See With Your Heart
Motherloss, neurodivergent friendships and the magic of animation in The Land Before Time!
Between the release of The Little Mermaid and the Barbie movie, summer 2023 has been full of big-screen nostalgia! All that’s missing is a remaster of The Land Before Time (TLBT) to complete the triad of my early childhood obsessions. Of all the Don Bluth classics like An American Tale and All Dogs Go to Heaven, from the late 80s and early 90s, TLBT was, without a doubt my favourite. Long before Spielberg ventured into animatronics with Jurassic Park, TLBT sparked my dinosaur obsession that first woke the would-be paleantologist inside of me.
Released when I was four, TLBT is also the first movie I ever remember watching. A Disney exile, Don Bluth’s post-apocalyptic treatise on climate exile and motherloss spoke more keenly to my emo sensibilities and childhood anxieties. 35 years later it feels incredibly prescient on both a personal and global level.
Welcome to AutCasts, a free bi-weeekly newsletter by writer, Aisling Walsh, exploring neurodivergence through cinema’s oddballs, misfits & rebels!
The Land Before Time (TLBT) is a 1988 animated classic directed by Don Bluth and produced by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. We meet our protagonist, a baby Apatosaurus named Littlefoot, at the moment of his birth in the midst of a great migration of dinosaurs from their, now barren, lands to the mythical Great Valley. Littlefoot is the only child in a herd which includes his mother and grandparents. He grows up on the move, learning about the world from the safety of his mother’s back. One day his curiosity leads him away from the herd and he finds himself face-to-face with, Sharp Tooth, a vicious T-Rex. His mother is killed in the battle to protect him from Sharp Tooth and Littlefoot gets separated from the herd by an earthquake. He wanders alone and dejected until he comes across other orphan’s who were left behind after the earthquake: Cera, Ducky, Petrie and Spike. Together they must find their way to the Great Valley and reunite with their families.
Things you see with your eyes …
Few people probably realise this but, TLBT was made in Ireland! Following his split with Disney, Don Bluth was lured across the Atlantic by generous tax incentives from the Irish film industry. Sullivan-Bluth was founded in Dublin in 1985 and would give life to classics like American Tail, All Dogs Go To Heaven and Thumbelina.
My father had briefly taught at Ballyfermot College where Sullivan-Bluth had set up an animation school. No doubt aware of my TLBT obsession, my father arranged for a contact on the inside to give my younger brother and I a tour of the studios, just as their 1992 animated feature Rock-a-Doodle was about to premier. It was meant to be a treat and a chance to see something none of our friends had ever been privy to: the behind the scenes from some of our favourite animated films. I was not, however, prepared for what actually happened once we got there.
As we were brought around to meet the different animators and shown how cartoons come to life — from story-boarding through to the drawing and painting of characters — a growing sense of despair swept over me. My childhood illusions of magic and animation were being ruined before my very eyes. I felt like shouting, ‘No, no, no, I didn’t want to see anymore!’ Instead, I smiled on cue and kept my despair to myself.
I was barely seven, but I had already learned that my father would not appreciate any complaints about our “treat.” My parents’ marriage was falling apart around our ears after my father had decamped to Dublin to pursue his career and, conveniently, an affair. Though I was not aware of these details at the time, I was deeply aware of my mother’s devastation at being left single and close to penniless with three children under the age of seven. The studio tour may well have been orchestrated to distract us from my father’s sudden disappearance from our home and the chaos he left in his wake.
After leaving the studio we headed straight for the cinema to see Rocky, of Rock-A-Doodle, in action. Here too I feigned excitement, even though all I could think of were the thousands and thousands of sketches layered on top of each other. I wanted to believe Feivel and Littlefoot had simply come to life in a parallel animated universe that was then projected onto a screen. I couldn’t fathom they there were the product of human hands drawing on plain old paper, over and over again with the faintest variations to simulate movement. It was so much worse than finding out (or rather, deducing) that Santa wasn’t real: I could never fully enjoy another cartoon again.
Not all of us arrive together at the end…
My memories of TLBT have nothing to do with my father — who was mostly absent in my early childhood and present after the split in ways that were mostly destructive — and everything to do with my mother. I must have rewatched it many times as it made an indelible mark on my early childhood. But my only memory of this is watching it on a cold winter night, in front of the fire and snuggled beside my mother on the couch. TLBT is ultimately about mothers and their bond with their children.
Littlefoot and his mother enjoy an incredibly close relationship and Littlefoot learns the world through her eyes. She explains the workings of the universe, the nature of faith and the importance of their mission to reach the Great Valley. She gives up her life trying to protect Littlefoot in a terrifying battle with Sharp Tooth. During their tearful farewell Mother urges Littlefoot not to lose hope and to keep trying to find his way to the Great Valley:
“I’ll be with you even if you can’t see me. Let your heart guide you, it whispers, so listen closely.”
Watching their farewell as a six year old, I cried into my mother’s dressing gown unable to imagine what such a loss would be like. As a 38-year-old I cry even harder, recognising Littlefoot’s fear and pain as my own.
My mother passed away from cervical cancer in 2008. She was 47 and I was 23. Like Littlefoot, I felt like I was just starting out in life. In the months after her death I lost sense of my path and purpose in the world. Littlefoot’s grief is so sharp, he loses notion of everything around him: his own hunger and thirst and his purpose, despite his mother’s last words. He misses her but blames her too, even though she was trying to protect him. Unable to let go and accept the loss he chases shadows that turn out to be rocks and wanders lost for many days.
A wise stranger, Rooter, comes across Littlefoot and tries to coax him back into action. Rooter explains that death is part of the circle of life but that he must carry on:
“You'll always miss her. But she'll always be with you, as long as you remember the things she taught you. In a way, you'll never be apart, for you are still part of each other.”
True to those words, Littlefoot sees his mother in the clouds and remembers her in the Tree Star she gave him, which he carries like a talisman. The journey to the Great Valley gives Littlefoot a purpose, something to focus on so that he can keep going and bear the loss that threatened to consume him.
Three horns don’t play with long necks!
But more than his quest, it is Littlefoot’s friends who keep him going. Alone, scared and hurting in their own ways, their company softens Littlefoot’s loneliness and distracts him from his grief.
When Littlefoot and Cera first bump into each other in the earliest days of the trek to the Great Valley, their instinct is to become friends. Nevertheless, Cera’s father insists that the dinosaurs, despite all being herbivores, must ‘keep to our own kind.’ Even Littlefoot’s mother believes this to be the natural order:
Well, we all keep to our own kinds. The three-horns, the spike-tails, the swimmers, the flyers... we never do anything together.
While Littlefoot cannot see the sense in such arbitrary dictates, Cera takes it to heart and remains the most obstinate and aloof of what eventually becomes their band of mis-fit orphans, along with Ducky, Petrie and Spike. There are obvious parallels to be drawn here with the absurdity of racial, ethnic, class, religious and other divides between communities based on fear and misunderstanding. However, the one I’m interested in exploring for this newsletter is, of course, disability.
Littlefoot, Cera, Ducky, Spike and Petrie all have diverse abilities and needs based on their body types and species. But they learn to find strength in their diversity and in working together so that everyone has enough food, sleep and can make it on the trek. Petrie hitches a ride on Spike because he hasn’t found his wings yet and otherwise wouldn’t be able to keep up. But Petrie can reach the highest leaves so they can all eat. Spike needs more sleep than any of the others (something I can relate to) but he is also the strongest and they all need each other’s warmth and proximity to sleep safely.
It is in their diverse communication styles, however, that the five friends really resemble a bunch of neurodivergent kids muddling through life together. Only Littlefoot and Cera use what we recognise as ‘standard English’ to communicate. Ducky and Petrie both rely on a more limited vocabulary but find joy in the expression of many physical and verbal stims: yep yep yep! Spike is non-verbal but he communicates a wide range of emotions and needs through movement and sound.
The differences in communication styles is presented as both natural and accepted. They all understand each other, never correct each other nor impose the ‘standardised’ communication style used by Littlefoot and Cera on the rest of the group. They are a model for how we might learn to not only accept, but celebrate, the vast possibilities for human communication that exist beyond words, between the neurodivergent community and across the neurotypical-neurodivergent divide.
A journey toward life…
Phew! There’s a lot going on in a children’s movie that barely grazes the 70 minute mark, and we haven’t even got to the climate apocalypse yet!
In the grand tradition of late 20th century, post-apocalyptic, movies — eg. Mad Max, and Waterworld — Littlefoot and friends are looking for the last remaining sanctuary of water and ‘green food’ on Earth. Though our heroes make it to the Great Valley and reunite with their families, (pre)history tells us that the dinosaurs’ time on Earth would soon be over.
As a child who grew up with deep-seated climate anxiety, I wonder how much of the plight of Littlefoot, his family and friends contributed to my sense of doom about global warming, melting ice-caps, rising seas and drought. 35 years later, climate change, rather than being a distant nightmare, is an urgent reality for all human, non-human and more than human beings sharing this fragile planet. Littlefoot and friends show that to survive the crisis facing them they must learn to protect each other, make room for the displaced and dispossessed and share their drastically reduced resources responsibly.
As for me and my respective traumas: I remain estranged from my father but, I realise now that animation — the sheer skill implied in turning thousands of drawings into movement or the minute manipulations of clay required by stop-motion — is its own kind of magic.
This September marks 15 years since my mother passed and I miss her everyday. Like Littlefoot I find myself looking for signs of her presence in the world around me and ways to remain connected despite her absence. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her in my own reflection, other times I see her in my dreams. Most days, I do feel that we are still a part of each other.
Thank you for accompanying me on this journey into prehistory!
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You had me at dinosaurs. Loved this so much 👌🏽