Disney's 1940 porno film

This weekend I picked up a copy of the recently released remastered Pinocchio, the 1940 animated version from the Walt Disney factory, as a present for my granddaughter. After reading this lengthy essay from GQ's Tom Carson, I'm not sure I did the right thing.

Sure, Pinocchio contains some disturbing images that could frighten some impressionable kiddies, especially the scenes where the kids turn into donkeys. But Carson makes the film sound absolutely pornographic:

"Children can also intuit sexuality long before they've got a clue what it is, and Pinocchio is the dirtiest Disney feature ever. The unavoidable Exhibit A is the Freudian no-brainer of the hero's lengthening proboscis, though I'd forgotten that in the scene when it happens he's a) locked in a cage and b) lying to the Blue Fairy, the only adult female in sight. As if the fact that "blue" was the contemporary slang for "dirty" wasn't enough, she's also drawn in an eroticized Maxfield Parrish style that has no equivalents elsewhere in Disney. When not only leaves but chirping little birdies sprout from his "nose's" tip at the scene's—wait, the word'll come to me—climax, the image is as pornographic as anything in a Tijuana bible. Even Betty Boop would blush."

I have always been accused of being somewhat naive, but I gotta tell ya I never had any "blue" thoughts when I saw Pinocchio as a child. What I always remembered was that it featured the best songs of any Disney movie ever -- "When You Wish Upon a Star," "I've Got No Strings," "Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee (An Actor's Life for Me)," and "Give a Little Whistle." Great stuff.