“Babar” Based on the children’s books by Jean de Brunhoff (maybe); Directed by Raymond Jafelice, Laura Shepherd, Dale Schott, and Larry Jacobs; Starring Gordon Pinsent, Gavin Magrath, Dawn Greenhalgh, Stuart Stone, Elizabeth Hanna, Chris Wiggins, Lisa Jai, Stephen Oimette, Jeff Pustil, and Allen Stewart-Coates; Run time 30 minutes; Originally aired March 28, 1989.
I got up this morning, as I do every Saturday morning, on the hunt for cartoons. Generally I do this in an effort to start my weekend in a good place with a little innocent nostalgia. Most of the time it works, but today I plunged my hand into the murky waters of my childhood and was bitten and shocked by an electric feel.
Both the content of today’s episode, and the story of how it came to be, illustrate one unavoidable truth, sometimes life is confusing and sad. We’ll start with the history of the character and then move on to the episode that made a grown man (variable definitions) weep.
There is some contention over who is the true creator of “Babar.” Officially the books were created by Jean de Brunhoff, a French writer and illustrator circa the 1930s. It seems however, that the creation of the character and the world belongs to Brunhoff’s wife Cécile and the development of that world was a family affair.
The story goes that in 1930 the couple had two sons, one of whom was sick, and in an attempt to comfort him Cécile invented a story about an elephant who left the jungle and came to live in the city. The details of that particular story diverge slightly from the published version but it made enough of an impression that the boys took the story to their father, who was a painter remember, and asked that he illustrate it. The next year “Histoire de Babar” The Story of Babar was published.
Originally the cover page was planned to list both Jean and Cécile as the creators but she had her name removed as she thought that her role in the creation was minor. Talented and modest too. While Jean did go on to develop the series into seven children’s books and his role in the series can’t be understated, I think it would be inaccurate to say that Cécile wasn’t the creator of “Babar.” Sadly Jean de Brunhoff died of tuberculosis six years later at the age of 37.
Jump forward seven years, it’s 1946, the echoes of the second great war are still ringing in your ears, and Laurent de Brunhoff, the eldest son of Jean and Cécile decides to pick up where his father left off. Laurent trains himself to draw elephants in the style of his father so well that many readers don’t notice a difference and assume the seven year gap between books was due to the war and not to Jean’s tragic and untimely death.
Laurent would go on to create over 40 more “Babar” books, the most recent of which “Babar’s Celestville Games” was released in 2011. Laurent currently lives in New York with his wife and presumably (hopefully) continues his work with the characters his parents gave the world.
So that’s the sad but awesome and interesting story of the birth of “Babar” on the page. Then in 1989, almost 60 years after the brave little elephant first walked onto the page, he moved from 2D to… still 2D but moving, animated 2D, that can rip a man from his comfortable existence and remind him that the world is cold, dark, and unforgiving.
“Babar” originally aired on CBC and HBO as 78 half hour episodes, since then it has been translated into 30 languages and aired in over 150 countries. In 2011 a spin-off series was launched titled “Babar and the Adventures of Badou” which continues the story into the next generation of Babar’s family. There are new characters, the most prominent of which is Badou, Babar’s grandson.
I’d never seen or heard of the modern series, but I grew up watching “Babar” when I was a kid and had fond but vague memories of it. So today I thought I’d start where any reasonable person does, at the beginning. This was my first and most terrible mistake.
The pilot episode of “Babar” is titled “Babar’s First Step.” It begins with Babar as an adult and King of Celesteville, preparing to give a speech when he pauses to sit his elephant son down on his elephant knee and tell him a tale. Why in the name of Ganesha you would tell this story to a child is beyond me yet here we are.
SPOILERS BEYOND:
I’ve include the episode above, instead of its usual place at the bottom of the page in case you want to watch it spoiler free. This episode shows us the birth of Babar and his early formative years in the wild with his mother and the other elephants. Babar makes friends, plays, explores the world, gets in fights with a tree stump, and is highly regarded by both the adults and his peers. Everything is looking up for Babar until a strange noise rocks the jungle.
Some of the elephants want to leave, putting as much distance as they can between them and the monster as quickly as possible. Babar speaks up saying that this is their home and they shouldn’t leave it. It’s a powerful moment meant to illustrate that Babar is strong willed and unafraid, qualities that make him suited for greater things, like ruling an anthropomorphic elephant empire.
The monster returns and is revealed to be a human hunter who is a total dick by the way. You’d think maybe you’d stop shooting at the elephants when you hear them talking and notice that some of them are wearing glasses. I mean, these aren’t mindless beasts, they live in the mud but they have hopes and dreams.
Babar’s mom swoops him up on her shoulders and high tails it out of there, but not fast enough. She is gunned down, right out from under Babar and he shrieks over her fallen corpse. I know this is HBO but I didn’t think they would let George R.R. Martin write children’s programming. Animation hasn’t made me feel this way since that unspeakable scene in “The Land Before Time,” I still haven’t forgiven you Spielberg.
Babar leaves with the other elephants and in time his emotional wounds heal, but the hunter returns and this time Babar won’t let him hurt anyone else. Though he’s still a child, he breaks off from the group and confronts the hunter, breaks his gun, and gives him what-for. Though, when the confrontation is over Babar is lost and it takes him many years to find his elephant family again.
But that’s another story and shall be told another time.