SAMBO’S RECURRING NIGHTMARE

As irony (although due to the divination approach, it’s a bit ontologically lazy to describe things this way, but because people understand irony better than magic, so be it) might have it, I looked up the Little Sambo story after I completed the animation just to confirm my memory of it, and found that I was unaware of a few key details. First, it was four tigers, not two. I was fine with this, as my version was meant to be a gestural abstraction of the tale, not a direct representation of all its narrative points. The second thing I didn’t know about the story, however, was its actual motive and ending.

Apparently, the tigers, who had whipped themselves into a creamy frenzy around this tree, had done so first in pursuit of eating Sambo, but were later distracted by Sambo’s surrender of his fine garments, which appealed to the tigers’ vanity. They began chasing each other after an argument about who was the best dressed. In terms of the ending, Sambo’s family decided that a bounty of free butter was not to be wasted, and instead, his father collected it, and his mother used it to make some pancakes (!!!!!!).

When I read this last detail, I screamed internally. Because although the appearance of the stack of waffles in my animation seems to be an oblique nod to this moment in the tale, it was absolutely an unconscious and original decision. I am fascinated by the collectivity of consciousness! The original story was written in 1899, and over 100 years later, I was able to divine the same use for butter. Racist sensibilities aside, I guess that’s what’s meant by “common sense.”

Although this tale was initially written by a Scottish woman, and since its many versions along the years, has been decried as a racist tale, I enjoy the very African element of the trickster figure, shown in Sambo’s decision to distract the tigers and triumph with his life (and some unsolicited but welcomed butter!) by appealing to their baser senses.

Also divine — as the musical accompaniments in my moving images almost always are — are the lyrics in Boswell, the Westside Gunn song I paired with this animation, in its synchronicity with the new details I learned of the story. Along with the dismal and vintage tonal vibe that conjures up, of a forest night scene with hyenas laughing in the distance, it begin with the lines “Niggas wanna be me bad/Talk like me, walk like me, cook like me, look like me, braids like me…” I can just hear these vain tigers diss rapping about how much flyer they are than the next cat, LOL. Pun definitely intended.