Online Response #5: Imagination

Roy Rowland and Dr. Suess's 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is a dream adventure in every sense of the word. Like the dreams that most of us experience on a nightly basis, Bartholomew's adventure is not just fantasy, horror, or science fiction: it is a melding of all three. Like the wandering subconscious, Rowland gleefully takes us on sidetracks, twists the familiar into the fantastic, and ultimately, returns us to the waking world, a little wiser and well worn.

The genre of the 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is difficult to establish. Vivian Sobchak, whose classifications of fictional stories I find persuasive, would see the fantastical in this film, as many of Bartholomew's dreams become reality at little sacrifice to himself. The ridiculous 'sound remover' concoction created at the end comes at little personal sacrifice, and the science literally bends its will to satisfy the boy's desires. It is not science, it is the pure power of wishing, or fantasy. On the other hand, Bartholomew's journey could be seen as a horror. Sobchak defines horror as a story which rewards exploration with complete disappointment or even destruction, which indeed happens several times in the film. Bartholomew is constantly trying new doors, passage ways, and also tactics to win back his mother and escape the evil academy, and they mostly fail. He has difficulty communicating with adults (a common childhood horror) and the dungeons are literally scenes from nightmares. Science fiction elements are also apparent. Sobchak notes that science fiction narratives are interested in the display of a world over a character, and with the many meandering music and dance numbers, it is not hard to see a focus on place over character. Ultimately, this place must be sacrificed to grant the children freedom. The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is certainly not a genre picture, and if anything, must be described as a 'dream' picture. It is pure imagination.

Another aspect of the film that links it clearly in our minds as an imaginative experience is the meandering nature of the narrative. Though this is a common trait in musicals, it is noteworthy that several of the songs (Zabladowski's seduction to Dr. T's power, the dungeon sequence, Dr. T's dressing sequence) do not involve the main character of Bartholomew. He is a silent, or dreaming, observer to all of these numbers, which often serve the establishment of the world over furthering the character driven narrative. Like a section of a dream that we cannot shake, these visually rich sequences stick with us even when the finer points of the plot have faded away.

Finally, the film makes good on a childhood wish: that our imaginations really do make a difference in the world. Though we as viewers know that Bartholomew is dreaming, we, like him, secretly hope throughout the film that when he awakes, he will not only have overthrown Dr. T in his dream, but also in real life. We are familiar with this hope from our childhood. We have all secretly hoped that our toys might come alive, as we imagine them, or that if we dream we have received a present, that we will find it magically the next morning. At first, when Bartholomew wakes, we are disappointed. His imagination seems to have been for nothing. But the prick of the finger on Zabladowski's hand proves it: Bartholomew's imagination has changed the real world. 

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, though terrifying, puzzling, and surreal, is rich in its promise about imagination. To many children, dreams are the only tool they can wield against a hard world they do not understand. In the world of Rowland and Suess, those dreams are a valid tool to be respected.