Howard Jacobson: Elephants are far too precious to suffer the indignity of being dressed in a rah-rah skirt

It was sacrilege for Disney to make familiar what is beyond our comprehension

Published: 29 October 2005

I can't remember what age I was when I first read George Orwell's essay Shooting an Elephant but I reckon I must have been about 12, and I do recall it made a big impression on me. Something to do with a hunger for seriousness, I think. I was living in a feather-light facetious Disney world, in which other people (not just other kids but adults) roared with laughter when a mouse with a spluttering American accent drove a stream-roller over a cat, or when an elephant danced to light classical music in a frilly skirt.

I wasn't morally certain about everything when I was 12 but I did know that it was a grievous wrong to put an elephant in a skirt. To my mind, Disney was indictable on a thousand counts - kitsch, cuteness, comicality, crimes against aesthetics, crimes against animal and human dignity, the trashing of the imaginations of children. But the crime of putting an elephant in a skirt was the most indictable of them all.

Article Length: 915 words (approx.)