Inside Jacket

Last week, Deadline New York (the latest outpost of Nikki Finke’s growing blog empire) reported that “Twilight” producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey had made a deal to create a series of family films based on the beloved “Babar” titles by Jean de Brunhoff.

As Adam Gopnik wrote in the magazine in 2008, Babar may be adorable, but his story is tainted by ideology that is decidedly less warm-and-fuzzy:

Babar…is an allegory of French colonization, as seen by the complacent colonizers: the naked African natives, represented by the “good” elephants, are brought to the imperial capital, acculturated, and then sent back to their homeland on a civilizing mission. The elephants that have assimilated to the ways of the metropolis dominate those which have not. The true condition of the animals—to be naked, on all-fours, in the jungle—is made shameful to them, while to become an imitation human, dressed and upright, is to be given the right to rule. The animals that resist—the rhinoceroses—are defeated.

The dicey subtext of de Brunhoff’s books will undoubtedly present a challenge to the film’s producers. Just how will they soften the books’ pro-imperialist message? An animated series from the late nineteen-eighties was faithful to the original, as was (no surprise here) the “Babar” radio show from the nineteen-forties. If recent Hollywood movies set in Africa are any indication, I imagine the producers will add a new character, a greedy elephant who wears sharp suits, walks upright, speaks with an English accent, and works in the pharmaceutical or the diamond industry. King Babar will team up with a kind and wise “native” elephant who, despite walking on all fours, is not just civilized but exceptional. Together, they’ll stop the nefarious plot to raze Celesteville, and turn it into a luxury resort.

I have another concern with the new “Babar” film that is aesthetic, rather than ideological. According to Deadline New York, “Bowen and Godfrey are shopping to studios a blueprint for a family comedy that will mix live-action with C.G.” “C.G.,” as in, “computer-generated.” Surely, the charm of the “Babar” books lies in the hand-drawn illustrations, in which elephants are reduced to a few monotone gray semicircles and two little dots for eyes; they’re hieroglyphs for children. Go ahead and soften the imperialist rhetoric, but please don’t make Babar look like a “real” elephant—with the hairy tail, scaly hide, and wrinkly knees that implies. Now that would be offensive.

Yesterday’s rumor that Taylor Swift plans to release a cookbook has to be false. Because what kind of just God would allow her to master cookbook-worthy recipes, like beef bourguignon or Earl Grey soufflés, when I’m still struggling with overcooked chickens and awkwardly chewy kale?

This rumor also recalled for me an odd-sounding cookbook mentioned in passing in Adam Gopnik’s recent article: “Monet’s Table: The Cooking Journals of Claude Monet.” Is the idea behind such a book, I wondered, that a genius in one art would lend itself to another? That a balance of colors, or chords, would translate to spices and salts? A little research turned up a host of similar offerings, including a series whose titles sound more like a Sotheby’s auction than a sumptuous meal: “Cézanne and the Provencal Table,” “Renoir’s Table,” and “Van Gogh’s Table: At the Auberge Ravoux,” among others. (The latter was a particularly off-putting offering, to my mind, tainted by the legend that the ravenous Van Gogh’s culinary experiments in those days may have involved such appetizing ingredients as absinthe and lead paint.) Only then did I realize these books were an answer to the oldest party question on the planet: if you could have dinner with any person in history, who would it be? These cookbooks offer a secular transubstantiation, a séance in which, by eating the bread and the wine of our idols, we can, so to speak, invite them to the dinner table and have them pull up a chair. So I’m doing a little research, hoping to uncover some hearty whale-meat recipes, so that I can conjure the ghost of Melville for my Thanksgiving meal. Bon Appétit!

(Image: Vintage Thanksgiving Day Postcard by Dave)