Mr. Magoo, Aladdin, and Interdependent visions of Nature and Culture

The same thematic and aesthetic philosophy underpinning UPA’s Gerald McBoing Boing guides 1001 Arabian Nights. Gerald McBoing Boing has clear connections to Mr. Magoo, the protagonist of 1001 Arabian Nights. According to Don Markstein’s Toonpedia, for example, when Mr. Magoo was included in Dell Comic Books, he shared most of the production space with Gerald McBoing Boing. Markstein explains that UPA introduced Mr. Magoo in Ragtime Bear, a theatrical release, “when, in 1948, Columbia Pictures decided to fold its in-house animation studio and hire the fledgling outfit instead.” Although Markstein asserts that there was no one creator for the Mr. Magoo character, he attributes the character to Millard Kaufman, the scriptwriter; John Hubley, the director; and Jim Backus, the actor who voiced Magoo until his death in 1989. According to Markstein, “Backus was encouraged to ad-lib in his depiction of the crotchety old coot, and to ham it up to his heart’s content. A great deal of the final product represents his off-the-cuff creativity.”

That off-the-cuff creativity contributed to Magoo’s success as a bumbling virtually blind character, but, according to Barrier, “what made Magoo more pitiable was the way his nearsightedness magnified his personality” (521). As John Hubley explains, “A great deal in the original character, the strength of him, was the fact that he was so damn bull-headed. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t see very well; even if he had been able to see, he still would have made dumb mistakes, ‘cause he was such a bull-headed opinionated old guy” (quoted in Barrier 521).

Such a focus on blindness as a personality trait highlights both narrative and aesthetic elements that link Magoo with Gerald McBoing Boing. Wells asserts that Magoo’s character’s “whole agenda is concerned with perceived reality” (Animation and America 66), an agenda produced by the 1950s context in which he and UPA were placed. That same agenda drives Gerald McBoing Boing, a character with another sense distortion that builds his personality. As David Fisher explains in 1953, “Mr. Magoo represents for us the man who would be responsible and serious in a world that seems insane; he is a creation of the 1950s, the age of anxiety; his situation reflects our own” (quoted in Wells Animation and America 66). Note also that both Magoo and Gerald are people, not animals, the most prominent characters in Disney, MGM, and WB cartoons.

Magoo’s character was connected to its modernist context in philosophical and aesthetic ways, as well. As Wells suggests, Magoo’s “shortsightedness and irritability” were more an “inability to see” that required “a philosophical approach to perception, and to the possibilities of syn-aesthetic cinema, and ways of ‘post-styling’ the reality of both the real world and the Disneyesque orthodoxy” (Animation and America 67). John Hubley embraced this aesthetic. In an interview, Hubley explained the central premise of his work as “an image that plays dramatically (a visual metaphor) and will develop into a scene” (quoted in Wells Animation and America 67). According to Wells, this image “aspires to the work of modernists like Picasso, Dufy, and Matisse, while also embracing the freedom of jazz idioms” (Animation and America 67).

Although Hubley did not direct 1001 Arabian Nights, his imprint remained embedded on Mr. Magoo’s character and contributed to its view of nature and a technology-driven culture as not only interdependent but indelibly connected. In fact, in 1001 Arabian Nights technology plays a vital role in building not only the stylized aesthetic, but also in driving a narrative in which Magoo’s bumbling character assists his hapless son only because technology intercedes.

            1001 Arabian Nights became UPA’s first animated feature because financial support wasn’t available for their original idea, producing Don Quixote with Magoo as Quixote. According to Jules Engel, one UPA’s principle players, “We had Aldous Huxley in to write a script for that. He did about a thirty-page skeleton script, but the bank wouldn’t buy it. They had never heard of Don Quixote, but they had heard of Arabian Nights, so we got money for Arabian Nights (quoted in Maltin 335). Because Pete Burness left the studio, UPA hired Jack Kinney, a Disney veteran, to direct and his brother Dick to write the story. Robert Dranko supervised the production design (Maltin 335). Although critics found fault with the film’s narrative and the relevance of Magoo’s character, most, like Maltin, agree that it “boasted sophisticated design and color” (335). Hal Erickson agrees and notes that “Many of the character designs seen in Arabian Nights were reused on UPA’s weekly 1964 TV series The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo.”

            For us, that sophisticated design and color augments a narrative in which the technology of a genie in his bottle, a flying carpet, and a magic flame supersede bumbling and incompetent human and nonhuman nature. Yet technology does not serve as a tool for destruction in 1001 Arabian Nights. Instead, it serves to preserve and protect humans and their natural world and illustrates the interconnected interdependence between culture and the nature of humanity, and a technologically-driven aesthetic demonstrates the interconnectedness between technology and human nature throughout the film.

A modernist aesthetic connects with a modernist worldview in both the Sultan’s and the Wazir’s settings. The red, hot pink, and orange background sets off the midnight blue of the Wazir and his secret passage and chambers when he prepares to meet the Princess. The red-robed Sultan and pink and blue clad princess contrast with this dark Wazir. This modernist aesthetic continues into settings that foreground Aladdin and Jasminde’s infatuation. Ultimately it is supernatural technology that connects Aladdin and Jasminde: a magic lamp, a flying carpet, and a bumbling Mr. Magoo.

T-Shirt Travels and Environmental Justice

Shantha Bloemen’s T-Shirt Travels explores recycled clothing as another aspect of the clothing industry. Although recycling t-shirts seems like a positive environmental step to take and a safe alternative to expanding landfills, T-Shirt Travels reveals some of the negative economic, social, and environmental consequences of clothing recycling as it documents an African study of the history of a t-shirt as viewed by a volunteer working in a Zambian village. Where did all these clothes come from? According to the film, in the U.S., t-shirts and other clothing go to Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and other charities where 95% of them are not unpacked. Instead, they are sold to distributors, who, once free trade opened, ship them to Africa where sellers buy bales at 10-15 cents to the pound and take them to factories. The largest export from the U.S. is used clothing.

This process explains why there are no new clothes in Zambia. In 1991, when the country’s markets were opened to free trade, clothes began arriving in Zambia by the container load, so local clothing factories went out of business. Zambia was colonized by companies that forced locals to work on colonial plantations and mines, driving citizens to famine. These colonizers built economies outside the African continent, so Zambia did not gain any of the financial benefits from the exploitation of their valuable commodities. Every American t-shirt has become a metaphor for Africa’s dilemma: Who will be left to make good on the debt? According to T-Shirt Travels, globalization has exacerbated disparities between rich and poor and encouraged economic and environmental injustices that may destroy a country and its people, the film asserts.

Most would agree that fashion is fun, and “fast fashion,” clothing available at such a low price that consumers may see it as “disposable,” has become the norm, especially for young women. As Luz Claudio explains, fueled by fashion magazines, “disposable couture appears in shopping mall after shopping mall in America and Europe at prices that make purchase tempting and disposal painless.” With clothing production and disposal, however, come environmental costs, “with each step of the clothing life cycle generating potential environmental and occupational hazards” (Claudio). Polyester, a widely used petroleum fiber, requires intensive energy and crude oil amounts during the manufacturing process, in which “emissions including volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and acid gases such as hydrogen chloride” and wastewater that includes volatile monomers, solvents, and other by-products are emitted.

Cotton production is “one of the most water- and pesticide-dependent crops” (Claudio). During the cotton fabric manufacturing process, “effluent may contain a number of toxics” which flow into stagnant ponds. Not surprisingly, “The EPA, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, considers many textile manufacturing facilities to be hazardous waste generators” (Claudio). The globalization of the clothing industry and the rise in consumption associated with it has also increased the amount of clothing disposed as waste. According to the EPA Office of Solid Waste, “Americans throw away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per person per year,” translating to four percent of municipal solid waste in 2007. 

Environmental justice seeks to address these dire conditions in the clothing industry. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, educational level, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws. Environmental justice seeks to ensure that minority and low-income communities have access to public information relating to human health and environmental planning, regulations and enforcement.” The Ohio Environmental Council explains this definition further, asserting, “Environmental justice ensures that no population, especially the elderly and children, are forced to shoulder a disproportionate burden of the negative human health and environmental impacts of pollution or other environmental hazard.”

This broad definition breaks down into three categories of environmental equity issues. As Robert D. Bullard explains in his discussion of “Waste and Racism,” these categories include the following areas: 1. Procedural Inequity, which addresses “the extent that governing rules, regulations, and evaluation criteria are applied uniformly”; 2. Geographical Inequity, which focuses on where factories and waste disposal facilities are placed, suggesting that some areas receive direct benefits, such as jobs and tax revenues, while others, such as waste disposal, are sent elsewhere; and 3. Social Inequity, which highlights how and where noxious facilities are located sometimes mirrors racial and class bias, so that low-income areas become “sacrifice zones.”

These categories serve as the basis for the UN Draft Principles on Human Rights and the Environment, which states

(1)      Human rights, an ecologically sound environment, sustainable development and peace are interdependent and indivisible.

(2)      All persons have the right to a secure, healthy and ecologically sound environment. The right and other human rights, including civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights, are universal, interdependent and indivisible.

(3)      All persons shall be free from any form of discrimination in regard to actions and decisions that affect the environment. (Cifuentes and Frumkin 1-2)

T-Shirt Travels illustrates what happens when these principles are violated. 

Poem in Response to Birders: The Central Park Effect

Bird Watching

Cooper hawks perch on posts along a highway 

dead trees piled behind them    

                                                                     

brown pines marked further up the road

Scrub jays land on a backhoe loader

tape-linked peg lines surrounding them

blackened palmetto breaking under their weight

Flocks of turkey buzzards darken an arid field

ivory shards scattered beside them

whitewashed shells speckling black with gray

A red-tail swoops from a backyard fence

blackbirds scattering beneath her

their red wings locked in taloned flight

Another sparrow knocks on a picture window

and falls.

Pale Rider and Sustainability

Instead of focusing only on the classic western conflicts of earlier Westerns—the battle between cattlemen and farmers, or between free range and fenced ranchers—Clint Eastwood’s remake of Shane (1953), Pale Rider (1985), highlights and critiques the consequences of 1850s-1880s’ corporate mining and its continued repercussions into the 1980s, hydraulic mining that must be destroyed through eco-terrorist means, according to the film’s blatant rhetoric. Unlike any other Eastwood Western, Pale Rider provides its audience with a clear vision of the environmental horrors hydraulic mining causes, even including detailed descriptions of the technique, while showing the devastating results of this great engineering feat.

As a way to foreground the horrors of this technique, deep into the film, Josh LaHood, the corporate miner’s son (Christopher Penn), explains how he and his men are able to thrust two hundred pounds of pressure per square inch of water at the side of a mountain, a process called hydraulic mining that was engineered around 1850 to extract as much gold as possible from mountain crevices. Josh describes the process to fourteen-year-old Megan Wheeler (Sydney Penny), a prospector’s daughter, and his detailed description is juxtaposed with images of falling trees and soil devastated by pressurized water shooting out of monitors, the water cannons used to strip the hills of topsoil and growth to make the gold beneath easier to find, all more powerfully presented through Bruce Surtees’ camerawork. 

According to Josh LaHood: 

About three quarters of a mile upstream we diverted half of Cobalt Creek. See, it flows through a ditch along the contours of the slope and ends up about a hundred yards up yonder….It flows into … a three foot pipe and then flows down slope real steep. And then that narrows to a two-foot pipe. And then a one foot pipe. You see all the time that water’s flowing downstream, it picks up speed. And it picks up force by going into the thinner pipes….By the time the water reaches the monitor, I’ve got about 200 pounds of pressure per square inch. I can blast that gravel out of that cliff and then it washes into the bed and then it travels right through the sluice.

While looking at the land around her, Megan tells Josh, “It looks like hell.”  But Josh is only interested in the product of the degradation: “You know I can get 20 tons of gravel a day in this river,” he says. Seconds later, while the audience watches hydraulic monitors shooting water at the cliffs above the Yuba River, Josh attempts to rape Megan, in an obvious parallel to what is happening to the landscape. Josh fails only because Preacher (Clint Eastwood) saves her.

This scene from Pale Rider introduces one of its most important themes: the violent exploitation of the environment and of those most connected to it. Although this theme is prevalent in mining films like North Country (2006) and Silver City (2004), it is missing in any other Eastwood Western. In fact, Pale Rider is the only film directed by Eastwood that focuses blatantly on such an environmentally-packed issue. Pale Rider not only examines how the environment can be exploited, it also takes the time to demonstrate a better way, an alternative to the absolute destruction of large scale corporate mining centered around the fact of hydraulic mining. Just as Preacher saves Megan, the individual miners the LaHoods oppose (“tin pans”) can save the land from the mining baron, LaHood, and halt his environmentally devastating methods using violent eco-terrorist means.

But Pale Rider not only problematizes corporate mining techniques, suggesting that the corporation should be obliterated; it also provides a viable alternative to the consequences of hydraulic mining—individual tin panning in a cooperative community seeking to plant roots and raise families, an alternative that is attainable with the help of eco-terrorism. In contrast to LaHood and his greed for gold, for individual miners like Hull Barret (Michael Moriarty) and Spider Conway (Doug McGrath), “gold ain’t what [they’re] about.” Pale Rider, then, offers a politically charged solution to the environmental destruction threatened by hydraulic mining interests.

This solution in Pale Rider has not received any detailed examination. Extreme eco-terrorist violence drives the ultimate solution offered in Pale Rider, and while it is couched in mythological terms similar to High Plains Drifter (1973), the inclusion of Hull Barret in the mayhem and killing keeps the environmental argument grounded in the here and now and provides for an alternative to the individualist “progressive” model of the Western, as defined by Richard Slotkin in Gunfighter Nation and Regeneration Through Violence. Since Preacher and Hull take a collaborative approach to eco-terrorism; they promote communal sustainable development rather than individual progress like that Slotkin describes.

Instead, the resolution of Pale Rider harks back to The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976) where, according to Slotkin, Josie forgives his enemy with the statement, “All of us died a little in that damn war” (633). It also prefigures the anti-revenge themes in Eastwood’s critically acclaimed Unforgiven (1992) and Mystic River (2003). Although violence does provide “regeneration” (Slotkin’s word) in Pale Rider, it ultimately serves both a working class community and the natural world that sustains it.