Gunga Din
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"Gunga Din" (1892) is one of Rudyard Kipling's most famous poems, perhaps best known for its often-quoted last stanza, "Tho' I've belted you and flayed you, By the livin' Gawd that made you, You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!" The poem is a rhyming narrative from the point of view of a British soldier, about a native water-bearer (a "bhisti") who saves the soldier's life but dies himself. Like several Kipling poems, it celebrates the virtues of a non-European while revealing the racism[?] of a colonial infantryman who views such people as being of a "lower order". The poem was published as one of the set of martial poems called the Barrack-Room Ballads.
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[edit] Adaptations
The poem inspired a 1939 adventure film of the same name from RKO Radio Pictures starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joan Fontaine, and Sam Jaffe in the title role.
The movie was remade in 1961 as Sergeants 3, starring the Rat Pack. The locale was moved from British-colonial India to the old West. The Gunga Din character was played in this film by Sammy Davis, Jr.. Many elements of the 1939 film were also incorporated into Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.[1]
A much shorter animated version of the poem and film was made as an episode of The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, with the ultra-myopic character in the title role. He was voiced, as always, by Jim Backus.
[edit] In Popular Culture
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"The Ballad of Gunga Din" was recorded by Jim Croce in 1966. The song appears on the albums Facets (1966) and The Faces I've Been (1975). "Gunga Din" is also the title of a 1969 song by The Byrds written by Gene Parsons.
The team trophy of the Comrades Marathon between Durban to Pietermaritzburg was renamed the “Gunga Din” trophy and was first awarded in 1931 to Maritzburg United Athletics 'A' Team.
The "Gunga Diner" in the graphic novel Watchmen is a play on the poem's title, perhaps reflecting the undertones of the story.
The play Veronica's Room by Ira Levin contains a line spoken by the character "Girl" in which she references Gunga Din: "A better man than you are, Gunga Din."
The band UFO on their album Flying (1971) taped backwards the last lines of the poem at the end of the title track.
In Season 2, Episode 9 (entitled Dear Dad...Three) of M*A*S*H, Hawkeye recites part of the poem while performing surgery. This episode ridicules racism, which reflects the theme of the poem.
In Bruce Hornsby's song The Good Life (on his "Intersections" album), he mentions getting some "plastic gunga dins." The song seems to be mocking the idea of the "good life" through owning material possessions.
Hellboy quotes the last line of the poem in reference to Roger (an inhuman creature, also reflecting the theme of racism) in the Hellboy: Conqueror Worm comic.
In episode six of the first season of "The Sopranos," Livia Soprano complains about her neighbor in the nursing home. "She runs the water all day. Water, water, water. I'm... I'm living next door to Gunga Din."
Bob Dylan, in his song "Ain't Goin Nowhere," sings "Gonna see a movie called Gunga Din."
Neil Diamond, in his song "Done Too Soon," sings "Ho Chi Minh, Gunga Din, Henry Luce and John Wilkes Booth and Alexanders King and Graham Bell."
In the movie IT the character Richie says in response to being identified, "Maybe you were expecting Gunga Din."
In an episode of "Highlander", Duncan sarcastically says "You were expecting Gunga Din?" after being noticed by someone.
In the song "Chubb Rock Can You Please Pay Paul The $2200 You Owe Him (People, Places And Things)" on the album Politics of Business by Prince Paul, MF Doom compares himself to Kipling's character with the line, "In case you just tuned in, once again, / we're here with the super-villain known as hip-hop's Gunga Din."[2]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Jaap van Ginnekan, Screening Difference: How Hollywood's Blockbuster Films Imagine Race, Ethnicity, and Culture, 143, ISBN 0742555844, 9780742555846143 "Spielberg conceded that Gunga Din was one of the major sources of inspiration for the second Indiana Jones movie, and it does indeed contain many of the same elements."
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5XiXOXQdyA
- George Robinson: Gunga Din (article on the 1939 Hollywood film). Soldiers of the Queen (journal of the Victorian Military Society). September 1994.
