Dumbo has been accused of being made by Disney for a fast buck, a way to further profits via the barrage of CGI remakes that are slated for 2019 (the others being Aladdin [already sure to be the worst of the arsenal based on blue Will Smith alone/the fact that Guy Ritchie is out of his element there], The Lion King and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil). Yet Disney’s intent to begin with in making Dumbo was, unabashedly, to recoup their financial losses from the likes of Pinocchio and Fantasia. Accordingly, Dumbo was a deliberately low-budget affair, produced cheaply and originally based on a premise for a scrolling children’s book (a.k.a. a novelty item with illustrations presented on a long scroll placed inside of a box to be rolled up or down, backwards or sideways with dials attached to the book).
Written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by her husband, Harold Pearl (though the two would divorce in 1940 as not everything can have a Disney ending), the rights to the story were bought by Roll-A-Book Publishers, Inc., who then sold them to Disney Productions in 1939 despite having created roughly three prototypes for the scrolling book.
The ups and downs story of Dumbo‘s production itself is a testament to the adversity one must overcome in order to gain success–adding further layers to this tale of the little elephant that could. Except, Aberson didn’t quite get the success she deserved for her writing, receiving a one-time fee for Dumbo and the consolation prize of being a consultant on the film without being paid for that work and then ultimately not being included in writing credits once the copyright for the book expired in 1968.
Aberson’s Russian descent at a time when “immigrants” weren’t all that tolerated in America (oh wait, sounds like now, too) likely factored into her creation of a character deemed by other “normals” as some sort of freak of nature ripe for taunting. Because “normals,” so unremarkable themselves, love to feel superior by insulting those who actually possess a unique trait. What’s more, Aberson wielding Dumbo as an allegory for what it means to be human at all was surely the perfect tactic for her to make children understand that feeling out of place and awkward is par for the course of existence. For who among us hasn’t had to surmount harsh judgment and mocking disparagement in our day to day? Calling it a win simply to get home and close the door behind us without having sobbed in public (or is that just me?).
A character such as this is, of course, tailor-made for Tim Burton’s distinct canon, touting a slew of “freaks” ranging from Edward Scissorhands to Emily a.k.a. the Corpse Bride. To boot, many of Burton’s greatest outcasts rendered to screen have been adapted from the works or lives of others (e.g. Pee-Wee Herman, The Penguin, Ed Wood and the Mad Hatter). So why not allow him the opportunity to interpret his most innocent outcast yet (and Dumbo really does look quite cutely helpless in CGI form)? With four years having lapsed since the release of yet another underrated film of Burton’s, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Dumbo re-teams the auteur with not only his go-to favorite muse (post-Helena Bonham Carter, anyway), Eva Green, but also veteran staples of his oeuvre, Danny DeVito and Michael Keaton (forever immortalized in the cinematic glory of Batman Returns).
New to the usual arsenal of Burton actor favorites is Colin Farrell as Holt Farrier, a cowboy-turned-soldier freshly returned to the Medici Bros. Circus in 1919 as an amputee from World War I. In his absence, his wife has died, leaving his children, precocious and science-loving Milly (Nico Parker) and affable Joe (Finley Hobbins), mistrustful and skeptical of his parenting skills (especially having just one arm and all to take care of them). Luckily, to mitigate some of the tension that has arisen between him and his kids, ringleader Maximilian (Danny DeVito) has assigned Holt to “tend to the elephants” (better put as “shovel shit”) in the wake of selling his horses while he was away. Instead, he has made an “investment” in Mrs. Jumbo, pregnant and due to have her baby any day now. As Milly and Joe get drawn into the saga of Mrs. Jumbo as a result of their father’s new role, they quickly become protective of Jumbo Jr. (getting his new name, “Dumbo,” in an entirely different fashion than before, as a result of the rearrangement of fallen letters in a sign), deemed as having “those ears that only a mother could love.”
And as they become his sole human protectors (Timothy Q. Mouse being sidelined to a more silent, cage-oriented role), they find themselves spending the most time with him apart from Mrs. Jumbo (who, as we all know, gets slapped with a “Mad Elephant” label and is separated from Dumbo early in the narrative). After merely protecting her son from the ridicule and potential harm of the nefarious Rufus Sorghum (Phil Zimmerman), a garden variety bully in the troupe, Dumbo is relegated to posing as a clown in a degrading gag developed by Maximilian to at least get something more out of the money he paid for Mrs. Jumbo upon sending her away. By this time, Milly and Joe have already ascertained that Dumbo can fly, accidentally stumbling upon his gift when they toss a feather at him and he snorts it up his snout, propelling him into the air with his ears as a buffer from falling. Of course, Holt pays no attention to what Milly is trying to tell him about Dumbo in a classic kids’ movie instance of adults ignoring the simple truth that the youth is trying to convey to their oblivious asses.
Upon being able to sell out tickets with the renewed interest in the show thanks to Dumbo’s talent being advertised on the front page of the paper, “theme park mogul” V. A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton) comes a-knockin’ with his “queen,” Colette Marchant (Eva Green), in tow, offering Maximilian a “partnership” he can’t refuse, along with the proposal to make Dumbo a headlining performer at his Coney Island-inspired Dreamland (being in Brooklyn, it’s only natural that at one point we get a scene of Dumbo flying over DUMBO as he makes his way across the Brooklyn Bridge). And as we see how Burton manages to transform sixty-four minutes (the length of the original) into almost two hours, it becomes apparent that the vast addition of new characters and subplots to the original Dumbo might be, to purists, unnecessary or what some have called “lacking heart.” Others, instead, prefer to critique the film for attempting a CGI remake at all (those people should consider not going to a movie at all, as CGI isn’t going anywhere, but rather, only ramping up as time goes on). But the truth is, there is no Disney narrative more perfect–more in keeping with what Burton has represented from the start of his career–than this persecuted pachyderm (a synonym the original Dumbo bandied as a way to refer to an elephant, back when people had a more extensive vocabulary, one supposes).
While still anchoring the script with the core of what made the first so tear-inducing–the mother-child relationship and the emotional trauma of an early separation–Burton also interweaves the budding romance between two misfits, Holt and Colette, with humorous repartee. Colette, shamelessly from Paris, is gently mocked by Holt for her city of origin. Referencing his time in the war, Holt quips, “I’ve been to France, you know. It wasn’t a positive experience.” Some will say that of Dumbo for not going all out with the re-creation of the illustrious pink elephants scene (very Fantasia-esque indeed).
1941, not surprisingly, was clearly an edgier time for portraying drunkenness in children-oriented movies, as Burton has seen fit not to include any scene of Dumbo seeing pink elephants as a result of unwittingly drinking too much champagne. Instead, Burton presents the once hyper-hallucinogenic scenes of multi-toned elephants (even appearing in Egyptian landscapes and belly dancing) as bubbles being blown before Dumbo’s first big performance for Dreamland.
However, apart from that minor affront to the animated version, Burton has done something wonderful and unique with the source material (which cannot necessarily be said of his Alice in Wonderland adaptations–for one might do better to see Terminal for a fresh take on that tale). With echoes of The Greatest Showman (but with much better execution and less cheese factor), Dumbo also puts a new twist on the wonder and potential of the circus–even if that twist was largely at the behest of PETA, who insisted upon a revised fate for Dumbo and his mother back in 2015 when the project first went into production.
Strangely, where once being a “freak” meant rising to the top, it would appear that, in the present, being a “normal” to the point of freakdom (Trump being the most concrete example) is what allows one to soar to the greatest heights. However, “back in the day” and as it has always been the case in Burton’s films, it is the true “freaks” who inherit the earth. Let us hope that Dumbo can remind those of the non-white supremacist variety that this can still be the case.
