Why Disobedience is Good in Del Toro’s Pinocchio
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One of the biggest themes of Del Toro’s Pinocchio is the purpose of abstract things. When Pinocchio is first brought to life, he launches into a musical number expressing his wonderment that so very many things exist in the world. Existence itself is something celebratory for the puppet, shouting “I love it” to every one of Geppetto’s explanations: a clock tells time, a hammer smashes things, and a chamberpot… well, poor Geppetto doesn’t quite explain that one.
But the point of the song “Everything is New to Me” is not just to delight in the chaos of Pinocchio smashing glass bottles with a hammer or wreaking havoc in Geppetto’s workshop, it underscores the wooden boy’s lack of memory or solemnity. He doesn’t see these objects as Geppetto’s possessions because he doesn’t understand the concept of possession yet. Pinocchio, in his reckless exuberance, gives no thought to ripping off the bluebird from the cuckoo clock, much to Geppetto’s dismay.
Something else worth noting about this scene is that it was obviously cut short for time. The film ends the song after the verse on the chamberpot, but the original soundtrack released the song with an extra stanza, in which Pinocchio also learns the concept of “beauty.” In a song about usefulness and purpose, Pinocchio holds up a flower and asks “what do you do with it?” To which his papa can only shrug and say, “you love it.”
Throughout the film, Pinocchio’s persistence to be as curious about the world is as much associated with goodness as honesty. Omission of truth is perhaps greater than a direct lie — a distinction that even Geppetto struggles with. As Pinocchio learns about religion, school, the circus, and even war, the age-old question “what do you do with it?” surfaces time and time again in reshaped forms, but the most important two questions are:
What is prayer for?
What is school for?
To these questions, Del Toro’s answer is simple: discipline.
What is prayer for?
The idea of “wishing upon a star” in Disney’s 1940 Pinocchio is associated with prayer, but in Del Toro’s adaptation, prayers are wishes, wishes are miracles, and miracles don’t come true.
The Blue Fairy — depicted in this grim fairy tale as a nightmare of benevolence straight from the Book of Ezekiel, a shimmering cherub with rivulets of eyes running down two pairs of wings, a human body, a lion (?) head, and a serpentine tail — brings Pinocchio to life because she wants to bring Geppetto joy. But this wasn’t Geppetto’s wish.
Geppetto’s prayers went unanswered in the cemetery, in the bombed-out church where his son Carlo died, praying at the crucifix that he probably never ever finishes painting. He prays with every nail he hammers into Pinocchio’s back to bring his real son back to life. But this spidery, spindly, pinewood tree is a mockery of what Geppetto prayed for and only serves to remind the woodcarver what he has lost.
A wish, in this film, is not what you ask for. It may even be in direct opposition to your will. But Geppetto’s life has been torn asunder by forces out of his control — an international war, the death of his son — and this wish for a miracle is a man in despair of ever having any semblance of control again. For Geppetto, the “joy” that the Blue Fairy is giving him is not literally his old son resurrected or a new son created, it’s the ability to control his despair by choosing to love Pinocchio in the way both of them need.
Prayer is for clarity.
What is school for?
When Pinocchio first meets the Podestà in the church, the officer’s immediate reaction is to question if the puppet has no strings, then who controls him?
To which Pinocchio indignantly replies, “Who controls you?”
This is Pinocchio’s first human interaction with someone other than Geppetto, and it sets up a beautiful framework for how we understand the next big idea: obedience.
Even though Carlo Collodi originally published this fairy tale in 1883, Del Toro moves the setting to Interwar Fascist Italy. The political era establishes a pretty linear understanding of power and rule — Mussolini controls the military, the military controls the citizens, and the ones who suffer the most are the children. We see this with the Podestà’s own son, Candlewick, who is afraid to tell his father that he doesn’t want to be a soldier but is more afraid of his father’s disapproval. We see this as the Podestà forces Geppetto to send Pinocchio to school, presumably hoping to indoctrinate the “immortal super-soldier” into the Fascist military regime.
But all of that is pretty irrelevant for Pinocchio in the moment when Geppetto hands him the schoolbook with the blue cover and tells him that it once belonged to a very special boy whom Geppetto loved very much, and Pinocchio understands that even though he doesn’t know what school is, he knows it matters to his papa dearly. And he promises to go to school…
…and never makes it. Instead, Pinocchio is tempted away by the circus-master Count Volpe and his monkey servant Spazzatura, merely for “all the hot chocolate you can drink and all the games you can play.” Quite simply, Pinocchio acts in disobedience.
It’s important to remember that, for almost 140 years now, Pinocchio has been told as a fable about a boy learning what makes a person good. Del Toro very carefully, very intentionally, sets his story in a place where people live under political and social dictatorship, and still asks Pinocchio to discover where goodness can be found in that.
What the Podestà misunderstands about school is that learning how to be obedient is not the same as learning how to be good; what Pinocchio doesn’t understand is that disobedience without thought is also not good.
What Pinocchio eventually learns is that fear and kindness dictate choice.
Candlewick and Spazzatura both suffer abuse in the guise of love. Both have this paternal relationship where their father figure essentially molds them as a younger mirror of themself — just as jealous, just as cruel, as much a bully as they are. More importantly, both Candlewick and Spazzatura view Pinocchio as a threat to their respective father’s love. Candlewick tricks Pinocchio into setting his feet on fire; Spazzatura tries to trick Pinocchio into leaving the circus. Candlewick knows his father thinks of Pinocchio as the perfect puppet solider; Spazzatura knows that Pinocchio is the novelty puppet act. Despite this, Pinocchio doesn’t hesitate to offer kindness to either of them. When Candlewick admits that he’s afraid of hearing his father call him a coward, Pinocchio attempts to pass on Cricket’s words of advice from earlier: “Sometimes fathers feel despair like everyone else. And they say things, things they only think they mean in the moment. But with time, they learn that, well, that they never really meant it at all.” And in the circus, when Pinocchio witnesses Count Volpe beating Spazzatura, Pinocchio angrily intervenes.
Because of Pinocchio’s kindness, Candlewick and Spazzatura both choose to disobey their fathers to protect Pinocchio.
Because of their fathers, it’s easier to understand how important it is that at the end of the film, Geppetto admits that “I was trying to make you someone you were not. So don’t be Carlo or anyone else.” Even more importantly, the film deviates from any Pinocchio adaptation I’ve seen where the Blue Fairy transforms Pinocchio into a real boy… and then Pinocchio remains the same wooden puppet we’ve seen throughout. Geppetto tells Pinocchio, “I love you exactly as you are” and Del Toro is the only one I’ve seen who visually reinforces that statement.
Pinocchio is disobedience personified. He defies Geppetto’s initial wishes, refusing to be like Carlo because he cannot be Carlo. He knows who he is, and as other people get to know him, they begin to have a new clarity of judgment. The strings of Del Toro’s world are Fascism, abuse, guilt, despair, inaction — when these are the rule, you must defy them.
It takes wisdom, it takes self-reliance, it takes discipline for Pinocchio to understand that people belong to each other in the same way possessions do, and if you love it, you take care of it, and if you care for it, this is good.
