Ears Don’t Make the Heart

I saw Dumbo this weekend and I can understand the lukewarm reception. Before I go into Dumbo 2019 I need to explain my history with Dumbo and elephants for you to understand how I feel today.

Elephants are majestic creatures. They always will be. I rode elephants when I was a kid. One of my best memories as a kid is riding one with my dad at Vargas Circus. It was magical and fun and I remember the elephant handler allowing us to go around a second time because I didn’t want to get off. I remember thinking about this as the best activity for a kid.

I was stupid. I didn’t know any better. I thought they were happy and liked seeing us happy. Dead wrong. It was painful. It was killing them, they would have killed us all if they weren’t beaten into submission by the handlers. That day will still exist as one of the top ten days of my life and I think the innocence of how neither of us knew that anything was wrong keeps it pure. The children today know better and they weren’t having it in the movie.

Dumbo in the 1980s was traumatizing. You’re sitting there with popcorn and your mom and then they send the mommy elephant to jail. Was it social commentary on mothers behind bars that ended up there due to bogus drug charges, defending themselves against domestic violence and economic circumstances? It sure felt like it and I was not a repeat watcher.

Did I like the ride at Disneyland? Yeah, I can remember sitting on that ride and looking over at Alice in Wonderland and debating what I would eat as soon as the ride was over. That’s how drugs work, children.

Fast forward to 2019 and the remake. Tim Burton directed this and I can’t quite put my finger on what happened, but it felt like two stories were struggling to be told and we were subjected to a tug-of-war on screen.

I think Disney wrote a story about two children that helped an elephant find its true potential and made him a star so he would have the courage to get his mother back. Why this Disney story fell flat? The children lost their mother and to make an analogy between that loss and the separation of Dumbo from his mother crossed the wires in my mind. I can’t feel pain and hurt for everyone all at the same time. Give me something to root for and let me know it’s going to be okay. Those children lost their mother, there is no happy ending, only healing and that’s heavy for a Disney movie. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the storylines was that the mother was evil and ran off leaving them with their dad, but then maternal abandonment would have been awkward as well. This storyline was blah and tangled with Burton’s story.

I believe Burton was writing a love story to tentpole show business. There was supposed to be a bigger love story between Colin Farrell and Eva Green. I don’t care if it is a Disney movie, you don’t put two extremely fuckable actors in the same space where they set the scene on fire and then try to convince me they were brought together due to their mutual goal of raising children. They are not plain and boring — it’s Colin Farrell and Eva Green! There are films out there dedicated to both of them just walking around a room naked without any dialogue because that’s all it takes to make a scene. Let Tim Burton make his love story! It’s Disney, but take a chance and see what he can do with it.

I don’t know where the story was lost or taken away from either side, but what we have is a two-hour film that sort of told a few stories all at the same time and then came to a happy ending that checked off all of the politically correct boxes no matter how far fetched it made the story.

What I was happy with was the audience. Kids have strong bullshit meters and a lot of the ones in the audience I was in didn’t like that someone had to prove themselves as equal and just as important because they are different. Adults have memories of how something that makes them stand out can cause them to be ostracized and ridiculed in different ways. The kids today don’t get it and they’re not here for that shit.

They were over Dumbo being different with large ears after the first minute he appeared on-screen and they just didn’t get why everyone else was still harping on it close to an hour and a half later. The end scene was needed for this crowd, but they still walked away not knowing what they just watched.

I started this essay with a photo of two elephants. After Vargas circus, I wanted a stuffed elephant. My mother couldn’t find one at the store so she made one hoping I would like it. I loved it and still have it today. The scars are from near-death experiences where Elephant was harpooned by hunters, but killed them and survived to tell the story. The second elephant was a stuffed animal I received on my 25th birthday. My mom saw it at the store and had a flashback to the Christmas she frantically searched for a stuffed elephant at the shops and couldn’t find one in time. The final elephant in my collection will be Dumbo when I get him at the Magic Kingdom in the future. It will complete the trifecta — innocence, growth, and remembrance. The three elephants represent different points in my life. I will always love this animal and the fond memories I have of being around them, but I apologize for any pain caused to these beautiful creatures and I still wouldn’t choose to watch this film again.