Revolting Musings on the 1973 Animated Version of "Charlottes Web"

First off, just to be clear: none of this is about the book. I loved the book. I loved Garth Williams's drawings. Let's just leave the book out of this.

I also have no comment about the 2006 film with Dakota Fanning, who currently stars as Cherie Currie in the biopic The Runaways. I haven't seen the 2006 version of Charlotte's Web, although I am still trying to reconcile the Dakota Fanning of a children's film from a mere four years ago with the Dakota Fanning of The Runaways, but any parent of a 16 or 17 year old female has articulated these thoughts much better than I ever could. So forget about the 2006 version of Charlotte's Web. Just let it go.

No, I'm talking about the 1973 animated film, in which Debbie Reynolds did the voice of Charlotte, and Paul Lynde did the voice of Templeton. Yeah. That one.

I admit that I loved the film when it came it came out, and still had a genuine affection for it when I got older. Still, however, there is one thing that I just need to get off my chest, once and for all:

God, did I find Wilbur annoying in this film.

I get it, honestly, I get it. Wilbur is, in effect, Charlotte's child, and she saves him from the slaughterhouse. I know. He's Some Pig. He's Terrific. Radiant. I know.

I also understand that he's bound to be a bit stressed out, especially considering that he's going to be slaughtered when he gets big enough. This has to be a difficult thing to wrap your mind around when you're a child. I understand that Wilbur's upset about this, and in the book, I'm with him; I want Charlotte to save him as much as anyone else.

But he's so annoying.

Voiced by character actor Henry Gibson, you understand why the rest of the farm animals are reserved in their opinions of him. Okay, the little chick who's the runt of the litter likes him, and says something about how he doesn't want him to be turned into crispy bacon. Still, most of the rest of the farm animals find him annoying.

They find him really, really annoying.

God almighty, does he complain. Charlotte, Charlotte, what are you going to do, Charlotte? Help me Charlotte. I'm not going to leave you alone Charlotte. Don't get any sleep, Charlotte. It doesn't matter that eventually you're going to give birth to hundreds of children, Charlotte. It doesn't matter that you probably ate your significant other after mating, Charlotte. Help me, Charlotte. Do everything for me, Charlotte. Save me, Charlotte.

Once again, I understand. He doesn't want to be killed. Still, he just gets on my last nerve. In the book, he's an innocent child, crying out for his mother to save him. For all I know, in the 2006 movie he's as adorable as Babe.

And while we're on the subject of Babe, there's a pig who took matters into his own hands. He made himself useful. Learned a trade.

Not Wilbur, and especially not the Wilbur in the 1973 film. He's infuriating. Whining. Complaining. Whining. Complaining.

It's enough to make anyone snap.

And that's why I admit that in my head, I've succumbed to that pathetic, "look at how hip I am, why don't I just hop in a time machine and move to Williamsburg back in 1992 or so before it got all played out" kind of thinking in which I reimagine the 1973 version of Charlotte's Web.

Before I go on, let me state again: this is not, in any way, a statement about the book. The book is a beautiful piece of writing. Let's leave the book out of this.

Once again and again, let's just focus on Henry Gibson's infuriating Wilbur, who Charlotte gives her life for. Let's also remember that it's not even Wilbur who saves the goddamn egg sac; it's Templeton, the lowest of the low, who does the dirty work. And don't tell me that Wilbur is all noble because he gives Templeton dibs on his breakfast slops for getting that egg sac; I don't care, and anyway, it's still Templeton who performs the service that saves Charlotte's children.

Wilbur blubbers and wails when the spider children abandon him, but there are three left behind. It made me wonder what life-sacrificing chores Wilbur will have them do. Already, he shortened Charlotte's life considerably by having her write epic tomes in her web. Now, he's got three more slaves to do all the work while he once again wins a medal at the state fair for...nothing. He did nothing. They gave him a medal just because he had a spider who wove a magic web for him. It's more depressing than The Giving Tree.

So I say, in response to the 1973 film, that I reimagine the way it plays out. I take elements from George Romero's The Crazies, and imagine a neurological virus that slowly causes all those infected to slowly lose their minds, becoming unusually susceptible to religious delusion. Then I imagine Lurvey, the farmhand who finds Charlotte's messages, becoming stricken with the illness.

In my version, Charlotte weaves chapters and verses from the bible into her web, and then tears them out the moment Lurvey sees them. This causes everyone, including Mr. Zuckerman, to believe that Lurvey is insane. Lurvey, already insane, comes to believe that only he is truly sane, and that he must do what Charlotte commands him to do.

"Yes, yes," he says, flagellating himself like medieval monk, "but what exactly does she want me to do?" The web, after all, says:

SIROCH 21:5

..which is a reference to a book contained in the Catholic Bible, but not the Protestant bible, which leads Lurvey on an obsessive search through all the churches in town, until finally, he turns to the chapter, and comes to rest upon the phrase that he starts muttering to himself on the way back to Zuckerman's farm:

His judgement cometh, and that right soon

And yes, Lurvey thinks to himself, as the virus takes full control of his brain, it is he, Lurvey, who is God's instrument of divine judgement. And so, like many other spiders across the land--for Charlotte is not the only spider who has gotten sick of the whining and complaining of the pigs in the farm, and Lurvey is not the only farmhand to lose his mind--Charlotte watches from the barn as Lurvey goes into the Zuckerman household, axe in hand, muttering with ever increasing volume "there is power in the blood..."

Still later, the farmhouse is in flames, and Lurvey, wearing nothing but a loincloth made from the skins of animals he's slaughtered, descends on the barn to sacrifice Wilbur. He needn't bother. Jack and the hunters have beaten him to it. Ralph, meanwhile, with pieces of the shattered conch on his clothing, looks into the eyes of the pig's head mounted on a post, the sacrificial god of the boys who have degenerated into primitive savagery. Ralph looks into the lifeless face of Beelzebub, The Lord of the Flies, and screams "Pig on a stick! It's just a pig on a stick!"

Outside, Napoleon and the rest of the pigs from Manor Farm walk on two legs as farmhouses across the land burn. Wilbur never learned to walk on two legs, and as Napoleon is quick to say, while all animals are created equal, some animals are more equal than others. Benjamin the mule hides in the shadows with Clover, Jack and hunters dance a neolithic dance of glee, and the mad crazed tapestry that Charlotte and the rest of the scheming spiders have created throws flickering shadows on the barnyard wall.

"Humble," Lurvey mutters, his axe slick with crimson, "humble, humble humble."

Amen.