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Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: animation, books, Charlotte's Web, E.B. White, Katharine White, movies, poetry
E.B. White, who once suggested February be abolished, would have been glad this one's almost over. In a springier time, he wrote:
NATURAL HISTORY
(A Letter to Katharine, from the King Edward Hotel, Toronto)
The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unwinds a thread of her devising:
A thin, premeditated rig
To use in rising.
And all the journey down through space
In cool descent, and loyal-hearted,
She builds a ladder to the place
From which she started.
Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do,
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken strand to you
For my returning.
My returning! Yes, it's time for the inevitable live-action Charlotte's Web. With any luck, it'll be an improvement on the sweetish but jarringly musical 2001 animated version. As Moviehole reports:
"Charlotte's Web" is filming right here in overcast—how quickly the weather changes in the city by the bay—Melbourne, and one of the paid aid contacted us to let us know who—besides the all star voice cast—will be joining Dakota Fanning in front of the Panavision wide-lens.
Siobhan Fallon Hogan, who played Stanley's mother in the recent "Holes", has been enlisted to play Mrs Zuckerman, the 'butter milk bathing' farm-wife. As has Kevin Anderson ("Sleeping with the Enemy"), Gary Basaraba who played officer Ray Hechler in "Boomtown", Essie Davis ("The Matrix Revolutions"), and young actor Nate Mooney ("Elizabethtown").
As previously announced, the all-star voice cast includes Julia Roberts as spider Charlotte, Oprah Winfrey as goose Gussy, John Cleese as Samuel the sheep, Steve Buscemi as sneaky rat Templeton, Reba McEntire and Kathy Bates as cows Betsy and Bitsy, and Outkast hip-hopper Andre 3000 as crow Elwyn.
Also in the cast: Cedric the Entertainer, Thomas Haden Church, and Andre Benjamin. Of course the versatile Bates has to be the cows, even without appearing live (does anyone even remember Betsy and Bitsy from the book?). And let's get back to "crow Elwyn." Tell me again why crows have to be characterized as shucking black fools? This is getting old—really old. From Wikipedia on the otherwise top-notch Dumbo (1941):
The crow characters in the film are in fact African-American caricatures; the leader crow voiced by Caucasian Cliff Edwards is officially named "Jim Crow." The other crows are voiced by African-American actors, all members of the Hall Johnson Choir. Though Dumbo is often criticized for the inclusion of the black crows, it is notable that they are the only truly sympathetic characters in the film outside of Dumbo, his mother and Timothy. They apologize for picking on the elephant, and they are in fact the ones that help Timothy teach Dumbo to fly. The roustabout scene which features African American laborers largely in shadow and singing a working song that many find offensive has drawn similar complaints.
There are a lot of reasons to stop generating these tired and creatively limiting stereotypes (cast Bates as a crow. Cast Andre 3000 as a cow. These are voices we're talking about here!), and I suspect White would have found eloquent ones. All the media have a responsibility to prevent yet another generation of children from believing African-Americans are only good for crude entertainment. As Charlotte says to Wilbur, "People believe almost anything they see in print"—or, for enough of us, see onscreen.
Who's playing the live-action parts in Charlotte's Web? [Moviehole]
Reversal of Roles: Subversion and Reaffirmation of Racial Stereotypes in Dumbo and The Jungle Book
[Alex Wainer, Ferris State University]
The New Black Animated Images of 1946: Black Characters and Social Commentary in Animated Cartoons [Journal of Popular Film and Television]
Two Black Crows [Banned Films]
Reel Bad Arabs [Third Way]
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Comments
Was there actually a crow in Charlotte’s Web? I have no memory of such crow.
And who is Cedric the Entertainer, anyway? Have you noticed that he is in EVERY NEW MOVIE? It’s a little eerie.