Dumbo;’ Remake Sidesteps Issue

FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2019 | SERVING CHICAGO’S LEGAL COMMUNITY FOR 164 YEARS | CHICAGOLAWBULLETIN.COM

VOLUME 165, NO. 72 History isn’t kind to the original ‘Dumbo;’ remake sidesteps issue

Before Pearl Harbor, before Henry Louis Gates provides some big top in an effort to protect him, Brown v. Board of Education, context. is befriended by two motherless before Rosa Parks sat down on Although the blackface charac - children, Milly and Joe (Nico that bus, there were the “Dumbo” ter Jim Crow goes back to the Parker and Findley Hobbins), who crows, led by the bowler-hatted, 1830s, blackface minstrelsy — belong to Holt Farrier (Colin Far - cigar-chomping top bird, Jim white performers with blackened rell) a former trick-riding horse - Crow. faces presenting African Ameri - man who lost an arm in World When Dumbo the baby ele - cans as simple minded, happy-go- War I. phant first took flight in the 1941 lucky and primitive — became Priggish Milly doesn’t see a cir - Disney animated feature, he popular as a post-slavery tool to cus in her future and, inspired by landed in a tree. Out on a limb, show blacks as unworthy of free - Madame Curie, uses scientific the black crows were there to dom, responsibility and the right principles and experimentation to greet him. to vote. REBECCA L. FORD teach Dumbo to fly. She’s assisted Teasingly kind and mockingly The powerful visual rhetoric of in this effort by her ebullient little helpful, these “boys,” as they blackface was then endlessly brother and a beautiful French were called by Dumbo’s mentor, repeated in mass-produced REBECCA L. FORD is counsel at aerialist named Colette (Eva friend and business manager Tim - advertisements, postcards and Scharf Banks Marmor LLC, and Green). othy Q. Mouse, are the tricksters tchotchkes, as well as on stage concentrates her practice on The original Dumbo story takes who present Dumbo with the tail- and in motion pictures. complex litigation, compliance, up the first act of the new movie. feather talisman that gives him The black characters in 1941’s board governance and specialized In act two, Michael Keaton the courage to soar. “Dumbo” reflect pre-civil rights employment issues. She is the former appears as V.A. Vandevere, the evil executive vice president for Jim Crow, named after the seg - notions about black people and litigation and intellectual property Walt Disney-esque owner of the regationist policies of the South demonstrate the power of enter - at MGM. She can be reached at Dreamland theme park who buys (in what must have seemed like tainment to reinforce reprehensi - [email protected]. Dumbo’s tattered circus from an clever joke at the time) was ble social attitudes. Vestiges of Max Medici (Danny DeVito). voiced by Cliff Edwards, the this presentation persist in we’re happy-hearted roustabouts, Keaton and Burton have white actor behind Jiminy today’s advertisements and enter - we don’t know when we get our reunited to deliver a beautifully Cricket in 1940’s “Pinocchio” and tainment. pay, and when we do, we throw stylized, Gotham-dark cartoon in sang “When You Wish Upon a While the crows were our pay away.” which good triumphs over evil. Star.” metaphors, the animation also It’s too much to ask a pre-ado - The elephant in the room is With Jim Crow as frontman of directly depicts black men with lescent target audience to sepa - that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & their tree-top quintet, the black the roustabouts who pitch the big rate the animation’s antebellum Bailey Circus closed in 2017 birds sang a toe-tapping Cab Cal - top tent overnight after the circus racial message from its believe-in- largely because it eliminated its loway-style scat number, “When I train pulls into town. These yourself moral. “Dumbo” has pachyderm act after animal rights See an Elephant Fly.” nameless, faceless, dark-skinned been long due for a makeover. groups objected to the manner in Anthropomorphically speak - figures sing the “Song of the Enter Tim Burton. His live- which the animals were trained ing, the crows were good people. Roustabouts,” vocalized by “The action “Dumbo” isn’t a poignant and treated in captivity. Fun too. So why is everyone for - King’s Men,” a popular white tear-jerker like the original. It’s a No snappy songs, no talking ever trying to prune their perch? quartet of the ‘30s and ‘40s, who children’s adventure as imagined animals, and few black folks to It’s the blackface. were also the off-screen voices of by the guy who brought you “Bat - speak of, the new “Dumbo” suc - In “Stony the Road: Recon - the lollipop guild in “The Wizard man.” cessfully sidesteps the anima - struction, White Supremacy, and of Oz.” The tune came with rep - Gone are the crows and the tion’s problematic issues. So can the Rise of Jim Crow” and his PBS resentative lyrics such as: “We beloved Timothy Q. Mouse. we finally put a fork in the argu - series, “Reconstruction,” Harvard work all day, we work all night, we Instead, Dumbo, separated from ment over blackface? professor and genealogy buff never learned to read or write, his mother after she wrecks the When elephants fly.