DUMBO-PINK ELEPHANTS

DUMBO- pink elephants on Parade

Dumbo created by Disney in 1941, is a family favourite in our house. The scene “pink elephants on Parade “ definitely has to be the highlight of the entire film. It is one of the best-known, surreal animated sequences that Disney have done so far. It doesn’t seem to have much relevance to the rest of the film at all, the story of Dumbo seems to be totally lost in it. The sequence begins by Dumbo and Timothy the mouse accidentally becoming intoxicated by drinking a barrel of water spiked with champagne. And by the end of the sequence, Timothy the mouse and Dumbo are up a tree. The sequence gives away no clue or suggestion of how they seem to end up there.

There seems to be no structure to the coming scenes, it begins with a bubble blown by Dumbo which morphs itself into one pink elephant. That singular pink elephant then morphs into the play trumpet like instruments until instruments merged together and explode into a full on parade of pink elephants. The music seems to be created by the elephants themselves, and Dumbo and Timothy the mouse seem to be a part of this in the opening segments. But after that they are lost in the sequence, as if the sequence has completely taken over.

Once Timothy the mouse and Dumbo are removed from scenes, the music seems to no longer come from the instruments of the elephants but subsides as a backtrack emphasising the visual more than instrumental. A flood of elephants drowns the screen in all manners of shapes and forms, neon colours, patterns, and a voice emerges commenting on some of the strange and unexplainable things happening on the screen.

Then we come to alone elephant lying in bed possibly having a nightmare, who awakens to elephants surrounding him chanting and singing. This almost suggests that the illusion is getting too much for Dumbo and Timothy, although in another way is the first point in the sequence where a piece of furniture seems to ground space around them but this quickly changes as the bed then flips and the strange sequence continues.

The rest of this segment of the film consists of lots of different shapes colours, and craziness. Then we see strange walking creature made entirely of neon coloured elephant heads walking towards us, we zoom in on its creamy yellow head and his eyes become a pair of pyramids. The music changes to an Egyptian tune, and a strange surreal pink elephant appears from between the pyramids with humps and a closed trunk as a camel trotting along to the music. Then we come to some kind of elephant Egyptian belly dancer, who dances until her big round bomb tends into just an orange circle dance around the screen which then opens as an eyeball.

There is a sudden change of scenery and music, the music now plays a fast waltz and we see a pair of elephants dancing not particularly pink seem have a green outline and a pink skylight shining on them, the ice skating ski around the interact with each other, they seem to be having a lot of fun.

The sea and then subsides we are introduced to some up-tempo Latin music. The elephants there some sort of spark, this is shown by a bottle of electricity from one trunk to another. The couple then explodes into a large group of pink elephants and they all seem quite happy and to be having fun and the tempo picks up.

From then on the music gets faster and faster, and the elephants become trains, planes, cars, sledges and attack the screen from all angles before exploding in the centre of the screen. And this is where the sequence ends, the pink elephants look as if to fall asleep in the sky and transform into clouds, and we see a dark tree in the distance where Dumbo and Timothy the mouse wake up.