Cover Charge #14: The Jungle Book

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Froggy Pagemaster.

That byline works two ways, Ticketholders!

First is that I had kind of a scare last Thursday night when Google Chrome didn't know how to access Blogger for four straight hours, and I strongly considered exporting my content to another platform (hopping, if you will). It's still in my thoughts to do so, but the instructions are several years old and no longer apply (which you can also take to mean that A.I. can now add an extra instance of being wrong to its learning database). There's even a help topic on Google where someone asked why the old instructions no longer work, and it was flagged as a duplicate question (even though it wasn't), locked out of receiving responses, and additional information on the subject links to a page that no longer exists, almost like Google doesn't want anyone to Frogger their way out of Blogger so that years of content can just go poof when they start to feel like it's the next Google Plus or Yahoo! Groups and amputate it because long-form content consumption doesn't make them that extra cuntillion dollars they don't need and can't spend. I'm scared and angry and selfish and prideful of this endeavor that I have made my passion for over a decade on this platform, and fuck Google if they can't take the hint. Ribbit, ribbit, you rich assholes....

Oh, right; I'm supposed to be reviewing a classic children's book (like, so classic that it's public domain, a first edition goes for at least a hundred thousand dollars online, and it's novel-sized because children apparently used to be smart or had parents who knew how to read).

Sorry about the language; not sorry about the message. Anyway, the second way the byline works is that I was Last Week Years Old when I learned that "Mowgi" is Hindi for "frog." And if the hints and the post title and the banner image weren't enough of a giveaway, I'm reviewing Rudyard Kipling's 1894 story collection, The Jungle Book.

And like I said on Saturday, as I was listening to the LibriVox audiobook recording, I was faced with the perspective reality that I would not strictly be able to review or summarize The Jungle Book because it's almost beyond reproach (the stories are decent to great, the prose isn't that headache-inducing, the polymath forays into poetry and lyricism are plot-relevant unlike a certain other classic, and not even the moments where Kipling uses dated racial terms are personally vehement or working against their historical context). I found reasons to talk about The Jungle Book in reactionary, anecdotally nostalgic, and comparative formats as well as critical, so in the anthology spirit of Kipling's book, I'm going to section this post off, beginning with something I'm calling....

Mowgli Is A Little Busted, Actually

You wouldn't guess this from reading the Zenescope comics (Book I, Book II) or watching the Disney movies (1967, 2016), but Mowgli has feats that make him kinda busted as a combat and survival character for scaling debates. Like, he's a kid with no powers or martial arts training, so I'm not saying he's ready to solo a fictional universe or even take on most street-level comic book heroes, but being raised by wolves, a panther, and a bear has trained him to peak-human to low-superhuman levels of strength, stamina, and durability to where he can survive being tossed around the treetops by wild monkeys, casually bitten and struck by multiple species of predators on a daily basis, and do the heavy labor of several grown men by himself without tiring. He has the mental capacity to learn and retain multiple animal and human languages and craft fairly solid combat strategies (one of which he used to kill Shere Kahn even in the event of its failure), his gaze is enough to frighten any animal (which is contrary to what normal human eye contact means to wild animals in reality), and his fearless spirit and mental fortitude at one point made him resistant to Kaa's hypnosis. Unfortunately, Mowgli's pride and fearless nature (and the youthful know-it-all attitude he had at a very young age and seems to be the base trait of the character in most adaptations), and his inability to learn the tongues of non-jungle animals like cattle, have gotten him in trouble (running off and getting kidnapped by the Bandar Log monkeys, making light of human ignorance costing him financial gains from Kahn's hide, being unable to speak buffalo compromising his attack on Kahn, and being outcast as a demon because he threatened a human hunter with his command of jungle beasts, just to name a few). Still, Mowgli's a little busted, right?

It's been decades since I watched the animated Jungle Book (and time and hard scheduling prevent me from doing so now, much less with any of the live-action adaptations), so I'm smashing the nostalgic anecdotes and comparisons together into this next section.

From What I Remember

To me, The Jungle Book was about this lanky, awkward boy who hung out with dancing, singing animals, trying to fit in, until he somehow won an epic showdown with a tiger amidst a burning landscape and his companions shooed him off to make goofy faces at a human girl, to be continued in what the book calls "another story...that's not for children." The vultures were caricatures of the Beatles, Kaa was this silly, elastic, comedic foil with hypnotic eyes and the voice of Winnie-the-Pooh, Baloo was somewhere between a naked Little John and a future cargo pilot, Bagheera was the lazy know-it-all authority figure, the monkeys were wannabe jazz musicians, the wolves were barely in the movie, and the elephants were cranky, stuck up, and one psychedelic filter away from being the stuff of Dumbo's nightmares.

Apparently, this Disney version and some of the live-action adaptations were based mostly on stories from The Second Jungle Book, which I will cover in March when I compile Zenescope's Jungle Book Trilogy into one post. In The Jungle Book, Mowgli was written to be more competent than in the majority of adaptations, being both a figure of prophecy and an outcast of dual nature whose life is owed to a cow (all in accordance with the Indian culture Kipling was exposed to in his upbringing during British occupation). Though we see the Rule 63 version fight more in Zenescope's comics and there are live-action adaptations where Mowgli is older and the stories are more generically action-focused, I'm more impressed with the original character (I even devoted the first section of this post to him). Also, did you know that him/her wearing animal skins isn't book accurate? He's actually written to be naked for the majority of his chapters, frightening other human children with his appearance on occasion and finding clothing to be uncomfortable and restricting when he joins human society for a brief time. I guess The Jungle Book should be banned as child pornography, right?

That was more cynical sarcasm, by the way, so let's get back to comparisons before some radical decides I agree with them. The main predatory bird in the book is a kite named Rann, not vultures, Kaa is more realistic, deadly, and serious (though The Jungle Book is not without humor, and he was depicted with hypnotic abilities from the beginning that are existentially terrifying) and acts as a volatile ally in the chapters he appears, Baloo and Bagheera are more like brotherly mentors to Mowgli (despite Bagheera essentially owning him according to Jungle Law), and the wolfpack of the Seeone Hills had a great deal of lore and story participation. I didn't mention Bagheera, the elephants, or the monkeys in detail yet because they deserve their own paragraphs.

Bagheera actually had some lore originally, buying the infant Mowgli's life with a cow carcass because of previous experiences he had as a show captive of Man before escaping back into the jungle, and seeing this as an opportunity to inject understanding of the Law Of the Jungle into Man's World. And he gets to show humility and provide brief comedy when he asks Kaa for help against the monkeys. Bagheera is an actual character in the original book, and I like it.

Speaking of the monkeys, there is no King Louie in the book (they are stated several times to lack leadership), though their two-chapter story ends with a verse that "I Wanna Be Like You" was probably inspired by. Whereas the comics give most characters some kind of sociopolitical allegory, it is most evident in the book with the monkeys. Kipling seems to use the monkeys as a commentary on aristocracy and incompetent leadership. They are short-sighted, forgetful, and unfocused despite their promises, lofty aspirations to humanity, superior attitudes, and negatively attention-seeking nature (strangely, almost like they'd be more at home in an Alice In Wonderland story...). They are the closest genetic relatives Mowgli has in the jungle, and yet prove to be the last beasts he ought to associate with...right up until they get hypnotized and walk right down Kaa's throat to never be seen again. Like I said, existentially terrifying.

As for the elephants, only Hathi gets any role in the Mowgli chapters until "Toomai Of the Elephants," and I honestly can't remember anything they did except that the elephants in the Toomai story were pack animals for the Indian government, and Little Toomai is like Mowgli for elephants, which made me wonder in the end why it wasn't just Mowgli to begin with. I don't know whether it has anything to do with the narrator's voice or the shift away from Mowgli in The Jungle Book's second half, but I found the later stories boring and forgettable, which brings us to the final, critical section of this post.

The Critic Sleeps Tonight

Once Mowgli's arc of growing up, learning human things, and slaying Shere Kahn to fulfill his oath to the Jungle was complete (to be continued for adults because Mowgli's V-Card is still up for grabs), I found myself with a lack of engagement in the ensuing stories, wanting The Jungle Book to be over as quickly as time and "reading" speed could allow. "The White Seal" was a blunt focus on human brutality that seemed too verbally graphic for its intended audience, crossed with an off-brand Ugly Duckling narrative. "Toomai Of the Elephants" was an exercise in patience and endurance with a decent, unexpected payoff. "Her Majesty's Servants" was an animal perspective on a military inspection with no clear narrative, and is entirely as interesting as that sounds. The only standout (and the only story I have fond childhood memories of besides the movies inspired by the Mowgli chapters) of these latter stories is "Rikki-Tikki Tavi," which I watched the Chuck Jones-animated short movie of in grade school. The short (narrated by Orson Welles) isn't as epic with its fight choreography as nostalgia tells me (is it ever objectively right?), but it adapts the original story pretty faithfully. Basically, Rikki-Tikki washes up on the grounds of a British estate and is taken in by a family of three, soon getting to display his serpent-slaying skills in their defense and coming to the attention of a couple of cobras who seek to kill the family and maintain rule of their garden. It's heartwarming and reads like a small-scale Beowulf, though the 1890s British writing dries things up a little. Rikki-Tikki Tavi is an awesome little hero in both versions I've experienced, and I'll remember it and him fondly.

There were other characters I neglected to mention here, but my stomach grows rumbly at this time of writing, and there will be plenty of time to be comparative about them in tomorrow's Zenescope - Omnibusted. Stay Tuned and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read because it's still a jungle out there, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

117

Pagemaster,

Out.