Actually popular art: Bolt

So Bolt isn't exactly "high art" or "mass art" or possibly "art" at all, but searching for the "correct" word is rather semantic at best and truly pointless at worst. Bolt is most definitely a film...or a movie...or an animated feature. It is also the production I found myself planted in front of with my family during Thanksgiving away from NYC.

Thankfully, Bolt the dog is adorable. Those wide kitten eyes from Puss in Shrek2 are a near perma-feature of this white-furred, giant-headed furrball. (In fact, the fascination with "cute eyes" is a truly bizarre phenomenon that perhaps reflects some desire for the ability to look at others and find them truly non-threatening, even welcoming. The GAZE is met, returned, and fully open.)

But aside from "the gaze," Bolt the movie tells a completely implausible story that unfolds like this: Bolt is chosen from a shelter by a young girl named Penny (homage to Inspector Gadget anyone?) and raised inside a televison studio to believe he is a super dog who every day rescues his beloved Penny (who truly does love her dog) from an evil green-(cat-)eyed man. One day, much to Penny's dismay, the studio stages Penny's abduction to raise ratings and Bolt is prevented from saving her. Desperate to find her, Bolt escapes the studio confines, falls in a box, and gets shipped to New York. Yadda yadda yadda, he heads back West with the help of a cat and a hamster, learns he is NOT a super dog, learns how to be a regular dog, then saves Penny from an actual death when a Hollywood studio catches fire, and the whole group ends up together as a family.

That's the cheesy version. The version that makes anyone with any cultural studies training cringe and of course...dismiss. Yes, the movie ends in a ridiculously happy ending with all ends neatly bowtied. Yes, it is ironic that the movie is about movies being false, etc. etc.

However, Bolt is also genuinely touching tale.

Why? Because as Disney's (granted highly market-tested) foray into mirroring the contemporary American family, it posits the possibility of the hybrid familial unit predicated on adoption. The varieties of adoption and types of families are exhibited by the various characters: Bolt himself is a shelter puppy who never knew his parents. Mittens the cat was abandoned by her own family and is distrustful of humans and others in general. She is forcefully "adopted" by Bolt, and only over time comes to view him as her new family. Rhino the hamster (whose name itself hybridizes the creature by adopting a cross-species reference) has a fine home life, but actively chooses to leave his current family behind to become part of Bolt's. And finally, Penny, who has a mother but no father (unusual for many Disney films which are based on the killing or absence of the mother figure, e.g. Bambi) and ends up creating her own new family by adopting all three animals.

Such a diversity is refreshing in a children's movie.

Also interesting (as well as a bit of a stretch) is Bolt's story's relation to that of U.S. IF one can accept that possiblity that in some ways Bolt the dog stands for the United States, then Bolt the movie is about the waning and death of its power and the realization that what power it had was impotent. It is also about the nation's wish for a final demonstration of true power and redemption.

Bolt is under the impression that there is danger everywhere, he is so convinced that he becomes paranoid. (More importantly, Disney sets it up so that Bolt has been tricked into being convinced there is danger. He has also been tricked into believing he is omnipotent.) Bolt will do anything to save Penny from the perceived danger. Bolt and Penny are divided from one another. Bolt, over the course of many hard knocks, realizes that he is not a super dog, but a regular dog. Still motivated by his love of Penny, he decides to reunite with her regardless lack of superpowers. Finally, he is given the opportunity to save her from a real death, redeeming both himself and her and reuniting them.

Replace "Bolt" with the government of the United States and "Penny" with the concept or notion of the United States as a country and you have an abstracted (borderline conservative) parable about the how the Iraq war rent the nation from itself, and the country's desire for its sense of self to return.