Maybe you should just call me Jumbo. Clueless fucking Jumbo.
Maybe I was always clueless. I never questioned Disney movies as a kid, but now as an adult, one who's gotten a hard education in being clueless, I see a lot of questionable things in Disney.
Case in point: Jumbo the Elephant. I'd never questioned why we never saw him. In fact, I think the only male elephant in Dumbo was the title character himself. All the rest were women. Mrs. Jumbo wanted to name her child Jumbo Jr., but with his large ears, he was soon renamed Dumbo and Mrs. Jumbo was shunned. She was never welcomed into the group whenever elephants gathered. I thought as a child that first, she was separated because she was delivering a child, and later because she was considered dangerous, but in retrospect, she's never with another elephant, except her son. And the father, Jumbo, has apparently taken a flyer.
Why? Because of the surprise features of his son. We think, as children, that it's because he's a freak. But as an adult, I notice now that all the elephants are Asian elephants. Every single one of them... except Dumbo.
His large ears are the point, just not how we thought they were. Asian elephants, like Dumbo's mother, have small ears. Only African elephants have big ears. The big ears that Mrs. Jumbo's son is known for.
I thought about those ears, as I looked through the window at my own little Dumbo. His ears aren't large; if anything, they're on the small side. His hair and skin pigmentation, though, make me think of those ears on Dumbo. They share the same continental origins.
