Cattle; More Than Meat: MOOvies

It is not often your attention strays from the main plot of the movie, but every so often, the audience of a film may notice the background scenery. There, graze the cows. Often with films intended for an adult audience, the cattle do not make a star debut but hope only to make an appearance. Some of the most recognized films like, "Back to the Future" featured cows as part of their backgrounds fairly often, but instead of being seen as an animal, are seen rather as props. In such humorous films such as Tommy Boy, the characters participate in a commonly known activity known as "cow tipping" in which once again, the cow is a mere prop to facilitate a humorous scene. Unlike family and children's movies, films specifically for the adult audience drive their messages, morals, and themes using human characters that the audience easily connects with. Unlike kids, adults are often in environments in which they are interacting with other adults whether it be in the workplace, on the bus, or even in restaurants. Their social skills being greater than that of a young child also helps to relate to human characters and the predicaments they may have. With life experience as well, it may be easier to connect with the characters by shared frustrations and experiences or similar desires hence lack main characters represented as animals.

"Home On The Range Trailer"

In contrast, children's movies such as "Home on the Range" use anthropomorphized animal characters to drive their message home. Although sometimes they are used simply for their entertainment value, other times they are used to educate children on lessons that could be applied to humans and the humane treatment of animals. Because children tend to anthropomorphize more on a daily basis and have not developed full social skills, they may relate more to animals because of their pure love for them, compared to the use of human characters. In this particular film," Home on the Range" attempts to demonstrate how to humanely treat animals. Although adults would evaluate such a movie as "unrealistic" or "naive", younger individuals see the protagonist as a dear old lady who treats her cattle and other farm animals as family rather than products, and the antagonist as a cattle rustler who treats animals as mere property. Also, developing these animal characters to have extremely in-depth emotions, thoughts, and motivations, allow the animal characters to become protagonists to the story plot as well, driving yet another message that people are similar to animals and could think just as humans do.

Nonetheless, there are the few adults that may possibly enjoy new Disney releases more than their children.