Michigan J. Frog:
His Black Folktale Roots
Andrew Schulman
andrew@ora.com
January 21, 1997
As anyone with small children and a television in the United States
probably
knows, the Warner Bros. TV network has as part of its logo a top-hatted
frog, known as Michigan J. Frog. This character plays about the same role
for Warner Bros. as Mickey Mouse, dressed as the sorcerer's apprentice,
plays for the Disney corporation: Michigan J. Frog stands for
the WB vaudevillean style, just as Mickey the Sorcerer's Apprentice (combined
sometimes with "pixie dust" from Tinkerbell in Peter Pan)
evokes what is sometimes (usually by the corporation itself) called "Disney
magic."
There's a certain irony to both these logo characters. Originally,
Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer's apprentice (from the amazing 1939 film Fantastia)
seems the essence of unsuccessful magic: he brings to life (literally
animates) brooms to carry his master's water, but can not get them
to stop, and is almost destroyed.
Similarly, Michigan J. Frog first appears in a context very different
from what one would expect given his later employment in the WB logo.
In the brilliant 1955 cartoon, One Froggy Evening, the singing frog
with top hat and cane is a destructive force, bringing insanity
and poverty to his discoverer, who tries to make money off him. This frog
is a vaudevillean who can dance and sing songs such as "Hello Ma Baby"
and "I'm Just Wild About Harry" -- but the catch is that he'll
only perform for his owner. Everyone else just sees a plain old
frog, whose only song is a fart-like ribbit. His origin (and, in
fact, almost sole appearance) in this context would seem to make him unsuitable
as a symbol for the entertainment business. Almost the entire point of
his original appearance is his ability to undermine and destroy attempts
to commercialize his entertainment.
So in the case of Disney we have an almost-suicidally incompetent magician
where the incompetence and near suicide seem to have been forgotten, leaving
behind only the aura of "magic," and in the case of Warner Bros.
we have an entertainer who destroys his potential employers, but with the
destruction seemingly forgotten.
Is this worth following up? Is this just what should be expected in
the fast-paced, almost necessarily somewhat superficial, world of corporate-popular
culture, or is there anything to be learned here?
I think there is. Aside from having an excuse to closely examine some
great, well-loved animation, the fate of Michigan J. Frog (like that
of Mickey as the Sorcerer's Apprentice) shows how images tend to pull away
from their original context, and how little control a creator (even of
such a humble thing as seven-minute cartoon) has over its later use. An
image or story tends -- just like the brooms in the story of the sorcerer's
apprentice, in fact -- to "take on a life of its own."
Elsewhere, I'll follow up the evolution of the story of the sorcerer's
apprentice, from its early appearance in a 2nd century satiric dialog by
Lucian, to Goethe's late 18th century ballad "Zauberlehrling,"
to the late 19th century music by Dukas, to Disney's 1939 Fantastia, and
its subsequent employment in, for example, the pseudo-anthropology of Carlos
Castaneda.
Here, I'd like to closely examine the story of Michigan J. Frog.
It turns out that
the
figure of The Singing Frog that Refuses to Sing has its roots in Afro-American
and African folklore. Michigan J. Frog's most famous song, "Hello
Ma Baby," has, in its own right, a fascinating story relating both
to the history of technology and to the embarassing minstrel/blackface/"coon
shouter" stage of the early 20th century. The whole theme of unreliable
discoveries, cursed gifts, un-commercializable entertainments, and the
refusal to perform for an audience, has connections to many other stories.
All these themes are packaged up and somehow contained within the seemingly-simple
figure of the singing-dancing frog in the WB television logo.
This is one of a series of web articles I am writing that will use
folklore, mythology, literature, and the history of technology to examine
"popular culture," particularly Disney and Warner Bros. animination,
which form such a large part of contemporary culture. I'm using the phrase
"WebLore," not only because I'll use the World Wide Web to publish
(and, to a lesser extent, to research) this material, but more so because
the area of popular culture is itself a web, an interconnected world:
start with one place or character, diligently follow up the leads, and
eventually you'll visit every other place and character in this world.
So, more or less arbitrarily, let's start with the 1955 Warner Bros. cartoon,
One Froggy Evening, and see where it leads us.
The popularity of Michigan J. Frog [1]
is surprising, considering that he comes basically from single cartoon,
One Froggy Evening (1955, directed by Chuck Jones; story by Michael
Maltese; animation by Abe Levitow, Richard Thompson, Ken Harris, and Ben
Washam). The cartoon is however the subject of in-jokes in several other
cartoons,[2] and in the hilarious
Mel Brooks film Spaceballs,[3]
and Chuck Jones did a sequel in 1995??, Another Froggy Evening,[4]
but few people have seen this.
So it's just a single cartoon, nothing like the Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote
cycle. Ah, but what a cartoon: it is a seven-minute masterpiece. One Froggy
Evening appears as #5 in the wonderful book, The
50 Greatest Cartoons as Selected by 1,000 Animation Professions.
By the way, cartoons 1 through 4 are: What's Opera, Doc? (Warner
Bros. 1957 Chuck Jones), Duck Amuck (Warner Bros. 1953 Chuck Jones),
The Band Concert Disney (1935 Wilfred Jackson), Duck Dodgers
in the 24-1/2th Century (Warner Bros. 1953 Chuck Jones). No. 6 is Gertie
the Dinosaur (Winsor McKay ca. 1912). That Chuck Jones and Warner Bros.
rather than Disney dominate this list is no surprise: see the fascinating
biography of Jones, Flurry of Drawings, by
literary critic Hugh Kenner, and see Jones's own books, Chuck
Amuck and Chuck Reducks.[5]
The Internet Movie Database [6]
has a nice, concise plot summary of One Froggy Evening: "A
workman finds a singing frog in the cornerstone of an old building being
demolished. But when he tries to cash in on his discovery, he finds the
frog will sing only for him, and just croak for the talent agent and the
audience in the theater he's spent his life savings on."
That's about it: not very promising-sounding as the basis for a lengthy
article, much less as the basis for a corporate logo. But the cartoon is
a masterpiece:
- need to tell them WHY masterpiece: only frog sound (pantomime behind
window), quote Jones "never knew when son of a bitch..."
- also because structured unlike most cartoons (shares structure with
sorc. app, another story about someone's defeat, undoing at the mercy of
what should be under control)
- tell them where to see cartoon! One Froggy Evening available
on tape Bugs Bunny’s 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales; also see The
Bugs Bunny Road Runner Movie (which also has What’s Opera, Doc?
and Duck Amuck). Whole
Toon Access.
- check spelling!
Back
to our story: only sings for finder when alone, for example when he's been
confined to the "Psychopathic Hospital". Otherwise, just a plain
old frog. 
- Description in standard reference (yes, there is a standard reference
to all those WB cartoons you saw as a kid), Looney Tunes and Merrie
Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons
by Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald. Lists about 1,000 cartoons, 1930 to 1988
(Click here
to order). p. 281:
Picture, if you will, a member of a wrecking crew demolishing an 1892
building and opening the cornerstone to see a frog entering stage left,,
doing a song-and-dance, singing "Hello, My Ragtime Gal." The
finder's mind races with the possibilities of getting rich by exploiting
this singing frog. [Emphasis mine: he's trying to turn a gift/miracle
into a product.] But the frog will not sing if anyone is present. At a
talent agency, the finder gets an agent to look at the frog (today called
"Michigan J. Frog"). [Amazingly, the frog acts like a normal
frog, making rude ribbiting noises.] Investing his mattress of life savings
in renting a theatre, the finder lures a crowd in with the promise of "Free
Beer." The frog does his stuff atop a high wire, finishing just as
the entrepreneur manages to lift the jammed curtain. [All the crowd sees
is plain frog going ribbit.] Months later, a policeman hears someone singing
(Barber of Seville) in the park and when our friend points to the frog,
the film dissolves to a shot of him in a psychopathic hospital, the frog
leaning on a window bar crooning "Please Don't Talk About Me When
I'm Gone." Years later, a broken and desolate man, he finally dumps
the frog in the cornerstone of a building about to be constructed. A hundred
years pass, and rayguns disintegrate the old building. Some things never
change, as the discoverer of this cornerstone is also convinced
he can make a fortune with the singing frog.
- Cornerstone theme: like mummy's curse! A time capsule from another
era; going to impoverish discoverer and drive him insane.
- Search for "Michigan Rag" on web (not Michigan Rag, but enough
think it is), found "Frog
Like Me", Words: Copyright 1993 Tom Smith, after Howard Ashman,
Music: something like "Friend Like Me" by Alan Menken, from the
Disney animated film Aladdin:
You won't believe that things can get so big,
It'll really knock off your socks,
'Cause you found exactly the place to dig --
Now just open up my box,
And I'll say:
"Mister, I'll be your pal
If you only let me be,"
Hello, baby, honey, ragtime gal,
You ain't never had a frog like me.
Success is in the bag,
Your wealth I guarantee,
Everybody likes the Michigan Rag
When they hear it from a frog like me.
- Which wonderful inversion. Aladdin grants all wishes, Michigan J. Frog
also magical, but subverts all wishes. Difference is analogous to that
between, say, cornucopia and Pandora's box.
- Deception of finder: connection with what say over phone in song? "Phoney"???
This is a stretch, and after all have to account for other songs too. Still,
"Hello Ma Baby" is one that everyone associates with Michigan
J. Frog. It is his theme song.
- WB cartoonists probably didn't know, folklore theme, especially American
black and African
- B210.2 "Talking animal or object refuses to talk on demand.
Discoverer is unable to prove his claims; is beaten"!!!
- Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. A Classification
of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances,
Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books and Local Legends, Copenhagen 1955.
- The Folktale, by Stith Thompson, Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1946. A fascinating scholarly overview of basic tale types and how they
are distributed around the world. It also explains Thompson's research
tools, the Type Index and the Motif Index, which you may never use directly
but will see many references to and should understand (Click
here to order).
- Odd varient of D1651, "Magic object obeys master alone".
Here, causes trouble for master because only works in his sole presence!
Usually that is good thing (e.g., D1651.2 "Magic cooking-pot obeys
only master")
- These motif numbers; is there a Tale Type number? (Note difference
motif and tale type.)
- Numbers for themes: like old joke about prison, new guys hears shout
out numbers, everyone laughs, someone explains that know jokes so well
that just give numbers, next day he shouts out "514" -- no one
laughs. What did I do wrong? "You told it wrong!".
- AltaVista search for "+joke +prison" leads to Joke
in Prison by Virendra S Walavalkar
- John Barth in his 1966 novel Giles Goat-Boy apparently pokes
fun at Thompson's Motif Index of Folk Literature, and other classifications
of folklore, as "steps in the right direction" toward fully mechanically-generated
literature (quoted in David Porush, The Soft Machine: Cybernetic Fiction,
1985, p. 151).
- Easy to make fun of numbers for stories, but makes it easy to do comparison
shopping: Clarkson/Cross.
- Other versions same story, e.g. Ozark versions: get Randolph, "Talking
Turtle"
- Dorson, American Negro Folktales, "Old Marster Gets the
Better of John" cycle, #50 Talking Bones p. 147; #51 Talking Turtle
p. 148; #52 The Talking Mule p. 149. #52 especially good Unfortunately,
OP. Powell's?
- Pull in notes from notebook! Punishment for telling truth, "shoot
the messenger," etc.
- Talking Mule
- Dorson #52: Apprentice makes broom overwork, so broom gets apprentice
in trouble via literal over-obedience.
- William Bascom, Aftrican Folktales in the New World, pp. 17-39:
"The Talking Skull Refuses to Talk" -- also talking animal, singing
tortoise. Lesson: don’t tell the truth! Connection is not only that magical
object/animal doesn’t obey when needed, but reason why doesn’t perform
as needed: because victim/apprentice/finder didn’t keep a secret. Especially,
don’t tell The Master. Bascom shows transition from African chief or king
to US Old Marster, boss!
- Dorson #50: "Talking Bones". African versions: "Of the
22 African motifs found in the over 200 motifs in my tales, only one is
not known in Europe. This is K1162+, ‘Dupe tricked into reporting speaking
skull, is executed for lying,’ which does provide an African core to one
popular American Negro tradition. But this case is exceptional" (Dorson
p. 16). Exceptional or not, there seems to be general agreement that talking
skull or animal tales come directly to America from West Africa.
- K1162??
- "So John was walking out in the woods and seed a skeleton. He
says: ‘This looks like a human. I wonder what he’s doing out here.’ And
the skeleton said, ‘Tongue is the cause of my being here.’ So John ran
back to Old Marster and said, ‘The skeleton at the edge of the woods is
talking.’ Old Marster didn’t believe him and went to see. And a great many
people came too. They said, ‘Make the bone talk.’ But the skeleton wouldn’t
talk. So they beat John to death, and left him there. And then the bones
talked. They said, ‘Tongue brought me here, and tongue brought you here.’"
(Dorson p. 148)
- Connection to sorcerer’s apprentice: Magical object disobeys, gets
apprentice in trouble. But the form of disobedience here is especially
ironic.
- Dorson #51: "Talking Turtle": John "tired of toting
water every day." (Water-carrier theme!) He’d repeat this same complaint:
every time he went to the bayou "he would start fussin’. ‘I’m tired
of toting water every day.’ The next day he went to the bayou and he repeated
the same thing." Turtle is tired of hearing this: "Black man,
you talk too much." John tells Old Master, who doesn’t believe him,
finally agrees to come see, but if turtle doesn’t talk John is going to
get a beating. "And so John told the turtle, ‘Tell Old Marster what
you told me.’ So John begged the turtle to talk. So the turtle still didn’t
say anything. So Old Marster taken him back to the house, and gave him
a good beating, and made him git his buckets, and keep toting water."
(Dorson p. 148)
- Water-carrier, as in sorcerer’s apprentice.
- "You talk too much", "tongue brought me here" theme.
- Part of John/Ole Marster cycle, this this is a weird variant where
Ole Marster wins. Generally think of black folktales from Julius Lester
(one of my favorite books as a kid, though subsequently realized how much
came word for word from Hurston’s Mules and Men!; Lester has wonderful
illustrations, and the dialect has been cleaned up: same as he’s done for
Uncle Remus stories and more recently Little Black Sambo!)
- Dorson #52 "The Talking Mule": "George, the mule, he
stopped and says, ‘Oh I sure am tired.’" John asked mule, "George,
was that you talking to me?" Mule says, "Yes, I asked you don’t
you get tired of working all the time?" (p. 149).
- Talking mule: Francis? Only finder sees/hears him: Harvey the rabbit?
Wilbur and Mr. Ed?
- John runs back to tell Old Boss [post-slavery], who of course doesn’t
believe him. "So John went on down in the field, hit George in the
side with the plow line, told him to get up. George told him, ‘Yes, you
went telling on me to the Boss; you going to get enough of that [getting
hit] one of these days.’ He says, ‘Yes, you talk too much. And it will
get you in a lot of trouble.’" (Dorson p. 150)
- Servant’s servant gets servant in trouble with master. In sorcerer’s
apprentice, the apprentice makes broom do all the work, so the broom uses
literal obedience to get apprentice in trouble with sorcerer. In "Talking
Mule," mule sets up John to get in trouble with master, then
refuses to talk on cue. Same as Michigan J. Frog in One Froggy Evening.
- Refuses to talk/sing on cue: dramatic/theatrical situation?
- Magic object deliberately misses cue, behaves unmagically, so owner/mis-user
thought to be lying or crazy. He should have kept secret. Lesson of all
talking object stories: don’t tell truth; keep secrets from Old Marster;
dissemble.
- What is more general point behind "don’t tell truth" stories?
Surely not just "keep a secret," but some reason why truths are
dangerous and ought to be kept secret, and why telling the truth will get
truth-teller in trouble. What are real-life situations in which this the
case? Woman reporting rape, child reporting incest or other form of abuse???
"Shoot the messenger" theme?
- Punished for telling the truth.
- Harold Courlander, A Treasury of Afro-American Folktale, pp
420-422 "Old Boss, John, and the Mule" (from Courtlander, Terrapin’s
Pot of Sense, 1957) is amusing shaggy-dog twist on Dorson #52. (Or
Dorson #52 is non-amusing moralistic version of this?): same basic story,
but at end Boss walks back to the house, talking to himself, "Don’t
know what I’m goin’ to do with that boy," and his dog says, "Fire
him, Boss. You got no choice.... When a man start to imagine things like
that boy does, ‘bout time to get rid of him" (p. 421). Nice touch!
- Shaggy-dog stories: collection on web. Why "shaggy dog"?
What makes this a shaggy-dog ending is that it undermines any possible
moral. (Really
Bad Complex Extended Puns)
- For an African comparison, see Courlander Appendix XI, pp 558-589:
"The Things That Talked; Broken Pledge; All Things Talk; and Old Boss,
John, and the Mule: An Ashanti Version". Actually, anything in common
other than talking object? Need refusal to talk for anyone other than finder.
From Courtlander and Herzog, The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African
Tales 1975. This one has African tribal chief instead of boss, all
objects start talking, very upsetting, chief pronounces "Now this
is really a wild story. You’d better all go back to your work before I
punish you for disturbing the peace." He then mumbles to himself,
"Nonsense like that upsets the community." And his stool says,
"Fantastic, isn’t it? Imagine, a talking yam!"
- (Joke about taking brother to psychiatrist, "He thinks he’s a
chicken". How long has he thought this? Ten years, or whatever. Why
didn’t you bring him here earlier? "Well, doctor, I need the eggs.")
- Cautionary tale about not keeping secret, turned into unstable irony
where talking to yourself about absurdity of idea of talking objects, objects
answer back, they agree that idea of talking objects is absurd.
In these versions, most of connection of sorcerer’s apprentice is gone.
Except does return to theme of Lucian Philopseudes: lies, tall tales,
pseudo-Socratic question, what is point.
- Courlander pp 441-2 "John and the Blacksnake". John down
at the pond to catch catfish. Blacksnake calls his name "to be sociable....
besides that, John, ain’t we both black?" John denies this: "Let’s
get it straight ... they’s two kinds of black, yours and mine, and they
ain’t the same thing." Snake insists: "Black is black ... and
I been thinkin’ on it quite a while. You might say as we is kin."
"That was too much for John." Runs back to tell Old Boss. As
usual in these stories, Boss calm/cool contrast to John’s overexcitement.
"Well, let’s go take a look." John to snake: "Tell him,
Tell Old Boss what you told me." Snake says nothing. (In story, this
otherwise-expected point becomes unexpected). Boss: "I’m mighty disappointed
in you. You sure let me down." Tells John to lay off the corn [liquor].
After he leaves, blacksnake says: "John, you sure let me down
too. I spoke with you and nobody else. And the first thing you do is go
off and tell everything you know to a white man" (p 442).
- Lessons: black vs. white; keep secrets; don’t tell truth; it isn’t
lies that will get you into trouble, it’s truth (see introduction to Puttin’
On Ole Massa??)
- African comparison: Courlander Appendix VII, pp 582-3: "The Singing
Tortoise and John and the Blacksnake: Mbundu and Nupe Comparisons."
Heli Chatelain, Folk-Tales of Angola 1894: Skull says, "I, foolishness
has killed me; thou, soon smartness shall kill thee" (my emphasis).
"The young man, his wits killed him" (my emphasis). Don’t
be too smart, keep cool, keep it under your hat.
- Connection to standard idea of magic object, only magic if don’t
tell anyone? Lot’s wife looks back when shouldn’t, Cupid/Psyche, etc. Transgression?
See new Highwater book?
- "The theme of a talking (or singing) animal or object that refuses
to talk when its discoverer brings witnesses is widely known in Africa."
Note in particular singing: Michigan J. Frog. Only works when no witnesses:
idea that magic is very sensitive, secretive. Maybe just myth of magic
makers to explain why no one ever sees it?? Spiritualism: only works if
believe in it. Self-fulfilling explanations of magic/miracle?
- Keep it to yourself; if you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with
it (sorcerer’s apprentice theme). Just adults advice to children about
"over reaching"??
- William Bascom, African Folktales in the New World, pp 17-39:
"The Talking Skull Refuses to Talk" -- this is one tale that
even Dorson says "comes straight from West Africa". Are there
really no European versions? Yeats, Lady Gregory on Ireland? Besides B210.2,
Dorson mentions K1162. But this wrong? (Bascomb)
- Bascom p. 20: Aarne-Thompson "specifically disclaims any real
coverage of Africa."
- Bascom p. 22: "The distinctive feature of these folktales is not
that the skulls or animals can talk (or sing), but that later they *refuse*
to talk" or sing. See sorcerer’s apprentice, in which distinctive
feature is *not* that broom carries water (enchantment) , but that won’t
stop, i.e. won’t return to being a simple broom (disenchantment). Story
in which non-enchantment rather than enchantment is surprising, is the
plot twist. Good plot device, is that sufficient explanation for its widespread
use?
- If talking/singing animal/skull not Europe, why not?
- Bascom p. 22: "Incidentally, this series of historically related
folktales neatly illustrates how the African chief or king has been replaced,
in the United States, bu the Old Master or the boss."
- Talking Skull Refuses to Talk: 25 versions, from Senegal, Mali, Togo,
Nigeria, Angola, Zaire, ... Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arkansas, North Carolina,
Florida.
- "If I died of my foolishness, then soon you will die of your cleverness"
(Nigeria: Efik).
- Talking Animal Refuses to Talk: 11 versions, from Nigeria to Arkansas,
etc. Usual stuff, e.g., "A blabbermouth who told only the truth [naive,
Persival?] found a turtle in the road. It said, ‘You talk too damn much’"
(Arkansas).
- Singing Tortoise Refuses to Sing: 5 versions, from Ghana, Texas,
Haiti. "It is man who forces himself on things, not things which force
themselves on him" (Ghana, p. 31). "Hunter could not keep his
secret." Hunter persuades tortoise to go home with him, "but
on the condition that he tell no one." That’s the crucial point. "Don’t
trouble trouble till trouble troubles you" (Ghana, p. 40). "Trouble
does not look for man; it is man who looks for trouble" (Ghana, p.
41). In Texas version, boy runs home "and told his father, who gave
him a thrashing for telling a lie." Turtle then says, "Don’t
tell all you see." Odd varient on "boy who cried wolf" (Aesop?
maybe singing tortoise in Phaedrus/Babrius??).
- Version in Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, The Book of Negro
Folklore, 1958, pp 505-6: talking alligator.
- Metafictional version from Jamaica, Bascom p. 39: When monkey refuses
to talk to back up man’s claim, judge sends for Anansi, who buys up the
tale [cf. main Anansi story, buyer of tales], and then uses it to make
an incredible one of his own. At the time, Jamaica "the one place
in the world where no one told tales." When judge hears Anansi’s tale,
"smiled and ruled that telling tales was noty that bad, and it was
good for Jamaica to have them like other countries" (Bascom, p. 39).
- Jack in Two Worlds??
- 50 Greatest Cartoons #5, "One Froggy Evening": "Far
from riches, the man gets only frustration and financial ruin, for the
frog will perform only for him; in the company of others, it’s simply a
humdrum ribbiting frog."
- Cursed gift? Or gift with a condition? Man allowed pleasure of frog’s
songs, but not allowed to make money off it. Like Irish fairy tale about
magic stream, magic does away when the townspeople start charging money
for it? Lesson: don’t try to take possession of a gift.
- "With simplicitly and economy of drawing, the frog foils the
plans of his would-be marketer [my emphasis: and now a WB logo!] with
increasing sophistication. The hat and cane give way to a high-wire act
and then a vocally demanding aria [Barber of Seville; Figaro; also about
master/servant relations???]; the frog’s talent expands exponentially as
his owner’s mental health deteriorates, the frog remaining cheerfully oblivious
to his owner’s plight. The frog’s cultured tenor voice and lithe movements
are directly and uproariously juxtaposed with his public persona, that
of a lumpen, limp-limbed frog whose only sound is an impolite ‘ribbit’
[fart!]. The story is classical in structure, a departure from the peripatetic
[???] zaniness of the typical Warner Bros. cartoon, and paints a familiar
scenario of the dreamer who, unable to share the brilliance of his dreams,
is gradually destroyed by them" (Jami Bernard quoted in 50
Greatest Cartoons, p. 50). Jami Bernard? [My emphasis: familiar scenario?
other examples?]
- One Froggy Evening available on tape Bugs Bunny’s 3rd Movie: 1001
Rabbit Tales; also see The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Movie (which
also has What’s Opera, Doc? and Duck Amuck). Whole
Toon Access.
- Not stealing gift, but telling about it (Heisenberg?? trying
to have others observe makes it go away??), or trying to commercialize
it.
- Michigan J. Frog as WB logo, like Mickey as sorcerer’s apprentice as
Disney logo. Odd, at least until remove context, then works. Only works
if remove context: is this also a theme?
- Theme of writings denouncing their own author, speech taking on life
of its own?
- "Silence is golden" (and, in humor from Nazi period, "speech
is Dachau").
- "Silence is golden": not only if finder had kept his mouth
shut, but if frog had not sung.
- "Silence is golden": need separate article?
- "Silence is golden": Kalila and Dimna: Selected Fables
of Bidpai (retold by Ramsay Wood, intro by Doris Lessing). Frame story,
on Bidpai himself, has passage on how speech exposes the speaker to
risk. Bidpai explaining his reluctance to speak out to repressive
King Dakschelim. Don't know how much or how little this reflects original,
but here is Wood's version:
"Speech, as your Royal Highness has already suggested, exposes
the speaker to risk. Once upon a time the kings of China, India, Persia
and Greece were all together and each agreed to deliver a saying which
might be recorded to their posterity. The King of China said: 'I have more
power over what I do not speak than I have over what escapes my lips.'
The King of Persia said: 'A man's own tongue may cut his throat.'
The King of India: 'I am the slave of what I have spoken, but the master
of what I conceal.'
The King of Greece: 'I have never regretted imposing silence upon myself,
but have often repented the uttering of words.' ["imposing silence":
can this saying also justify repression? clearly it justifies dissembling
in times of repression, but has it also been used to justify repression
itself?]
So, Sire, if speech is so universally regarded as a reliable instrument
for man's downfall, then it must follow that the antidote is deliberate
silence." (pp. 28-29)
- Bidpai is speaking in fact of the danger of speaking out under bad
ruler, King Dakschelim. Under his rule, speaking is dangerous.
And story about four kings praising silence is really just Bidpai's light-handed
way of referring to King's repressive rule. But nonetheless remains as
general theme:
- Speaker doesn't control what he has spoken. General "sorcerer's
apprentice" theme that story-teller loses control over his story.
Lucian's commentary on lies ends up as cautionary tale about technology,
or about the economy (Sismondi 1837, quoted in Binswanger, Money and
Magic, pp. 108-112), or as logo for animation company, perhaps being
about nothing at all other than some vague "magic." Within the
sorcerer's apprentice tale itself, of course, apprentice loses control
of product of his utterace (magical incantation). Dangerous utterance.
- Avoid attaching a moral to everything (Alice; Mark Twain), but here
fairly transparent. Moral is: shut up! But not fixed moral: stories
are containers, can be filled with many different, even contradictory,
morals, just as a cup can be filled with anything.
- Michigan J. Frog "lesson"? Not so much runaway technology,
as unreliable product. Put product on market, takes on life of its
own. Software vendors sometimes refer to how their product will be used
for things they never dreamed of, and this sounds good and all, but has
a price: these unexpected uses will come to dominate what they can do with
what started out as their own product. No longer their own. Often try to
keep control, cf. Microsoft and Windows (Brad Silverberg quote on changing
interfaces).
- MJ Frog as logo: may one day dry up, stop singing. Stage fright,
writer's block?
- What other meanings to MJ Frog? Private dream, insanity, don't
productize, don't try to sell gift
- Folklore of talking head: "Tongue brought me here, tongue will
bring you here" says talking skull to slave in cemetary. Slave tells
master, master goes to check it out, skull doesn't speak, slave is killed
for lying (and this in tale told by slaves!), skull turns to slave's corpse
and says (in some versions of tale, now in front of master, after harm
already done) "I told you so."
- Intro. to Haase, Reception of Grimms' Fairy Tales, p. 21. Following
sounds trite, probably been said a million times, but all he same important:
Peter Straub horror novel Shadowland has Bros. Grimm as characters.
Main character asks them question. Their departing voices tell him, "Ask
the stories, child." He replies, "But they never give the same
answers" (Straub, pp. 225-6).
- Haase p. 21 goes on: "Indeed, Grimms' fairy tales never do
give the same answers, which is [precisely!] why they endure. What keeps
Hansel and Gretel, and even Jacob and Wilhelm [Grimm], alive is not their
moral character, not what they contain, but the potential they have to
play whatever roles are given them, to have meaning conferred upon them,
to give an answer to whoever asks the question. [Not the contents, but
the container.] It is their protean nature, their many voices..."
(etc.) cf. Jung "symbol": not stand for something, but stand
for anything.
- Talking head: fine, until tell. Prohibition against telling; keep
it secret (can't take it with you??).
- Don't try to own it. Just enjoy, don't make product. (All-You-Can-Eat
not available on To-Go items!)
- Irish tale about town with magic river, townspeople try to sell water,
goes away. (Positive version: Million to Juan, Mark Twain banknote.)
- Tempting to say that even though talking/singing frog/skull/mule not
in Europe, Ireland etc. does have other tales with similar point, such
as magic river. But whole lesson from evolution of talking/singing frog/skull/mule
is that this equivalence really can't be, since one story has no fixed
point. All you can truthfully compare are the stories themselves (tale
type, motifs). Meaning is not fixed, so can't say that two stories have
same meaning?
- Theft brings happy times to an end: in More Celtic Fairy Tales
notes to "Elidore," p. 231, Joseph Jacobs refers to another tale
in which fairies treat visitors with great hospitality "but on the
condition that they might eat all, but pocket none" (emphasis
mine).
- Flann O'Brien, Third Policeman: infinite riches in the afterlife,
but can't bring any of it back (weigh before step into elevator!). cf.
also Lost Horizons, Man Who Would Be King?
- Basic principle: "Sorry, All You Can Eat not available
on To Go items!"
- Also an interesting twist to "give a man a fish and you've fed
him for a day; teach a man to fish and you've fed him for life." Here,
given fish for as many days as you want, but definitely not taught
to fish! (Not taught: cf. Pancrates not teaching trick to Eucrates
in Lucian version of sorcerer's apprentice.) Difference between accepting
gifts, enjoying product, vs. misappropriating trade secret!
- In sorcerer's apprentice, can enjoy sorcerer's conjured servants, but
not allowed to conjure his own. Trying to steal gift! Well, this
is just killing goose that lays golden eggs. Don't try to steal
a gift: not just cautionary tale about impatience, but about being vs.
having (Eric Fromm). Don't try to own what you can enjoy. MJ Frog:
making product of gift; putting the golden goose to work! (Actually,
a theme in old cartoons?)
- Perhaps Goethe's sorcerer's apprentice learns this sometime after the
poem ends?
- Jacobs, More Celtic Fairy Tales notes, p. 232: similar story
from Davies, Mythology of the British Druids: "door in a rock near
a cave in the mountains of Brecknock, which was left open for Mayday...
condition that they might eat all, but pocket none [emphasis mine];
for once, a visitor took away with him a fairy flower, and as soon as he
got outside the door the flower vanished [Lost Horizons: wilted!],
and the door was never more opened."
- cf. "Elidyr's Sojourn in Fairy Land," W.J. Thomas, Welsh
Fairy Book, pp. 42-49, notes pp. xvi-xvii, 308-309; Gerald of Wales,
Journey Through Wales ~1188 (Gerald of Wales ~1146-1223, also History
and Topography of Ireland).
- Rather than "you can't take it with you," this (like Flann
O'Brien) is "you can't bring it back with you."
- Don't try to own it: stealing library books!
- Possession vs. sharing? No, being vs. having is closer.
- Need to go through Briggs, etc., and look for other tales of attempted
the theft of fairy gifts. Or, instead of theft, telling someone about
them: plenty of those.
- Jacobs, p. 231: Elidore source is Giraldus Cambrensis, Itinerarium
Cambrias, I.viii (get pp. from Penguin ed.)
- Lost Horizons: trying to bring back magic destroys it. Can't be removed
from its proper environment, ripped out of context. Decontextualization!
(This a stretch, but maybe worthwhile one?)
- "Elidore" is clearly related to killing goose that lays golden
eggs. "Golden Goose," Suvannahamsa-Jataka #136 (date?), in Rafe
Martin, The Hungry Tigress: Buddhist Legends and Jataka Tales, pp.
83-87, notes pp. 200-201: Doesn't lay golden eggs and isn't killed.
Instead, father dies, turns to goose, tells children "Each day you
must pluck a feather from my wings. It will turn to gold.... But you must
tell no one, not even your mother, who I am. And you must pluck only one
feather each day" (p. 83).
- What mean, "you must tell no one": what is this for? Obvious
temptation to tell now, which otherwise might not have thought. So perhaps
whole point of prohibition is to goad finder to tell -- every gift
must have possibly destructive test?
- "Pluck only one feather each day": this part is clear enough.
- Makes me imagine "I will sleep with you so long as you tell no
one" and then having irrestistible urge to tell someone and almost
feeling it's no good if can't tell anyone. A scene in a Marilyn Chambers
porno film sort of like this: guy getting a blow-job, all the while saying
"No one's going to believe this. Who am I going to tell? Who's going
to believe Arty Goldberg got a blow job from Sandra Chase?" To him,
it's almost not worthwhile if can't tell.
- Misused gift, cursed gift, destructive gift (potlatch), miracle causes
downfall, killing with kindness (Garrison Keilor story about Democrat mother
and Republican son-in-law!).
- Cursed gift: carbuncle
-
-
Version
with skull, not frog, in Zora Neale Hurston "High Walker and
Bloody Bones," Mules and Men 1935, pp. 173-175; not
"The Talking Mule," pp. 172-173, which is different shaggy-dog
story?? Here, High Walker comes across a skull, and the skull talks to
him: (dialect in original):
- Den de skull head said, "My mouf brought me here and if you don't
mind, you'n will bring you here.
High Walker went on back to his white folks and told de white man dat a
dry skull head wuz talkin' in de drift today. White man say he didn't believe
it.
"Well, if you don't believe me, come go wid me and Ah'll prove it.
And if it don't speak, you kin chop mah head off right where it at."
So de white man and High Walker went back in de drift tuh find dis ole
skull head. So when he walked up tuh it, he begin tuh kick and kick de
ole skull head, but it wouldn't say nothin'. [Lack of miracle becomes
surprising.] High Walker looked at de white man and seen 'im whettin' his
knife. Wheetin' it hard and de sound of it said rick-de-rick, rick-de-rick,
rick-de-rick! So High Walker kicked and kicked dat ole skull head and called
it many and many uh time, but it never said nothin'. So de white man cut
off High Walker's head.
And de old dry skull head said, "See dat now! Ah told you dat mouf
brought me here and if you didn't mind out it'd bring you here."
- Click
here to order * Library
of America edition * even Caedmon
audio cassettes
- High Walker character odd. Intro to tale more complicated than I've
described it. And ends with skull talking to the white man. Hurston version
much more complicated than standard folktale versions. So if I'm going
to quote her rather than (or in addition to) them, I need to examine these
complexities.
- boy who cried wolf inverted: punishment for telling truth!
- African versions: transmission of African culture via slave trade (see
Ashanti tale, "Talk," Clarkson/Cross, World Folktale #36, from
Courlander, Cow-Tail Switch; click
here to order). Unfortunately, great Clarkson/Cross OP. Powell's?
- It's also one of the few major black American folktales with a very
clear African background, but not (at least to my knowledge) a European
background. I don't believe it appears in Yeats' or Lady Gregory's fairy
tale books, for example (these are the Irish equivalent to Hurston, I guess
you could say).
- Also great shaggy-dog versions: see other shaggy-dog stories on web
- what this story B210.2 mean? (Not talking animals generally, but ones
that only talk to their master, and embarass him by not talking in front
of others: Harvey the Rabbit? Insanity? Magic/not-magic at inappropriate
times.)
- And what mean for WB for use as logo? Figure of unreliability as logo?
Impossibility of sharing dream as logo? Need to not tell all or even most
of what you know? (Similar to Disney use Sorcerer's Apprentice: failure
as logo??)
- I'm interested generally in how motifs such as this, or the sorcerer's
apprentice, or Pandora's box, or the fall or Icarus, or whatever, get removed
from their "original" context and get reused and reinterpreted
in completely different contexts. In the case of Michigan J. Frog, what
starts off as a gift or discovery that brings harm to its finder, ends
up as a logo for the Warner Bros. affiliate TV stations. Does it carry
any of its old context with it?
- Clear that motifs don't "mean" something. People often say
that e.g. sorcerer's apprentice "means technology out of control"
but if image/motif simply stood for something else, would be no need for
the image/motif in the first place: could just have the something else,
and be done with it. Much more complicated that the simple morals they
supposedly stand for. Little motif is a world that can be explored, like
a fractal, almost infinitely. I suspect that 7-minute One Froggy Evening
could, if done properly, generate several good-sized books: without destroying
the fun of the cartoon, and possibly even enhancing it.
- Trivia, but when pile on enough details, dig deeply, get something
real.
- Mike Maltese story, expert on vaudeville, maybe was a vaudeville routine
he saw?? or maybe "X-ing Y refuses to X" is part of Jungian collective
unconscious, ready to be created anew multiple times. If so, though, absence
from European folklore (Thomson B210.2) is inexplicable. No, WB must come
from American black, which in turn directly from Africa. Pretty exciting,
idea that this story would survive the Middle Passage!
- What story meant in Africa, what meant to Southern slaves -- very possibly
not same. Stories are containers, can be filled with different meaning.
Perhaps stories use the meanings to circulate? ("Meme"
idea)
- Reduced to shaggy-dog story (nonsense!)
- brings us back to opening point about decontextualization in logos
- links to separate articles:
- "Hello Ma Baby"
- "If I Could Talk to the Animals"
- "Silence is Golden"
- "Stealing a Gift"
- "Not the Contents, But the Container" (?).
For Further Reading
These books can be directly ordered online from amazon.com. I am hoping
to partially fund this web site by sales through amazon.com's "Associate
Program."
The
50 Greatest Cartoons as Selected by 1,000
Animation Professionals edited by Jerry Beck (published by Turner Broadcasting,
1994). Aside from the cartoons mentioned above, the book also features,
for example, the infamous Bambi Meets Godzilla, Steamboat Willie,
Gerald McBoing Boing (Dr. Seuss, 1951) and the racist classic Coal
Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (Warner Bros. 1943). An interview with the
editor, Jerry Beck, is available online.
Chuck
Jones: A Flurry of Drawings, by Hugh Kenner.
Chuck
Amuck : The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist, by Chuck
Jones.
Chuck
Reducks: Drawing from the Fun Side of Life, by Chuck Jones
Notes
[1] For what it's worth, he even has
his own web
page.
[2] There's a "Tiny Toons Adventure"
on frog dissection, and apparently a Simpsons episode (Treehouse
of Horror II).
[3] Spaceballs is mostly a spoof of
Star Wars, but there's a scene spoofing Alien, and Michigan
J. Frog makes a surprising appearance. See Spaceballs
page.
[4] "Another
Froggy Evening"
[5] Also see the web site http://www.chuckjones.com/,
and the Chuck
Jones biography and Leonard
Maltin tribute at Cinemania.
[6] Internet
Movie Database