Lessons of "Dumbo: The Flying Elephant"

I've never really felt 100% comfortable with the movie, but have only just now started putting together some of the lessons "Dumbo" has been teaching children for the better part of the last 70 years. Here are some of the lessons I've derived.

Babies are delivered by storks. We've gone from children being completely shielded from any talk of sex - and quite frankly parents from having to even think about having any sort of conversation with our children about their bodies - to society's overindulgence in the topic.

When we were expecting our son, we bought a copy of PBS's "Nova: The Miracle of Life" as a tool for us to help my daughter understand what was going on. In 1941, though, babies were apparently dropped from the sky by storks, and apparently at the whim of delivery schedules.

As an aside, I would be willing to bet that even as far back as 1941, Walt Disney and the Disney Company were thinking about building the amusement park now known as Walt Disney Word - take a good look a the map to which the stork refers as he's trying to locate Mrs. Jumbo - the finger goes straight to the point on the map at which one would now find Walt DisneyWorld.

Fathers have no active role in a child's life. Notice "Dumbo's" mother is "Mrs. Jumbo" and his given name is "Jumbo, Jr." yet we never once see his dad, presumably "Jumbo, Sr." He's not there for the delivery, he never makes an appearance in the movie. He doesn't even hand out cigars upon learning of his son's birth. We know not of his whereabouts nor his state of health. Yet, we are lead to believe through this lack of information he is alive and that Dumbo's parents are together in some shape or form.

He's not there to support Mrs. Jumbo when she's detained as "mad" and as the movie comes to a close, it is she - and apparently only her - riding in Dumbo's private car. Since babies are apparently ordered asexually, and delivered by storks, apparently fathers have no active role to play in a child's life.

You're never quite sure of people's motives. Timothy Q. Mouse takes on the role of "Dumbo's" biggest supporter, yet he continues to use the moniker bestowed upon him by the crotchety old elephants who have little use for the little elephant or his disability. Timothy apparently supports Dumbo though the difficulties and vagaries of circus life; Yet, I find myself strangely uncomfortable with Timothy: he always seems to have an angle on things.

He is willing to break into and enter the Ringmasters' tent as the ringmaster sleeps to subliminally place the idea of Dumbo being the star of the elephant show, for instance, yet it's not entirely clear this is what the little one actually wants. As Dumbo is poised to fail in his debut, he casually hides his eyes to avoid seeing the catastrophe about to be unleashed. He acts almost as a confidence man, first gaining Dumbo's confidence through promises of peanuts and helping this mother, then in going about setting the little elephant off in directions that could best be described as "endangering a minor."

He supports Dumbo through the movie, through thick and thin - using deception and manipulation when necessary. It seems as though he genuinely cares for Dumbo and wants him to succeed. Only at the very end of the movie is his motivation revealed - in the wake of the flying elephant, the headline of the local paper is Timothy Mouse signs deal.

Workers are nameless & faceless. As the circus rolls into town, the train is vacated and faceless black men set about doing the work of the circus; sledgehammering pilings into place in a driving rain. They have no apparent individual identity. I've often wondered about those men - why have they no face? Is it a subtle racism - not unlike the crows later on in the movie - or is it a statement on workers? Or something else? We see them only at one point in the movie; despite one point at which Dumbo sets off a catastrophic chain reaction that devastates the entire big top where these men would presumably be required to reconstitute the circus. We never see them do anything but hammer the pilings at the beginning of the movie, yet the big top does make a reappearance in short order - with no apparent consequence from having been brought down and apparently without the work of these men.

It's a good idea to go drinking then ask the boss for a raise. The clowns fresh off the success of the first show with the diving elephant, celebrate the occasion with a little bubbly. From this celebration comes the revelation that if the crowd loved the elephant diving from 20', they'll doubly love it if he were to dive from 40'. They then decide to march in and give the ringmaster this idea, along with the idea they should get a raise. Besides being of questionable judgment showing adults drinking to excess in a children's movie - in Disney's defense, they are shielded from direct view as the point of view shown is that of the third person observer directly outside the tent - the decision to actually approach the boss after having been imbibing would seem to be remarkably poor.

It's a good idea to listen to a dozen drunken clowns when they have an idea or "How not to be a leader." When next we see Dumbo dressed as a clown, he is standing on a precipice twice as high as he had been previously, suggesting of course that the ringmaster decided that it would be a good idea to listen to the clowns in their inebriated glory and double the height of the diving platform.

This ringmaster seems completely unconcerned with planning or with the safety of the performers or even patrons: at an earlier point in the movie, he awakes with an idea (having been placed in his head by Timothy Mouse) that there should be a pyramid of elephants, capped off by Dumbo. One can imagine the planning and training required to pull off this feat, yet it would seem the first time this is attempted is in a full big-top.

Drinking to excess is OK, and may be beneficial. After a night of - albeit inadvertent - drinking, Dumbo and Timothy Mouse wake up in a tree. Confused, unaware of how they got there, they do some tangential exploration of how they got up there, but the movie never addresses how they actually got up there - it's presumed they flew, but never truly answered. Besides this, while they were on their adventure, it was fun! Pink elephants dancing, wearing Technicolor suits, the whole bit. Without this little adventure, we may never have learned the truth of Dumbo's abilities. There's no cautionary tale associated with drinking to excess, no ramifications to Dumbo for having been drunk. It seems almost acceptable. Drinking releases one's inhibitions and can clearly play a pivotal role in self discovery.

Granting a come-uppance is a benefit of success. As Dumbo flies around the big top for the first time, he methodically gives back a little to the clowns who had made him the butt of their jokes, the ringmaster for putting him in the position in the first place, and of course the nasty old ladies who had been nothing but awful to him - to the point of no longer considering him an elephant. He comes swooping in on an innocent peanut vendor, vacuums up his stock of peanuts, and proceeds to Gatling Gun them at the older elephants.

The Placebo Effect or Deception Pt. II Back to Timothy Mouse's use of deception when it served his interests. He has Dumbo convinced the crow's feather has helped him fly when Dumbo may not have otherwise accepted such a premise. Timothy certainly understood how the mind works much the same way scientists had understood it for centuries, which once again asks the question about Timothy's motives.

Only when Dumbo loses the feather on his decent down, does Timothy come clean. It's never actually said, but Dumbo's reaction suggests that he may have known that Timothy was deceiving him. Did he? From that point in the movie on, there is no apparent contact between the two. Did Timothy bail out to having made his mark and leave Dumbo with his mom, or was he dumped by the elephant once he figured out the mouses' true motivations?

RESOURCE:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033563/