W E B L
O R E # 1
Michigan J. Frog, the Telephone, Zora Neale Hurston, and B210.2
Andrew Schulman
andrew@ora.com
January 8, 1997
Introduction to WebLore
Outline
- There's a character, Michigan J. Frog, that the Warner Bros. television
affiliates employ in their logo
in somewhat same way that Mickey Mouse as sorcerer's apprentice has become
a Disney logo. This character
even
has his own web
page.
- Comes from single cartoon, One Froggy Evening (1955). Nice
concise plot summary found at Internet
Movie Database: "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."
- Shows how images tend to pull away from original context, how little
control a creator (even of such homely thing as 7-minute cartoon) has over
later use, way that image or story tends, like brooms in sorcerer's apprentice,
to "take on a life of its own". In fact, sorc. app. story itself,
its evolution from Lucian to Goethe to Dukas to Disney, to general phrase,
illustrates this same point.
One Froggy Evening
- Amazing popularity of Michigan J. Frog, considering he comes basically
from single cartoon, "One Froggy Evening", 1955 Warner Bros D.
Chuck Jones (Story by Michael Maltese; Animation by Abe Levitow, Richard
Thompson, Ken Harris, and Ben Washam). This cartoon is refered to by other
cartoons, such as Tiny Toons Adventure on frog dissection, and apparently
a Simpsons episode (Treehouse
of Horror II), and as noted below in Mel Brooks film Spaceballs,
but character himself really is from single 7-minute cartoon, who provides
the only sound in an otherwise silent. [Who does singing of Michigan J.
Frog?]
But
what a cartoon: Appears as #5 in wonderful book, The 50 Greatest Cartoons
as Selected by 1,000 Animation Professions edited by Jerry Beck (published
by Turner Broadcasting, 1994). (By the way, cartoons 1 through 4 are: What's
Opera, Doc? Warner Bros. 1957, D. Chuck Jones; Duck Amuck Warner
Bros. 1953, D. Chuck Jones; The Band Concert Disney 1935 D. Wilfred
Jackson; Duck Dodgers in the 24-1/2th Century Warner Bros. 1953
D. Chuck Jones. No. 6 is Gertie the Dinosaur Winsor McKay ca. 1912?
Also has e.g. Bambi Meets Godzilla. Click
here to order * Interview
with Jerry Beck
That Chuck Jones dominates this list no surprise. Brilliant American artist:
Hugh Kenner (literary critic, author of XXX) on Chuck Jones (Click
here to order)
- His own books show his intelligence: Chuck Amuck : The Life and
Times of an Animated Cartoonist (Click
here to order) and Chuck Reducks: Drawing from the Fun Side of Life
(Click
here to order)
- Many web sites, including http://www.chuckjones.com/
(Including sequel, "Another
Froggy Evening")
- Cinemania: Chuck
Jones biography, Leonard
Maltin tribute
Kiss by Wire: Hello Ma Baby
- You probably know One Froggy Evening from "Hello My Ragtime
Gal" (click
here to listen to version from Spaceballs) and good chance know
words by heart, even if haven't thought about what they mean:
Hello ma baby
Hello ma honey
Hello ma ragtime gal
Send me a kiss by wire
Baby my heart's on fire
If you refuse me
Honey, you'll lose me
Then you'll be left alone
O baby telephone
And tell me I'm your own
Perhaps know from Spaceballs! Spoof of Star Wars, but
scene spoofs Alien, using this song from "One Froggy Evening"!
Alien rips out of chest, does the Michigan J. Frog. See Spaceballs
page.
Impossibility of hearing Hello Ma Baby tune without thinking of MJ
Frog and/or Spaceballs, same as impossibility of hearing Scott Joplin's
Maple Leaf Rag or The Entertainer without thinking of movie The Sting,
or of hearing Dukas "L'Apprenti sorcier" without thinking of
Mickey Mouse in Fantasia. (Amanda's point from David Lodge, Small
World: impact of Joyce on Shakespeare, or something like that.)
But song does have independent existence, before immortalized by Michigan
J. Frog: 1899 "Hello Ma Baby" by Howard and Emerson (not "Michigan
Rag" and not by Scott Joplin, as has been reported on web (unfortunately
clueless: huge discussions back and forth over facts that can be easily
verified in readily-available books); nor by "Warner/Disney musical
genius" Carl Stalling as also reported, though the musical genius
part true. Check out music on some of those old cartoons!
It's an interesting song for several reasons: from a description of
the sheet-music cover in James J. Fuld's standard Book of World-Famous
Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk (4e, Dover, 1995, about 1,000 songs;
Click
here to order) it sounds like the 1899 song (by Joe Howard; lyrics
by his wife Ida Emerson) was a "coon song" (sic!) as they were
called at the time: "Front cover has a drawing of a Negro couple talking
on a telephone..." Fuld also says, "This was the first well-known
song to refer to the telephone," so it's interesting from a sociology-of-technology
perspective also.
Curious that both "coon song" and technology song. Making
fun of "newbies" we know can easily have gender component (women);
in past had explicit ethnic component too. Inappropriate or amusing mis-uses
of technology, e.g. in 1899 to romance over the telephone. "Send
me a kiss by wire" may not have been metaphorical; curious ideas about
what did go over wire, similar to Irish stories of sending shoes by telegraph.
Ragtime and player piano?
Music that reflects new media (especially when reflecting it in an
un-self-conscious way, in contrast for example to something like "Johnnie
Mneumonic") is an interesting topic. Existing histories of the telephone
that I've read or looked at (for example, Claude S. Fischer's America
Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, Ithiel de Sola
Pool's important Social Impact of the Telephone, or the popular
Once Upon a Telephone: An Illustrated Social History by Stern and
Gwathmey) don't seem to cover this well, except for common references to
the song "Hello Central, Get Me Heaven". Telephone songs.
Telephone in lit: Blazes Boylen in Joyce, Ulysses; Mark
Twain, "Telephonic Conversation"; Chekhov, Three Sisters
(1903).
Fuld's Book of World-Famous Music (an excellent reference) says
"Front cover has a drawing of a Negro couple talking on the telephone,"
which combined with the date (1899) makes it sound like this was a minstrel
or "coon song" (sic!) pastiche of ragtime. (On cakewalk, see
article
by Chuck Kleihans).
Michigan J. Frog is a minstrel: any connection between this type
of deception ("passing") and the deception he puts over on his
discoverer? On the one hand, white frog passing as black; on the other
hand, frog pretending to be helpful gift, in fact is a curse.
What mean "ragtime gal"? For that matter, what significance
of word "hello"? Ragtime puts emphasis in "wrong" place:
hel-lo instead of hel-lo.
Sure enough, found copy of cover in Edward A. Berlin, Ragtime: A
Musical and Cultural History:
Theme of blacks using new technology: see Marvin, When Old Technologies
Were New. A superb book (click
here to order). Can see, 100 years ago, similar to contempt for lusers,
newbies (jargon
file):
Gerald Gordman, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle, 2e, p.
187: Joe Howard wrote "Hello, Ma Baby". Also did "Coffee"
and "Queen of the Track" which went into Chow Chow. Howard
had prizefighting vaudeville act with Bob Fitzsimmons. Was in McNish, Johnson,
Slavin's Refined Minstrels. So roots in vaudeville, ragtime, minstrelsy.
Oxford Companion to Popular Music, pp. 276, 466: Joe Howard
1878-1961, "Hello My Baby" 1899, one of the earliest telephone
songs (later "Hello Central Get Me Heaven"?). Wrote music; wife
Ida Emerson wrote words! Also did "Honey, will you miss me when I'm
gone" 1912. 1947 film I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now about
Howard; does it have "Hello My Baby"; maybe seen by Chuck Jones?
Part of pseudo-ragtime rage: "Wait till the sun shines, Nellie"
and "Hello my baby". Culmination 1911 "Alexander's Ragtime
Band" (Berlin??). Joplin rags are after 1899??
Copyright dispute over I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now;
similarly, said that they didn't write Hello Ma Baby either?
Friedland, Jolson, p. 45: Jolson at NY Colonial Theatre 1909,
sings "Hello My Baby," one of the first big ragtime hits. Importance
of Jolson to movie sound ("you ain't heard nothing yet"); meanwhile,
One Froggy Evening entirely silent, except for frog.
AltaVista search for "hello my ragtime gal", find someone's
paper
on Charles Ives: In the tone-poem Central Park in the Dark ... he quotes
note-for-note, as in the "Hello, my baby, hello, my honey, hello,
my ragtime gal" excerpt in Central Park in the Dark m.80 (Eb clarinet)
and m.103 (trumpet).
Ragtime, Vaudeville, Minstrel, Cakewalk
Little 7-minute anthology of ragtime? vaudeville? songs, preserved.
Vaudevillian roots of modern entertainment business (Norman Klein, 7
Minutes, p. 21). Sound
clips for all available on web:
Hello, Ma Baby (Howard & Emerson 1899)
Come Back to Erin (Claribel 1866)
I'm Just Wild About Harry (Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake 1921)
McCluskey's Fight
Won't You Come Over to My House
Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone
Barber of Seville
The Michigan Rag (original)
Point of all this: ragtime, minstrelsy, vaudville roots of modern pop
entertainment (Beatles Sgt. Pepper is vaudeville? Explicit in Being
for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!)
Minstrels: passing, men's movement and native Americans, Michigan J. Frog
is minstrel? Not all racist: made poetry of slang.
Some books with good coverage of this period: Ian Whitcomb, After
the Ball: Pop Music from Rag to Rock; Donald Clarke, The
Rise and Fall of Popular Music; Charles Hamm, Yesterdays:
Popular Song in America; Philip Furia, The
Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists;
Robert C. Toll, The
Entertainment Machine: American Show Business in the Twentieth Century;
Robert C. Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century
America; Edward A. Berlin, Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural
History; Leroi Jones, Blues People.
Ismael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo and to a lesser extent, Doctorow, Ragtime.
Reference: Peter Gammond, Oxford Companion to Popular Music;
what is Donald Clarke, Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music?
Importance of pop music for understanding contemporary life. Means
going back to origins at turn of the century, understanding its connections
with theatre (vaudeville, etc.).
Why this choice of songs? One speculation I have is that a movie of
Joe Howard's life, I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now, came out in 1947.
(Copyright battle over song.) Presumably the song Hello Ma Baby
appears in the movie (I haven't seen it), and maybe Jones saw the movie?
The Unreliable Discovery
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.
B210.2
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 touth!
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.
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 ritches, 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.
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: theme?
Theme of writings denouncing their own author, speech taking on life
of its own?
Continue with notes 11/19/96 later...
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, something real.
A drawing of Michigan J. Frog by Matthew
Jacob Schulman