hard rule about language: more than 1 utterance of "F**k" is an automatic R rating,” tweeted Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show’s creator and star. “We have 3 ‘F**ks’ in our show. So... I literally gave two f**ks so the kids could see it: 1. In Yorktown, there's a mute over "I get the f___ back up again" 2. "Southern *record scratch*kin' Democratic Republicans." You can sing whatEVER you like at home (even sync up the album)!”

But while Miranda was censored – “Hamilton” got a PG-13 rating – an even greater musical force was able to speak freely without being bleeped. Last November, Disney scored a major content coup by releasing Peter Jackson’s three-part documentary “The Beatles: Get Back” on its Disney+ platform. However, this offering included a disclaimer that had never been seen before on the streaming service: “This footage contains explicit language, mature themes, and smoking.” 

Jackson revealed that Disney initially wanted to censor the film and omit the saltier elements, but Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison’s Olivia pointedly refused to bowdlerize the content.

Photo: Jane March and Bruce Willis in “Color of Night,” courtesy of Kino Lorber