Five go to America but it Disney work

Published on Monday 24 March 2008 09:26

IF you happen to catch the new Famous Five kids' TV series starting in May, you may well ask: "What kind of Mickey Mouse operation is this?" In an act of sheer literary vandalism, Disney – who else? – has stripped the very heart out of Enid Blyton's adventures and characters and in their place offered up a pale imitation of Scooby-Doo.

Instead of Julian, Anne, Dick, George and Timmy, we have Max, Allie, Dylan and Jo. Only Timmy remains, but even he has been transformed from a large, hairy mutt of indeterminate breed to a know-it-all collie.

If, like me, your childhood revolved around the Famous Five and the Secret Seven, you will be truly horrified by the chisel-jawed, cool, Americanised version and such ridiculous episodes as The Case of the Impolite Snarly Thing and The Case of the Thief That Drinks From The Toilet (which in any case should be "who drinks from the toilet").

It gets worse. Jo is half-Indian, the daughter of the original George. Allie is the Californian offspring of Anne, who moved to the US after "college". Dick begat Dylan and Julian begat Max. Pass me the smelling salts!

Of course, this isn't the first time Disney has taken classic British creations and mangled them for US consumption, a mysterious tactic since, otherwise, they seem to be in love with all things British, from Frasier's domestic help, Daphne, to Jean Luc Picard. It's not as if they can't understand the accent.

The tragedy is that we now have generations of UK children who think Winnie The Pooh speaks with the voice of a small, 60-something, wheezy, American gent.

The same US makeover fate befell Dennis the Menace, but arguably the greatest sacrilege was what they did to Noddy. Now fair enough, the golliwogs had to go. But then came the decision to bring in an assertive, ethnic, female character, Dinah Doll.

Big Ears was renamed Whitebeard lest he offended the deaf. PC Plod became Officer Plod and, of course, the whole of Toytown was imported to America with every character, including Noddy, speaking Stateside.

It's not just the abduction and re-grooming of "our" childhoods. The Famous Five was set from 1942 to 1963. A huge part of its fascination is the time machine that takes us back to when excited children said "Golly!" rather than "Holy S***!" and celebrated with lashings of ginger beer rather than cheap cider.

Catching smugglers with guile and courage was their thing. The new lot use webphones and laptops and hunt down fake DVDs.

Interestingly though, the Americans never feel the need to update Huckleberry Finn. Oh no. Their period pieces get to stay in situ.

The original Five characters were carefully crafted to relate to young readers with varied personalities. Anne was the gentle, fearty one and George the tomboy (who, I would say, was unlikely to have given birth to "Jo" without artificial insemination if you get my drift).

Julian was the adventurous leader and Dick was the rock. Timmy, while a truly heroic canine, behaved like a real dog.

Like real children of the 50s, they were left to their own devices for most of the time, hence their freedom to take part in thrilling escapades. In today's society they would be described as "neglected" and be taken into care.

Yes, they were unashamedly middle-class, white and terribly, terribly English; as English as Pride and Prejudice or Larkrise to Candleford. And that's the way they should stay.

As children, my friend and I "played" Famous Five (or Two). Our base was my garage. We would lock on some hapless neighbour and follow him, hiding behind hedges, noting down his comings and goings having convinced ourselves he was up to no good. Lord knows what our "suspects" thought we were doing.

Sadly, such is the global power of Disney that it won't be too long before British children forget the Five holidayed on the Cornish coast rather than California and that they were ever anything but a cartoon series among many bland, samey, predictable, trite cartoon series.

We should be blaming Chorion, the British firm that owns the film and TV rights and has sold our heritage, presumably for megabucks. I, for one, will never forgive them.

Mystery of misery

AT last the literary world (specifically some Orange Prize judges) is turning on what has been dubbed "misery-lit", writers who churn out books about their ghastly childhoods, their inadequate parents, their cruel siblings, their unfaithful spouses and their whole, tortured existences.

I'm all for a bit of sharing and self-help groups. We all have obstacles to overcome in life and there's nothing wrong with a bit of support to help us quietly heal our wounded psyche.

But increasingly these – disturbingly similar – selfish, neurotic, obsessive revelations are discredited and exposed as sheer fantasy and attention seeking.

True or not, real life stories about abuse, neglect and misery account for almost a third of non-fiction sales. Most sane people have misery enough of their own to dwell on . . . so who's buying them?