Now at a Theater Near You: MIA Moms

In Hollywood, is the only good mother a dead mother?

Unquestionably, the great majority of children in this country reside with their mothers (often, but not always, with their fathers). And yet, if you spend any time at the movies with your kids, you may come away thinking that the typical American family features a living father, a willful child and inevitably . . . a dead mom.

Disney, in particular, is pathologically unable to give its characters living, breathing mothers. After its recent slew of animation extravaganzas, you would have to guess that Disney writers have never met a fictional mother who wouldn’t serve the plot better stone dead than alive.

Just take your pick of plucky animated heroines: Pocahontas, Jasmine, Belle, Ariel.

Headstrong women, dead mothers.

Sure, Simba the Lion King has a mother, but what does she do except lie around and lick his ears? Sarabi is a drip, with less personality in life than Simba’s father, Mufasa, has in death.

Of course, Disney, which also gave us the motherless Max in “A Goofy Movie,” is not the only offender. Other studios are mommy-phobic too. “Casper” and “A Little Princess” featured motherless protagonists. And when Lassie returned to life as a full-length feature last year, the June Lockhart/Mother of Timmy character had bitten the dust, replaced by a stepmother. (At least she was not created in the wicked mold. We stepmothers have to take our progress where we can find it.)

Because my child is animal-crazy (her first word was fish , and yes, we are talking to a doctor about this), I took her to see “Gordy,” a bomberoo about a talking pig. Mother-wise, it was a mixed bag: The adolescent protagonist has no mom, but the piggy gets one. Sure, she’s a big, fat powerless sow, but at least she’s portrayed as halfway competent--more than we can say for the only human mother in the movie, who is a pathetic, scheming idiot.

Now, I like dads as much as the next guy--and I’m all for showing them as capable, nurturing parents--but at some point, I have to wonder: Is there some cabal of mother-haters out there that has imposed this unnatural standard on children’s movies?

Or do mothers--talk about selflessness--simply serve the action better from six feet under?

*

Maybe one reason mothers are omitted from plots is simple manipulation: Most children take the presence of their mothers for granted.

Kill off the moms, and the kids sit up and take note.

“The assumption on the part of screenwriters seems to be that it’s just not that exciting to have a mom taking care of her kids because it’s so humdrum, so everyday,” says Nina Leibman, adjunct professor of communication at the University of Santa Clara and author of “Living Room Lectures” (University of Texas Press), a study of the “ ‘50s family” in film and TV.

I spoke with Leibman, a mother of two, after thumbing through the index of her new book and finding entries such as these under “Mothers”: “absent, dead or marginalized” “evil,” “ineffectual or stupid,” “self-effacement” and “self-sacrificing.”

If, in fact, these are the alternatives, then perhaps the makers of current kids’ movies are doing mothers a favor by killing them off before the action starts.

When Leibman, who teaches film history, criticism and theory, discusses these issues with her students, she always tells them, “Being critical doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it.”

Which made me feel better, actually, because I happen to like those Disney animated features, even if I can’t bear the cliches about headstrong female dreamers, their confused or bumbling but well-meaning fathers and, of course, their missing mothers.

(I have a bone to pick over that big-busted Barbie-in-buckskin masquerading as a Powhatan princess, but perhaps now is not the time for my body-image issues.)

*

My final theory, while the most cynical, is probably the real reason for the symbolic annihilation (as the feminist lit-crit crowd would put it) of motherhood in kids’ movies.

And that is: Cabbage. Moolah. Simoleons. Bananas.

Why tamper with a proven formula?

A motherless child facing an adult villain is perhaps the most appealing character in all of fiction.

Ask Dumbo.

Or Bambi.

Or Snow White.

Or Cinderella.

Who needs a mother? We’re talking immortality here.

* Robin Abcarian’s column is published Wednesdays and Sundays.