Why "Pinocchio" never traumatized me

 

An alternate source of childhood anguish...

I have been remiss (I know, I know, I'm usually remiss) in updating my blog roll of late, or else I would have added my dear friend Tom Carson's "Notes From The Culture Bunker," his relatively new blog over at the GQ website (Tom's the TV and movie critic for the print edition, too, and given that he'd tweak me a bit were he to think I was being too fulsome in trumpeting his achievements there, I'll just paraphrase Harvey Weinstein and say "lot of awards") some time ago. Bad me. Anyhow, it is now on the blog roll, but if you're a lover of really sharp and often hilarious writing about movies, I dare say you've discovered it yourself already. In Tom's latest post, he kindly gives me a hat tip, but also lays the blame at my feet for compelling him to revisit Disney's Pinocchio, wherein he rediscovers a treasure trove of trauma. Go check it out. 

While Tom's points are all exceedingly well-taken, and his terror of the film is shared by any number of individuals of refinement (My Lovely Wife included), his piece set me wondering just exactly why I've never had the same kind of primal reaction to the film. For as long as I can remember, I believe I've always looked at it kind of...objectively. From whence, I pondered, did I draw such sang-froid?

I believe it has something to do with being raised a strict Catholic in the early 1960's. An anecdote and a half from this period may suffice to shed some light on my perspective. In the spring of 1965, I was five going on six, living with my younger sister and infant brother, and, of course, my parents, in an increasingly cramped apartment in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. Mass was still in Latin and my family went every Sunday, in our Sunday best—I remember how my black socks used to make my ankles itch like hell during the seemingly interminable periods during which we were obliged to stand. What we got during the sermons was pretty much a litany of the forbidden, and that had to be drilled into us in Sunday school too, because the whole course of our spiritual training was a preparation for First Holy Communion, which was a totally big deal for which your small young soul had to be scrubbed absolutely lily-white.

Which meant, among other things, no cursing. Not just taking the Lord's name in vain, as specified in scripture. No Anglo-Saxonisms, either. I wonder what genius thought of throwing that provision into the mix. Anyhow. Spring of 1965. I'm hanging out on the concrete patio back of the house with my two best friends, Frankie and...what was that guy's name?...oh, what the hell, let's call him Ducky. Now one of the big top 40 hits of late '64 and going into the next years was "The Name Game," a novelty song in which it was suggested that you take a random name and apply it to this rhyming chant, changing the first letters of the name as you go. As in, as per the Wikipedia entry: "Jack, Jack, bo-back/Banana-fana fo-fack/Fee-fi-fo-mack/Jack!"

And so, for no other reason besides the fact that we were all, you know, five years old, we're all sitting on the patio singing variants of "The Name Game" like a bunch of idiots. And at one point Frankie says to me, "Hey Glenn, sing it using 'Chuck'!" And me being a happy child, one who was eager to please, I launched into it immediately.

"Chuck, Chuck, bo-buck/Banana-fana fo-fuck—"

I froze. 

Frankie and Ducky froze too, at least for a moment. 

I had done it. I had let slip from my lips not just a curse word, but the curse word. The very worst curse word you could ever utter, ever. The most absolutely A-Number-One forbidden curse word in all the known universe. Sitting there with my mouth wide open, an eternity passed. And then, I broke out crying. The hottest tears ever, pretty much. 

And Frankie and Ducky broke out laughing, hysterically, and began singing a new song, another song that had been a hit late the prior year and still had legs. "You're gonna go DOWNTOWN," they sang, pointing at the concrete beneath their feet. They sang it over and over again, until finally my mom came outside and gathered me up. She gave Frankie and Ducky a good scolding once she figured out what the fuck was going on. She tried to convince me that it was okay, given that I had said the word without intending to, but I knew it was no use. I was doomed. Satan, complete with pitchfork, horns, and a really, really long tail, visited me in my dreams that night, as he had been doing somewhat frequently of late, along with that poor little girl with the daisy from that Lyndon Johnson campaign ad. 

Now as Frankie and Ducky were my best friends, they did kind of feel bad about their little prank the next day, and they were eager to help me solve my dilemma. We thought we'd go pay a visit to Bennie. He was slightly older than us, had received his First Holy Communion, and was a super devout Catholic with, we believed, a lot of inside knowledge about absolving sin and that kind of thing. (Also, his dad was a widely-feared lunatic—it was rumored that he had instructed Bennie in riding a bicycle by tying his feet to the pedals—which made the kid's general equanimity seem that much more impressive.) We stopped over at his house and explained the situation. After giving it a good deal of thought, he said, "I don't really see that there's much of an official way of getting out of this one. I'd recommend that you say five 'Hail Mary's a day, and drink ten glasses of tap water a day, every day, for the rest of your life, and then there's maybe a chance that Jesus will have mercy on your soul whenever it is that you die." 

And so began the praying and the water drinking. But (to quote Nick Tosches) I was young. I got over it.

Now you have to understand that stuff along these lines was going on all the time, not always to me, but always within my line of vision. So when I did finally did see Pinocchio on the tube a couple of years later, my reaction was something along the lines of, "Well, of course if you're a bad boy you're gonna get waylaid by anthropomorphic animal con men, turn into a donkey, and get swallowed by a whale. And the thing is, all of that is nothing compared to the torments that await you in h-e-l-l after all that."

And there you have it. 

Comments

[Aaron Aradillas]

That's kind of a fucked up story, Glenn.

Then again, you always struck me as a Dumbo/Fantasia kind of dude.

Mom raised me a pretty strong Catholic. (I still don't go out on Good Friday.) But she was practical in teaching me to follow the straight and narrow. I guess you could say I'm a Scorsese Catholic. The opening lines of Mean Streets ("You don't make up for your sins in the Church. You do in the home. You do it in the streets. The rest is bullshit and you know it.") have always resonated with me.

On the other hand, that whole turning-into-an-ass-and-getting-eaten-by-a-whale is pretty fucked up.

[sara]

It was The Neverending Story that scared the bejesus out of me. And Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty.

[Dan]

I don't remember any children's movie scaring the living shit out of me. I guess I'm missing out.

[Griff]

"So when I did finally did see PINOCCHIO on the tube a couple of years later..."

Uh, Glenn, PINOCCHIO didn't air on television back in the day. It was theatrically reissued in 1971, 1978 and 1984, though.

I vividly recall watching the picture one afternoon during its '71 run (it was likely the best movie then playing in general release in the country) in a theatre filled with terrified kids. On-screen, children were being transformed into donkeys. One of the donkeys was trying to call out for his mother. So were some of the kids in the theatre. In the row behind me, I heard a little boy timidly ask, "Daddy, are those boys going to be all right?" His father genially replied, "Son, that's what happens to you if you're bad."

Thirty-eight years later, I'm still kicking myself for not having turned around and said sharply, "Don't listen to him, kid!"

[bill]

"I don't remember any children's movie scaring the living shit out of me. I guess I'm missing out."

Me neither, although you've never heard such sobbing as that which flowed forth from yours truly upon experiencing the death of Spock at the end of "The Wrath of Khan". Also at the end of Cronenberg's "The Fly".

And Glenn, I was raised Catholic, too, though in a different environment and era, and that tap water thing is new to me. I assume that was just your friend pulling something out of his ass, but it's kind of hilarious.

[Glenn Kenny]

@Griff: Well, memory is a funny thing. I do remember seeing, at the very least, excerpts from the picture on television; maybe on "Wonderful World of Color?" I'll have to check in to that...