"The Jungle Book", Or "How To Take A Beloved Adaptation And Utterly Ruin It By Reading The Original Works"

"The Jungle Book", or "How to take a Beloved Adaptation and Utterly Ruin It by Reading the Original Works"

not gonna lie, here: I blame disney's "the jungle book" for a few fetishes I have. most people can probably guess because there's a few there's an origin for. and I rather liked the disney film when I was in elementary school. I also tended to like the text-adaptations of the film. disney frequently does something right in text-adaptations by capturing mood as well as scene setting.

but then sometime in high school I was introduced to kipling's "rikki-tikki-tavi", and from there managed to find the original set of jungle books. yes, two, though they're now frequently sold as a collection because they are basically short-story collections. that being said, eight of the fifteen - more than half - are about mowgli and the characters that are used in the disney film, and they actually form a pretty cohesive narrative.

thing is, once you start to grasp the original narrative and characters, it completely ruins the disney films. because they're just so much better written.

it's not bad to have it be fun and amusing. but there's a couple of glaring plot-holes and enough flimsy characterization points that holy shit, unless you're in it for something specific, the film gets its ass beat by the books easily.

I'll break down the points that really stick for me as "why do you like the disney version so much when this is way better".

1) narrative

plot of disney film: shere khan is trying to kill mowgli because he's a man. we need to get him to a man village to make sure he's safe. baloo gets the biggest characterization because he needs to take responsibility.

[I swear I'm not trying to over-simplify it. this is literally what happens.]

plot of kipling stories: a man-cub orphaned by a tiger attack takes refuge with a band of wolves because a panther pays his debt. while trying to repay his debt to the wolves for taking him in, the man-cub seeks his revenge on the tiger, learns about man, and realizes whatever hard lessons he learned in the jungle are preparation for living among men because goddamn, most men are as fickle and vindictive as any jungle beast if not worse. mowgli gets the biggest characterization here, because half the stories are literally him going through the five stages of grief because he's spending his formative years trying to resolve the existential crisis of "where do I fit in here."

[this is me trying to oversimplify it.]

2) characterization: mowgli

mowgli's characterization in the disney film: "waaa I want to stay in the jungle because the jungle is fun. sure I almost get eaten by a snake twice, piss off the elephant herd, consort with a schizophrenic monkey, attempt to get high with the jungle's layabout, and am a twig so can't fight back against a tiger, but it's just more fun here."

mowgli's characterization in the kipling books: "I love my wolf brothers and would do anything for them... so why do they cast me out? I can learn to love these humans because they're not as experienced with the jungle as I am and I can teach them... so why do they treat me as a demon? where do I go when I try and give my all to both but neither of them treat me as one who fully belongs? what do I do when even my closest friends can admit I'm different and so unlike the rest of those they know that I won't ever fully fit in? ...perhaps its time for me to make my own way, using my upbringing but making my own path through here."

problem with this part two: mowgli's our viewpoint character in both circumstances. tying back to the narrative problems I have, baloo has greater characterization than mowgli in the disney film but we're left with a whining p.o.v. protagonist who really can't get a lesson through his thick skull, and it becomes really hard to root for him. kipling's mowgli manages to carry both the emotional heft with his inner turmoil and the physical heft of leading the narrative through his wit and ingenuity to overcome obstacles. mowgli is the primary planner of the books with one story exception ("kaa's hunting") and does well enough that he comes out on top physically, but it's balanced by the result usually lending itself to an emotional cadence that drives home "you're respected a little more but don't quite belong", either from outsiders or, towards the end, even from mowgli himself.

and if you're going to defend it by saying the disney version is like a child giving up their innocence, let me stop you right there. disney's mowgli isn't innocent, he's ignorant, willfully choosing to ignore danger in preference of hedonism and whatever pleasure he's receiving in the moment rather than truly thinking long-term. kipling's mowgli undergoes the true loss of innocence, believing that things would fine so long as he followed jungle law to realizing he doesn't fit in as well as he thought to realizing even the group he's supposed to belong to isn't that much more accepting of him.

3) characterization: baloo and bagheera

it's less the personality types themselves, as both baloo's and bagheera's personalities are present in the books. it's not even the fact that the personalities are inverted, where kipling's bagheera is closer to disney's baloo and kipling's baloo is closer to disney's bagheera.

no, it's the fact that, despite these two being our primary narrative force in the disney version, they're both very much 2-dimensional and flat.

bagheera in the disney film establishes himself early on as a firm friend of mowgli, caring about his best interests, but kind of sick of his shit early on. baloo takes a little longer but gets there eventually: he's lazy but really does like mowgli, and he can teach him something but needs to be spurred into taking true responsibility.

bagheera is the invert in kipling's stories. he's still mowgli's firm friend and occasionally sick of his shit while younger, but also more relaxed enough to indulge in his stranger interests and both emotionally supportive and caring no matter which way mowgli is currently feeling. of all the jungle residents, bagheera is the least inclined to send him back; it must happen, but it's going to happen on mowgli's terms and the best he can do is be a supportive friend and have his back either way. it might take a hard lesson or two, but bagheera will do almost anything to keep him safe until mowgli makes the decision.

baloo's role in kipling's stories is also an invert. he's the responsible one of the two here, and even mowgli's primary teacher about the jungle, but is shown to frequently go into a panic if something upsets what may be considered the natural order of the jungle. nevertheless, while one of the ones who most easily accepts mowgli going back to the realm of man, baloo still takes mowgli as his charge to make sure that, when he does go back, he can still respect the jungle and keep him as safe as he can in both situations.

what you end up getting is a bagheera and baloo is, in the disney film, are fairly one-note and single-minded in all of their scenes. meanwhile, in the book, you can have situations where scene one and scene two are very much different sides of the same coin; two parts of the personality but very much the same character. the best example is bagheera's behavior in "letting in the jungle", where you have the bagheera afraid of what mowgli's going to do to the man-village... and then giddily accepting that he has a part to play when mowgli informs him of it and carrying it out in the same regal and concerned-about-mowgli's-well-being manner in both scenes.

4) characterization of kaa

hoooooo boy. it cannot be denied that the disney kaa is where one of the fetishes came from. but damn... in a one-on-one kipling's kaa would put disney's kaa to shame.

this is not including how disney's kaa sounds like herbert from "family guy" and thus the pedophile jokes.

this does include that the kaa we have in disney is a powerful predator with an intimidating skill, but one who both only has a sole motivation in each scene and becomes one-note plus getting a little too caught up in his own pride and conceit to be a true threat. in fact, I would say both of the times he nearly wins it's rather less his own skill than the fact that mowgli is a little shit and too stupid for his own damn good (seriously, how did this f*ckin brat survive 10 years in the jungle by now!?). he's not one to be taken lightly, but at the same time a smarter protag along the lines of kipling's characters would likely have zero trouble dispatching him. he's also only motivated by hunger, less a blue-and-orange morality than a neutral party who's an antagonist by virtue of you're not supposed to root for mowgli to get eaten. but, depending on your p.o.v., even if you're not in it for the fetish content you likely will be rooting for that because mowgli's that stupid and he makes kaa look smart by comparison.

kipling's kaa is a true force of nature. head like a battering ram, capable of powers of fascination (read: hypnosis) that can knock the socks off dozens or potentially hundreds of potential victims, a temperament that even the wisest are afraid to cross, strength that even baloo and bagheera (the mightiest warriors and some of the most feared even in lore) can't match, and a mind like a steel trap with at least a hundred years behind it. kaa in kipling's mythology is treated as damn near a physical god and potentially borderline eldritch given how the other jungle creatures react to him.

and then you have his relationship with mowgli.

kaa's relationship with mowgli does two things. it first displays exactly how powerful and knowledgeable kaa really is that even the older mowgli is in later stories, where baloo and bagheera are starting to run out of things to teach him, kaa still can. but secondly, kaa's portrayal is one of the best and most sympathetic for any snake you can find. it's shown early on: "a brave heart and a courteous tongue. they shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling." kaa's first direct line to mowgli is a compliment - unveiled, without any sort of malicious intent, non-deceptive, and one of the first to fully give respect to mowgli. my favorite bit of kaa's characterization comes from the story "red dog": mowgli, looking for kaa, trips over him and kaa gets moody, but the moment he figures out it's mowgli who disturbed him, kaa drops the moodiness. these two are fire-forged friends: a young outcast and a temperamental but wise and surprisingly understanding emotional support. while still clearly showing his status as a force of nature, kaa is the weird benevolent half-god who intervenes when the time is right and the situation is as clearly out of our main protagonist's hands as much as can be stated.

most people who like jungle book fantasize about encountering disney's kaa and how that could go wrong. me, I want an encounter with kipling's kaa a-la "the king's ankus", where he and mowgli can bathe in the pool and participate in wrestling matches yet neither is in fear of the other, where one feels safe not in a false sense of lulled security but in a strange partnership-cum-friendship with someone who absolutely could snuff you out yet displays a surprising amount of gentleness and respect.

I go on about this point for so long because kaa's first appearance in both media is what cued me in onto how different these were and what the problem with the disney film is. by kaa's first appearance in disney's film, you have a whiny protagonist who isn't making things easier to root for him, a supporting character who is already settled into his position and won't see much more character development, and an antagonist whose motivations aren't much more fleshed out than our protagonists. at that point, if you aren't just entirely giving up and settling in for a popcorn flick, fully setting your disbelief aside, the animation quality is really the only thing going for it. by kaa's first appearance in kipling's second story, we've already seen two sides to every single character included in the disney film (except hathi, who is also a travesty but hadn't appeared yet in the kipling stories) and have both a protagonist and supporting characters we actually can root for because the emotional problems are much more than simple vanity and hedonism. and our support characters aren't the primary driving force but emotional and narrative bolsters that help progress but don't dominate the story.

if you like disney's jungle book? fine. but if you want to absolutely have your perception ruined of it, read the books. and in either case, at least do me a favor: realize that the disney film and continuity, by this point, is in name only to how the original books go. not adapted, hardly even inspired by, just with everything lifted off and pasted onto something completely different.