Tired of trying to paint the world pink,
the Pink Panther decides to burn it to the ground instead.
I.
One of the more arresting images to have come out of the latest unrest in Paris was - predictably enough - generated by AI and circulated on social media. It features the Pink Panther [1] and probably makes some readers of Deleuze and Guattari very happy ...
Why do I say that?
Well, firstly because many - perhaps most - readers of Deleuze and Guattari anchor themselves to the concept of becoming-revolutionary.
Thus, they are likely to look favourably upon the events unfolding in France at the moment - hopeful that, like May '68, the uprising signals a radical break from the established order and allows new, uncodified possibilities to emerge (even if secretly a little concerned that things will collapse into reactionary violence and mindless destruction and thus play into the hands of political figures on the far-right promising to restore order).
Secondly, Deleuze and Guattari were such groovy cats themselves - well, Guattari was, I'm not quite so sure that's true of Deleuze - that they had a soft spot for La Panthère rose, who briefly makes an appearance in Mille plateaux (1980) ...
II.
"Mimicry is a very bad concept, since it relies on binary logic to describe phenomena of an entirely different nature. [...] The Pink Panther imitates nothing, it reproduces nothing, it paints the world its colour, pink on pink; this is its becoming-world, carried out in such a way that it becomes imperceptible [...]" [2]
Without getting too bogged down in asignifying ruptures and aparallel evolution, I think Deleuze and Guattari reference the Pink Panther here in order to illustrate that becoming is not "a correspondence between relations" and neither is it "a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification" [3].
Above all, becoming "does not occur in the imagination" [4]. It's a real process; not at the level of forms, but at the molecular level of forces. "Be the Pink Panther", say Deleuze and Guattari, "and your loves will be like the wasp and the orchid, the cat and the baboon" [5].
Which sounds great - but is it great?
Isn't the Pink Panther ultimately a fanatic out to deny difference (and external reality) by painting the entire world one colour - the colour of his own fur? This seems the very opposite of becoming-world to me - more an attempt to remodel the world in his own image. He may become-imperceptible in this manner - but at the cost of denying everyone else the right to identify in their own colours.
I'm sure followers of Deleuze and Guattari will accuse me of a misunderstanding, or of a naive and superficial reading. They'll argue that the Pink Panther is free of ego and vanity - that he's actually attempting to lose himself via an act of extreme humility, not erase otherness.
Ultimately, however, despite what the followers of Deleuze and Guattari say, I still think the Pink Panther is a bit of a fascist and an enemy of diversity: Eine Welt, eine Farbe, ein Panther! He acts like a coloniser - entering another's space, painting over their history and traditions with his monochromatic colour scheme; he is deterritorializing their world or just destroying it?
III.
Funnily enough, I'm not the only one who is a little suspicious, shall we say, of the Pink Panther ... Some contemporary viewers interpret his antics as cruel and borderline psychopathic rather than comic.
For example, he relentlessly frustrates the Little Man (sometimes known as Big Nose) by repeatedly trying to paint his blue house pink, showing zero regard for the latter's property or personal preferences - and even when his actions cause chaos or misery for others, he remains coolly detached and indifferent.
He may simply be having fun, but his humour is rooted in absurdist provocation rather than warm-hearted merriment. That doesn't necessarily make him malicious or manipulative, but when I think of all the animals I've heard about, there are plenty I'd choose as companions before I'd choose a panther that is positively pink [6].
Notes
[1] I'm assuming most people know who the Pink Panther is, but, just in case there are readers who are unfamiliar ... The Pink Panther is an animated, anthropomorphic character created by Friz Freleng and David De Patie who first appeared in the opening credit sequence of the film The Pink Panther (dir. Blake Edwards, 1963).
Later, because of his huge popularity, he got his own TV show. He also, famously, has his own jazzy theme tune composed by Henry Mancini - click here - which has helped cement his place in the cultural imagination.
[2] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press Ltd., 1988), p. 11.
[3] Ibid., p. 237.
[4] Ibid., p. 238.
[5] Ibid., p. 25.
[6] I'm playing here with the lyrics from the theme song to The Pink Panther Show (NBC, 1969): click here.
Thanks to Tim P. for sending me the image that inspired this post.
