The 2010 Children’s book, Fruit of the Vine, by Ellen Weisberg and Ken Yoffe has been a popular choice for school libraries because of its focus on the theme of bullying. Now, Weisberg and Yoffee have teamed up again to create an animated short based on the book.
The film, beautifully animated, follows Justin, a boy who’s smart and good-natured, but small. Justin is the victim of constant bullying and he has not even one friend to help him. He is, the film emphasizes, alone. He could go to his parents to ask for advice, but his parents never make an appearance. The choice to avoid showing any family or friends hammers home what it must feel like to the victim of bullying: you can’t tell anyone and no one can help.
The only solace Justin finds is in a book about lizards. While reading, he drifts off to another land. The new world is rocky and barren, save for a large blue creature named Irvino and a snake that Justin accidentally steps on. Luckily, instead of biting him, the snake offers Justin three wishes. We also learn from the snake that Irvino has been exiled to this part of the island by the other Werloobees because he’s different. The other, red, Werloobees live on the side of the island where food is abundant, but here there’s not much of anything to eat.
The symbolism here is quite revealing. On the one hand, there’s a strong Edenic theme running through the film. We have an island that is lush and full of food on one side, and rocky and barren on the other. And we have a clever snake roaming the land. Irvino, like Adam and Eve has been evicted from the beautiful garden and now must scratch and scrape for whatever rotten fruit he can get his hands on. The snake, though, unlike Satan in the book of Genesis, does not tempt Justin, but, like a genie, offers him three wishes.
The snake, though, is a realist. He knows what Justin and Irvino don’t seem to know: If you want to get ahead in this world, you have to look out for yourself. He can’t wrap his slithery head around the fact that someone might use their wishes to help another person.
So, opposing the theme of the garden of Eden, we also have a classical tale of the State of Nature, popularized by the English philosophers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and others. In this modern retelling of the garden of Eden story, we all begin in a harsh environment where big fish eat little fish and where only the strong survive. Those who are capable fence off enough land to feed themselves and defend it with their lives. Those, like Irvino, who are not strong enough, are cast out of the best places and must try to survive on scraps.
In the Biblical story, mankind is thrown out of the garden and must rely on God’s grace. Life is suffering and there’s no hope but trusting in God. In the State of Nature tales man must find a way out of this warlike situation. Justin and the Werloobees actually follows the State of Nature stories more closely than the Eden story. In order to escape the horrors of nature, someone, somewhere, must show some sort of gratitude or goodwill towards another. It is only with this first hint of goodwill that man can start to live together in peaceful society and not rely any longer on physical force.
And this is what happens in Justin and the Werloobees. Justin, who feels sorry for Irvino, uses his wishes to make sure the blue fellow has enough to eat. Irvino, meanwhile, uses his wishes to help out Justin. They’ve each found a friend and have created a bond that will help them escape from the world of bullies and scarcity.
Irvino also shares his cornucopia with the red Werloobees, who now accept him. The message here is only partly moral: the red ones only accept the blue one when there’s something in it for themselves. Justin, too, finds his reward in someone who can defend him against the bullies. He does not reform the bullies. But these are, unfortunately, the first steps towards a more peaceful civil society. One key message here for readers, though, is that one must rely on one’s self and actively find a way to solve a bad situation rather than feeling sorry for oneself.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.