Tarzan (1999, dir. @GoofyMovieDir & Chris Buck) is on Disney+, so let’s talk about one of its most brilliant sequences. Want to see how “Strangers Like Me” subtly teaches the history of early animation & reflects on what animated film at its best does for us? Follow along (1/27)

After the English explorers meet Tarzan and struggle to communicate with him, Jane comes up with the idea to teach him about them and their language through pictures. She and her father set up a “magic lantern,” one of the earliest precursors to animated film (2/27)

Invented in the 17th century, the magic lantern is a projector that uses firelight and painted glass slides. Here’s a model from 1895–1905, around when Tarzan is set. To Victorian audiences, they offered entertainment and a way to experience the world beyond their reach (3/27)

At magic lantern shows, the projectionist — often accompanied by an organ-grinder — would show slides, elaborating on the images and using them as a basis to tell stories, sometimes familiar (e.g., the Christmas story), sometimes exotic (e.g., China or the American West) (4/27)

Later, wide-format slides were developed so that the projectionist could pan through a scene, effectively “moving” the camera across a landscape (5/27)

Wide-format slides also allowed for faster movement through a narrative sequence. Here’s a great one. The slides are numbered 1–8, so be sure to read them in order from right to left. Can you tell what the story is? Hint: Disney produced its own animated version in 1950! (6/27)

To achieve full animation, more complex magic lanterns were developed to hold one slide stationary and one or more additional slides that the projectionist could move around, as in this example of a ship at sea (7/27)

Later in this scene, we see Jane’s father showing Tarzan another precursor to animated film: the praxinoscope (“action viewer”), an improvement on the zootrope (“wheel of life”) invented in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud, a magic lantern slide painter and projectionist (8/27)

Reynaud is often seen as the father of animated film. To learn more about his work, check out The Story of the Animated Drawing (1955), also on Disney+, which explores his 1888 Théâtre Optique, the first animated motion picture system, mixing praxinoscope and magic lantern (9/27)

The film even reinforces links between the praxinoscope and modern day animation by showing the penny-farthing rider turning into Tarzan, who then rides wildly along the trees. Note how the aspect ratio changes as 19th century animation blends into its 20th century form (10/27)

So the English explorers use their day’s forms of animated film to teach Tarzan about people & places he’s never seen — which is just what Disney’s Tarzan (1999) is doing for us in the audience, who likely have never been to African jungle or observed gorillas in the wild (11/27)

Let’s dive deeper and explore the lessons being taught to both Tarzan and us. The first slide Tarzan sees shows a gorilla. He’s surprised & intrigued — it’s familiar but also not, a “stranger like him.” True for us, too. These animated humans are strangers...but like us (12/27)

Tarzan moves so his & the gorilla’s faces overlap. He has always seen himself as a gorilla, so he sees himself in the slide. But then he is shown an Englishman dressed in shorts similar to his loin cloth, whom he promptly mimics. Has he been wrong about who he really is? (13/27)

Next, Jane shows a slide depicting the jungle, which she swaps for one of a London street. Notice how Tarzan’s posture changes: against the jungle, he stands erect (“tall with pride”), but against the backdrop of London (& to those from England) he’s more animal than man (14/27)

This magic lantern show is moving in a predictable and troubling direction, as is the film. Cultured English saviors have come to use their advanced technology to show Tarzan how backwards and ignorant he is of the world, how he needs to “evolve” to become more like them (15/27)

But it’s about to flip and lay the groundwork for a fascinating turn, sowing doubt about the assumed lesson that being “civilized” (that is, like modern English people) is the same as being a “person” and that those who look, think, and act differently are less than human (16/27)

Tarzan stares in awe at a slide showing the planets, and then Jane & her father take him outside to show him the actual night sky. The magic lantern serves as a starting point to learn about and experience new aspects of the world in person — just as animation can for us (17/27)

But teaching isn’t a one-way street, & “uncivilized” Tarzan is about to take Jane from a solitary parrot to experience hundreds of birds on their own terms. Here too we see animation (in the form of reference sketches) as a starting point for connecting w/ the real world (18/27)

Animal life-drawing has been part of Disney animators’ practice since the beginning, and this moment reminds me of these 1941 photos of Disney artists Lee Blair, Charles Wolcott, & Herb Ryman sketching birds in Rio (from Walt and El Grupo (2008), also now on Disney+) (19/27)

The parrot scene acts as a mirror to the astronomy scene. Note how Tarzan and Jane/Jane’s father swap poses — arms extended downward in awe at the new vs. expanding in comprehension — and how small the humans against the backdrop of hundreds of birds/stars in the sky (20/27)

What seemed at first to be a story of a “savage” needing to be “civilized” has instead become one about how different people can have equally worthwhile perspectives and how animation can bridge those divides and help find a common understanding — “two worlds, one family” (21/27)

This parallel is reinforced by another set of scenes. Right before Tarzan sees the planets slide, Jane shows him an English couple dancing. He takes her hand and, although she’s tentative, they begin swirling around one another (22/27)

After the parrot scene, they do something similar, but on vines! Tarzan takes her hand and, although she’s tentative, they start twirling around one another. Beautiful symmetry: English dance —> English natural observation —> jungle natural observation —> jungle dance (23/27)

At the beginning of this scene, we’re led to believe that “Strangers Like Me” is going to be about using pictures to teach Tarzan about people different from him — but as it proceeds, we see Jane using pictures to learn just as much about this stranger like her (24/27)

Importantly, Jane’s drawings don’t exist without first-hand observation. If it weren’t for Tarzan as her local guide, she would never have seen the rich world of the jungle canopy and the birds that she could only glimpse fleetingly earlier. Another two-way street here (25/27)

Incidentally @GoofyMovieDir, are Jane’s sketches animated versions of the Tarzan team’s own sketches? Is she drawing something that one of your artists drew while developing the film? (26/27)

So the film models an ideal experience of learning through animation: we are captivated by the unfamiliar, our world expands, we learn how artists work behind the scenes, and — most importantly — we see how they themselves learned from others to convey those lessons to us (27/27)

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little journey. If you haven't seen Tarzan (1999) or it's been a while, it's a beautiful film that's worth your time. If you liked this, please retweet the thread — I may walk through some other great Tarzan scenes if there's interest.