Law of Physics in an Animated Universe: Dumbo

Dumbo is a whimsical take of reality where physics are respected, but also granted that anything is possible. Dumbo is an elephant with ears the size of picnic blankets He thinks they are only good for ridicules, until he is pushed to actually flying with them. This is only one of the interesting aspects of physics in Dumbo’s world, yet there are many other aspects that happen, bending at different situations though not stretching too far from enjoying the story. The elephants are interesting observations for physics: although they are typically thought of as heavy and grounded animals, the elephants here perform extraordinary tasks that we would never expect. The fantastic possibility of Dumbo using his ears to fly seems even more unlikely, yet we cheer him on in excitement nonetheless. There are times when laws of physics are solid again, and objects take on something close to realistic weights. Yet some cross normality and are no longer accepted as part of this world. To contrast with Dumbo world, the hallucinogenic portion of Dumbo is stretched even further. It intentionally breaks the lines of what is accepted as part of what’s normal and what is pure fantasy. The fluctuation of how Dumbo physics, realistic physics, and pure fantasy work toward to carry the story and keep us visually entertained.

Most everything in Dumbo is animated with a squash and stretch that adds fun and malleability to the look of the movie. In the beginning when the animals are loaded into the train cars, the reaction of the wooden door hitting the wooden wall was appealing in that it gave a simple action life. A man would slide one of the car doors shut; it gave into the pull of that force, stretching with the pull and squashing with the contact. This example of applying squash and stretch onto something hard such as wood, introduces the rubbery and fun atmosphere of this world at once. If the car hit the other like it did in reality, I would expect damage and perhaps a painful crack from the force of impact. As a car would bump into another, the car would give under the collision and also recoil, as if the train was a soft object or character. The train eventually did reveal itself as a character, visibly straining under the weight of its animal cargo. It struggles forward at first, pulling one car and then another as it collects more strength. But the train stops suddenly and without added forward momentum, the caboose crashes into the still car in front of it, sending a domino effect and causing the head car to leap forward like a creature. The physics of this train reminds me of a caterpillar’s movement which is fantastic, since it would be working with an object much larger than a bug.

Despite the different weights of the animals in Dumbo, many of their interactions with each other and with their environment exemplify weightlessness. In the opening scene when the Stork was late with delivering Mrs. Jumbo’s baby, he pauses to sit on a cloud. He sets the bundle on the cloud next to him, which sinks through the cloud slowly. The contrast of the sinking bundle and the Stork marks a weight difference but generally, a cloud could never be dense enough to hold the weight of a stork, let alone a baby elephant. If we choose to look at this scenario realistically, these animals would have to weigh next to nothing to sit on a cloud. The fact that the Stork was even able to carry a baby elephant is unrealistic. However in his world, Dumbo seems to epitomize this delicate weight throughout. When a crowd comes to visit Dumbo and his mother, the kids start to harass him, pulling him by a tail or an ear. When a boy pulls and lets go of Dumbo’s ear, Dumbo recoils easily, like he were a stuffed toy. When Timothy the mouse decides to give the group elephants a scare, the elephants surprise us by climbing up poles and hanging off ropes in fright. There is a sense of weight from the ropes, as they bend with the elephant’s weight but the scene serves more as a humorous reaction. This weightlessness portrayed in the animals is the essence of the movie, pulling the viewer into a semi-backwards world, especially by giving elephants buoyant qualities.

However, there are times when the elephants act on strengths that bring destruction instead of the gentle air from before. Times of confusion and chaos disrupt the physics of this world. During the big tent performance, the elephants stack themselves up, some of them supporting the other with just their trunks. Though impossible, the illusion of mastery and accomplishment is portrayed through this tedious balancing act. The situation is convincing and entertaining enough to draw the attention to the story instead of impracticality of the act to begin with. This can also be applied to when Dumbo was to do a running jump from a catapult to land at the top of the elephant pyramid. Instead, he trips before the catapult, lands on his chin and miraculously soars over 200 ft in a horizontal path of action to hit the ball base of the pyramid. The momentum of the run could not have carried Dumbo that far, despite the buoyant physics he had at other times. At most, Dumbo would have traveled a few feet from where he tripped. As a result, more inconsistencies follow. As elephants tumble down, there is a scene where an elephant pedals its legs frantically to keep from falling and succeeds in slowing down a bit before one overhead falls in quick collision. Another elephant falls onto a tightrope and it flings her high enough to shatter a wooden platform. These tumbling elephants manage to destroy the whole arena within seconds. With chaos comes the force needed to execute it. If real physics came into play, the elephants would have fallen like dead weights and probably could not have gained that much time in free fall to destroy anything but where they landed. The destruction that comes with panic is exampled again when Dumbo is resting on a tree branch. When he realizes that he is up in a tree, his panic causes the tree branch on to snap. Like the bowling ball in a bag example, the larger acceleration of Dumbo frightened lurching against the branch caused it to snap due to the large force.

To divide Dumbo’s world from the world of hallucinations, physics bends in ways that are unusual to the characters and to the audience. When Timothy embraces a bubble tightly without having it pop, we start to question the boundaries of the universe’s physics. Not only is it impossible for a normal liquid to retain a a shape when hugged, but Timothy also hangs off of it, lifting him off the ground. Even in Dumbo physics this would have been a normal activity for Timothy. We can tell the two are slipping into delusions when Timothy asks Dumbo to blow a square bubble from his trunk. His trunk shapes-shifts into a square version and out of that comes the perfect square bubble. Although the characters of this universe do squash and stretch, the extent of it never reaches the extremes of shape distortion. As they two begin to hallucinate even more, they begin to realize that something is not right, especially when their bubbles begin to morph on their own! When these inanimate objects begin to walk in mid-air, disappear and reappear as different shapes, defying the reasonable laws of Dumbo physics, it starts to concern both characters and audience, for we know when normal physics now do not exist.

This was all I could get it by the deadline.. .I still wish to finish it.

The organization of my outline was not quite as accurate as I realized later on. There were some details I wanted to include but I couldn’t organize it well into my essay without deviating a bit from the outline.