. . . bother anyone else? It's terrifying. You're a bad kid, you've done bad things but you are trapped into being a donkey for the rest of your life. To your parents you essentially disappear off the face of the Earth. That's terrifying!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9n23J2IGJc
I reckon we should spare a thought for donkeys who were born donkeys. They are not born bad. They haven't done bad things. All around the world they are trapped into working until they drop. A lucky few may get rescued to spend a nice remainder of their lives with their fellow donkeys.
These donkeys get mostly unseen by us like the kids turned donkeys in 'Pinocchio' after they have disappeared. We can make wrong choices in life and just get called stupid jackasses for doing so. But a donkey is a donkey who never got to make the wrong choice. Excuse me if this post sounds a bit moralizing but just spare a thought all the same.
It's absolutely the most disturbing scene in the film. It's also meant to be allegorical in a sense (much like the whole story)-- that people who skip school and live without self-discipline (indulging every whim, living by your id more or less) become animalistic-- in this case, literal animals.
The book makes it way worse though. Pinocchio later encounters Lampwick as a donkey and finds him worked to death by an abusive owner.