If you watched the Paul Bunyan film, you'll find yourself, as I did, rooting for him against the steam saw. Really, can anyone even think of rooting for the steam saw? When I saw this on filmstrip as a third or fourth grader in the library at Jackson Elementary School in Sheboygan, I was outraged. Upset not only that Bunyan loses, but mainly because Paul should have added another part to the competition. I remember thinking, "Wait, what about the stumps? They weren't even part of the race!" Add in Bunyan's singular ability to stomp stumps, and the steam saw loses hands down. Every time. Especially this time! It's not even a question.
So when it came time to prepare my Technology and Culture class at Kettering, I returned to this little film, because for me it captures perfectly the American anxiety about technology.
Later, as I was reading around, I came across an article by the great Carrol Pursell who noted something similar. He doesn't include Paul Bunyan in his list, but he sees in the tall tales of John Henry, Mike Fink, and Stormalong some key affinities. The most important of these is that all the heroes represent some kind of older technology that loses out -- in one way or another -- to steam power: Mike Fink's keelboats get displaced by steamboats; John Henry, who dies with a hammer in his hands, is replaced by the steam drill; and, like John Henry, Old Stormalong, the captain of a whaling sailing ship, dies in his victory over the steamship. The Disney version of the Paul Bunyan story fits exactly into this same narrative. In each case, the hero is vanquished by steam power, and thus their oversized, overpowered spirits no long roam our land and sailing our seas.
Pursell notes:
[…] if these were indeed authentic folktales (and this could not be safely assumed), they might represent a deep tide of artisanal unease that ran against the flood of national self-congratulation over the technological “progress” of the nineteenth century that was deskilling a large number of workers, with social and political as well as personal costs that could hardly be calculated. I never followed up on that hunch, but sometime later I found the tools with which I might have done so.
Pursell captures the larger, more important point that I saw when I returned to these cartoons. The frustration I felt as a kid (and, honestly, still feel) is that we don't often see what we lose when we adopt technologies. My students struggle to see this -- often dismissing it as too pessimistic. But the loses of technological progress are very real. And they're very often hidden by the fact that your iPad2 has made it easier to do a multitude of things.
Yet for a moment, when you watch these films, you feel, deep down, that the advancing technology has ruined something. The values and skills and real spirit of a core part of America -- John Henry, Paul Bunyan, Old Stormalong -- are made to disappear. And as much as we can say these heros stand in for skilled railworkers or lumberjacks or sailer, then that way of life, that way of thinking, those values and skills and entire ways of life have disappeared. You don't see it if you only think in terms of the tools -- the hammers and axes and steam saws and their utilitarian purposes -- because then all you'll see is progress. After all, who wants to dig a tunnel with a hammer or cut down trees with an axe?
But in celebrating Henry and Bunyan, the cartoons and stories first celebrate the values and the lifestyles and the ways in which each of these men shaped our country. Banishing or killing them is, in a sense, a loss of the soul of this country. That is, after all, what the what folktales capture: the core values and meanings of a place, a time, a people.
In the end, then, what I find so fascinating about these Disney films is that they evoke a response out of step with our usual technological optimism. We'll likely forget these feelings moments later. My students do. During the mid-course break, they don't talk to each other. Heck, they barely even get up any more. Instead, they get out their cell phones and talk to anyone else who's not in the room with them. We might remember these lessons as the number of books in kids homes dwindle or when we get excited receiving a real letter or when we notice the subtle loss of our important skills in younger generations. These films, then, serve as a nice reminder, an emotional appeal, creating a deep attachment to the idea that technologies aren't always for the good, and that we should try to remember what they so often displace.
Pursell, Carroll W. "Technologies as Cultural Practice and Production." Technology and Society, Volume 51, Number 3, July 2010 pp. 715-722.
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