“Paul Bunyan”

I have not rewatched this short preparatory to writing about it. You might think this to be a horrible failing on my part and that I’m being deeply unprofessional. I have two responses to this. Number one is that I literally do not know how often I’ve seen this short. It played all the time on The Lost Disney Channel Of My Childhood. It was seventeen minutes, which is longish for airing, but if you had a decent chunk of time after the movie ended, you could fill it with good ol’ Paul. The second is that it’s unavailable. It’s on the Disney Rarities set, which I do have around here somewhere, but that’s it.

Still, we all know the legend. Paul Bunyan (Thurl Ravenscroft) is initially found washed up on the coast of Maine after a storm. He becomes a lumberjack and finds Maine too crowded, so he moves out west. In a blizzard, he finds an ox frozen blue; he names it Babe and it becomes his companion, being his size and all. Together, they do such exciting things as creating the ten thousand lakes of Minnesota, logging off the Dakotas, building Pike’s Peak, and making Yellowstone Falls to be a shower. Then comes automation.

There’s a going concept of Paul as an American kaiju, but I don’t think that’s accurate. Babe, I suppose, but even then—kaiju are at best neutral forces and sometimes actively malevolent. Paul and Babe are closer to demigods. They’re more an American version of Maui than of Godzilla. They are an explanation for why things are the way they are. Given how modern they are, it’s tongue-in-cheek; I don’t think anyone really believed that the Grand Tetons were the result of Paul and Babe roughhousing. It was, however, a fun story and people could pretend.

I don’t know how much American folklore ends with “and then automation came,” but it’s definitely a theme. Paul and Babe. John Henry, of course. American folklore tends toward mythologizing real people, but our invented figures fade from importance when their field gets taken over by machinery. What room is there for Paul Bunyan and Babe when there’s no more need for a double-bladed axe and a chained ox? We’re also less okay with logging off two entire states, but still.

I’m infuriated that this short is not on Disney+ and appears to have been scrubbed from YouTube. You can watch at least some of it in short-length segments, but I can’t make myself do that. I’m also afraid of what filters and things might have been put on it to keep the copyright searches away. And look, I’m not encouraging people to violate Disney’s copyright and put it up on YouTube. I’m encouraging Disney to put it up on Disney+. I think it’s just the wrong level of famous—too old and obscure to want it on the service; too well-known to let it slide if it’s up online. This is the kind of thing we were basically promised with Disney+, and I’m sick of it.