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Stories from the jungle
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Kipling's Jungle Book celebrates the notion of the Empire. But Walt Disney's animated version is a fun-filled film. In the wake of the release of "The Jungle Book 2", AJIT DUARA discusses the movie's connection to the book.
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From "The Jungle Book 2"... a remix of the old film and old numbers.
RUDYARD KIPLING wrote The Jungle Book in 1894. At that time India's jungles must have been teeming with wildlife. Kipling, who was born in Bombay in 1865 where his father was a teacher at the J.J. School of Arts, knew that the most beautiful environment in the world was an Indian jungle. He was in love with India and with the notion of the Empire. He makes this quite clear in The Jungle Book, which quite frequently functions as allegory for the basic principles of the Empire — the herd instinct and the superiority of the British rule of law:
"Now this is the law of the Jungle — as old and true as the sky,/And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that must break it must die./As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back/For the Strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack."
The imperialist as the pack animal is very clearly identified. British writers after him, notably George Orwell, also born in India and quite nauseated by the hypocrisy of Empire, found it difficult to like Kipling even while admiring his narrative skill.
Certainly, there is a rhythm to his verse, a lyrical quality to his prose, and even "The White man's burden", a poem written in 1899 has flair, parody though it has become today: "Take up the White man's burden,/send forth the best ye breed,/Go bind your sons to exile,/To serve your captive's need".
The American animator Walt Disney had no patience with Kipling. He thought The Jungle Book was a cerebral and depressing work and told the artists and musicians who were working on the Disney adaptation not to read it. It was enough that they knew it was about a boy in the jungle and that they knew about the characters — the wolves, the panther, the bear, the tiger, the monkeys and the snake. "Make it funny," he told them, "and identify scenes that we can slip songs in." This sounds so much like a Hindi film producer, it is not funny!
Of course the funniest song in "Jungle Book", in fact one of the most memorable sequences in all animation cinema, is the duet between King Louie of the monkeys and Baloo the bear. In the book, Mowgli is given dire warnings about the Bandar log (monkey people) and how wicked they are, particular their king. But when it comes to Walt Disney, King Louie is Louis Prima, the jazz legend. Originally, Louis Armstrong was to have voiced the song, but apprehension that it may be construed as racist, caused the "casting" alteration.
Nevertheless, the music and lyrics are devastating: "Now I'm the King of the swingers/Oh, the jungle VIP./I've reached the top and had to stop/And that's what's bothering me./I wanna be a man, man cub,/And stroll right into town/And be just like other men/I'm tired of monkeying around." Now Baloo the bear (Phil Harris) is no ordinary singer and his "Bare necessities" has also hit the top of the charts. But when he hears the king, he realises just how middle-of-the-road his own music is. He is mesmerised by jazz of the 1960s and forgets all about his task of rescuing Mowgli from the monkeys. He gasps: "Man, what a beat!" and disguises himself as a monkey to join the music.
The only problem with Disney's "Jungle Book" is that it robs some of the dignity of the Kipling characters, particularly that of Kaa the snake and Sher Khan the tiger. In the book, Kaa actually helps rescue Mowgli by scaring the monkeys but, in the animation, he is reduced to a series of sibilant hisses: "Oh, my sinuses!" Similarly, the deathly fear that accompanies the arrival of the tiger is replaced by a plummy upper class English accent: "How absolutely delightful!"
Walt Disney died just before the original "Jungle Book" was released in 1967. This was his last and, for some, his most memorable film. "The Jungle Book 2", just released, is a sort of remix by the Walt Disney Company of all the old characters and the old numbers.
The only additions are some human characters at the beginning of the film — Mowgli's girl friend, Shanti, and her baby brother, Ranjan. The difference between the 1967 version and the 2003 one is that there is an "Indianisation" of the story as, clearly, Americans today are more aware of Indian names and ethnic characteristics (Shanti's father wears a turban in the "man village").
The other difference, of course, is that the animation is now computerised. But the handwork in the 1967 version is so brilliant; you would be hard put to point out the technical and visual improvements that technology has presumably brought. The glorious colours of the Indian jungle are stunning in both versions.
But is "The Jungle Book" Kipling? The answer, fortunately, is still "No"!
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