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Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Babe and bbq

Before Jamie and I went golfing yesterday, we had a serious talk.  It wasn’t on the agenda; it just happened.

We were dining at one of our favorite lunch stops, Fat Jack’s Barbeque.  Suffice it to say that we don’t go there for the decor or the ambience.  We go there to chow down on some serious meat (he takes the pulled pork, I do the brisket) doused with Mississippi Mud bbq sauce.  This time, Jamie brought along the quite wonderful animal encyclopedia he bought last year at the AAUW booksale (he went with Janet and picked it out himself).  It consists of a looseleaf binder full of information about various animals—their habitats, their diets, their mating practices, and so forth.  While we waited for our animals to arrive on plates, Jamie asked me to go over some of the animals in his book, and I insisted on reading some of the fine print of the entries.  Jamie usually resists this, but I managed to convince him that some of the fun facts on display were really kind of fun: who knew, for example, that the nine-banded armadillo is the only species of armadillo that can swim?  or that they always have babies in litters of four?  Jamie understands the difference between animals that lay eggs and animals that have live babies, and knows that it marks the distinction between most mammals and most reptiles/ birds.  He also knows the difference between animals that have litters and animals that usually give birth to babies one at a time.

But after we’d discussed the Bengal tiger, the gorilla, the African elephant, and the nine-banded armadillo, it was the vampire bat that really got things going.  I explained what the book meant by saying that the vampire bat is a “threat to cattle” because it can “infect them with the deadly disease of rabies.” Jamie has heard of rabies before, and because we fought to have him included in regular seventh-grade science class last year (and because his science teacher was so receptive, and so inventive in finding ways to adapt his tests to his skill level, so that, for example, he was responsible for knowing only about half the components of a plant cell), he knows what a virus is.  So he understood when I told him that rabies is a dangerous virus that can make an animal go crazy and die, and that you can treat it if you catch it early (or vaccinate against it) but that there is no cure once it reaches an advanced stage.  And that’s why we take dogs to the veterinarian to make sure they have their rabies shots.  Why, I said, even Lucy the Dog has had a rabies shot.

“Like in Babe,” Jamie said.

“Babe?” I replied.  “I don’t think there’s any rabies in Babe.”

“No, the doctor says, ‘it can’t be rabies.’ He says to Mr. Hoggett.”

“Oh!  You mean when Rex bites Mr. Hoggett!”

“Right, exactly.”

Right, exactly: in Babe, Rex the sheepdog has become increasingly furious with his partner Fly, whom he sees as complicit in Hoggett’s heretical scheme to train Babe to become a sheep-herding pig.  Finally, when Fly approaches Rex to try to convince him that there’s no need for all this trouble just because Babe is helping the boss, Rex calls her a “traitorous wretch” and attacks her.  When Hoggett runs out to break up the fighting dogs, Rex bites him on the hand.

“No, not the hand,” Jamie corrected me.  “On the wrist.”

Right, on the wrist.  So, then.  Why would Rex bite Mr. Hoggett when he knows perfectly well that the dogs are never, ever allowed to bite Mr. and Mrs. Hoggett?

“Why?” Jamie asked.  “You tell.”

“Well,” I said.  “You know he is very angry at Babe, and very angry at Fly for helping Babe.”

“Why?”

“Because Rex thinks that only dogs should herd the sheep.  He thinks it is wrong for a pig to do the job, and he thinks—as Fly says to her puppies at the beginning of the movie—that pigs are definitely stupid.  He doesn’t want Babe to do the job that he, Rex, is supposed to do.”

Jamie and I have been over this ground before, usually when he asks, “what does Ferdinand say about Rosanna?” For when he asks what Ferdinand says about Rosanna, he’s referring to the scene in which the farm animals watch the Hoggett family as they carve up a duck for Christmas holiday dinner.  When Ferdinand joins the onlookers, the cow remarks, “if you’re out here, then who’s that in there?”—to which Ferdinand replies, “her name is Rosanna.  She had such a beautiful nature.”

About the eating of Rosanna, our routine goes like this: Jamie asks me what Ferdinand is feeling, and we take turns enumerating the emotions.  Angry.  Confused.  Sad.  Frustrated.  Worried.  Ferdinand is consumed (you might say) by the belief that he will not be eaten if he simply demonstrates that he is “indispensable,” as he mistakenly explains to Babe upon enlisting Babe in the project of stealing the Hoggetts’ alarm clock so that Ferdinand can go back to crowing at the dawn—one of the two activities, besides having sex with chickens, that keep roosters from being eaten.  Or so Ferdinand thinks.  “I tried it with the hens, it didn’t work,” he sighs.  “But I begin to crow, and I discover my gift!” Upon witnessing the family dig into Rosanna, however, Ferdinand is beside himself.  “It’s too much for a duck,” he cries.  “It eats away at the soul!” “The only way you’ll find happiness,” replies the cow, languidly, “is to accept that the way things are is the way things are.” “Well, the way things are stinks!” snaps Ferdinand, and he vows to run away.  Which he does, leaving Babe to overturn the way things are by demonstrating that a clever and compassionate animal need not succumb to the forces of animal destiny.

So Jamie and I have had numerous discussions about the eating of animals.  (You might recall that we’ve also had a talk or two about whether animals can think, as well.) We acknowledge that poor Ferdinand is driven to distraction by the realization that humans eat ducks, and we admit that it is unjust for poor Rosanna, who had such a beautiful nature, to become Christmas holiday dinner.  “But Jamie,” I point out, “you love to eat ham and pork chops and sausages and bacon, and all of that comes from pigs.” “And hamburgers and steak that come from cows,” he remarks.  “Right,” I say.  “And chicken,” he adds, conscientiously.  “Right, chicken too.  So you know there are some people who think it is wrong to eat any animal, and they eat only vegetables and fruits.  Some eat fish and some don’t.  Some people won’t eat milk or cheese, either.” “From cows and goats,” Jamie says.  We have reached a tentative conclusion about this:  we will continue to be omnivores.  But we would prefer that the animals we eat not spend their entire lives in factories being shot up with antibiotics (which is, you’ll recall, precisely where Babe opens).

Anyway, this shouldn’t be very surprising.  Ten years ago, if memory serves, there were indeed reports that Babe had led some children to rethink their love of hot juicy strips of bacon.  Instead, what was notable about Jamie’s invocation of Babe this time was that he’d remembered—with that amazing memory of his—the film’s one mention of rabies.

Now, back to Rex.  It just so happens that one of the reasons Rex hates sheep is that they are the cause of his disability, and his disability, in turn, has prevented him from becoming a champion sheepdog.  You see (as Fly explains to Babe), one night during a terrible storm, Rex tried to save a bunch of sheep from a flood, but the sheep were “too stupid” to follow his directions.  The sheep perished, but Rex, faithful hound, stayed with them all night—and became terribly ill as a result, permanently losing much of his hearing.  (Narrative twists like this are what make me argue that disability is ubiquitous in film, even if only as plot device, as in the premise of Garden State.  Really.  Go check:  why does Zach Braff’s character return home in the first place?) Jamie and I have discussed Rex’s deafness as well as his anger at Babe, and the deft way these come together at the end of the film, when Rex decides to help Babe by asking the Hoggett sheep for the secret sheep password “baa-ram-ewe”—a scene in which he not only has to speak nicely to sheep for the first time in his life, but also has to admit to them that he’s “a little deaf.” All so that Babe can speak to the foreign sheep, guide them through the sheepdog trials, and take Rex’s rightful place as a champion sheepdogpig.

So after Rex bites Hoggett, the vet rules out rabies.  “Hormones,” Jamie says.  “What?” I ask.  “Mrs. Hoggett says ‘hormones,’” Jamie replies.  Ah, right, exactly.  Again with the memory!  I ask Jamie if he remembers about hormones from seventh grade, when we talked about his pituitary gland and how hormones work in the body.  “And remember when the doctor says, ‘I could always snip, snip’?” I ask.  “Right,” Jamie says.  “And does Hoggett want to do that?” “No,” Jamie says.  “Because he says Rex is a breeding dog.”

Well, I’ll be damned.  I knew that Jamie had seen the movie dozens of times, and has replayed scenes (especially the ones involving Ferdinand) hundreds of times, but I didn’t realize how deeply he’d thought about things like this.  “That’s right, Jamie,” I explained.  “The doctor is wondering why Rex would be so mean and aggressive, and it can’t be rabies, so maybe, he thinks, it is testosterone, and maybe he should snip, snip Rex’s testes with surgery.”

At this point the owner of Fat Jack’s is giving us a puzzled look.

“But then Rex couldn’t have any more babies, and you remember that Mr. Hoggett sold Fly’s children—with that sign ‘pups for sale, by Rex, out of Fly’—to people who wanted sheepdog puppies.  So Mr. Hoggett might want to sell more puppies, and keep Rex as a breeding dog.” And yes, Jamie and I have already discussed the moment at which Babe, seeing how depressed Fly has become by the sale of those puppies, goes over to Fly and asks her if he can call her “mom.” Jamie knows that’s one of the reasons Fly likes Babe so much—because he knows when and why other animals are sad, and he tries to help them.  (See also the vastly underrated and widely misunderstood sequel, Babe: Pig in the City, especially the pivotal scene in which Babe saves the life of the pit bull who’d been trying to kill him.  Back in 1998, this scene was the first thing in Jamie’s life, to my knowledge, that led him to think about why we need to breathe to stay alive, and why it is good to save someone from dying—as Babe does later with the much less problematic goldfish whose bowl has been broken by careless animal-control police.)

“Sometimes doctors do surgery so that animals cannot have babies.  Think of Lucy.  Before we got her at the pound, doctors removed Lucy’s ovaries, and that’s why she cannot have babies—because the doctors were afraid that maybe she’d have babies and she would have no place to live and no place to take care of her puppies.  But with Rex, the doctor thinks that maybe he has hormones that are making him too angry, that his testosterone made him bite Mr. Hoggett.  They don’t understand that Rex is really angry at Fly and Babe because he doesn’t want Babe to herd the sheep.”

“Ohh,” Jamie said.  ”That’s why they give Rex a shot.”

See, the thing about the classics—like Babe—is that you can go back to them time and again, and keep rereading them with fresh eyes, so to speak.  You can look at Judith Halberstam’s queer reading of Babe, in which Babe and Ferdinand demonstrate the fluidity of categories of identity, or you can listen in on me and Jamie as we discuss how Rex’s deafness deepens his disdain for sheep and fuels one aspect of his opposition to Hoggett’s training of Babe (only one aspect, because although he and Fly disagree about Babe as sheep-pig, they agree, on anti-Habermasian grounds, that dogs should not speak to sheep in a way that invites reciprocal recognition).  Most of the time, when Jamie and I talk about Babe we talk about whether animals have feelings, and whether one animal can behave like another, and whether it’s OK to eat some animals (and if so, which ones and why).  But this time, the bit about the vampire bat had led us back to Babe to talk about rabies and Rex and deafness and hormones and “neutering.”

What a great movie.  What a rich text about what it means to be human.  Jamie and I will talk about it for years to come, I’m sure.

And then our pulled pork and beef brisket arrived!  It was delicious.

Posted by Michael on 11/28 at 03:47 PM
Jamie • Permalink
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