D52 Week 4: Dumbo!

Last week, we covered Disney's first real financial failure; this week, I get to take a look at the outcome. After neither Pinocchio or Fantasia were an immediate success (thanks a lot, Hitler), Dumbo was thrown together as a quick way to recoup some of those losses. Not only is it really short (64 minutes, which is still slightly longer than 2011's Winnie the Pooh, I think), but the animation is noticeably a lot simpler than the lavish detail and, sometimes, outright beauty of the previous three Disney films. Given that, at times, the only thing those films had going for them was gorgeous visual craftsmanship, this might not bode well for Dumbo, which shows a similar disinterest in any sort of significant plotting. To compensate for this lack of visual endowment, though, Disney has clearly opted to stuff the metaphorical trousers of this film with the metaphorical sock of increased gag output. Did it work? Well, most critics seem to regard Dumbo as a charmingly crafted little movie in its own right, so...maybe?

Though Snow White and Pinocchio were simple stories that were essentially structured like overexpanded cartoon shorts simply because certain plotting conventions hadn't yet been established at the time, Dumbo pretty transparently IS nothing more than a short that was expanded to bring in some quick dough for the studio. It's evident as soon as the movie begins, with the animation credits loaded right up front, like the theatrical shorts of the time. It's also sort of apparent in the style of gags, which are relatively very cartoony for the theatrical Disney features of the time, but which would not feel at all out of place in a short. Like the aerial shorts of Florida, which reveal it to actually be labelled "FLORIDA" in giant letters, like a map. Or the circus train, which behaves like a living creature and speaks through its whistle somehow. ("All aboard! Let's go!") And, well, if the shot later in the film where Dumbo pokes his head out of the collapsed circus tent, waving his flag as a goofy music cue plays before we iris out, isn't exactly the sort of thing you'd see in a short, then I apparently don't know what is! It's not like any of this is to the film's detriment, though; all of these things are charming in their own way, and if the film were nothing more than a somewhat longer form exploration of short-form silliness, I'd probably agree with the general critical consensus.

...but I can't really say that I do, because it also carries over one of the least desirable elements to find in a "full-length" film: paper-thin one-note characterization. In the original drafts for this as a short, it's perfectly understandable, as characters like the heartless elephant bitches probably would've only had three or four lines, and had to serve their essential role during that limited dialogue. In expanding the script, they were given a lot more dialogue, but all of it continues to do nothing but hit that one character beat, over and over. Like some other characters in this film, their entire lives seem to revolve around just being completely awful to Dumbo for no good reason. In a short film, it would've kept the plot (such that it is) moving at a brisk pace; but here, it just makes the entire exercise seem unjustifiably cruel. (And why does their cruel joke suggestion of "Dumbo" as his name actually stick, anyway? I didn't get that.) Aside from his mother, quickly locked up for defending her son in the film's one bit of sadness that actually resonates in a significant way, the only truly sympathetic non-Dumbo character is Timothy Q. Mouse, who nonetheless also doesn't completely work. He's clearly as relentlessly one-note as the other characters in the film, just in the opposite direction, helping Dumbo out due to a combination of sympathy and pity and being defined pretty much solely by that friendship from the moment they first meet. Even though he has some of the better comic moments here (and the choice to cast Edward Brophy is just odd enough to be sort of inspired), the character ultimately comes across, frankly, like a low-rent Jiminy Cricket retread, being there primarily because early Disney films didn't seem to like protagonists who could do anything for themselves. But maybe I'd find Dumbo more interesting if I pretended the whole thing was just one big shady ploy on his part to become a big showbiz agent from the outset...

But could any discussion of this picture be complete without mentioning those crows? Directly following right after the deeply strange "Pink Elephants On Parade" segment - which is, itself, a deeply strange and sort of uncomfortable sequence, but also an impressive and memorable one that I admit I kind of respected - comes Dumbo and Timmy's rather uncomfortable encounter with the unfortunately named Jim Crow and his probably fortunately unnamed cohorts, who are of course African-American stereotypes, even though I'm reasonably sure that crows actually have pasty, pale skin underneath all those feathers. The most troubling thing about the crows is that they do manage to possess indisputable charm, belting out the cutest song in the whole damn movie before providing a simple and effective solution to our heroes' problems, in blatant contrast to the ineptitude of most of the other characters. (Granted, the feather gets ditched in the very next scene, teaching Dumbo that he had actually possessed the ability to fly all this time if only he'd believed in himself blah blah blah in a particularly limp and half-hearted way, another flaw of the aforementioned short film plotting, I suppose.) But does that make the stereotyping excusable? Not really. Though the backup crows were voiced by actual African-American actors, it's hard to look past the fact that Jim Crow is voiced by Cliff "Jiminy Cricket" Edwards, uttering one too many stereotypical blackisms, if you will, for there to not be an undercurrent of discomfort running through every moment they spend on-screen. At least it's better than the black workers who erect the circus tent near the beginning of the film, who are so thrilled at being forced to work in a torrential rainstorm that they sing - a song about how they never learned to read or write, no less!

Is Dumbo terrible? Not by any means. Even with animation quality scaled back from the previous Disney features, there are still some impressive visuals. The previously mentioned Pink Elephants sequence embodies the sort of cuddly-yet-horrific aesthetic that can only really exist in animation, and Dumbo's surprisingly effective silent acting is conveyed so well that it can sometimes effectively make you forget about the films' relatively limited budget compared to its predecessors. Also, some well-rendered rainstorms, though a minor detail, continue the tradition of early Disney things having an impressive command over things involving water. Dumbo clearly has plenty going for it, but unfortunately there are just as many things about it that are sort of inexplicable. Never have I seen a titular character be such a non-entity in anything! He's just there to be used as a prop by the other characters, for purposes positive or not. As soon as he finally discovers his one real natural talent, the film ends (with the military using elephant-shaped bombers in his honour, which I suspect would be a HORRIBLE idea in reality). Is it ever even confirmed that his mom gets set free? I don't recall that it was. Dumbo is one of Disney's most deeply strange films, and whether the good strange will outweigh the bad strange (and slightly racist) is very much up to one's individual tastes. For me, it did not.

UNNECESSARY DIRECT-TO-DVD DISNEY SEQUEL IDEA CONCEPT THING: Dumbo, now a famous and independent star, finds fame a bit much to take and decides to go on vacation, for the sole purpose of making a trunk-packing joke. Because he's an elephant! In lieu of the crows, Dumbo ends up befriending a gang of emus, because Aussie stereotypes still fly with people, apparently. Crikey, mate. And so on. (Also, Dumbo probably talks now, and is probably voiced by one of the Jonases. Oh, hell, why not? Multiple Jonases.)