Dead Putting Society (aka Life During Wartime)

In some respects it seems a tremendously cruel twist of fate that Ned Flanders, of all the fictional characters we had to choose from, became our cultural shorthand for the process by which a nuanced personally is slowly flattened into a flow-blown caricature. Hence we got "Flanderization", one of those irritating but I suppose intermittently handy buzz terms we can trace back to the route of all early-2010s internet evil, ie: TV Tropes. Looking at Ned's development toward the start of The Simpsons' run, he was a telling indication of the writers' willingness to avoid easy stereotypes and to make the character dynamics more fleshed out than first meets the eye. In the very beginning, it looked as though Ned might be an antagonist. When he was introduced in "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" he was explicitly denounced by Homer as a "big show-off", and from what we had to go on that episode, you couldn't help but agree. He interjects at precisely two points in the story, on both occasions to rub Homer's nose in the inadequacy of the shoestring Christmas he's struggling to scrape together for his family. Ned isn't doing it on purpose, but he seems so wilfully oblivious to his neighbour's plight that his affability rings hollow. He comes off as rather a smarmy bastard, the kind of omnipresent thorn in your side you can always count on to show you up at everything you ever try by doing it better, and it must have been tempting for those early writers to keep him pigeonholed in that convenient character niche - someone we could easily hate, to increase our sympathy for Homer. Instead, they went a more challenging route and made Ned genuinely likeable. His only other prominent role in Season 1 was in "The Call of The Simpsons", where he sets events into motion by showing up at Evergreen Terrace with a flashy new RV, once again he stoking Homer's envy and feelings of inadequacy. This time the scales are tipped more in Ned's favour - Homer has no pressing need for an RV and only wants one to keep up with Ned, making his motivations a little more petty. Ned is also entirely pleasant and polite when confronted with the dented RV Homer is ultimately wheedled into buying by the A. Brooks-voiced cowboy; there's not even a hint of him snickering behind Homer's back. The real revelation, though, was in the following season's "Dead Putting Society" (7F08), which debuted on November 15th 1990 and gave us our first proper glimpse of life on the other side of the fence. As it turns out, Ned is not so oblivious to Homer's feelings. He's aware that Homer hates his guts and, deep down inside, we suspect that he's got his own lengthy list of grievances with Homer. Ned, however, has a steely determination to rise above it all and adhere to the teachings of Matthew 19:19, however challenging a neighbour Homer might be to love. It's the ingenious punchline to that early dynamic with Ned being this unbearably perfect neighbour - he's so unbearably perfect that Homer can't even resent him without casting himself as the bad guy.

"Dead Putting Society" cemented the all-defining trait of Ned being devoutly religious. This would become the nexus of his self-titled Flanderization, as he was used increasingly as a caricature of a prudish Christian. Given that the devoutly religious were a class whose feathers The Simpsons were always wont to ruffle, back when the very premise of this dysfunctional cartoon family was seen as shocking and radical, the representation they get through Ned here feels surprisingly non-spiteful - for now, Ned is just a regular guy with regular interests who is sincerely using his faith as a guide for being fairer to others, not to put himself above them. To a point, Ned is able to rationalise the aggravations of living next door to Homer as an ongoing test in turning the other cheek, but only to a point. He has his limits like any other person. A later episode, "Hurricane Neddy", would make the controversial assertion that Ned was incapable of expressing anger at all (a quirk rooted less in his faith than in his psychologically damaging upbringing), but we could see in "Dead Putting Society" that that blatantly isn't true. Jeff Martin's smart fable of deadlocked suburbanites is interested not only in how Ned brings out the worst in Homer, but also the extent to which Homer might do the same to Ned. It is ultimately a cautionary tale about the dangers of giving in to petty rivalries and choosing the path of enmity when it's blatantly in everyone's interests to just be friends. Ned is established as the party who should know better. Yet not even he can resist the constant temptation of Homer beckoning him to the dark side.

When I looked at "Bart's Dog Gets an F" a couple of months ago I noted that Homer was effectively the villain of that episode and how unusual that seemed, but come to think of it he's probably even worse here. Homer starts "Dead Putting Society" in a foul mood and pretty much stays that way for its entirety - at least in "Bart's Dog Gets an F" he was ultimately happy to see Santa's Little Helper succeed. What's more, he instigates ALL of the conflict in this story. What keeps Homer from coming off as too despicable is the underlying comprehension that his non-stop peevishness is but an expression of the vulnerability and wounded pride Ned invariably makes him feel. The bitter truth is that, while Homer's rudeness to Ned is in no way justified, there is a certain shameful level on which his disdain for Ned is entirely relatable and human. Sometimes the very worst people are those who put us in the shade by doing everything right, to the point that they can't even give us a valid reason to hate them (Lisa would face a similar dilemma with Allison in "Lisa's Rival", albeit with a more positive resolution). Homer openly expresses this vulnerability in precisely two scenes in "Dead Putting Society", but it's palpable all throughout.

The tragedy of it all is that if Homer could get past this knee-jerk defensiveness, he'd likely find that Ned is a very supportive and valuable person to have in his life. In the opening sequence, we find Ned making a conscious effort to be friends with Homer by offering him some practical help with gardening, which Homer instantly rebuffs. This over-the-fence stalemate has presumably characterised their relationship for quite some time; it's revealed here that Homer and Ned have been neighbours for eight years (this is consistent with what we were later shown in "Lisa's First Word", which had the Simpsons moving to Evergreen Terrace shortly before Lisa was born), and within that time Homer has apparently avoided ever setting foot inside the Flanders' homestead. On this occasion, Ned has more success by enticing him with the offer of ice-cold suds, and Homer is impressed to discover what a swanky rumpus room his neighbour has tucked away, complete with lager imported all the way from Holland. It doesn't take long for Homer's awe to give way to envy, however, particularly when he gets a first-row view of how much more heavenly things are in the Flanders abode compared to his own. "Dead Putting Society" marked our proper introduction to the Flanders unit; Todd was never far from his father's side in Season 1, but this is the debut showing of Maude and Rod. For now, Rod doesn't really matter - he's just a second Flanders child who shows up in the third act and gets no dialogue.^[1] Maude's role is fairly minimal, but we see enough to get the idea that she and Ned have this wholesome and idyllic partnership. This also stokes Homer's envy, but for the lewdest possible reason - Maude's butt is apparently nicer than Marge's, an opinion he very explicitly and very unwisely voices to Ned. Todd is the one character who now seems nigh unrecognizable; in his early appearances, you can see how they were setting him up to be another anti-Bart, albeit in a less flamboyant and antagonistic way than Martin Prince. He's polite, obedient and genuinely respects his father, but he's also a normal, well-adjusted kid who gets along fine with Bart, as opposed to the warped reflection of an insular upbringing that he and Rod would eventually become.

Homer blows up with Ned about this perceived rubbing of his family's failings in his face, and in return is politely asked to leave. He remains so steamy about the incident into the early hours that he's unable to sleep; Marge patiently attempts to understand Homer's perspective, but opines that she's never seen Ned be anything less than a perfect neighbour. Homer knows this to be true, and feels this is precisely what makes him the real victim of this scenario; he'll never be able to compete with Ned. Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence Ned is also struggling to sleep. He's such a perfect neighbour that he's willing to shoulder responsibility for what happened with Homer, feeling he could have handled it better (in reality, he responded more graciously than most people would). This sequence actually does reveal a less admirable side of Ned's character, but it's one to which the Simpsons aren't privy - his tendency to treat Reverend Lovejoy as his personal 24/7 confessional. Ned is so fixated on doing the right thing, and so poised to reach out for Lovejoy's counsel whenever the slightest challenge comes his way that he seems to overlook the fact that Lovejoy is as human as everyone else, and is entitled to things like a private life and a decent night's sleep. Hence, he rings Lovejoy at Ridiculous O'clock to discuss a problem that absolutely could have waited until the morning (also disturbing Helen's sleep in the process). Lovejoy's own (more justified) dislike of Ned is something the series wouldn't fully delve into until the Oakley Weinstein era; for now, it's one of those smaller moments that doesn't add much in terms of plot but gives us a little extra flavour of Springfield as this vibrant community with all these additional dynamics going on beyond the Simpsons' walls. Ned's response is to extend Homer an olive branch in the form of a missive penned straight from the heart, but he makes the mistake of bearing his soul a little too candidly - Homer finds Ned's flowery, touchy-feely prose so hysterical that it becomes the centrepiece of the family's breakfast the following morning. Again, the Simpsons' reaction is an ugly one but alas, all-too-natural. Even Marge, who recognises that the family have no cause to sneer at the Flanders, has to sneak away to enjoy a private giggle.

Tensions between the two households (unalike in dignity) flare up again later that day, when Homer and Bart head to Sir Putt-A-Lot's for a round of miniature golf. (Homer makes the unusual move of voluntarily taking Maggie with them, although this sets up a running background gag where Maggie is continually neglected throughout the game, leaving her to wander the golf course and narrowly avoid being gruesomely injured several times over.) As chance would have it, Ned has also gone there for a game with Todd, who is quite the gifted young golfer. They pass a sign promoting an upcoming children's golfing tournament, which Bart and Todd both express an interest in entering. Homer spies an opportunity to get even with Ned - he might not personally be able to compete with Ned at anything, but perhaps he can indirectly one-up him by having the fruit of his loins beat the fruit of Ned's in a golfing contest.

Homer's outlandish declaration seems destined to backfire. For one thing, Bart clearly had no aspirations of actually winning that tournament - it's telling that while Todd immediately sets his sights on the $50 grand prize, Bart seems contented with the participation prize of a free balloon. It's not because he sucks at golf or anything. He got a score of 41 in his game with Homer, which is none too shabby (it works out to an average of 2.27 per hole), but that was all for shits and giggles. Bart doesn't see himself as much of a competitor, a view the collection of participation ribbons adorning his bedroom shelf would appear to confirm, and the awareness that he's being used as a dupe to settle someone else's petty grudges gives him little incentive to rise to the occasion. Homer attempts to give Bart additional training, a chunk of which amounts to conditioning Bart to loathe Todd as much as he loathes Ned. As if Homer's seething hatred of Ned ever gave him the edge in their (mostly) one-sided rivalry.

"Dead Putting Society" is your classic sins of the fathers story. The challenge facing the younger generation is to resist succumbing to the corruption that's making full-blown jackaninnies of their elders. And the kids are pretty much on their own in figuring this out; Marge spends much of the episode as in her despairing bystander mode; she calls out Homer for warping Bart's mind but otherwise doesn't intervene, and if anything she becomes complicit in Homer and Ned's escalating feud by acting as a witness to their wager, however grudging. Bart gets more practical support from Lisa, who helps him to hone his technique and to offset Homer's negative influence with an array of resources that play to her own strengths: geometry (Bart is amazed to discover that it can be applied to the real world), The Tao-Te Ching by Lao-Tzu and a selection of Buddhist proverbs. This is a Homer/Bart episode foremost, but we also get some really lovely peeks into Lisa's lower-key world - her interactions with her "gang" at the local library and her melancholic observation that maybe it's a blessing after all that Homer can't relate to anything she does. (We saw first-hand evidence of that earlier, when Lisa chose to sit out the mini golf so that she could study for an upcoming math contest, which led to this beautiful exchange: "If I win I'll bring home a new protractor!", "Too bad we don't live on a farm...") It's also a nice testament to how far the Simpsons siblings will go to back one another up. As a bonus, Lisa's training montage contains the episode's strangest and single most unsettling moment - a random non-speaking cameo from Krusty, who is conspicuously not wearing clown makeup. At this point the production team were clearly undecided on whether Krusty should retain his circus guise when out in public, and it doesn't surprise me that they ultimately ruled to make him a clown full-time - he looks a fair bit meaner and honestly a whole lot uncannier as a regular guy.

As Bart strives for Nirvana, Homer sinks ever further into the pit of despair, and things get even juicier when he finally manages to drag Ned down with him. Already on thin ice, Homer puts his pride on the line even further by goading Ned into making a bet with him over the outcome of the tournament. Tired of Homer's constant antagonism, Ned takes the bait, and proposes a batch of Marge's blueberry muffins against one of Maude's homemade wind chimes. (This clearly meant to be a sissy bet, but it's actually kind of dickish if you think about it; this animosity is purely between the husbands, so why should the wives do all the work?) Homer suggests they make a REAL bet, and before long things have escalated to the point where the loser has to mow the other's lawn (Ned notes that Homer would have to decent job of it for a change, betraying that his earlier offer of assistance was rooted in the observation that Homer is shit at gardening). The cap-it-all penalty of the loser having to mow the other's lawn in drag is the one element that admittedly seems rather groan-worthy now (heck, they admit on the DVD commentary that it was dated even in 1990), but it sufficiently captures just how senseless and childish their feud is becoming. The possibility that there might be a third child somewhere in Springfield who could give both Bart and Todd a run for their money never occurs to them - conveniently, it never does come up in the plot, but this is further indication of their ever-growing self-absorption, now that the tournament's very existence has devolved into a personal pissing contest for their respective clans. Ned still has enough of his dignity in intact to stipulate that the losing child should be described in gentler terms as "the boy who doesn't win" in their contract; he also sorely regrets his decision the instant he gets away from Homer (as per the DVD commentary, the script originally had an additional scene where he once again harasses Reverend Lovejoy for guidance, but that will have to be left to our imaginations). Homer likewise expresses some regret; having once again failed to bring out Bart's best golfing form, we cut to a scene where he's picking out dresses from Marge's wardrobe and resignedly asks for her opinion on which of them would look best on him. It's a small moment, but a revealing one, being the sole point in the episode in which you can really get in a smidgen of sympathy for Homer. He absolutely dug his own grave on this on, but not even he's oblivious to that fact. (Actually, I'm surprised that Marge would have anything in her wardrobe that would even fit Homer, except maybe her pregnancy gear.)

"Dead Putting Society" is another of those earlier Simpsons episodes that succeeds in turning a puny molehill into a staggering mountain. It's a fairly modest scenario in which nothing overly dramatic happens, and yet by the end you feel the weight of all the generational trauma that's hanging on this silly game of kiddie golf, juxtaposed incongruously with the assortment of chintzy animatronics that accompany each hole. Similar to "Dancin' Homer", there's humor in the very absurdity that something so trivial would be treated as such serious business, not just within the context of Ned and Homer's grudge match, but to the town as a whole. The tournament is a lavish affair, complete with an over-enthusiastic British-accented commentator who insists on treating this local children's contest as if it were the most riveting thing he's ever seen. (I didn't notice this until it was pointed out on the DVD commentary, but the other commentator who never gets a word in is the father of Eugene Fisk, who appeared at the bachelor party in "Homer's Night Out".) What has the townspeople so transfixed by watching these children putt is what we also suspect to be the root cause of all evil in this story - the terminal boredom of suburban living. Characters come to hate one another because they're stuck together, they inevitably get on one another's nerves, and they need something to even out the vapidity. Hatred serves no purpose other than to compensate for life's disappointments; as Homer explains to Marge in the only other scene where he makes his vulnerability all too stark: "Sometimes the only way you can feel good about yourself is by making someone else look bad. And I'm tired of making other people feel good about themselves." This kind of hatred is shown to be an exclusively adult thing - Bart and Todd seem naturally disinclined to it, even with their parents so wildly at one another's throats. Their lives are still mostly ahead of them, and they've yet to be whittled down by the same deluge of accumulated cynicism, although their parents might give them a head start with the run-off from their own. We might question why Ned is ultimately as susceptible as Homer when he's living the dream life, with his fancy Dutch beer and his adoring son. But then fate did stick one bum card into his otherwise ace hand, by lumbering him with Homer as a next door neighbour. Proximity to Homer is a bugbear he contends with on a daily basis, and it's finally reached the breaking point where he's allowed this to overshadow everything the world has going for him.

We don't get a lot of insight into the possible knock-on effects on the Flanders' dynamics. This is something the script might have expanded on a little, by having Maude weigh in on what a cracked, hardened exterior her beloved sponge cake is acquiring (her input is instead restricted to a single aghast reaction during one of Homer and Ned's heckling matches at the tournament) and signs of Ned putting increased pressure on Todd during his own training. Still, we get a succinct enough glimpse into Ned's descent into darkness, and it is genuinely starting. This is the man who'd once enthusiastically received the advice that a gentle answer turneth away wrath, and now he's feeding his child the completely contrary message that mercy is for the weak. That's about as ugly as Ned's bile gets - he doesn't spew anything quite as flagrantly inappropriate as Homer's threat (in the alleged words of American football coach Vince Lombardi) to disown Bart if he loses - but we can tell, even with the limited time we've spent getting to know him thus far, that he is behaving in a way that's egregiously out of character. And yet it comes so very naturally to him. With Homer's help, he's tapped into the latent toxins lurking deep within his soul. Such behaviour would be largely inconceivable to Ned post-Season 3, of course, but perhaps we ought to regard that as the later seasons' loss? Because Ned certainly feels real here - a man with the very best of ideals and intentions who can be momentarily led astray with the right provocation. It may not be pretty, but he's taken his place with the rest of humanity, with all of its messy and irrational tendencies.

The adults, then, are the ones who behave like kids, while the actual kids are shouldered with the responsibility of having to find a better solution. And find a better solution they do. Come the tournament, the two budding golfers play a close game, and on the final hole end up in a situation where it could easily go either way. Bart and Todd both decide that they've got nothing more to prove and agree to call it a draw. The British announcer declares this the most stirring display of gallantry and sportsmanship since Mountbatten gave Egypt back to the Punjabis. He clearly doesn't speak for everyone, however. If you pay attention, you'll notice how the spectators departing as Bart and Todd receive their $25 checks are shooting the boys incredibly dirty looks, as though they're bitterly disappointed that these two 10-year-olds couldn't see their match out to the finish. Maybe they had bets of their own riding on the outcome. Or maybe the prospect of learning who was the better putter out of Bart and Todd was really the most exciting item on their agenda that day. There we have it, the terminal boredom of suburban living.

The ending of "Dead Putting Society" is at once wildly optimistic and deeply cynical. Bart and Todd might not win the game, but they come out as victors through not being tainted by their parents' rancour. At the same time, it seems that the adults might be too far gone to reverse their own debasement, or at least one of them is. Ned is prepared to follow Todd and Bart's example and suggest that he and Homer finally put aside their differences, but Homer isn't having any of it. He's got Ned on a technicality - since neither boy won the tournament, as per the terms of their contract they are now BOTH obligated to mow the other's lawn in their wife's Sunday dress. Obviously Homer is being unreasonable here. The opportunity is right there for the two feuding neighbours to laugh it off, agree they've been foolish and make a renewed effort to be friends going forward. Yet he insists on the path of malice and demands his pound of flesh. Ned points out that this maybe isn't in Homer's interests, since he would have to do it too; Homer coolly responds that he could bear the humiliation. If he can't actually elevate himself above Ned then he'll readily settle for dragging him down along with him. This all backfires on Homer (and quite rightly so), since it's Ned who has the last laugh - by laughing at himself. He's able to see the funny side, admitting that it reminds him of the cross-dressing hi-jinks he got up to in his frat boy days, thus robbing Homer of whatever satisfaction he might have gleaned from the experience. Ned has the right idea. After all, he and Homer didn't need to get dressed up and mow one another's lawns to make an exhibition of themselves - they already did that quite wilfully with their behaviour at the tournament. Everything that comes after is but a curtain call, and the healthiest option is to embrace the humbling with a little gentle humor, rather than let it fester for a further round. Better than letting your pride get dented is often just to let your pride go altogether. Meanwhile, on the sidelines, Lisa makes yet another of her melancholic observations: "Why do I get the feeling that someday I'll be describing this to a psychiatrist?" The situation she's applying it to maybe didn't age so gracefully, but the line itself is immortal.

As we've observed, this is a cautionary tale. It has a very clear message. Love thy neighbour. Don't be a jackaninny.

 

[1] Why yes, I do regret that I didn't pick an episode with a prominent role for one of Pamela Hayden's characters to go with her recent bombshell announcement.

The Most Vexing Thing About Wish (aka Will We Find A Silver Lining?)

One year on, and I still can't find the stomach to talk about Wish. 

The vitriol Wish attracted from the online community felt utterly unprecedented for a Disney animated feature...which might be as much a reflection of the times we live in as any failings on the film's part. ^[1] It put me in an awkward position. On the one hand, there was a TON of bad faith criticism surrounding the film, which made me automatically want to fight a little in its corner. But I do still have to weigh that against the harsh reality that the film isn't particularly strong, and that there is no shortage of legitimate criticism to be had about it either. Look, anyone who tells you that the film's central conflict amounts to Asha calling Magnifico a big meanie because he won't grant all of his kingdom's wishes is misrepresenting the plot. Asha simply wanted those wishes that Magnifico had no intention of granting to be returned to their owners, so they might have a chance to fulfil them themselves; she openly acknowledged that there might be some bad wishes that should be stopped, but felt there had to be a better solution than depriving the entire kingdom of the initiative to pursue their passions. Which is a healthy perspective. Anyone who tells you that Valentino the goat is the most embarrassingly juvenile sidekick in the entire Disney canon (a title previously assigned to those three inane gargoyles from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, who I guess are now off the hook) is making a truly excellent point. I can't stand him either.

Even if the vitriol feels way out of proportion, Wish is still one of Disney's lesser efforts. Not the least. I don't believe Wish to be the nadir of the Mouse's output. As someone who lived through the mid-00s, when Disney was still reeling from the public mockery it had received from Shrek while wringing its hands over the messy divorce with Pixar that looked, for a moment, as if it might be happening, you won't convince me that there was a more demoralizing era in the company's history than that which gave us Brother Bear (2003), Home on The Range (2004), Chicken Little (2005) and a shower of direct to video cheapquels. That really was a rough time to be a Disney fan. And besides, a lesser effort need not mean an uninteresting one. There are plenty of productions, from Disney or otherwise, that fall flat on their faces, and yet I get transfixed by them anyway because they're so fascinating as failures. Take Pixar's Lightyear (2022) as a recent example - a detailed write-up of that film is absolutely on my to-do list, because it's such an astoundingly misguided production that I frankly can't stop looking at it.  I wish I were exaggerating when I say that I've now revisited it more times than I have any of the actual Toy Story sequels. Wish, though, just makes me squeamish. I feel I've been so overexposed to the all-out vitriol that there's no mileage left in attempting to warm to the film as a guilty pleasure. At this point, the most I can say is that I'll be interested to see how its legacy pans out in the long-term. Will Gen Alpha take a different perspective, once it gets old enough that Wish becomes its childhood nostalgia? Will Disney insist on pushing Asha into their Princess line-up, in spite of the film's poor showing, meaning she becomes a hotly merchandised character regardless? Or will it be one of those historic humiliations the studio forever attempts to sweep under the rug - much like some of the other unlucky Disney pictures we're going to touch on here?

See, the one thing that I really am itching to talk about regarding Wish would be its end credit sequence. As you know, Wish came out during Disney's centennial and was intended to serve as the big end-of-year celebration of the company's legacy (making its actual fate all the more depressing). To mark the occasion, the end credits featured a long, lavish roll call of familiar faces from the studio's expansive output. The outlines of various Disney heroes, sidekicks and villains from across the decades, depicted as twinkling celestial constellations, were presented in chronological order, starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and ending with Wish's immediate predecessor Strange World (2022). It's a neat enough idea in theory, the kind that should have any Disney buff salivating with uncontrollable delight. Instead, I suspect it will have most buffs at best scratching their heads with confusion and at worst, pickling their piss with ire. Forget whatever criticisms could be made of the picture itself - the biggest bones I have to pick with Wish are right here in the credits.

First of all, it's important to note that this sequence was only looking to cover the films in Disney's Animated Canon (ie: the theatrical features produced by the Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank). As such there were a few things that were never going to be included here - no Pixar films, no live action, no Burton or Selick stop motion, no direct to video sequels, no television spin-offs (eg: A Goofy Movie, Doug's 1st Movie). A few commentators thought they were being clever in pointing out that Song of The South (1946) wasn't represented, but that film was never in the running anyway, since those live action/animation hybrids aren't considered part of the canon. Hence, the massively beloved Mary Poppins (1964) didn't get in, nor did Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Pete's Dragon (1977) or Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).

As of Wish, the Disney Animated Canon consists of 62 films, meaning that its end credit sequence had 61 titles to which it could potentially have paid homage. Naturally, it didn't quite rise to that challenge. Most of the canon was covered, sure, but there were some glaring omissions, and watching this sequence proved an invaluable exercise in illuminating which films in the canon Disney is happy to flaunt and which it currently regards as the unwanted stepchildren. Some were all-too predictable, others left me truly gobsmacked. If there was one omission in particular that put a sour taste in my mouth for the remainder of the experience, it was when we got to the late 1970s, and skipped directly from Winnie The Pooh to Tod and Copper. Huh? Where were the Rescuers? Not to worry, I assured myself, they're probably just holding the characters over for The Rescuers Down Under (which, in all fairness, is probably the more popular Rescuers film among modern audiences - I've met more than enough people who don't even know that it's a sequel to a film from the 70s). But no. We reached the Renaissance era, and went straight from Ariel to Belle and Beast. It was official. Bernard and Bianca weren't invited to this celebration.

And that bites. Bernard and Bianca are two of Disney's most endearing heroes, and they deserved better. 

It's odd, because when The Rescuers was released in 1977, it was a pretty big commercial smash, and it fared well with the critics at a time when the future of Disney animation had appeared to be in question. The company had never figured out where to take itself after Walt's death, and their surrounding output seemed hopelessly conservative next to the radical innovations happening elsewhere in Hollywood; the success of The Rescuers was a beacon of hope in an era of darkness. It was also a significant film from a historical perspective, having functioned as the handover piece between the remaining members of Disney's veteran directors (the Nine Old Men) and an incoming generation of younger blood (including Don Bluth, who served as a directing animator). And I seem to recall that Bernard and Bianca were still very popular and well-known Disney characters by the end of the succeeding decade. It's true that The Rescuers Down Under flopped in 1990 (although it ushered in a major technical breakthrough, with the implementation of CAPS), and once the Renaissance was in full swing the characters' prominence, both in Disney marketing and the public consciousness, was drastically decreased (along with most Disney characters introduced throughout the 70s and 80s). But Bernard and Bianca absolutely have their place in Disney history. Why wouldn't you include them?

I did wonder if it maybe had something to do with that topless woman who was found lurking in a couple of frames on the print used for the film's 1999 VHS release. ^[2] That's literally all I've got. I'm not convinced it flies as an explanation, as I don't think the matter with the topless woman had that much lingering notoriety among the general public. If it ever was regarded as a hot button scandal then things have long since moved on. Disney responded appropriately by recalling the tapes with the offending print; it may not be the kind of footnote they want attached to one of their features, but a footnote is all that it is at this stage. Maybe some higher-ups were afraid that, in the digital age, calling attention to The Rescuers meant that people could easily look up the film and read about the incident for the first time, but if so, then are they really planning on keeping it hidden forever? Heaven knows, there have been some far uglier skeletons in Disney's closet that they've managed to bury over time - clearly, they're not afraid of people googling Fantasia (1940) and discovering that film's shameful little secret.

Let's look at who else wasn't on the guest list:

• Most of the package features: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (1949) is the only one directly referenced, with a showing from Ichabod Crane...although I think the idea is that he is meant to represent ALL of the package films, allowing us to skip through this weird and somewhat awkward era of Disney history in one tidy leap. I'm in two minds about that. There's no denying that the package films are the ones that only the hardcore Disney buffs are going to care or even know about, and referencing all six films individually would have meant bombarding general audiences with characters they were unlikely to recognise. So in a way, it was nice that they threw this era a bone by including just one. And yet I would argue that if there was any arena in which Disney should absolutely have catered to the hardcore buffs and celebrated ALL of its canon on an equal footing, this was it. Jose, Panchito, Willie, Bongo and Jenny & Joe should have each had their turn. If the general public was confused by who these characters were, they could've always looked them up. It's the digital age, remember?
  
• The Black Cauldron (1985): Now this one I totally saw coming. It didn't perplex me as did The Rescuers' omission, but it did strike me as incredibly petty. Yes, we all know what a huge flop The Black Cauldron was back in the day, but that was nearly 40 years ago. Maybe it's time Disney moved on from that historic embarrassment and stopped trying to downplay the fact that they made this film at all? I mean, it didn't do much damage in the long-term, did it? Disney were able to recover and get their Renaissance started just four years after, so why should this one misstep be such an enduring source of shame? Actually, I'm not sure if flopping is really enough to justify its pariah status alone, as several other films that were represented here were also spectacular money losers in their time. Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and Treasure Planet (2002) are noted for doing phenomenally badly with audiences - and, in their case, the twin failure had a significant hand in convincing Disney to abandon traditional animation altogether - yet they're both present and correct. No, in the case of The Black Cauldron, I think that film has a reputation for being very unDisney and unkid-friendly, and Disney isn't too comfortable with having to accommodate that in its brand. It isn't just that the Horned King meets a visually gnarly end, and that his skeleton army might be a tad unsettling to the toddler set - the tone of the film is uncharacteristically dark and sombre, and there aren't any upbeat songs to offset that. As someone who unapologetically loves The Black Cauldron, I wish Disney would come to terms with that already, but it just isn't happening.
  
• Meet The Robinsons (2007): I've indicated above that I regard the 2000s as a bleak time for Disney, particularly around the middle when the Renaissance years were well behind them and they were struggling to adapt to the changing animation marketplace. There aren't many films from this decade that caught on with the public in any big way, with Lilo & Stitch (2002), The Princess & The Frog (2009) and The Emperor's New Groove (2000) being the only notable exceptions (in that order) - the rest of the decade was a washout so far as modern Disney is concerned. As such, it was impressive to note just how thoroughly the 2000s were represented here - the sparse hits, the overlooked gems and the missteps alike. For better or for worse, Home on The Range and Chicken Little also have their place in Disney history, and it seemed only right that they be acknowledged in this kind of retrospective. Then I realised they'd skipped Meet The Robinsons, and my heart completely sank. This is the omission that confounds me the most after The Rescuers, because I can't begin to fathom why this, of all the 00s films, should be singled out for exclusion. Sure, Meet The Robinsons didn't exactly break out on release and isn't well-remembered by the public today, but you could say the same for dang near every film from this decade. It's a shame, because in my opinion Meet The Robinsons holds up as one of the better Disney films of the 00s, and this feels like a missed opportunity for it to pick up a few extra fans.
  
• Most of the sequels: Fantasia 2000 (1999) is the only canon sequel given recognition here, with our yo-yoing flamingo - and, unlike the example cited with Ichabod above, I DON'T think he was intended to be a stand-in for them all. The Rescuers Down Under aside, this is the omission that bothers me the least. I can see why they might not have felt obligated to cover Winnie The Pooh (2011), Wreck-It-Ralph 2 (2018) or Frozen II (2019). Those characters were already represented, with the latter two just a few spaces prior; you risk making the list confusing and repetitive.
  

In the end, the galling revisionism of the Wish credits just made me all the more thankful for the the Trent Correy and Dan Abraham-directed short Once Upon A Studio, which served as much more fitting centennial celebration. Unlike the corresponding sequence from Wish, this short seemed to be made with love and reverence for the full canon, going all-out to encompass as many characters as possible. Bernard and Bianca were included. Several characters from Meet The Robinsons were included. Heck, it wasn't afraid to extend its arms to the most unwanted stepchild of them all, and invite The Black Cauldron back into the fold. None of its characters had any speaking roles, but Gurgi was featured prominently in one scene - he was in the foreground, getting petted by Pocahontas, and not squirrelled away at the back of the crowd - which is the most attention Disney has lavished on that character or his movie since the VHS release of the late 1990s. ^[3]

Of course, Once Upon A Studio didn't just restrict itself to the Animated Canon - it also included characters from the Mickey Mouse shorts, and a few from those aforementioned live action/animated hybrids. So if you wanted to nitpick about Song of The South being absent here, the observation would be a valid one. That film knows what it did, however.

 

[1] The vitriol of the online community doesn't necessarily represent the broader view of the general public, of course. But in the case of Wish, the public seemed mostly indifferent. It was a matter of total disdain or total disinterest, a depressing situation whichever way you approach it.

[2] I'm linking to the Snopes article here, although I'm not keen on how tin hatty it gets toward the end. For a better coverage of this incident, check out the relevant chapter in Richard Roeper's 1999 book Urban Legends.

[3] Well, I think there might also have been an episode of House of Mouse in which the titular cauldron was used as a major plot point. I am not much into House of Mouse, however.

Rabbit In Your Headlights (aka I Get Knocked Down...)

Even with Jonathan Glazer's directorial mettle being as playful and as intermittently demented as it is, there are few entries in his filmography quite as hauntingly enigmatic as the visual accompaniment he cooked up for "Rabbit In Your Headlights". A 1998 single by electronic outfit Unkle (then comprised of founder James Lavelle and collaborator DJ Shadow), the mournful tune featured the vocals of Radiohead's Tom Yorke (who co-wrote the song with DJ Shadow) and sampled dialogue from Adrian Lyne's 1990 thriller Jacob's Ladder. The video starred French actor Denis Lavant, who'd previously worked with Glazer on the Stella Artois ad "Last Orders", featured here as a muttering, parka-clad pedestrian attempting to navigate his way through a road tunnel whilst enduring an onslaught of punishment from the incoming traffic. At once, this is a video of contradictions - the setting and the imagery have a dingy, downbeat realism, yet the tone immediately feels nightmarish and uncanny. It's also striking just how muted the song itself is, meaning that it plays less a like a promotional video for the Unkle single than a short film that happens to use said single as its soundtrack. The music becomes ambience, and the visuals and the journey of Lavant's character the components that most command our investment.

The titular metaphor of a rabbit caught up in a vehicle's headlights is a harrowing one, its implications perhaps most aptly explained by one of literature's most esteemed leporines, Bigwig from Watership Down:

 

"...at night the hrududil have great lights, brighter than Frith himself. They draw creatures towards them and if they shine on you, you can’t see or think which way to go. Then the hrududu is quite likely to crush you. At least, that’s what we were taught in the Owsla. I don’t intend to try it.’

 

To be a rabbit in a headlight suggests confusion, paralysis and the inability to get out of the path of impending calamity; the sheer force of what is coming for you has already overwhelmed you and sealed your fate before the moment of destruction has even occurred. The treatment this metaphor receives in Glazer's video is in some respects quite a literal representation, but in others runs somewhat contrary to the precise implications. We don't see any actual rabbits - it takes place in a world that, save for its human transients, seems utterly divorced from nature - but Lavant's protagonist has entered into a situation where he is in perpetual danger of becoming roadkill. Headlights are omnipresent, but are mostly shown from behind the protagonist, and he does not look at them. The repeated battering he receives upon car bonnet after car bonnet comes less as a result of his being transfixed by the vehicles than his being doggedly determined to shut them out altogether. The headlights are the force that instead appear to reanimate him after each fall; the first time he is hit, he looks to be dead, until his motionless body is bathed in the Heavenly glow of an approaching headlight and he is miraculously revived. But as the sampled dialogue from Jacob's Ladder (not audible in the video) would suggest, the distinction between the angelic and the demonic is perhaps not always clear-cut. The protagonist is revived merely to repeat the same process over and over. The landscape he inhabits is Hellish; he wanders onward in search of a light at the end of a tunnel that likely does not exist, for there is nothing to indicate the tunnel itself has an end. He seems doomed to carry out his cycle of revival and destruction ad infinitum.

We get intermittent glimpses of the occupants of each vehicle - that these cars even have drivers makes the nightmare all the more perturbing, as it indicates a pervasive indifference toward the plight of the protagonist. While some of the drivers blare their horns or swerve to avoid him, a harsh constancy emerges in that whenever he is knocked down, nobody pulls over and attempts to help. One of the drivers who hits him is seen to acknowledge him but continues on unfazed. To most, he is simply a nuisance obstructing the drivers' paths, and once eliminated as an obstruction he is afforded no more concern. The most familiar reaction he gets is when the occupants of one car (our obligatory cameo from Lavelle, seen here with future Unkle member Rich File) drive alongside him and query where he is going, and even then it's not clear if they have any intention of assisting him or regard him as a passing curiosity; either way, they eventually lose interest and drive on when he fails to engage with their questioning. The protagonist is an outcast in his society - he is out of his element on that road and distressingly vulnerable, lacking the protection and prestige offered to those who are safely contained inside their cars, but it's equally evident that he has no aspirations of joining them. We suspect that, in an incongruous way, his refusal to acknowledge the motorists, and his determination to keep treading this path, even if it means being repeatedly knocked down, offers its own form of defence against the cruelties of his world. 

At the same time, the protagonist gives off the impression that he might be mentally ill, partly through his ostensible inability to understand what's going on around him, and through his frenzied and incomprehensible rantings. It is this designation that perhaps makes him so undesirable to his world, which has little tolerance, much less compassion, for those who do not conform to its standards. Mental illness is also one of the key themes of Jacob's Ladder, where the titular Jacob (Tim Robbins) is a Vietnam veteran wrestling with the traumas of both his wartime experiences and a family tragedy that occurred before the war; while we get no direct insight into what is going on inside the mind of the video's protagonist, we sense that the real battle he is waging is happening on a psychological plane, and this takes precedence over the immediate happenings inside the tunnel. What is written off as madness by detached onlookers might even conceal a deeper understanding; Lavant stated in an interview included on DVD release The work of Jonathan Glazer that the character's verbal ramblings amount to an equation he is attempting to solve. (He also shared that as he speaks no English, his dialogue was fed to him through a walkman for him to repeat.)

The dialogue sampled from Jacob's Ladder in the Unkle track is spoken by Danny Aiello's character, in reference to the German Catholic philosopher Meister Eckhart: "If you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth." On that same note, there are different ways we might look at the video's scenario - is it a rueful condemnation of a society that discards those it views as inferior, leaving them trapped in a cycle of relentless cruelty and indifference, or as a testament to the endurance of those who have been discarded by their society but who have the tenacity to go on existing? What eventually makes the difference for Lavant's protagonist is that he  decides to shed his parka and leave it on the roadside. This is a paradoxical move, one that leaves him more exposed but seems to bare his survivor status all the more starkly, so that we see the muscular form underneath, and the various scars from the previous hits he has weathered. Finally, the protagonist stops walking, ceases his ranting, and stands in the middle of the road with his arms outstretched, as if anticipating and embracing the next impact surely coming his way. Another vehicle slams into him at full speed - on this occasion, however, the protagonist withstands the impact, while the car crumples behind him as though it hit a brick wall.

It is a tremendously cathartic ending, yet the getting there naturally proved too intense for some sensibilities. Lavant laments that the video was censored in his home country, while James Lavelle (also interviewed on Glazer's DVD compilation) talks about it being denied a spot in MTV's daytime line-up, less because of the violence per se than because the protagonist was "too realistically fucked". A grungy realism pervades the film, keeping its more fantastical elements swathed in a sense of desolation. The protagonist is uncomfortably reminiscent of the kind of mumbling derelict we might find wandering along the roadside in real life and would probably sooner drive past than get acquainted with. The hardship he's subjected to is brutal and bleak, no matter how persistently he gets back on his feet. We might question if that desolation has really been conquered at the end, in spite of the catharsis it throws us. After all, we never do find our way out of that tunnel. We don't discover if there is any light at the end or a better world beyond it. But then we never actually saw the protagonist enter into the tunnel from anywhere else. For the purposes of this video; that tunnel is the only world that exists and he's always been traversing it.

Lavelle and Lavant each offer different interpretations of the ending. According to Lavelle, "You can get beat down, but you know, if you fight through it then you're gonna win." Lavant's view is that the character has finally solved the equation, which doesn't make him invincible, but enables him to break the cycle and attain an ending. Meaning what? That he'll awaken from the nightmare? Or that he'll finally die and stay dead? The video's final arrangement certainly seems to offer us incongruous imagery - the character's outstretched arms as he is hit make him into a none-too-subtle Christ figure, indicating transcendence, yet he is ultimately engulfed by the dust, which seems evocative of death ("ashes to ashes and dust to dust") and implies that he and the car have shared the same fate. There is an apocalyptic finality to that closing image, as if the order of the tunnel has been subverted and the entire structure must now come down in smoke (which, if the tunnel is all there is of this world, means The End). Pitchfork, who named the video the 8th best of the 1990s, felt that the spectre of death pervaded it all over, observing that the setting recalled the Pont de l'Alma tunnel where Princess Diana had been killed a year prior, and that, "any tunnel is metaphorically a riff on walking toward the light at the end of one's life." (Without going into the ending of Jacob's Ladder, yep, that's a pertinent theme there too.) Is the protagonist's journey a matter of coming to terms with his own mortality, an act that paradoxically makes him empowered? Is it through freeing himself of his lingering baggage, in the form of that parka, that he finds his peace and accepts what is inevitable? Is the video conveying a broader message about the necessity of letting go of pain and regret? Is the protagonist required to endure as many hits as he does in order to attain that super-human level of strength, or is it specifically the act of forcing himself to keep going along his futile path that reaps such self-destructive consequences?

We might think back to the question Lavelle had previously put to the protagonist, which he had no interest in answering: "Where are you going?" The question the protagonist might have put to him, had he so cared, is where Lavelle and his mates were going. Where is there to get to in a world that consists of nothing more than an endless tunnel? The implication is that the motorists share a delusion that they are on their way to something beyond, when in reality they are caught up in the exact same entrapment. The enlightenment the protagonist achieves at the end enables a simple turning of the tables. He stops still, having realised that the journey is in vain, and becomes an onlooker to the world falling to pieces around him.

Walter's Story (A Found Footage Nightmare In 60 Seconds)

"Walter's Story" is the most singularly peculiar of a series of ads that ran on UK television in the late 1990s, showcasing the array of anal retentive German weirdos (supposedly) responsible for bringing the VW Passat to fruition. The campaign tagline assured us that the Passat was "a car born out of obsession", with each ad giving us a portrait of the assorted perfectionists who'd endeavored to give the world the exemplary driving experience. Each was an individual in their particular fixation, a running feature of the ads being a close-up of their worker ID tag, to specify their esteemed place within the company process. In some cases, there was an endearing air of genius to the obsessiveness (see that one ad with qualitatskontrolle expert P. Fischer, the man determined to engineer just the most sonically pleasing effect when you shut your Passat door). "Walter's Story", has a sadder, more sinister quality in a way that seemingly anticipates the found footage boom that was all set to take horror cinema by storm with the impending release of The Last Broadcast and The Blair Witch Project. This ad is keenly aware of the camera's function as a grotesquely intimate confessional and a device that, far from passively recording reality, actively obscures and distorts it.

Meet W.I. Froegel, aka Walter, our resident Detail Meister. His ad takes the form of a video diary, documenting his journey from 20th October 1994 to 14th February 1996; within that span of 16 months he's able to perfect a number of ancillary details, including the car's pump-adjustable seats and fan-shaped water jets that help reduce the weight of the car. On the surface, his fastidious monologue offers a playful means of listing off the Passat's various mundane perks. It is, however, a notch more narrative-driven than others in the series, since it's effectively telling two stories at once. There's an underlying narrative thread that is, as it turns out, being literally overridden by the one we see, but which still makes itself known throughout and emerges especially plaintively at the end. Walter's titular story is not simply a document of how he went through all of the Passat's tinniest features with a meticulously fine comb, but of how he destroyed his marriage in the process. At least, we're given enough information to arrive at that conclusion, but it exists largely within the cracks of the ad.

We get only a fleeting glimpse of Walter's presumed spouse, in a single entry of his video diary. Walter is in what appears to be his own living room, talking to the camera about what a wonderful innovation the fan-shaped water jets are, when she sneaks up behind him in a dressing gown and is visibly annoyed to find him blathering into the void about that infernal car. This is our first direct clue of the tensions arising from the overspilling of Walter's work life into his domestic life. It takes on sharper significance at the end, as Walter is being applauded for his achievements by his fellow technicians, and his ostensibly triumphant image is suddenly swallowed up by a barrage of VHS lines, to reveal the butchered remains of the recording he was taping over all the while - a family wedding that took place in the decade prior, on 16th August 1985. His own wedding, I presume? There are certainly enough seedy details in the subtext of the ad that point us to that conclusion - the sequence in which he demonstrates his pump-adjustable seats feels eerily evocative of a beak-seat make-out session, and it's likely not a coincidence that Walter's final recording takes place on Valentine's Day. Walter's interests have clearly moved on, the car he's played a crucial role in birthing having replaced his wife in his affections. The blissful promises from that summer of 1985 lie now lie in ruins; what remains haunts Walter's present-day obsessions like a ghost, undermining whatever triumph could be gleaned from within. The chapel bells in the wedding video seem to actively counteract his colleagues clapping - no longer the sounds of joyful celebration, they become a mournful ode to what was abandoned en route to the Passats's being.

Which is really a bit weird as a selling point for the Passat, is it not? True, it wouldn't be the first time Volkswagen used a relationship in unsettling peril to promote one of their models, and I've no doubt that it was all intended as an elaborate joke, the wedding video being the final punchline in illustrating the full ludicrous extent of Walter's fixations. But with that as our closing image, it all feels rather poignant, almost as if the ad is conceding that it it couldn't have commanded such unrelenting obsession without breaking a few hearts on the side. It's notable that, while the campaign obviously wants to present the Passat's creation as a worthwhile endeavor, Walter himself is portrayed as a broadly ridiculous figure throughout. At best, you can say that he has the enthusiasm of a small child at play, most prominently seen in the sequence in which he's fiddling repeatedly with the locks (a shorter version of the ad existed comprising only this sequence, allowing Walter's kiddish indulgence to stand as a self-contained thing). But there is an uglier side to his kid-like demeanour, a self-absorption that's totally averse to any form of intrusion from the outside world. Walter is, above all, depicted as foolish, his self-importance persistently undercut by the hustle and bustle unfolding around him - his introductory recording climaxes with him having to shout down his colleagues, while another entry has him totally inaudible. So long as he can hear the sound of his own voice, he seems oblivious to whatever is behind him, both directly and temporally - at the end of his diary, as he stands there smirking like an idiot while clutching that headlight as though at an award ceremony, one wonders if he's even noticed that his marriage has been disintegrating around him. But then the final status of Walter's relationship, while doubtlessly not rosy, is never revealed. It is an unknown piece of the narrative puzzle that lurks tauntingly within the blank space of those ominous VHS flickers. What we're left with is a series of images that force us to get uncomfortably up close and personal with Walter, immersing us in the overwhelming awkwardness of his Passat-dominated world. We come away grateful that we don't know the Detail Meister, even if we do feel a lingering curiousity about the car on which he was working. Obsession, the ad illustrates, can be an ugly and merciless thing, yet the campaign hinges on the notion that it delivers the goods nevertheless. Obsession fuels the drive for making those little details function - even if we do end, hauntingly, by giving the final word to the bigger picture bypassed along the way.