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Gulliver Connections

I think most large cities throughout the English-speaking world have at least one travel agency named "Gulliver's Travels" or something like that. (In fact, it's the reason I can't use the web address "gulliver.com" -- it already belongs to a Texas travel agency.) But that's only one of the countless ways Western culture has embraced the mythical Lemuel Gulliver and the very real Jonathan Swift. The most obvious, I imagine, is the general acceptance of the word "Lilliputian" to mean "little" -- or more specifically, "scaled down." Thus retail lines of decorative miniatures called "Lilliput" This or That. "Brobdingnagian," meaning "scaled up" has also entered the language but is less common than "Lilliputian," perhaps only because it is harder to say and spell!

But it is the flying island Laputa that finds its way into the extraordinarily imaginitive world of Japanese animated films. In 1986 genre master Hayao Miyazaki released a film based on his own manga called Tenku no shiro Rapyuta (Laputa: Castle in the Sky). The film has no relationship to Gulliver apart from the presence of an immense flying kingdom which bears the name of Laputa (or Rapyuta).

I've been told there is an ironic twist to all this: apparently the film can't be marketed for children in Spain and Italy, even under a different title, because Laputa means "the whore" in Spanish and Italian and so is a phrase prohibited from films marketed to children in those countries -- and the written word is visible onscreen during a crucial scene.

Laputa also turns up in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece of Swiftian satire "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." Major Kong's B-52 is ordered to bomb the Russian ICBM complex at "Laputa" -- definitely an inside joke since there is not and has never been any place by that name in the former Soviet Union.

And there are more Kubrick connections. In Strangelove the all-important message decoder on board the bomber plane is the "CRM-114" -- Kubrick used that number again in his 1971 film A Clockwork Orange -- in which Alex is given "Serum 114." I only bring this up because there is also a clever sideways reference to Gulliver in the Anthony Burgess novel on which this film is based. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex and his gang of thugs speak of "breaking someone's gulliver" -- that is, to fracture their skull. This is because the kids in Burgess' dystopia speak a slang that combined Russian and English -- and "golova" is Russian for "head." Here again we can imagine Swift smiling -- A Clockwork Orange is the sort of book Swift might have written had he been born a few centuries later.

The "Cycling Tour" episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus dealt with an absurd voyage through Europe and Asia in which Michael Palin's idiotic tourist Reg Pither meets a man named Mr. Gulliver. This Gulliver is played by Terry Jones and is -- of all things -- an expert on crash-proof food. After a blow to the head, Gulliver first thinks he is Irish pop star Clodagh Rodgers, then Trotsky, and finally Eartha Kitt. A second blow to the head (with high-velocity food) restores him to his original Gulliver personality.

Comic-book artist Milo Manara wrote and drew an elaborate -- and extremely graphic -- erotic version of the story, called "Gullivera." While it is as intrinsically silly as most pornography, Manara's storyline stays closer to Swift's than you might expect. It follows a young woman (named, of course, Gullivera) on a series of adventures in which her clothes are continually being lost or destroyed, and in which she encounters all manner of extraordinary people to have sex with, regardless of their size relative to hers.

Playwright Lonnie Carter has given the world a whole series of plays using the name and ideas of Gulliver. As with many of Mr. Carter's plays, the Gulliver plays are loaded with explosive political satire -- so I feel certain the spirit of Jonathan Swift smiles at each and every performance.

Gulliver in the Movies

In many ways "Gulliver's Travels" seems like perfect source material for a movie. And yet somehow it hasn't yet quite happened. The first attempt was the short film Le Voyage de Gulliver à Lilliput et chez les géants in 1902 -- the work of genius film pioneer Georges Méliès. Even Méliès couldn't tackle the entire book!

Walt Disney took his turn in 1934 with the animated short film Gulliver Mickey. I've seen and enjoyed this, but the one from the 1930s I'd really like to see is the Russian Novyj Gulliver, directed the next year by Aleksandr Ptushko -- beloved by all my fellow fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 as the director of "The Day the Earth Froze" and others.

Novyj (New) Gulliver tells the story of Petya (Vladimir Konstantinov), a young Soviet pioneer who falls asleep reading Swift's book -- and awakens in a surreal Lilliput, updated to include jazz bands and -- since this is Russia after all -- mechanized tractors.

The Fleischer Brothers made their Gulliver's Travels in 1939, and I only wish it lived up to the genius of some of their other films. But that's only my opinion; for many it is their favorite of all the retellings of the Gulliver story.

I really want to like the 1960 film The Three Worlds of Gulliver because I so admire the talent and craft of the great Ray Harryhausen, but this film not only takes unfair liberties with the book -- it doesn't give Harryhausen much opportunity to work his magic.

As I kid I enjoyed an animated series called The Adventures of Gulliver -- in fact this was probably my introduction to Gulliver, albeit watered-down almost beyond recognition. The main thing I remember is the mournful Lilliputian named Glum (voiced by Herb Vigran) who was always saying "We're doomed!" It's a handy quote, suitable to many occasions.

(And I should mention that "Glum" clearly refers to Glumdalclitch, the good-hearted giant girl who is Gulliver's "keeper" in Brobdingnag -- but in the cartoon it becomes the name of a Lilliputian male. Whatever.)

Then followed two ventures about which I know very little: Gulliver's Travels (1977) and Gulliver in Lilliput (1982). I did hear from a nice person via the internet who remembered the 1977 film and shared the information that it starred the always-excellent Richard Harris -- and if you have a keen ear you'll catch the recognizable voice of Rod Taylor. I would also like to see the 1982 film someday, if only because one of its stars was Elisabeth Sladen, whom I adore.

The 1996 TV film Gulliver's Travels took us not only to Lilliput and Brobdingnag (as other films had done) but also to Laputa and Lagado, and even to the land of the Struldbruggs and of the Houyhnhnms! The special effects were every bit as breathtaking as they should have been.

And yet. It's still not quite a true film of "Gulliver's Travels." There are many liberties taken -- true, maybe not so egregious as some taken in the past, but liberties nonetheless. Now, my objections to the script are not as vehement as those of Lee Jaffe, keeper of the very best web site devoted to "Gulliver's Travels," but I have to agree that some of the changes made in the adaptation are puzzling and annoying. (As a peace activist, naturally I especially disliked this script's liberties with the whole gunpowder discussion in the Lilliput segment.)

As a screenwriter myself I would offer this defense of Simon Moore's adaptation: the book does pose a unique challenge for adaptation because it does not have a traditional dramatic structure (beginning, middle, end). To make the book into a movie requires the imposition of an artificial structure -- and Simon Moore's was often downright ingenious.

But still ... Lee Jaffe's right: if a "framing story" must be imposed, why does it have to be one that fractures the essence of the book? The film has Gulliver forced to prove he is not insane. The book demands all the rest of us prove that we are not insane!

I suppose the end result is this: the world is still waiting for the definitive Gulliver film.

So read the book!