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Duma (2005) is Carroll Ballard’s fourth and final great animal film. I’ve discussed The Black Stallion (1979) and Fly Away Home (1996) before; I’ll eventually round out my series with Never Cry Wolf (1983).

Duma is the name of a cheetah, one of the protagonists in the film. He and Xan, a young boy, take a journey through southern Africa.

I want to start this article by talking about Duma, and what I learned about cheetahs from watching this film. I learned that cheetahs are morons.

There are plenty of cat antics in the film. But Duma is no lolcat. He is docile, obedient, and permanently confused/apathetic. He has a blank-faced stare that betrays a lack of understanding, and a lack of curiosity. If you put Duma on a giant roomba, he’d just sit down and look bewildered.

It’s a running joke in the film that Duma is part domesticated, so his survival skills are hopeless. His hunting in particular is portrayed as being somewhere around the “I can’t find my food bowl” level. At one point, he saves the day “hunting”: he lopes after an ostrich and eventually stumbles/gets confused by a nest full of eggs. Success through incompetence.

So you might think that Duma’s boneheadedness is a deliberate plot device, and that he’s merely the Sarah Palin of the cheetah world. Except that a look at the credits reveals that Duma is played by five different cheetah actors, and I think it’s unlikely that the casting call for Duma was along the lines of “Wanted: witless cheetahs”.

I can only conclude that, in the evolutionary lottery, cheetahs traded brains for speed. To put it another way: Usain Bolt can run the 100m in 9.58s, but that doesn’t mean you’d want him to do your tax return.

Duma’s antics provide a modicum of light relief in what is a dark film. Much of the time, his haplessness reinforces the ever-present danger that surrounds our main characters for most of the film. The spectre of death is very real in Duma.

The film starts, as with Ballard’s The Black Stallion and Fly Away Home, with the death of a parent. Xan’s father succumbs to cancer, leaving Duma in Xan’s care. The death of Xan’s father is a bookend, and the film must end with a different kind of death: the inevitable death of the relationship between Xan and Duma. Xan must, eventually, abandon Duma to the wild.

Xan—and Duma—must learn to accept their separation. This is the emotional core of the film, as Xan learns to see death as a transition, a necessary part of life. He starts the movie as his father’s child, and must end it as an adult. Duma starts as a kitten, and must end it as a self-sufficient wild animal.

So it’s a coming-of-age film. Curiously, Ballard never wanted Duma to open with a death. This was a requirement from the studio funding the film (Warner Bros), who saw this as a critical trope to begin an ‘animal movie’ (see The Lion King, The Black Stallion, Bambi, etc). Ballard felt that this requirement ‘Disneyfied’ his film, forcing Duma away from a realist adventure and towards singalongs or action figures. In the end, Ballard gets his way through sleight of hand: the death of Xan’s father is something different from anything I’ve seen in cinema. It’s slow and jarring; subtle and sudden.

There is a secret about adulthood, something that children don’t know: adults are making it up as they go along. Children know that they are ignorant of the wider world, so they look to adults for guidance. Adults, secretly, also know that they are ignorant. Age teaches us adults to hide our incompetence, and act as if we know what we’re doing.

In Ulysses, James Joyce suggests that fatherhood is not about the sex act that leads to birth some nine months later, rather a responsibility inherited from one’s own father. The oldest of each generation is obliged to perform the paternal role.

And so it is with Xan. Xan’s father decides drive across South Africa to release Duma. When he dies, the mantle of fatherhood is passed onto Xan, and Xan proceeds to follow through with the plan.

It’s a terrible plan. Xan makes a series of life-threatening decisions that Duma, his de facto child, blindly follows. They become stranded on a salt plain and are, but for the machinations of the plot, a couple of days from death.

Anyone who has spent time in isolated rural areas, away from fresh water, will know how deadly they can be. This is captured in Duma: the South African wilderness is actively dangerous, malevolent.

Duma and Xan are joined in their journey by Ripkuna, a young father from a small village who is equally ignorant to the dangers of the world. The three form a loose codependent relationship, relying on each other’s skills to hurdle the deadly challenges thrown up by nature.

Xan and Rip’s relationship, despite their ages, is one of equals. They are both resourceful, selfless, intelligent, and deeply distrustful of each other. (Duma provides a physical threat towards Rip, equivalent to Rip’s physical advantage over Xan.) The distrust is informed by race: Xan is white, Rip is black.

Xan and Rip never acknowledge race. The racial tension comes from their clear cultural differences. Xan’s background is very white. His parents are farmers, his family lives in the city, he goes to a fancy school. In a country where less than 10% of people are white, there are no black faces anywhere in Xan’s world. It’s similar for Rip: his racial ‘otherness’ (to Xan) is clear from his clothes (compared to Xan’s school uniform), and their eventual visit to his village shows a world where white people are a curiosity at best, dangerous at worst.

To understand the depths of the racial politics, some insight into South Africa is required. This is a country where a tiny minority of the population asserted the nakedly racist Apartheid policy over the majority. The mindset that led to such a situation is explored by the great South African writer J.M Coetzee in his novel Summertime:

“In those days the white South Africans liked to think of themselves as the Jews of Africa. [...] All false. These people were not tough, they were not even cunning, or cunning enough. And they were certainly not Jews. In fact they were babes in the wood. That is how I think of them now: a tribe of babies looked after by slaves.”

 

and

“…they turned their backs on [history], dismissing it as a mass of slanders put together by foreigners who held [white South Africans] in contempt and would turn a blind eye if they were massacred by the blacks down to the last woman and child. Alone and friendless at the remote tip of a hostile continent, they erected their fortress state and retreated behind its walls.”

 

Anyone who has seen District 9 will note similar themes.

The racial politics of Duma informs the relationship between Xan and Rip but it’s never overt, never even mentioned. It’s just one more challenge, one more threat, for them to overcome. They do, of course, eventually learn to trust one another. It’s testament to Ballard’s brilliant direction that the tension, and its eventual joyful release, comes without any direct acknowledgement of race.

Duma was a failure on commercial release. Ballard felt that Warner Bros mis-sold the film by marketing it as an old-school simple children’s film (“Lassie with cheetahs”). A rave review and some rare personal advocacy from Roger Ebert saw it eventually get a limited release, where it was largely ignored. Ballard blamed the studio: “In my view, they had a terrible ad campaign that was way too soft and made it look like a namby-pamby kiddie movie.”

There are some problems with the film. For starters, there is some solidly lame CGI, particularly a scene that sees Xan, Rip, and Duma caught in a swarm of tsetse flies.

The actions scenes are well directed, and while Ballard never resorts to making quick cuts of shaky-cam in the hope the viewer will get caught up in the appearance of excitement (ala Michael Bay), he clearly struggled to get good takes form his animal actors. In some cases, he cuts between shots of a dangerous animal (a lion, a crocodile, a warthog) and shots of humans acting as if they were in danger. At their worst, these scenes remind me of the Radioactive Man movie, after Milhouse (playing Fallout Boy) goes missing:

Editor: Thanks to modern editing techniques, we can use existing footage to complete the film without Milhouse! Watch…

 

[rolls badly-edited film]

 

Editor: Seamless, huh?
Director: [pause] You’re fired.
Editor: And with good cause!

 

In the end, I don’t think that Duma‘s commercial failure is due to its cinematic flaws or its marketing. It’s more to do with its structure: it starts with a death, and takes a while for Xan and Duma to start their journey. And it’s a dark film: their journey is fraught, the relationship between Xan and Ripkuna is complex, and it ends with the inevitable separation of Xan and Duma. Duma starts and ends on a low key, and slightly depressing note.

The story is about how Xan is forced, by the world, to leave his childhood behind and begin a life as a stony-faced adult. It’s an excellent piece of cinema, but not exactly the sort of whizz-bang ending that leaves audiences feeling happy and buzzed.

The audience, though, will leave with the strong and lasting impression that cheetahs are flummoxed by just about anything and everything. Those scenes are the best scenes: Duma gets confused by water; Duma gets confused by a TV; Duma gets confused by a car.

In that spirit, here is a picture of a DVD sleeve with four pictures of Duma, all looking confused:

Duma is cheap and easy to find. I bought my copy from Amazon for £3.

This is the third of four articles on the films of Carroll Ballard. All four movies are great. Choose your species and join us:

• The Black Stallion (horse)
• Never Cry Wolf (wolf): coming soon
• Fly Away Home (goose)
• Duma (cheetah)

Author: Fred Chappell Ellison reports for the Cartoon Brew on a regional Canadian airline’s use of a jetsetting raccoon businessman mascot, Mr. Porter. More importantly, Ellison documents how this goes against the trend of airlines like American Airlines and Qantas replacing their familiar animal mascots with impersonal, stylized mascots, and why this is a big [...]

Facing slow internet speeds, scheduling conflicts, collisions with motor vehicles, and technical snafus, our heroes overcome all odds and deliver Episode 3 of Size Matters on time and in style. On this week's episodem StarryAqua joins Kwandry and Kenson to try and discover what leads up to someone being a fan of things big and smalle, as well as to discuss different species and character traits you just don't see that often in the macro/micro community. Episode 3 (2013-07-29)

Author: dronon Claws and Starships: A Collection of Pelted Short Fiction by M.C.A. Hogarth is a selection of six short stories that I enjoyed reading just recently. Set in her Paradox universe, the Pelted consist of many races of anthros created by humans in the distant past through bio-engineering. (Read more about them.) Since then, they’ve [...]

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I do not speak English but the public as well to tell me tips on how to keep drawing.. http://i.imgur.com/qKwhBVq.jpg

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I love going to furmeets and sometimes people never know the furs around them! I'm hoping that by making this we can have a better idea of the furs in our area. I'll start.

I'm Amira from NE Ohio

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I'm trying to help my boyfriend, his car's engine caught fire before he shipped out, so, he forgot to put his storage unit on auto pay. I need to pay for his storage unit until he gets into port, but, it's $147.55 and I only have $3.14 in my account. I only got paid $55 this week and most of it went to gas or food. He's on a submarine in the Navy and won't be able to get to a computer with internet until mid August or so. If I can get 8 people to get drawings at about $20 a piece, I'd really appreciate it. My paypal is under the email EnkeliDesigns@hotmail.com I can do things that're very simple http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs26/i/2008/156/b/9/Cheshire_Cat_by_enkeli19.jpg to really complex http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/205/a/c/queen_ceres_by_enkeli19-d58hvlw.png but the more complex drawings I may want $40-$50 for them... Complex meaning Renaissance to Edwardian fashions if they're wearing clothes.

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Hello everyone! I'm new to the furry world and just wanted to say what's up to everyone.

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What is Transformation? Sakita explains exactly this to Roo and Tugs as they take the deep dive into the sexual and non-sexual sides of this widely known phenomenon.  (Kids, skip to 56:00 when prompted!) Learn what sets TF apart from other kinds of interests and where it overlaps, plus the grand origins! We also introduce a new segment this show, kick off our listener idents, and announce the next FWIW LIVE!



NOW LISTEN!

Music & Breaks

Opening theme: Fredrik Miller – Cloud Fields (Radio Mix). USA: Bandcamp, 2011. Used with permission.  (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!)
Closing: Fredrik Miller – Cloud Fields (Chill Out Mix). USA: Bandcamp, 2011. Used with permission. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!)

Special Thanks

Sakita
Zeller
Kasstrick
LilChu
Retro

Next episode: What are Therian? What are Otherkin? Are you one or the other? We want to know if you are and/or your burning questions as we delve into this deeply personal topic. Send your thoughts using the “Contact Us!” button! You’ll have til August 12th to send us your email, due to a one episode break. S3 Episode 5 – Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe it’s….Transformation. - What is Transformation? Sakita explains exactly this to Roo and Tugs as they take the deep dive into the sexual and non-sexual sides of this widely known phenomenon.  (Kids, skip to 56

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Gotta Explicate them All: The World of Pokémon

Another quiet week in furry crowdfunding, must be the summer doldrums. A few fun new projects, but for me one of the highlights of the week was a pair of excellent podcast episodes from “Fear the Boot,” a thoughtful and long-running tabletop RPG podcast, focusing on Kickstarter strategies, pitfalls, tactics, and so on. Granted, it’s not the furry fandom, but certainly another colony in the great nation of geeks. If you’re thinking of starting a crowdfunding campaign, give them a listen (ep.1, ep.2). Anyway, today a long-overdue look at what must be the Audubon Society of Pokémon fansights.

And then a bunch of other stuff.

The World of Pokémon

Pokémon: Rich world, but aimed solidly at a younger crowd. In his pitch video, author Joshua Dunlop talks about a view of the…uh…Pokéverse that has matured with its older fans: a rich interactive website that looks at the world of Pokémon like a nature documentary, National Geographic, or travel guide might, exhaustively and elegantly.

Ancient drawing of a Charizard

“The World of Pokémon” cracks open every aspect of Pokémon with an almost academic fervor, looking at regional histories, gyms and trainers, technology, the “why” of the Pokémon league, and some artistic extrapolations into religion, ancient history, architecture, wars and lost empires…and the art we see in the KS is impressive, both professional and diverse in style, and the long-term/stretch goals–weekly newscasts from the Pokémon world, professionally-produced pokémon calls, soundtrack, webcomic…it’s an ambitious project.

An ambitious and accredited project! Dunlop’s staff includes students of zoology and biology, composers and sound designers, entertainment professionals…and strangely, more theater people than you can shake a stick at, but maybe you have to be a little insane to take a project of this scope on without corporate backing, and theater people generally qualify.

Is this a viable project? It’s hard to say. Pokémon’s star seems to be setting somewhat, it’s not the international craze it once was–though the games are still doing well for Nintendo, that’s not the same as a base of sustainable support for an ad-driven multimedia project that doesn’t directly feed into the games. And thusfar, the Kickstarter support has not made a deep dent in the campaign’s ambitious goal, which may or may not be meaningful given the peaks-and-valleys shape of most KS pledge patterns. Regardless, the World of Pokémon campaign is an excellent read and an exciting project.

Books/Print

The Dragon Princess (Ends: 8/2/2013)
A princess cursed to be a half-dragon, half-human creature looks for love to lift her curse.

Talonridge: Book II (Ends: 8/5/2013)
Heavily-illustrated young adult series of mice on a mission in a fantasy world, very “Mousegard”
Part two of a planned 63-book series. That’s ambition!

Children’s Products

The Tales of Shakespuss (Ends: 8/3/2013)
Stripped-down, lightened up, and retold versions of Shakespeare for kids, live action, theatre, and animated.

Clothing/Costumes

Right to Bear Arms tees (Ends: 8/9/2013)
Tee shirts with long, furry sleeves
Cute tees, unfortunately the shirt slogans aren’t as funny as the concept.

Woof — Dog Themed Pinback Buttons (Ends: 8/25/2013)
Cute, quirky, 1.25-inch buttons for your jacket or whichever. Cute little guys! Cats too.
Scroll down a little, the “extra dog” pins are adorable :) Watch the artist on DeviantArt or FA

Piki Charms (Ends: 9/21/2013)
Tiny charms for phones, etc, with an amazing range of designs, by DrawWithLaura
The goal is a little high for the nature of this product, but it’s to fund some business capital equipment. But it’s fixed-funding, so no accidental scams.

Comics/Graphic Novels

Dreamkeepers: Prelude (Ends: 7/31/2013)
A bound edition of the Dreamkeepers “prelude” webcomic, with a cast of graceful, stylized and colorful critters.
More artsnstuff on the Dreamkeepers FA account.

The Legend of MonkeyRonin (Ends: 7/31/2013)
A comic series featuring a Monkey King sort of character, very nice illustrations!

Animal Inphantry: Hupsalupa Beginnings (Ends: 8/2/2013)
A team of five critters takes to the street in a war against bullying.

Rabbit (Ends: 8/3/2013)
The graphic novel story of a rabbit working as a bar bouncer (among other things) in a city of carnivores

Sam & Fuzzy – Two Volume Omnibus (Ends: 8/7/2013)
The story of a man and a bear, in a crazy absurdist comic universe, a 1500-page epic comic collection.

World War Kaiju graphic novel (Ends: 8/12/2013)
What if the ultimate weapon that ended World War II didn’t usher in the atomic age, but the Kaiju (giant city-crushing monster) age? Excellent video, great retro propaganda visuals, and bizarre immersive stretch goal toys.
“Furry” is a stretch, but there’s a lot to like here for fans of giant, Tokyo-crushing armadillos.

Bulletproof Chicken (Ends: 8/13/2013)
Comic about “The most bad-ass fowl to ever wear a badge.” Cleaning up the streets with the cock with a glock.

Of Mice and Madness: Tails from Out There! (Ends: 8/15/2013)
The adventures of the mouse bounty hunter Othello and his trusted if dim cat steed as they travel the galaxy in search of riches.
More galleries and info at ofmiceandmadness.com.

Birdland (Ends: 8/22/2013)
A comic set in New York City, thick with jazz, noir, murder, and anthropomorphic birds

Owlgirls (Ends: 9/1/2013)
A “paranormal detective” genre comic, three shadowy sisters touched by the goddess of Death. Oh, they have owl heads.

Danger Squad (Ends: 9/9/2013)
Sci-Fi Comedy featuring a crazy captain and malajusted crew, and a nice range of anthro characters and villians.

Events

CANterlot, Ontario MLP Con (Ends: 8/9/2013)
Funding campaign for Ontario’s MLP convention in November

DerpyCon South (Ends: 8/14/2013)
Fundraising for Year 1 of DerpyCon South: the New Orleans Brony convention!

Film/Animation/Theater

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Blood Brothers (Ends: 8/23/2013)
A short, live-action TMNT film with some amazing props already in the works.
From the people who brought you Marvel Zombies: The Movie: The Trailer…. Disorienting KS video, total lack of business plan, but nice mock-ups.

Cat’s View Feature Film (Ends: 8/21/2013)
A crime thriller filmed from a cat witness’s point of view, along with information about the life of a feral cat, trap/neuter/return projects, etc.

Anthro: Animating the Soul (Ends: 8/27/2013)
A documentary look at beloved anthro characters and their creators.
Stitchfan has broken this project up into a series of small-goal IGGs, interesting model and I hope to see it succeed!

BiPolar Bears (Ends: 9/1/2013)
Animated series about manic and depressive polar bear twins Manny and Preston (orderilies in a psych institute), the Post-Traumatic Puffins, Randolf the Alcoholic Reindeer, and other friends.
Bleah. The promo vid is “join me in my philosophy” rather than “here’s this cool product idea.” That plus very high goal/60-day campaign is a bad sign.

Tabletop Games

Pelted Primacy (Ends: 8/12/2013)
A Bicycle style card deck with anthro court cards and paw-print pips.
More of the artist’s work on DeviantArt.

Room Party: The Game (Ends: 8/15/2013)
A card game about building the MOST AWESOME room party at the con. Concept by the artists of BLOTCH (and stretch goal Furry Con expansion to be drawn by Blotch.)
Reminds me a bit of “Chez Geek,” silly people, silly situations, accumulating cool points.

Zoo Fu: Path of the Samurai Zookeeper (Ends: 8/17/2013)
A silly card game of fighting zoo animals, martial arts, and shouting.
I really want to play a game where you get points by shouting “Crouching Gecko Kick of DOOOOOOM!”

Ponies for Pathfinder Setting Handbook (Ends: 8/24/2013)
A MLP-inspired tabletop RPG setting handbook–inspired by, but not derivitive of.
You may want to look at the Ponies for Pathfinder Racebook first. The writer seems to have tried to create a legitimate stand-alone product, not a MLP mashup or comedy piece. So, points for a clear goal.

Toys

Gothitropolis Raven Action Figure (Ends: 8/12/2013)
Six action figures of 6-inch anthro birds in gothic fantasy inspired armor, with stretch goals for several more within reach.

Video Games

Laika Believes: The Sun at Night (Ends: 8/9/2013)
A 2d action platformer featuring Laika, the Soviet space dog. Check the trailer.
Laika’s such a tragic story, I can’t blaim anyone for creating an alternate reality to give her a happy ending…

Questria: Princess Destiny (Ends: 8/18/2013)
A life simulation game with very familiar characters, human versions of the “mane six” from My Little Pony.

Fable Kart (Ends: 9/1/2013)
Multiplayer kart game in which the hare, turtle, and lots of animal friends crash and zoom around as they try to rescue the pages from Aesop’s storybook.

Web

The Pandas Show (Ends: 8/9/2013)
Multimedia web/print/video game featuring…well, various pandas, and parodies involving pandas. It’s a lot of panda.
Trailer slide show here…I’m not sure it helps!

The World of Pokemon (Ends: 8/11/2013)
A rich look at the Pokemon universe, with artistic, scientific, architectural studies. Fascinating stuff! More images on DeviantArt

Adult

Pocket Pussies: The Legend of Seven Purity Seals (Ends: 8/9/2013)
Zelda/Pokemon hybrid exploration/battling seizure monsters game, loaded with cheesecake pokemon, cat girls, and assorted anime-esque hotness.

A Petgirl’s Story (Ends: 8/11/2013)
Petplay meets the children’s book format in a VERY adult and yet charmingly innocent story of a catgirl and her owner.
Okay, “charmingly innocent” is a stretch. Half the illustrations are online already. NSFW seriously. There’s a leather dogboy for canine fans.

Chimera Labs (Ends: 8/27/2013)
Lovingly–that’s the word–detailed adult toys by Kharnak
I would like to meet the fennec fox that had one of those. They don’t usually grow that big…

Erotic Werebeast (Offbeatr voting period)
For transformation/female bodybuilder fans: a group of women test a formula that turns them into monstrous werebeasts (and soft-core stars).

…Meh.

The Elemals Graphic Novel (Ends: 8/31/2013): A bit pokemon, a bit Dragonball Z, a bit long and rambling. I’m sure this comic is about…something…but mostly it follows a somewhat uninteresting main character around on some sort of investigative story. Maybe you can make better sense of it.
Amazon Rage: Curse of the She-Wolf (Ends: 9/6/2013): A Buffy-esque miniseries featuring a female werewolf, possibly from outer space. Mmm, mediocre CGI werewolves are so hot right now.

…Causes

Wildcats of the World (Ends: 8/25/2013): A web-based interactive resource to spread awareness of the remaining sildcat species.
Save Virachey Park (Ends: 9/10/2013): Campaign to install motion-trigger cameras in Virachey park, Cambodia, to show it’s a worthwhile preserve of endangerd species. Do it for the dholes!

…Just For Fun

Meme Plus Cats (Ends: 8/17/2013): Stuffed and cartoon anthro versions of a hoste of meme cats (a plush grumpy cat and friends…)
Mahou Shounen FIGHT! (Ends: 8/17/2013): A colorful, humorous, LGBT-friendly graphic novel and webcomic breaking open the Mahou Shounen–crime-fighting magical BOY–genre.
The Wonderful Musical Animals Book and Print (Ends: 8/19/2013): Charming, rhyming book filled with vampire mandolins, rinoccordians, and tuba squid, cobbled together from Victorian illustrations.

…Coming soon?

Fox, Wolf, and Cat Hoodies by Mermade (prelaunch): Artist Mermade launching a KS soon for her line of hats, hoodies, and tails.