As always, dear readers, welcome.  If you read us regularly, you know that we love epics of all sorts and periods and cultures.  We have also been dictionary readers since we were children.  So, when, recently, we heard someone say that something was an “epic fail”, it caught our ear in both an epic and lexicographic (what a great word!) way.  Consequently, we thought that it might be fun to do a little investigating and thinking out loud a little about the use of “epic” in that expression

We began by asking ourselves:  what is an epic that it can be (silently) compared to something else, in this case, a kind of disaster?

Examples of epics immediately came to mind:  the Iliad,

and the Odyssey,

and the Aeneid

—all long stories in verse.  And we quickly added Beowulf,

Ramayana,

and Mahabharata,

all also long poems in verse, the Mahabharata being said to be the longest of all epics, 200,000 verses long (in contrast, the Iliad has 15,693, while the Aeneid has only 9,896 lines). 

The word “epic” itself is from Greek epos, which has a number of possible translations, but, at base, means “something spoken”.  This can easily be understood as “something told” and could refer to the work of the first Greek singers, the aoidoi (ah-oy-DOY).

 In Homer, we often see the word in the plural, as part of the phrase  epea pteroenta, literally “words with wings”.  This is used when people speak a lot and/or rapidly, which seems sensible, especially if you’re making a reply or trying to persuade someone of something.  There may also be a small poetic  joke here, as well, as epea can also mean “lines of verse”, so a character might be said to be speaking in “winged verses” in Homer, at the same time as “winged words”.

“Epic” is an adjective formed from epos, and appears to have become part of the English language during the Elizabethan era.  The first known citation comes from George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie (1589), where Puttenham calls John Hardyng (1378-1465), who wrote a rhymed chronicle of the history of England, “a Poet Epicke or Historicall” (Puttenham, Part I, Chapter 31).  We’ve sampled a manuscript version of Hardyng’s chronicle in the very useful edition of Simpson and Peverley (and you can, too, at this LINK:  https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/simpson-pevereley-hardyng-chronicle )  but, although it has the length of a shorter epic (7,042 lines), we would be reluctant to say that Hardyng would ever have the popularity of Homer or Vergil or Valmiki, the poet of the Ramayana.

Still, if you go to the always-handy Etymonline, you’ll find “epic” defined (digesting a longer definition in The Oxford English Dictionary) as, “pertaining to or constituting a lengthy heroic poem.”

And “lengthy”, as you can see, would certainly would fit all of the epics mentioned above, including Puttenham’s Hardyng.  So, on the one hand, “epic” in “epic fail” could mean something gone wrong on a scale as big as an epic is long:  after all, the war at Troy has been going on for 9 years when the Iliad takes place, and Beowulf covers the full extent of the hero’s life. 

But then there’s that word “heroic”. 

If we follow that definition, is an “epic fail”, which we’re assuming is something rather grand, also somehow heroic?

We don’t have any more information about our original quotation:  it was probably just something which zoomed past our eyes on the internet, or we heard someone say in passing on the radio.  Applying a text from our list of epics, we thought about Hector, the son of Priam, the king of Troy, and the main hero on the Trojan side.  The Iliad doesn’t have much to say about him for the previous 9 years, but he’s active in the current one although, even as the chief warrior on the Trojan side, he never appears to have faced the chief Greek warrior, Achilles, until their confrontation in Book 22.  Here, Hector is ashamed to retreat, but acts as a kind of rear guard for the Trojans until he’s facing Achilles by himself.

And then everything goes wrong for him:  he loses his nerve and Achilles chases him three times around the walls of Troy; he throws his spear, which bounces off Achilles’ shield; he thinks that his brother, Deiphobus, has come to help him, but it’s actually a hostile Athena masquerading; sword drawn, he charges and Achilles stabs him at the base of his throat; when he begs for a decent burial, Achilles says that the dogs and birds will eat his body.  And, after he dies, all of the other Greeks gather around to stab his corpse (now they’re brave), then Achilles puts holes in Hector’s feet, runs a line through the holes, ties the line to the back of his chariot, and drags him around the walls of Troy while Hector’s wife and parents look on in horror.

If anything could be described as an “epic fail”, we would propose that it would be the combat with Achilles and the death of Hector.  But was the comment we overheard or read about such a grim and dramatic event as to merit such a comparison?

And this is where another source comes in.  The Oxford English Dictionary, begun in 1857, when it comes to richness of source material, is a wonderful thing—we used it to find that reference to Puttenham.  At the same time, to keep up-to-date on what’s going on in contemporary English, we often dip into Urban Dictionary.  If you know this source, you know that some of those who contribute are often less than enthusiastic about other people’s word choices.  So, to gain another viewpoint, we consulted Urban Dictionary and found, among other references:

“Epic Fail -A mistake of such monumental proportions that it requires its own term in order to successfully point out the unfathomable shortcomings of an individual or group.”

Not quite Homeric, but okay. 

Then again, there was this:

“A word that used to be used to describe a book, a movie or other work as timeless, great, and meaningful. Is now used by [unprintable word:  substitute “the less intelligent”] who combine it with “win” or “fail” to describe everyday things…

INCORRECT usage:
[unprintable word–substitute “speaker”] #1: I forgot my wallet so I had to go home and get it.
[same unprintable word:  substitute “speaker] #2: EPIC FAIL!”

So, was what we saw or overheard, by its use of the expression, its own epic fail?

Thanks, as ever, for reading,

Stay well,

And know that

MTCIDC

CD

ps

We found the reference to Puttenham in the Oxford English Dictionary (upon which JRRT was once engaged, in 1919-1920—here’s the LINK to a really interesting article on his work there:  https://public.oed.com/blog/jrr-tolkien-and-the-oed/ ).  If you’d like to see the Puttenham for yourself, here’s a LINK:

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/16420/pg16420-images.html

If nothing else, it’s very interesting to see just how much earlier English literature Puttenham had available to him in the 1580s. 

As always, dear readers, welcome.  We begin with a quotation:

“Look out! Look out!
Pink elephants on parade
Here they come!
Hippity-hoppity
They’re here and there
Pink elephants everywhere

Look out! Look out!
They’re walking around the bed, on their head
Clippity-cloppity
Arrayed in braid
Pink elephants on parade

What’ll I do? What’ll I do?
What an unusual view!
I could stand the sight of worms
And look at microscopic germs
But technicolor pachyderms
Is really too much for me

I am not the type to faint
When things are odd or things are quaint
But seeing things you know that ain’t
Can certainly give you an awful fright!
What a sight!

Chase ’em away!
Chase ’em away!
I’m afraid, need your aid
Pink elephants on parade!

Pink elephants!
Pink elephants!”

All right, patient readers are asking, what in the world is this?  And where will you go with it?

It’s, in fact, from Walt Disney’s 1941 movie, Dumbo.

If you’re not familiar with this film, it’s about a very small elephant with very large ears who discovers that, using his ears, he can fly.  His real name is “Jumbo, Junior”, which is clearly based upon the name of the  first famous elephant in modern history, Jumbo, who lived his adult life beginning in the Jardin des Plantes,

in Paris, then in the Zoological Gardens in London,

and finally in the circus world of the American entrepreneur, P.T. Barnum.

(If you’d like a copy of the autobiography of Jumbo’s keeper at the London zoo and a biography of Jumbo, here’s a LINK:  https://ia803204.us.archive.org/4/items/autobiographyofm00scot/autobiographyofm00scot.pdf )

In the story, Dumbo’s only friend is a mouse, named Timothy, which is its own joke on the traditional idea that elephants are afraid of mice.

with whom, by accident, he becomes intoxicated

and suddenly, the two have a vision:  Pink Elephants!  which is accompanied by a very strange song, the words of which we’ve quoted above.

Here’s the LINK to a clip of this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcZUPDMXzJ8

Normally, this is said to be something which long-time alcoholics are traditionally said to see, but it makes for quite a scene in the film, as we’re sure you’ll agree!

In this scene, we were inspired by these lines:

“I am not the type to faint
When things are odd or things are quaint
But seeing things you know that ain’t
Can certainly give you an awful fright!
What a sight!”

to think about another story where people see things they “know that ain’t”.  And, as Tolkien is never far from our minds, or these pages, we were on Weathertop,

When the Wraiths first appear, they are described as

“…three or four tall black figures…standing there on the slope, looking down on them.  So black were they that they seemed like black holes in the deep shade around them…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “A Knife in the Dark”)

And then Frodo slips on the Ring and:

“Immediately, though everything else remained as before, dim and dark, the shapes became terribly clear.  He was able to see beneath their black wrappings.  There were five tall figures:  two standing on the lip of the dell, three advancing.  In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes; under their mantles were long grey robes; upon their grey hairs were helms of silver; in their haggard hands were swords of steel.”

Frodo sees the Ring Wraiths for what they really are because, by putting on the Ring, he enters its world, and that of the Wraiths, which appears to be a kind of twilight place between Middle-earth and someplace else—in a sense, a “place that ain’t”, as the Wraiths are a kind of ghost, doomed to haunt the world only while the Ring exists (or, in the case of their chief, when a weapon from the past catches him). 

 This made us wonder, what would the Ring allow its rightful owner, Sauron, to see?  When Frodo puts on the Ring again, to escape Boromir, and climbs up Amon Hen, the Ring still on his finger:

“At first he could see little.  He seemed to be in a world of mist in which there were only shadows:  the Ring was upon him.  Then here and there the mist gave way and he saw many visions:  small and clear as if they were under his eyes upon a table, and yet remote.  There was no sound, only bright living images.  The world seemed to have shrunk and fallen silent.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 10, “The Breaking of the Fellowship”)

Even if silent, this is a teeming world:

“But everywhere he looked he saw the signs of war.  The Misty Mountains were crawling like anthills:  orcs were issuing out of a thousand holes.  Under the boughs of Mirkwood there was deadly stife of Elves and Men and fell beasts.  The land of the Beornings was aflame; a cloud was over Moria; smoke rose on the borders of Lorien.”

But, reading this, we were a little puzzled.  Although some of this we know to be happening—certainly in Moria— much of the rest is yet to come in the story.  If this is Sauron’s view, are he and Frodo actually “seein’ things you know that ain’t” and the Ring shares some power (and danger) with Galadriel’s Mirror?  As she says:

“Remember that the Mirror shows many things, and not all have yet come to pass.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

If so, then should both take note of her warning?

“Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions turn aside from their path to prevent them.  The Mirror is dangerous as a guide to deeds.”

As a possible guide to Sauron’s mind and its imaginings, we want to return to this idea in another posting, but, as we started out with a strange, but still somehow jolly vision, we’d like to conclude with an odd and comic one, the present time being dark enough as it is!

In 1950, there appeared a film, based upon Mary Chase’s 1944 play, Harvey.

The basic story is about Elwood P. Dowd, played by the well-known actor of the period, James Stewart,

a gentle, quiet man, who spends much of the play/film in the company—so he says—of a 6’3”  (190.5cm) tall rabbit named “Harvey”.  Dowd lives with his sister, who is constantly embarrassed by Dowd’s insistence that Harvey is not only real, but extremely wise, and his seeming assumption that everyone can see him.   Unfortunately, at least initially, no one else can see Harvey, including Dowd’s sister, who, eventually attempts to have Dowd committed to an insane asylum.  In a complex turn of events, however, Dowd’s sister is the one who is (temporarily) committed and the doctor who examines Dowd not only can see Harvey, but finds him a very pleasant companion.  The film ends happily—although, until the very end, it’s difficult to know if Harvey is a figment of (several) people’s imagination, or real…

We know that the pink elephants were the result of accidental intoxication.  And Frodo sees the Wraiths and possibly a form of the future because of the Ring.  Harvey simply appears, as Dowd explains, and strikes up a friendly conversation.  Perhaps, considering those weird pachyderms, and the terrors of the Ring’s world, meeting a very tall and perhaps invisible but benevolent rabbit, would be a vision which we would prefer that we did see?  As Dowd says to the doctor:  “Well, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it.”

Thanks, as ever, for reading, stay well, and be sure that there’s

MTCIDC

CD

ps

Jumbo also inspired a famous classical piano piece.  It comes from Claude Debussy’s (1862-1918) Children’s Corner Suite, first published in 1908, and it is entitled “Jimbo’s Lullabye”.  Here’s a LINK:

(“Jimbo” appears to be a corruption, through the French pronunciation of “u”, of Jumbo.)

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

Recently, we’ve been watching the old Walt Disney Zorro, first series and very much enjoying it.

By the time Disney’s version appeared, in 1957, Zorro had had—for film—a long history.

It had begun in 1919 with a 5-part serialized novella by Johnston McCulley, “The Curse of Capistrano”.

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., a famous early-20^th-century silent movie star, appears to have realized the character’s potential and almost immediately appeared as Don Diego Vega (the “de la” came later) in 1920, in The Mark of Zorro, which, in our opinion, is a film still worth watching, if nothing else for Fairbanks’ own stuntwork.

(The Internet Archive has this—for free–https://archive.org/details/markofzorro-1920   We are big fans of silent film and the IA has lots of them, if you enjoy this one.)

After that initial film, a number of others have appeared, (here’s a LINK to what may be a complete—and rather overwhelming list:  https://zorro.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Zorro_Films )   including our favorites, the 1940 The Mark of Zorro

and the 1998 The Mask of Zorro.

Our boxed set was in black-and-white and, while we were watching, although it was great fun, we kept wondering what it would be like in color.   As a project, then, we thought that it might be interesting to do a little image research and come up with models for our own “colorizing”—and, as we did our research, we were rather surprised at what we found.

We began with the very elaborate Disney set of “Los Angeles”, about 1820.

(This is a beautiful Disney model of the downtown.)

This appears to have been mainly constructed of adobe—mud brick, plastered over, and the colors might have looked something like these—

And here is where our first surprise appeared.

In reality, this “Los Angeles” has almost nothing to do with the real Los Angeles of 1820.  Here is the original, in the first picture we’ve found of it, dated 1847.

And here’s the first photo (daguerreotype?), from 1869.

The major building in the first picture, labeled “church”, and on the left in the 1869 photograph, was consecrated in 1822 and, as “La Placita”, much changed, is still there.

The set model, perhaps because it is meant to be a Los Angeles of about 1820, doesn’t show us this, but the early illustrations also don’t show us any of the two-story buildings which appear in the model.  And, more striking, the presidio (“military base”, or cuartel, meaning “barracks”, as it’s labeled on the wall of the set)

is missing, as well.  What about the “lancers” as they’re called in the series?  Where were they living?

Our second surprise:  there seems, in fact, to have been no garrison at all in Los Angeles in 1820.  There were four presidios at that time in what was called Alta California, at San Diego, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco, each being the headquarters for a military district.  In reality, then, we presume, since Los Angeles was between San Diego and Santa Barbara—see map below—

that, should it ever need soldiers, they would come from either of those two presidios.

The soldiers who might have been sent were not technically lancers—although they carried lances, along with carbines, pistols, and swords.  Instead, they were dragones de cuera, “leather dragoons”, Spanish frontier soldiers so-called because they also wore a kind of leather armor and even carried leather shields as protection against the arrows of the Native American tribes they occasionally came up against.

Underneath the leather, however, they wore a uniform much like the ones Zorro’s “lancers” wear.

 

Because they could be attached to a presidio, they were also sometimes called presidiales.

As we’ve said, there was no presidio at Los Angeles, but we think that the actual presidios of Alta California served as models.  Take, for example, this map of that at San Diego from 1820

or this reconstruction of the installation at San Francisco.

In both cases, just like the “cuartel” at Zorro’s Los Angeles, there is a walled enclosure with a selection of buildings inside.

If the buildings on Disney’s set weren’t there in 1820 and there were no soldiers, we could still “colorize” them, of course, but was there anything which might match the actual Los Angeles of 1820?  And here we thought:  how about the citizens?  During that period, Los Angeles had about 650 people, many scattered on farms and the growing haciendas of the region, which became known for its leather, as well as for its grapes.

Images of people who would have lived in Los Angeles in the 1820s don’t appear to be easy to find, but we could locate parallels from those of two artists who worked in Mexico in the 1830s and early 1840s, Carl Nebel and James Walker, and, with the exception of the last image, these are all from their work.

Here are a couple of portraits of those at the top of society.

To the right in the second picture is a vaquero, literally, a “cowboy”, who worked for the hacienda owners, and here’s an image of several at work.

And we can add some folk perhaps a little lower on the social scale—

 

Then, as we continued our research, came our third surprise:  the Disney studio had been ahead of us in all of this, having eventually themselves colorized a number of the episodes!

It was a pleasure to do the research, however, and, even if the Los Angeles of Zorro wasn’t the Los Angeles of our 1820, it gave us a keener appreciation for the high quality of imagination and construction skill which continues to bring us—in color or in black-and-white—so much adventure and fun.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well and know that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

CD

ps

In 1924, The Mark of Zorro appeared as a novel.  Here’s a LINK so that, if you’d like, you can read it for yourself:   https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61620/61620-h/61620-h.htm

pps

In our research, we stumbled upon this article—in color—about surviving Zorro/Don Diego costumes and we thought that you might enjoy it:

https://hollywoodmoviecostumesandprops.blogspot.com/2011/09/guy-williams-zorro-tv-costumes-from.html