11/2/10 10:12 PMNEW SAVANNA: Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed

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M O N D A Y , O C T O B E R 2 5 , 2 0 1 0

Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed“Pink Elephants on Parade,” from Walt Disney’s Dumbo, is one of the best known,

and strangest, animated sequences that Disney, or any studio, has ever done (see

clip below). It’s strange on two counts. In the first place, it doesn’t seem to advance

the Dumbo story in any way. As the sequence begins Dumbo and Timothy Mouse

are pleasantly drunk; when it ends they’re 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 that’s 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.

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.

Let’s 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

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11/2/10 10:12 PMNEW SAVANNA: Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed

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and the merged bell expands, bursts, and becomes a portal for a parade of

marching elephants.

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

we’re 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;

they’re on-screen characters.

R E C E N T C O M M E N T S

bill benzon wrote...Ah, that's interesting, about themedical exam. You might be correct insuggesting that...Continue >>

bill benzon wrote...Thanks for the comment. Yes, though thefilm has action and adventure aplenty, it is,as you say, a...Continue >>

Peter wrote...In the early version of Dumbo - the onepublished just after Disney bought therights - Dumbo is...Continue >>

Anonymous wrote...A fine post. Castle in the Sky is asurprisingly tender movie, and that heart,plus the fact that...Continue >>

bill benzon wrote...There's one thing I've beenthinking about since I posted the analysis.That slinky...Continue >>

Eddie Fitzgerald wrote...Fascinating! The sequence makes intuitivesense, but it's nice to imagine thatthere's some...Continue >>

bill benzon wrote...Thanks, Eric. Those guys knew what theywere doing.

Eric Noble wrote...Fascinating. I love how you break downthe sequence. It's that subtlety ofstorytelling that...Continue >>

MovieMan0283 wrote...Thanks, bill - I'll check them out.

bill benzon wrote...Thanks for your comments. Glad you likedthe piece.Once you start looking at asequence like this...Continue >>

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11/2/10 10:12 PMNEW SAVANNA: Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed

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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):

There is no structure in the film-space itself on which those elephants are

marching. They’re walking on the border of the frame. This is the sort of self-

conscious gag that’s as old as animation itself – such trickery was fundamental to

Winsor McCay’s work, but also to Disney’s Alice shorts. Those elephants will

parade around the entire perimeter of the frame and then they’ll start expanding

until they burst.

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With that we move to new phase. We no longer see Dumbo or Timothy on screen;

they’re out for the rest of the sequence. The elephants are no longer depicted as

being the source of the music. They’re 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:

And then we see a lone elephant looking rather scared in a strange institutional

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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:

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:

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 we’re moving

away from elephants. And the music has changed; Disney’s dropped the “Pink

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it we’re looking at a swaying cobra, which is standard cartoon fare for music like

this. And that cobra becomes a bizarre harem-girl elephant:

And her buttocks become a single eye, staring at us:

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!

This, obviously, has got to stop. There’s another visual transition (a yellow curtain

rips open) and the music changes to a fast waltz. Now we see a pair of elephants

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dancing:

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 we’re in

a very different world. It’s 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. He’s been separated from his mother, with no sense that

he’ll 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

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11/2/10 10:12 PMNEW SAVANNA: Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed

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shift shape and color. But the current sequence, with leisure-time fun, that’s

different — these elephants have stable shape and color, but their actions change.

It’s almost as though that we’re looking ahead to what life will be like at the end of

the film, when Dumbo’s had his triumph. But we’re not there yet. We’re still in

pink-elephant land.

We’re got one more phase to go. The skiing gives way to a Latin sequence (don’t

ask me how, just watch the movie, clip below) with up-tempo Latin music. Hot hot

hot!

The couple becomes a group:

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Now it’s 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 Disney’s achieved in this sequence, he’s gotten us from a state

where we feel sorry for Dumbo’s really miserable plight to one where we’re relieved

and perhaps even feeling a bit of hopeful expectation. We’re 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.

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That is to say, the sequence has performed a dramatic function even if it hasn’t

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

Barrier’s site:

It seems to me that that would entail real problems. It is one thing to showthis cute big-eared baby elephant getting tipsy and blowing funny bubblesand seeing things, but do you really want to depict him bumbling aroundand somehow managing to fly without really knowing what he was doing?While there’s no technical difficulty in doing that, it does seem to me thatkeeping it realistic, even within the terms of the cartoon, would require thatyou besmirch Dumbo’s cuteness, or come dangerously close to doing so.Further, it would rob the “learning to fly” sequence of its interest. Therewouldn’t be any dramatic point to it. Finally, it would reduce the differencebetween Dumbo’s circus world and the crow’s world to one of meregeography. We see Dumbo stumble around in the circus, he somehowbegins flapping his ears, takes to the sky, and ends up in a tall tree – allbefore our watchful gaze. How dull, but disillusioning.

Instead, Disney takes us into this marvelous surrealistic sequence oftransmogrifying pink elephants. What that does is eradicate the circusworld from out minds. And that circus world was a pretty cynical one. It’snot simply that Dumbo and his mother were ostracized, but that the circusitself was not a place of fun and fantasy, but just a gig. Whatever it is thatchildren have in mind when daydreaming about running off to join thecircus, this is not the circus they dream about. The cynicism displayed bythe animals in the opening day parade, for example, was marvelous, as wasthe nastiness of the clowns.

So, the circus has been put behind us and we’re 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, they’re 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 Barrier’s. 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. It’s 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 Dumbo’s own rebirth?

Perhaps. Can’t say yet. Haven’t 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 I’ll have made some progress figuring it out. Maybe.

Some raw notes on this sequence from a couple of months ago.

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POSTED BY BILL BENZON AT 5:23 PM

LABELS: ANIMATION, ART , CARTOON , DISNEY , FILM , POP CULTURE

1 0 C O M M E N T S :

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...

11/2/10 10:12 PMNEW SAVANNA: Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed

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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 that’s 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 isn’t exactly slinky, but it’s 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.

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P O S T A C O M M E N T

I don’t know what, if anything, to make of this. Mere coincidence?

Perhaps. I doubt that there’s conscious imitation or parody, though one

can certainly read Pink Elephants as a parody of elements in Fantasia. If I

had to guess, I’d 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

we’ve 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

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