Dumbo

This podcast was created to give each of us an outlet with each other to talk about movies, discover a lot of new ones along the way, and to build up a community of film lovers around what we believe is a fun and unique approach to film criticism and discussion.

In this episode, we're back with the second half of our Animation Domination series, taking shape in Abe, Austin, and JC's picks of Dumbo, Chainsaw Man, the movie Reze Arc, and Space Jam.

I think it's safe to say that this episode certainly won't go off the rails once we ping-pong off the acting capabilities of Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, literally everything that transpires in the Chainsaw Man movie, and if that doesn't satiate your taste, we tackle capitalism and Mr. Cryogenic Head himself at the very end.

All rise, because this court is about to become a circus.

Yeah.

That's right.

Like, uh, "Dude, you just see what happened yet?" "I saw Dumbo." "No, I was talking about Pearl Harbor."

[laughs]

No.

Dumbo.

Oh, my God.

The best part of Dumbo.

Did Dumbo have an acid trip? Oh, my God.

I never saw Dumbo.

Oh, my God.

I

it was so nice.

Before 8 o'clock, we did Barnstormer twice and Dumbo twice.

Oh, my God.

And got breakfast and sat down, and there was, like, nobody around us, and we were just sitting, eating, and it was, like, really nice.

I don't know if we even did any rides.

Oh, no, no, we did—

We did Barnstormer and Dumbo, and you weren't really happy about that.

Yeah, yeah.

And because of that, certainly if you have a black man playing that character, singing I Want to Be Like You, a song where a non-human character is expressing a great desire to be just like the humans, you could probably... make a you probably would not need a a very complicated map to draw from point a to point b and say there's something pretty untoward here those would be overtones in that situation i think now that we have louis prima in the actual movie louis prima who not not a black man but an actor an actor and performer who is not doing anything to his voice to sound different as king louis I think it becomes largely extra textual.

The comparison I would make there is if you know When I See an Elf and Fly from Dumbo, and if you also know Cliff Edwards voicing Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, you know he's doing something different to his voice when he plays the crow in When I See an Elf and Fly to sound stereotypically, quote unquote, black.

That's a very different situation.

I say all of that because I also want to acknowledge that even while I understand this, I don't completely buy into it, partially because, again, it's extra textual.

Despite limited formal art training, he rose to prominence at Disney very quickly in the early 30s due to his great natural talent and the tremendous appeal of his drawings.

Freddy, as he was called, worked on such Disney classics as Pinocchio, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Peter Pan.

He later became the resident specialist on animating Mickey Mouse.

Moore's animation of the earlier Mickey design is especially memorable in the 1938 short The Brave Little Tailor, which is known as the last significant appearance of the pie-eyed Mickey, basically when he had those large black ovals with little triangle slits cut out.