Disney Studios changed and transformed the messages of the original Pinocchio story, as written by Italian author and journalist Carlo Lorenzini (under the pen-name Carlo Collodi).

 

Disney Studios changed and transformed the messages of the original Pinocchio story, as written by Italian author and journalist Carlo Lorenzini (under the pen-name Carlo Collodi).

 

Lorenzini's works were criticizing the social and political situation in Europe at that time, and his books were often allegorical stories meant to satirise Italian and European society. 

His book 'Le Avventure di Pinocchio' (The Adventures of Pinocchio), in 1883, was recognised as an allegory about human nature.

As is always the case, the American entertainment industry and in this specific case, 'Disney Studios', when making the film in the late 1930s, made an effort to transform the story of Pinocchio and change the messages of Lorenzini's original story.

Thus, while the original is essentially a social satire focusing on education and industrialisation with messages of the type:

- humans are generally deceitful and duplicitous beings, but they can change if they try

- those who were not prepared for the new world of industrialisation could end up becoming harmful actors in that world, like Pinocchio

- those children, like Pinocchio, who do not go to school will become morally compromised individuals, that is, they will be treated like this wooden hero, who we see, for example, even the fairy advising him to go back to school and stop being so lazy

in the story shaped and presented by Disney Studios, the social messages/comments have been removed, e.g. the fact that in the original story, Pinocchio kills Jiminy Cricket, and the story becomes a fairy tale that ultimately doesn't resemble the original (dark) social satire at all.