Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed

NEW SAVANNA: Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed
11/2/10 10:12 PM
Share
Report Abuse
Next Blog
NEW SAVANNA
INTIMATIONS OF A NEW WORLD
MONDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2010
PAGES IN THIS BLOG
Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed

Pink Elephants on Parade, from Walt Disneys Dumbo, is one of the best known, and strangest, animated sequences that Disney, or any studio, has ever done (see clip below). Its strange on two counts. In the first place, it doesnt seem to advance the Dumbo story in any way. As the sequence begins Dumbo and Timothy Mouse are pleasantly drunk; when it ends theyre sleeping high in a tree. The sequence tells us nothing about how they got from one state to the other, nor does it tell us anything thats otherwise going on in the movie. The movie is about elephants, the sequence is about elephants, pink ones; and that elephant connection seems to be all that links the sequence to the larger plot.
[Front Page] About New Savanna The Sita Chronicles Literary Studies Practical Criticism Literary Theory Graffiti/Photos About Bill Benzon
BILL BE N Z ON
Putting that aside, is there any order within the sequence itself or is it just a collection of strange gags? This is the question that interests me. And my answer is that, yes, there is some order there;. There is a progression. Lets start at the beginning. Dumbo and Timothy have drunk water that was accidentally laced with booze. They get drunk and Dumbo starts blowing rather surprising bubbles through his trunk. Timothy asks him to blow a large bubble, which he does. That bubble assumes elephant form, turns pink, and proceeds to blow a second pink elephant from its trunk. The second blows a third, and now we see four pink elephants. Their trunks become trumpet-like, playing a fanfare which we hear on the sound-track. They merge their trunks
SUBSCRIBE PR OFILE
thinker, writer, musician, artist, photographer: pioneer

VIEW M Y CO M P L E TE
Posts Comments
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2010/10/secrets-of-pink-elephants-revealed.html
Page 1 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
RECENT COMMENTS
bill benzon wrote...

Ah, that's interesting, about the medical exam. You might be correct in suggesting that... Continue >>

Thanks for the comment. Yes, though the film has action and adventure aplenty, it is, as you say, a... Continue >>
Peter wrote...
In the early version of Dumbo - the one published just after Disney bought the rights - Dumbo is... Continue >>
Anonymous wrote...
and the merged bell expands, bursts, and becomes a portal for a parade of marching elephants.
A fine post. Castle in the Sky is a surprisingly tender movie, and that heart, plus the fact that... Continue >>

There's one thing I've been thinking about since I posted the analysis. That slinky... Continue >>
Eddie Fitzgerald wrote...

Fascinating! The sequence makes intuitive sense, but it's nice to imagine that there's some... Continue >>

Thanks, Eric. Those guys knew what they were doing.
Eric Noble wrote...

Fascinating. I love how you break down the sequence. It's that subtlety of storytelling that... Continue >>
MovieMan0283 wrote...
Thanks, bill - I'll check them out.
Each elephant in the parade is playing a musical instrument, which is a deformed part of its body. There are three things to note so far. 1) The parade of elephants has now become effectively detached from Dumbo. He blew the first bubble, but it became an elephant on its own. The rest followed from that. 2) The purely instrumental music were hearing is, in effect, being created by the elephants themselves. 3) At various points in this opening segment we see reactions from both Dumbo and Timothy; theyre on-screen characters.

Thanks for your comments. Glad you liked the piece.Once you start looking at a sequence like this... Continue >>
BLOG ARCHIVE
2010 (318) November (3)
Page 2 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
We get a series of gags emphasizing that the elephants are making the music, and then we see a parade of small elephants march around (notice Dumbo and Timothy watching them):
October (39) Sinatra's Favorite Color The Great Writer: Graffiti and the Singularity In a 19th Century Mall? A View to Paradise Miyazaki Notes 2: Castle in the Sky Photographing Street Art: Luna Park, Becki Fuller ... A Little Color Originality, meh Graffiti Classics Pink Elephants Parade on the Web Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed Graffiti and Transgression
There is no structure in the film-space itself on which those elephants are marching. Theyre walking on the border of the frame. This is the sort of selfconscious gag thats as old as animation itself such trickery was fundamental to Winsor McCays work, but also to Disneys Alice shorts. Those elephants will parade around the entire perimeter of the frame and then theyll start expanding until they burst.
Faith & Handstyles: Graffiti Affirmed A plea for the study of friendship Beyond the Corporate University Happy STC! & Diz Feelings, nothing more than feelings . . . Bombing: 12th & Monmouth 3 Notes on Miyazaki: Becoming The sincerest form of flattery Renovation at the Malibu Roger Ebert: Im not a miracle. *uc* *or *ores* The World Go Round Here and There, and Thorns Too Mind the Gap: Reality and Prophesy in Nausica Mimi Mimi Mimi Mimi . . . . . . A Nave Reading of Nave Reading Ebert Defends Literature on the
Page 3 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
With that we move to new phase. We no longer see Dumbo or Timothy on screen; theyre out for the rest of the sequence. The elephants are no longer depicted as being the source of the music. Theyre just elephants. And the music gets a vocal that comments on the rather creepy things happening on screen. First we get a flood of elephants:
Ebert Defends Literature on the uncharted seas Exotic Jungle Ruin Scenes in Urban NJ Dear Reader, Can't we come out and play? to tweet RIP He went in his sleep Let it Bleed Movie Ecology: A little blitz Ebert on Burden Silence is golden Essentialism? A Maginot Line of One's Own September (32) August (59) July (45) June (44) May (57) April (39)
And then we see a lone elephant looking rather scared in a strange institutional bed (its got castors at the bottom of the bed posts). Could this be a nut house, a funny farm?
LABELS
abstraction academia activism aesthetics African-American AI alien 60s
America
ants
animation anime
anti-nuke
anxiety
apocalypse
art
autobiography awesome bees behavior
behavioral mode bell Bergen Arches biology bird black blogistan blogs body brains British Buffalo business cartoon CE workshop change chimpanzees chocolate
factory chrysler bulding classify
cognition
Coleridge color comfort communication
community
computers creativity
complexity computation copyright coupling
contrail
cultural
cyberspace design
evolution
death Ebert development drugs
culture
demonstration disarmament
Disney
dolls
ecology economics education emotion
Perhaps. But also, that bedded elephant gives us a point of entry into the scene. Is
empire state bulding environment Erie Cut
Page 4 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
that us? Could be. The rest of the sequence is a bunch of visual gags playing on shape and color, ending with a creepy walking creature constituted of elephant heads:
essay evolution family fast lane
film
flix
flowers fractal
funny future genji genre
gift globalization god golf graffiti graffiti
detail grass grief groups health high culture history Hoboken home homeless hope Hudson River human nature humanities
illusion international affairs internet IP
Japan jazz Jersey jivometric language

linguistics links
City
law
jim morrison
leaves life light
literary
low culture
criticism
manga
literature love mimi and
magic
manhattan memes mental health mhacks
eunice
mindfulness
Miyazaki moon morality music narrative natural geometry neuroscience New Hope City new savanna New York City
Obama orange
Nina Paley
party
notes
novel peak
Oshii
peace
experience perception percussion personal perversion philosophy

Pixar
photo
play
photography
poetry
plants
pleasure
politics
pollution
pond
pop
We zoom in on the yellow head, and its eyes become a pair of pyramids. With that, we move to the next phase, which is a surreal Orientalist fantasy:
culture poverty progress projection protest psychology Queen Mary 2 race

ranks
religion research rhythm risk robots love

science
romantic
science
fiction
sexuality Shakespeare silver sky society space speech SSTB street street art sunrise sunset synchrony tag tassles technology
texture
theology theory of mind throwie toast
TOM touch
transnational underbelly urban
urban
geometry
urban pastoral
video vision web weeds
BLOGS
3quarksdaily ARCADE: A Digital Salon Babel's Dawn Bordwell / Thompson / Film Brain Pickings Those pyramids were the eyes of that yellow elephant head. The creature between them appears to be a cross between an elephant and a camel. So were moving away from elephants. And the music has changed; Disneys dropped the Pink Elephants song in favor of generic slinky Oriental exotic music. Before you know Calculated Risk Changizi Blog Cobb
Page 5 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
it were looking at a swaying cobra, which is standard cartoon fare for music like this. And that cobra becomes a bizarre harem-girl elephant:
Coyote Crossing Crooked Timber Easily Distracted Evolution for Everyone Evolving Thoughts Gene Expression ginandtacos.com ICCI Blog Idiocentricism Language Log Marginal Revolution MetaManager.net Michael Berube Michael Sporn MichaelBarrier
And her buttocks become a single eye, staring at us:
Mind Hacks Mostly Harmless Neuronarrative Neuroanthropology Neurophilosophy Nigel Beale Nota Bene Books Nina Paley's Blog OnFiction Overcoming Bias QuestionCopyright.org Replicated Typo The Neurocritic The Summer of Genji The Valve Three-Toed Sloth
What just happened? In the opening phase of this sequence Dumbo and Timothy are on-screen observing the parade of self-generated elephants. In the next phase an elephant in the psych ward is seeing strange things; and that elephant is us. Now something up there on the screen is looking at us! Follow This, obviously, has got to stop. Theres another visual transition (a yellow curtain rips open) and the music changes to a fast waltz. Now we see a pair of elephants
with Google Friend Connect
FOLLOWERS
Followers (8)
Page 6 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
dancing:
Already a member? Sign in
Presumably the large one is male, the small female. She poses for him:
And then they ice skate and ski. These are leisure activities. All of a sudden were in a very different world. Its a social world; these elephants are interacting with one another. Those two elephants, the man and the woman, are having fun together. No more funny farm follies. Now, think of Dumbo. Hes been separated from his mother, with no sense that hell ever be reunited with her. His world must be rather scary. We could read the opening phases of this sequence, then, as depicting that mood. Those elephants
Page 7 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
shift shape and color. But the current sequence, with leisure-time fun, thats different these elephants have stable shape and color, but their actions change. Its almost as though that were looking ahead to what life will be like at the end of the film, when Dumbos had his triumph. But were not there yet. Were still in pink-elephant land. Were got one more phase to go. The skiing gives way to a Latin sequence (dont ask me how, just watch the movie, clip below) with up-tempo Latin music. Hot hot hot!
The couple becomes a group:
Page 8 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
Now its happy time with the gang. The tempo picks up, the elephants become cars, trains, planes, toboggans, all whizzing around through empty space at a faster and faster tempo. And then it all explodes:
And the sequence is over. Elephants come down from above, transforming into pink clouds and dawn, and Dumbo and Timothy are up in a tree:
Whatever else Disneys achieved in this sequence, hes gotten us from a state where we feel sorry for Dumbos really miserable plight to one where were relieved and perhaps even feeling a bit of hopeful expectation. Were relieved that this strange pink elephant stuff is over. But the peppiness of that Latin music got the blood moving. Perhaps there IS something to look forward in this movie after all.
Page 9 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
That is to say, the sequence has performed a dramatic function even if it hasnt given as any new information about the characters and their activities. In contrast, imagine that Disney had actually tried to depict however it is that Dumbo ended up in that tree. Allow me to quote a passage from a piece I published at Michael Barriers site: It seems to me that that would entail real problems. It is one thing to show this cute big-eared baby elephant getting tipsy and blowing funny bubbles and seeing things, but do you really want to depict him bumbling around and somehow managing to fly without really knowing what he was doing? While theres no technical difficulty in doing that, it does seem to me that keeping it realistic, even within the terms of the cartoon, would require that you besmirch Dumbos cuteness, or come dangerously close to doing so. Further, it would rob the learning to fly sequence of its interest. There wouldnt be any dramatic point to it. Finally, it would reduce the difference between Dumbos circus world and the crows world to one of mere geography. We see Dumbo stumble around in the circus, he somehow begins flapping his ears, takes to the sky, and ends up in a tall tree all before our watchful gaze. How dull, but disillusioning. Instead, Disney takes us into this marvelous surrealistic sequence of transmogrifying pink elephants. What that does is eradicate the circus world from out minds. And that circus world was a pretty cynical one. Its not simply that Dumbo and his mother were ostracized, but that the circus itself was not a place of fun and fantasy, but just a gig. Whatever it is that children have in mind when daydreaming about running off to join the circus, this is not the circus they dream about. The cynicism displayed by the animals in the opening day parade, for example, was marvelous, as was the nastiness of the clowns. So, the circus has been put behind us and were up a tree. With some crows. And, while these crows mocked Dumbo initially, they ended up sympathizing with him and helping him. As for those crows, theyre obviously modeled after black stereotypes, which is more than I want to get into here, though I say quite a bit about it in my post at Barriers. Here and now the point is simply that the world of the tree, and of the crows, is a different one from that of the circus. Its in this world that Dumbo gets a new start in life. Might we then read the autogenesis of those parading pink elephants as the seeds of Dumbos own rebirth? Perhaps. Cant say yet. Havent thought about it enough. All I can say is that the Pink Elephants sequence does make some kind of sense. Give me another year and Ill have made some progress figuring it out. Maybe.
Some raw notes on this sequence from a couple of months ago.
Page 10 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
PO ST ED B Y B I LL BE N ZON A T 5 :23 P M L AB E LS : A NIM AT I ON , ART , C ARTOON , DIS NE Y , FIL M , POP CU LTURE
10 COMMENTS: MovieMan0283 said... I love this post - on a number of occasions, you make a great point and I think "I wonder if he'll take it there next" and you do (and sometimes to somewhere else I wasn't expecting). I love the way you tie it into the structure of Dumbo's heroic journey so that it's not just a non sequitur but a fun-house reflection of the overall movie. Glad you mentioned Barrier too, I am just now reading his Disney bio and your post made me wonder how closely the Pink Elephants sequence echoes the Silly Symphonie working model - i.e. music first, then animation (at least that's how it's working at the spot I am in the book, which is pretty early, just post-Mickey). And a wonderfully readable essay, pithy yet packed in insight, nicely broken up by the images. Funny how we picked a lot of similar ones for our different posts, though somehow I missed that explosive frame you captured (second to last), would have placed nicely in there I think... OCTOBER 27, 2010 12:11 AM bill benzon said...
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2010/10/secrets-of-pink-elephants-revealed.html Page 11 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
Thanks for your comments. Glad you liked the piece. Once you start looking at a sequence like this frame by frame, LOTS of things pop out. There's more to say about this sequence, lots more. You might be interested in some of the other stuff I've written about Disney, both here and at The Valve. Most of it is about Fantasia, much of it more or less like this piece, but with fewer frame grabs. You can find links to The Valve stuff scattered here and there on this page. All the Disney stuff here is labeled "Disney," though Disney is only incidental to some of those pieces. OCTOBER 27, 2010 8:52 AM MovieMan0283 said... Thanks, bill - I'll check them out. OCTOBER 27, 2010 9:04 AM Eric Noble said... Fascinating. I love how you break down the sequence. It's that subtlety of storytelling that makes the early Disney features so fun to watch. OCTOBER 30, 2010 11:53 AM bill benzon said... Thanks, Eric. Those guys knew what they were doing. OCTOBER 30, 2010 12:00 PM Eddie Fitzgerald said... Fascinating! The sequence makes intuitive sense, but it's nice to imagine that there's some structure there, too. OCTOBER 30, 2010 12:12 PM bill benzon said... There's one thing I've been thinking about since I posted the analysis. That slinky oriental music, the belly-dancing elephant, and the eye that looks at you, all thats roughly in the middle of the sequence. We find something very similar in the middle of the Nutcracker Suite from Fantasia. The Arabian Dance is roughly in the middle, the 4th of six segments. The music isnt exactly slinky, but its certainly slow and sensuous. The moves of the fish were modeled on those of a belly-dancer brought into the studio. And at various points in this section, and nowhere else in the Nutcracker Suite, a fish looks directly at the audience.
Page 12 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
I dont know what, if anything, to make of this. Mere coincidence? Perhaps. I doubt that theres conscious imitation or parody, though one can certainly read Pink Elephants as a parody of elements in Fantasia. If I had to guess, Id bet on similar (unconscious) solutions to a similar aesthetic problem. Finally, just to stretch it as far as it can go, after this point in Pink Elephants we see gender differentiated elephants. Well, in Nutcracker weve got asexual mushrooms before the sensuous fish and male & female flowers afterward. OCTOBER 30, 2010 9:36 PM Peter said... This post has been removed by the author. NOVEMBER 1, 2010 8:17 AM Peter said... In the early version of Dumbo - the one published just after Disney bought the rights - Dumbo is taken to be examined by an Owl medical specialist. Part of the examination was psychological, and it rather looks as it the Disney writers played with the idea of making the Owl into a psychiatrist and making a feature of Dumbo's dreams. I've always wondered if, as the story got re-structured, the idea of a nightmare sequence was retained remodelled to be the needed link between getting drunk and finding themselves up a tree. I like your parallel with Fantasia - but I think you're right in suggesting that in trying to string together a flow of surreal ideas, and in a hurry at that, references to images and themes from the film were bound to creep in. NOVEMBER 1, 2010 8:19 AM bill benzon said... Ah, that's interesting, about the medical exam. You might be correct in suggesting that that's one of the seeds of this sequence. NOVEMBER 1, 2010 9:12 AM POST A COMMENT
Page 13 of 14
11/2/10 10:12 PM
Comment as:
Post Comment
Select profile... Preview
LINKS TO THIS POST Create a Link Newer Post Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Home Older Post
FLICKR PHOTOSTREAM
View Flickr Photostream.
THIS WORK BY WILLIAM L. BENZON IS LICENSED UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION -SHARE ALIKE 3.0 UNPORTED LICENSE . BASED ON A WORK AT NEW -SAVANNA.BLOGSPOT.COM . UNIQUE VISITORS
Page 14 of 14

Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed

Încărcat de

Informații document

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

NEW SAVANNA: Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed

MONDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2010

PAGES IN THIS BLOG