Free Life, Animated by Ron Suskind

dialogue—anything. One scene I’ve seen him watch and rewind is when Iago tells the villainous vizier Jafar how he should become sultan.
    Back as Iago: “Funny? Okay, Owen, like when I say…um…So, so, you marry the princess and you become the chump husband.”
    Owen makes a gravelly sound, like someone trying to clear his throat or find a lower tone: “I loooove the way your fowl little mind works.”
    It’s a Jafar line, the next line from the movie, in Jafar’s voice—a bit higher-pitched, of course, but all there: the faintly British accent, the sinister tone.
    I’m an evil parrot talking to a Disney villain, and he’s talking back.
    Then, I hear a laugh, a joyful little laugh, like I have not heard in many years.
    After dinner on a weeknight in late September, Cornelia and I lead the kids down to the basement.
    It’s a week after the Iago breakthrough, and we’ve been thinking of little else. Tonight, we decide to try an experiment.
    Owen usually picks the animated movie whenever we gather in front of the twenty-six-inch Magnavox. On this night, we pick it for him: The Jungle Book . It’s a movie both boys have long loved and one Cornelia and I remember from our childhood: Disney’s 1967 rendition of British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling’s tales of Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves in the jungles of India, schooled by Baloo, the obstreperous bear, and Bagheera, the protective black panther. In the film, largely drawn from the second of Kipling’s stories, “Kaa’s Hunting,” written in 1893, Mowgli ultimately triumphs over his fear, embodied by the great tiger Shere Khan, and then is returned, somewhat reluctantly, by Baloo, to the Man-village, where he can grow to manhood among his own kind. The movie, like Kipling’s saga, is full of moral tales about the survival of individuals and communities, the nature of interdependency.
    We watch the movie until, a few minutes along, we get to its signature song. “The Bare Necessities” is a talking song, with the melody broken up by dialogue—not all that common—and it starts with a line of dialogue. We freeze the screen and turn down the sound as everyone gets up and mills about near the couch. In my best attempt at the voice and inflection of Phil Harris, who voices the bear, I hit play and then say: “‘Look, now it’s like this, little britches. All you’ve got to do is…’”
    Then we all sing, trying to get the words right, following along with the low volume of the set:
Look for the bare necessities
    The simple bare necessities…
    When you look under the rocks and plants
    And take a glance at the fancy ants, and maybe try a few.
    Baloo lifts the edge of a large rock in the movie; in our basement I lift the edge of a couch cushion.
    Just as Baloo looks at Mowgli, I look at Owen; he looks squarely back at me—then it happens. Right on cue, he says, “‘You eat ants?’” That’s Mowgli’s line—he speaks it as Mowgli, almost like a tape recording—then sticks his head under the raised cushion, as though he’s scooping up ants.
    I’m poised with Baloo’s next line: “‘Ha-ha, you better believe it! And you’re gonna love the way they tickle.’”
    Then Cornelia, as Bagheera, the wary panther, cries, “‘Mowgli, look out!’”
    Owen jumps back as I drop the cushion, just like Mowgli does with the falling rock.
    We’d slipped into roles that actually fit quite well—something we recognized a bit later—with me in the rambunctious, impulsive character, Cornelia, ever watchful and protective.
    A few minutes later, when King Louie, the crazy orangutan—voiced by jazz trumpeter/singer Louis Prima—sings to Mowgli about becoming a man, Walt’s ready: “‘Teach me the secret of man’s red fire,’” he says, pulling on his ear, waiting for the whispered secret from the boy. Owen recoils—just like Mowgli does in the movie—and says, “‘I don’t know how to make fire.’” Cornelia catches my eye; I shake my