Thursday, May 7, 2015
Dumbo
I had not seen Dumbo in a long time and barely remembered what happened, so I was shocked in class watching the movie. It did not seem like a childrens' movie at all. The way he was separated from his mother was heartbreaking, and there was a lot of violence towards the mother during the scene at the circus when people were making fun of Dumbo. It was also so sad that he was ostracized from both the human and animal communities. The only person who accepted him was the mouse. That could have been a storyline to try to show kids how hurtful words could be, but it still did not seem like a good movie for young kids. I have no idea how I liked that movie when I was younger.
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I thought the exact same thing! I believe that yes, portraying them as crows was probably pretty racist (what with the Jim Crowe laws back in the day) and you can definitely tell they were African American by the stereotypes they were portrayed with, but I thought they were 'good guys' of the movie. The circus in itself existed and held animals in captivity and no matter how someone tries to spin it (the animals being portrayed as happy in the film, mostly in the opening sequence with the storks and the babies and then later when they're being loaded into the train) it's still cruel and these animals would have much rather liked being wild. So the circus itself had no redeeming qualities. The clowns wanted to make themselves greater by putting Dumbo's life at risk. The other elephants were rude. The only ones on Dumbo's side was the mouse, his mom, and eventually, the Crows. After all, they did give Dumbo the placebo to fly and knew it would work to give him enough courage to try. They felt sympathy for him when they learned his story. They were happy to see Dumbo fly and saw him off at the end of the movie.
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