Authority figures and transformation

After FAR too long of no postings, I’ve decided to write a post about one of the favorite subjects for transformation — authority figures.

Many transformation stories are about people in positions of authority LOSING their authority when they are transformed. One of the earliest TF movies I can recall, 1964’s The Brass Bottle stars Tony Randall as a man who buys the titular object, which has, yes, a genie (Burl Ives) inside. (To make things even more interesting, Randall’s love interest, Sylvia Kenton, is played by Barbara Eden, a year before she would become I Dream of Jeannie‘s, well, Jeannie.)

One of the other characters is his girlfriend’s father, Anthony Kenton, Played by Edward Andrews. (You know him from a LOT of 60s TV and movies.) A future father-in-law is a definite authority figure. As the movie progresses, the genie decides that this character is as “stubborn as a mule” and turns him into one. (Sorry, we don’t see him transformed into the beast or back.) Kenton spends a while as the mule before being turned back into a human.

Sitcoms of the ’60s deal a great deal with what were regarded as authority figures of the time: Husbands, such as Bewitched‘s Darrin, who demanded that his wife conform to his standards; and I Dream of Jeannie’s Tony Nelson, the title character’s “master.” Both were frequently turned into different things. (As were several of Darrin’s clients, who definitely had power over him.)

Another kind of authority figure who have found themselves transformed over the years are teachers. There’s a not-bad movie to be found on streaming, 2015’s, Help! I Shrunk My Teacher! Its one major flaw in that the reduction happens off camera. But it also has a nice scene where the teacher, after having some condiment spread over her, has to spend time concealed in a cardboard toilet paper tube while her clothes are washed. (I’ve also encountered a real-life teacher online who has confessed to fantasies about being shrunk.)

There was also a mostly text story decades ago in Vampirella about a boy who learned how to turn his teacher into a frog. It didn’t turn out well for him, but I’ve always remembered the story. There was a story in one of DC’s horror comics in which a mother, who’s a witch, turns a teacher into a frog — which is later, off-panel, dissected.

How about police officers? In the movie One Touch of Venus, a god on Earth starts to turn a cop into an owl, and he starts hooting. But the change is interrupted and not resumed.

The reason authority figures make such tempting targets for transformation is that TF takes away the figure’s power, maybe leaving him or her with NO power. Many times, the entity doing the transformation doesn’t understand or recognize the power of the authority figure and things get — messy.

Of course, sometimes the authority figure’s authority is over the one doing the transforming themselves. How many times on Bewitched was Serena or someone punished by an older, more powerful witch? And I just watched a Casper cartoon (in a universe where the world knows who Casper is and knows he’s friendly) where a “Ghostly Council” punished Casper for being friendly by taking away his ghostly power.

Authority figures are fun to play with, fun to transform. It’s a powerful reminder that such figures do NOT have that much power, when you get down to it.