I like Roald Dahl. He
has a fantastic way of using made up words which are more expressive and
explanatory than the “proper” ones. He
has a way of appealing to the imaginations of kids (and big kids) in a way that
means his stories and suggestions stick with you throughout life. In “Boy”, he writes about how he used to
believe that liquorice was made by boiling and steamrollering the rats that
would be caught in factories. In “The
Witches”, he describes the telltale signs of how to spot a witch (they have
unfeasibly pointy shoes because they have no toes, they’re always scratching
their heads because they’re bald and wear wigs, they wear long gloves because
their fingernails are long and pointy and grow very fast), meaning that readers
start looking with suspicion at shoes, at gloves, at hats. Steven Moffatt is a master of this – his
episodes of Doctor Who mean that viewers now have a very different relationship
with shadows, statues and the dust in sunbeams.
Don't blink...
The opening scenes of Steven Spielberg’s The BFG are like this. We see Mark Rylance’s eponymous giant move
around late night London completely unseen, hopping onto the back of a parked
truck to look like a pile of masonry, pulling his cloak across the gap between
buildings to look like the entrance to a building site. Does it look like there’s an extra lamppost
in your street? Might be the BFG. Are the trees rustling? Or is it the BFG.
For those unfamiliar with the story, Sophie is a sad and
neglected orphan who happens upon a Big Friendly Giant (BFG) one night and he
whisks her away to Giant Country, where she learns that he is the only
non-cannibalistic giant there is. He
protects her from the other giants (with typically Dahllian names as
Fleshlumpeater and Bone Cruncher) and teaches her the secrets of catching
dreams and blowing them through the bedroom windows of sleeping children.
In 1989, The BFG was made into an animated film
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| I found a dream in London...(part of the BFG Dream Trail) |
by Cosgrove
Hall (their only animated film) and it balanced whimsy and horror brilliantly. For every flash of Fleshlumpeater’s long,
sharpened fingernail poking in through a sleeping child’s window, there was a
sequence in Dream Country where Sophie and the BFG tried to catch squirming
dreams, or drank fizzy Frobscottle and flew on their explosive farts (Dahl
really knew how to appeal to kids!). The
most chilling part of that film, for me, was the Queen reading the headlines:
“Tragic horror as children slain. Bones
found beneath dormitory windows“. The
film has rightly become a cult classic.
Bizarrely, you can watch the entire thing on YouTube.
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| "This is Dream Country. This is where all dreams is beginning" |
In 2016, we have the Spielberg version. Spielberg has a brilliant mind for appealing
to kids, and Dahl and Spielberg should be a match made in heaven. And it almost is. Dream Country is there and looks beautiful –
the dreams are colourful, tangible things that dash around the screen like
Tinkerbell. Snozzcumbers are revolting,
warty, maggoty looking vegetables (the BFG’s only food, but necessary for
making Frobscottle). The fart jokes are
there in abundance (*snigger*). John
Williams’ score is magnificent, and (as always) captures the chaos, mischief
and wonder (it’s reminiscent of Maggie’s song from Hook) that seems to be specific to the children’s films he works on
(see also: Harry Potter, ET). And Mark Rylance is an excellent Big Friendly
Giant, childish and lonely with sad eyes, wanting to make the world a little
better with beautiful dreams. For me,
what this film lacks is a little bit of horror.
It all feels very safe. There’s
hints towards it, but it’s adult horror – the BFG has had a child living with
him before and Sophie finds his clothes – a little red jacket – and his
drawings, but doesn’t particularly question it.
The assumption is that this child met with a chewy end at the hands of
the “canningball giants”. The nightmare
set upon those giants is an adult one: “Looks at what you has done – there is
no forgiveness”. Dahl appealed directly
to children – the humour is for children, the horror is for children. Spielberg has captured one, but shied away from
the other.
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| Fleshlumpeater... |
This begs an interesting question, and I throw it open
because I’m interested. Is there room
for horror for children? Should children
be scared? I’m not saying to throw them
in a cellar full of rats, or chase them with knives, or make them watch endless
loops of Thomas and the Magic Railroad. If we want children to use their imaginations
(we still want that, don’t we?), can we limit that imagination to only the good
things, and protect from the bad?
Over to you…
