Don't Blame the Internet (this time)
by A. Griffin

---

Why was the 1940 version of "Pinocchio" one of the few Disney movies that could keep my attention in my formative years?

Were the adventuresome action scenes just more gripping to a toddler-aged boy than the domestic drama of "Cinderella"?

What kind of sense did it make that the fox con-artist spoke and wore clothes,
but Geppetto's cat Figaro was just a silent four-legged cat?

I mean, that cat that hung out with the fox walked upright and wore clothes too,
but at least he didn't talk.

If I loved "Pinocchio" so much,
how come I'm now the age my mother was when she first showed me the movie,
and I've somehow failed to re-watch it even once in the last thirty years?

How did my mom always know to have a can of tuna fish ready to crack open for me during the part where they're inside the whale?

Speaking again of my dear mother...

What saint did she appeal to,
to wield the patience
to put up with me repeatedly rewinding
and replaying
over and over and over,
my favorite scene of the movie?

You know.

THAT scene.

That one scene in Disney's "Pinocchio" that EVERY kid adored more than every other part of the film.

The part that gave NO ONE nightmares.

The part every normal kid just LOVED.

Right?

Right?

Okay.

Time to address the elephant in the room.

Perhaps an ironic choice of animal,
but anyway...

I'm not complaining here,
in fact I'm grateful for this.

Mostly.

But out of curiosity...

WHY?

WHY didn't someone tell me I wasn't supposed to LIKE the donkey transformation scene in Disney's "Pinocchio"?

How could an autistic three year amazed by time-lapse footage
of flowers blooming,
of skyscrapers rising,
of ice melting;
manage NOT
be transfixed by the lovingly hand-animated
24 frames-per-second sequence -
of tails sprouting,
of faces turning fuzzy,
of snouts springing out,
of fingers retracting
as hands harden into hooves.

I mean,
yeah,
it was scary,
but it was a kind of scary I could jam with.

It wasn't scary like when Henry crashed The Flying Kipper in "Thomas the Tank Engine".

In my mind, even at that age,
I had a certain sense of what was real and what wasn't.

Train wrecks were a real life danger,
and as a toddler in New York City,
I saw and rode trains every day.
The fact that "Thomas" was filmed with live-action models made the imaginary disaster of The Flying Kipper all the more real to me.

But Lampwick and Pinocchio becoming donkeys -
yes the chilling voice performances matched to exaggerated expressions of mid-metamorphic horror transmitted the emotions clearly to a mind often confused by other's feelings -
but it was a cartoon.

A living illustration.

Something that seemed to me,
separate
enough from reality
that the fictional peril never felt personal.

So yes,
the donkey scene in "Pinocchio" was scary to me.

But I wasn't scared.

And being aware at that time that I wasn't scared,
and aware that yet,
I was still engrossed in the story being told,
and understanding of the idea that it was in fact,
scary,
in THIS story,
but perhaps didn't always need to be...

I was free to cogitate upon the concept,
and at my own leisure,
and ponder the magic of transformation.

You see,
it was already magic to me;
to see dandelions changing from yellow flowers to white puff-balls in a matter of hours,
to see ice cubes changing,
from solid
to liquid
to gas
on a hot sidewalk.

But to imagine PEOPLE changing.

To imagine ME changing.

Yeah,
that's where my head was at.

Though,
if it were on the end of a two meter long giraffe neck,
I'd have been fine with that as well.

So there was born my benign disdain for the lack of ambition in my childhood peers,
who wished they could fly like Superman,
or wished they could own a horse.

Why waste a wish on flying like Superman,
or owning a horse,
when you could just wish to be a bird - or a dragon,
or just wish to be a horse - or a centaur?

And growing up in that 80's/90's era of Saturday morning cartoons,
when writers and animators desperate for some serious seeming threat of danger,
that was neither too graphic for children's eyes,
or too distasteful to their parents...

Between Professor Coldheart from "Care Bears" turning kids into goofy frog monsters with no feelings,
Verminous Skumm from "Captain Planet" turning people into rats,
or Dr. Robotnik on "Sonic the Hedgehog" turning the animal citizens of Mobius into robots;
just to name a few -
I had a fully stocked rogues gallery of morph-inducing evildoers to love and hate all at the same time.

And then they were the heroes that used shape shifting powers to their advantage:
I wasn't even five when I first rooted for Don Knotts
as he changed
from a fish-obsessed nerd,
into an actual fish,
to fight Nazi U-boats
in "The Incredible Mr. Limpet".

And a lifetime later,
in the year 1997,
wow did Katherine Applegate rock my world when the first "Animorphs" books hit the shelves of Caldor (Where shopping is always a pleasure).

So yes,
a childhood of transformation themed cartoons, video games, comics and literature -
all provoking my imagination,
long before my household first connected our computer to a dial-up modem,
to access the glorious, all new, AOL 3.0.

So...

Do you see?

Do you believe?

Do you understand?

I have receipts,
And witnesses.

I can prove,
without a doubt,
and with concrete evidence:

THE INTERNET,
100%,
ABSOLUTELY,
DID NOT DO THIS TO ME!

Anyway,
getting back to Disney's "Pinocchio"...

Yeah, it was alright I guess.
Haven't watched since '93.
I remember next to nothing I haven't already mentioned.

It arguably ruined me,
but I have no regrets.


Mostly.

---

Here it is, the first thing I ever wrote on my Pomera DM100 word processor!

[MAIN FA] | [TUMBLR BLOG] |[TWITCH] | [YOU TUBE] | [TWITTER] | [KO-FI]