"Gulliver Travels to Television"

Nicholas Clark
Department of English
University of Otago

nicholas.clark.otago.ac.nz

Deep South v.2 n.2 (Winter, 1996)

The Story of Gulliver among the Lilliputians has always been popular, and immediately recognisable. Images of Swift's over-sized surgeon walking delicately around the small kingdom of Lilliput have been the focus of artists and illustrators from the time the story first came into print. It isn't a terribly difficult task for an illustrator to reinterpret scenes from Gulliver's strange journal. However, a dramatic rendering of Mildendoians, Laputans and Houyhnhnms poses considerable problems.

Many obvious difficulties must has crossed the mind of producer Duncan Kenworthy whose ambition it was to recreate for television the complete story of Jonathan Swift's hero: possibly the first full adaption of the novel ever attempted for the small screen. The project had to wait seven years to come to full fruition, which is appropriate when you come this to Swift who began the satire in 1720 but didn't publish it until 1726. Swift tells his story from the point of view of Lemuel Gulliver, who is land fallen several times in lands that are dominated by little people and giants. He is also 'rescued' by a floating island of eccentric and irrational scholars. The landscapes are so well depicted, the humour so vibrant, that several credulous early readers believed the book to be a true account of travel. Readers will remember the narrator's invitation to view the stings, taken after Gulliver's famous battle with the wasps, now exhibited at Gresham College. Perhaps this isn't surprising. Swift had sharpened his narrative skill during the years of Gulliver's journey by creating the extremely persuasive figure of the Dublin draper in the first of his Drapier's Letters.

Gulliver, too, proved a success when he was introduced, and continues to enthrall audiences today. This is achieved in Kenworthy's recent production with the aid of late twentieth-century technology and special effects, and the creative input of the Jim Henson workshop. The series creates quite vividly an atmosphere of eighteenth-century society. Gulliver is constantly aware of the battle that ensues between self-serving passion and respectable reason in all of the worlds that he encounters. Kenworthy strives to make each of these worlds seem natural rather than artificial and this is done partly by way of seamless transition between Gulliver narrating his story and re enactment. However, the focus isn't upon magic exclusively. Character, characterisation and suspense are developed as Gulliver attempts to persuade those around him that this account isn't a figment of a diseased imagination. Ted Danson, in the title role, shows an impressive range of emotion. The demands of playing Gulliver dictate that he constantly there, either in voice-over or present on screen, but he is never wearying. He moves convincingly from bewildered but intrepid ship-wrecked traveller to embittered observer of inhumanity, acting as a reluctant but compelling tour guide. Scott once referred to Gulliver as a very 'real character.' If such a judgment implies a degree of sympathy for the figure then it is fair to suggest that Danson's portrayal has made Gulliver 'real.'

The threat of danger is maintained as Gulliver describes his travels to his wife, son, and a panel of cynical physicians at Bedlam. The most cynical and scheming of them all is Dr Bates, played by James Fox. Bates's plan is to prove Gulliver mad so that he may then take his place as both surgeon and as husband. Fox plays an imposing villain, managing to symbolise the face of power by exacting dark authority at home and in the asylum. There emerges an odd battle of wills: Gulliver's helpless plea for someone to believe his story is pitted against Bates's controlled disbelief. Swift himself would no doubt approve of the way both actors convey the manner in which Gulliver's apparent ravings subvert the dictates of Dr Bates's 'reason.'

Also of note among the impressive cast line-up are Mary Steenburgen who plays Gulliver's bemused wife Mary, Edward Woodward as Drumlo, Omar Sharif as a Glubbdubdribian Sorcerer, John Gielgud making a brief appearance as the Professor of Sunshine, Geraldine Chaplin as the Governess of Balnibarbi and Kristen Scott-Thomas as a sleepy Struldbrugg.

The Brobdinagian Queen (Alfre Woodard), rather than King, is given the significant task of displaying incredulity and disgust at the ugliness of Gulliver's reported human world. The Brobingagian section has always been important as it shows eighteenth-century society at its worst (managed here through the jealousy of the dwarf) and its best (the friendship of Glumdalclitch). These Brobdingagians are shown at their most salubrious: left out are passages that magnify man's true ugliness. Gulliver is not revolted by the enlarged lice and disease that he witnesses in the novel. Then again, Woodard's condemnatory speech raises human imperfection enough. The point is made as clearly here as it is in Swift, that man should remedy the less attractive qualities in his own world before making pointed observations about another. This is surely what another nineteenth-century commentator, William Hazlitt, had in mind when he suggested that Brobdingagians and Lilliputians amused Swift, while ordinary men and women made him angry. In short, Swift highlights mankind's faults while also allowing his reader to laugh at them.

Imperfection comes across most clearly when Gulliver studies the pettiness of egg debating Lilliputians. Small-mindedness, on a literal level, is made to look funny as Peter O'Toole (Golbasto the Emperor) parades wealth and splendour, but little humility. Camera magic allows Danson to peer at the tiny world in such a way that we seldom question the impossibilties of such situations. This is Gulliver's world, and Kenworthy and his team of technical wizards have done an excellent job at recreating it.

A more difficult enterprise is to establish a relationship between Gulliver and a talking horse. We are, however, given a touching view of the traveller's friendship with the Master Houyhnhnm who could, I believe, have been a little more dispassionate. Wisely, real animals, rather than obtrusive animations, are used to provide an answer to the nonsense that Gulliver has witnessed. Their appearance near the conclusion to the story marks an interesting set of visual contrasts and parallels. There is an obvious difference between the beauty of the Houyhnhnms and the primitive Yahoos, but there is a parallel drawn between the Yahoos and the behaviour of the Bedlam court as it watches Gulliver on trial. The scenes shift between the screaming savages and the so-called civilised citizens who want to incarcerate Gulliver.

Gulliver's reconciliation with his wife undercuts the embitteredness felt at the end of the novel--the discussion of pride tacked on in Danson's final voice-over seems disconnected and strangely irrelavent. Perhaps Swift wouldn't feel so comfortable with a Gulliver who is so ready to take his place among his fellow man once again. It is churlish to complain too much, however, as this television adaptation of Gulliver's Travels largely succeeds in doing what Hazlitt praised the novel for doing--to invest a moral lesson with vision and humour.