Dick Rickard | Ferdinand the Bull / 1938 [animated film]

the bull who liked poseys

by Douglas Messerli

 

Munro Leaf, Robert Lawson and Vernon Stallings (writers), Milt Kahl, Hamilton Luske, Bill Stokes, John Bradbury, Bernard Garbutt, Ward Kimball, Jack Campbell, Stan Quachenbush, and Don Lusk (animators), Dick Rickard (director) Ferdinand the Bull / 1938 [animated film]

 

Walt Disney’s wonderful short cartoon of 1938 features a bull, Ferdinand, who unlike all of the other bulls (read boys) has no interest at all in running, jumping, and butting heads together, but, as narrator Don Wilson tells us, prefers to sit under a cork tree and smell the flowers.

     In short, Ferdinand is “different,” so different that even his understanding mother, with the bovine female voice of Walt Disney, suggests “Now Ferdinand, why don’t you play with all the other little bulls and butt your head?” Ferdinand simply prefers to stay where he is and smell the daisies.

      As the bulls age, Ferdinand grows into the biggest and more fearsome looking of them, but still prefers his oak tree retreat and the pleasure of sniffing in the floral odors, while all the other  bulls hope they might get chosen to participate in the bull fights in Madrid. And one day a committee of bullring indeed visits the farm where Ferdinand lives.

      The other bulls show off their macho, but still don’t impress the committee, while Ferdinand returns to his tree and flowers with utterly no desire to participate in the Madrid fights. However, at that very moment as he sits, a bee stings him on the rump, sending Ferdinand on a crazy run, speeding down the pasture while tearing apart everything in sight, the perfect bull, so the terrorized committee members all agree.

      Off poor Ferdinand goes to Madrid, where the bullfight parade begins with banderilleros, picadors, and the matador entering the ring in succession, enchanting the crowd. A female admirer tosses her posey to the matador, who now awaits Ferdinand to enter to that he can play with him before he shoves his sword into his heart.

     But the shy bull is afraid to enter, finally being coaxed in only by the posey in the matador’s hand. He goes to it and, as usual, smells it, refusing to do anything else, no matter how the matador screams, pleas, and entreats him. Tearing off his own shirt in frustration, Ferdinand licks the tattoo on the center of his chest, a Daisy.

      So Ferdinand is sent back to his pasture and the flowers that grow under his favorite tree. What Disney doesn’t tell us is that Ferdinand’s fey demeanor has obviously saved his life.

      The animated work was highly popular, winning the 1938 Oscar for Best Short Subject, and was shown every year in Sweden as a Christmas Eve special from 1959 to the early 1980s. Indeed, the work has a great deal of similarities with another Christmas special about an animal different from the others of his kind, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, also often cited as a gay film that influenced generations of children.

 

Los Angeles, June 10, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).