Humor, Mental Blocks, and Billy Pilgrim

The character of Billy Pilgrim brings to mind my much-earlier blog post trying to deal with Why Postmodernists Do Weird Things. You would think Vonnegut is much more in the “for-the-hell-of-it” camp with this one, what with the plunger-shaped Tralfamadorian aliens during what is ostensibly a war memoir, or the tasteful drawing of Montana Wildhack’s locket at the end. In research for this post, I found a great Vonnegut quote; he says that his books “are essentially mosaics made up of a whole bunch of little chips… and each chip is a joke.” And yet, we discussed in class how humor and defamiliarization are an escape. World War II seems much different when you call it artificial weather or focus on the squishing, farting humans or just laugh at the sheer absurdity of this guy who ends up in a curtain toga during the apocalyptic bombing of a German city. Vonnegut’s creation of Billy Pilgrim and the ridiculous plot he stars in is a coping mechanism and a symbol for the war itself.

First: Billy is the ultimate veteran as someone who is constantly with his war days. At one point Billy doesn’t go back but just remembers (and this is emphasized in the book too, that he is remembering) his time as a soldier, and that he had never done that before. The Tralfamadorian time-jumps lend a sort of dreamlike quality to the book, and the remembering makes Billy seem a little more conscious in his storyline. (Something, I suppose, Tralfamadorians would laugh at. What does it matter to look “back,” if what will happen will happen anyway? Relatedly, does this make Billy a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife?)

Second: We mentioned in class how circuitous the path to the bombing really is. In chapter one Vonnegut sits us down and says “this book is about the bombing of Dresden.” Then he keeps saying, “the bombing will happen soon.” Then, right before the bombing, he goes on a series of about five related time-skips involving Campbell, Montana, and his wife, among other things. Not only does this take a page out of the Tralfamadorian novel handbook, showing many related scenes in succession to create a specific feeling, it also gives a good idea of the mental hurdles a veteran would have to overcome to talk about his experience. Valencia asks Billy about the war and he sprints to the bathroom. Then he’s talking to Montana Wildhack and is able to talk about the war. Since Billy doesn’t really have a sense of time, it’s not time that made him more comfortable with Montana. I think the sheer ridiculousness of being on an alien planet, in a human exhibit with an adult film star that said aliens inexplicably decided would be the best other human for the job, with her, baby on hip, sympathetically asking you about the war—it detaches Billy just enough from real life for him to be able to talk more openly about the war. Compare this to Valencia and Billy’s lackluster, very real-world marriage. It’s the difference between a dream and reality, almost. And wouldn’t you feel more comfortable doing something strange and out of the ordinary in a dream, rather than in real life? (e.g. you’re dreaming about a test, and you get an urge to yell as loud as you can. You do, and nobody notices. The next day you’re taking your test and you wonder what would happen if you yelled. But you don’t.) And after Billy tells Montana about Dresden, we finally see it happen in the narration. In my opinion, this is solid proof of both Kurt Vonnegut’s own mental blocks and the use of defamiliarization and humor to get past them.

Cartoonishness

We devoted a fair amount of class discussion to Mumbo Jumbo as a movie or cartoon. The problem, of course, arose from how caricatured the characters should be. At some points the novel seems almost like it takes itself seriously, setting a more realistic mood for our proverbial movie. Then something ridiculous and silly will happen, or some character is an unrealistic caricature, and we need something more emotive and expressive than real life. Some things are portrayed the same way throughout the book, and others use that code-switching humor my panel presentation group discussed (i.e. using a weird shift in language to throw you off guard and make you think, also putting language in juxtaposition. Reed uses this a lot, shifting from Black vernacular English to "formal" english even when it doesn't make a lot of sense to do so, such as the Wallflower Order's inexplicable proclamation to “Knock It Dock It Co-opt It Swing It Bop It or Rock It!” p. 118.)


So how do you mix cartoonish and realistic styles in a movie? One option would be a realistic cartoon like Archer. The character models for Archer were based off of real people, but being animated allows for handy things like grisly death, without real danger to actors or special effects. But the characters aren't really caricatures, and don't change style, making them not quite right for a Mumbo Jumbo.

There's also the style of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). It has a mix of comically animated and live-action characters that bounce off each other and interact in a way that was radically new at the time.

Of course, there's a spectrum of realistic versus cartoonish in every animated show. Animes tend to switch styles based on the seriousness of the topic: think One Punch Man's Saitama when relaxed versus fighting. I think Mumbo Jumbo: The Anime could be a good time, honestly.

As for what the characters themselves would look like, I made a goofy little drawing of Hinkle Von Vampton as I imagined him whenever he was mentioned. He's somewhere between the Duke of Weselton from Frozen and that weird mountain goat dude from Hoodwinked.

Thanks for reading my ramblings!