Winnie the Pooh: A Review
I just checked my Analytics and it turns out that most of the people who have visited have come here for the express purpose of finding out about kangaroo cartoons. Apparently those who have come to my website in the last month searched for the following things on Google:
For a moment, I was bewildered, and then I remembered that I wrote a post titled Forgetting (or never knowing) Real Kangaroos.
This presents a problem. My website is not about kangaroos, let alone cartoon kangaroos. I’m obviously not sure what this website is about, but it wasn’t meant to be focused on marsupials, Pooh Bears, or animation. As such, I’ve broken the reader-writer contract, which is a big error, especially if you did a Masters degree in Rhetoric. Having someone search for “kangaroo cartoon” and then landing on my website is like going to the movies to watch a romantic comedy and five minutes in realizing that you’re watching a horror film instead.
There are three potential solutions to make me feel better about myself as a writer:
1. Throw in the towel. Give up on this website in despair, because the only people visiting are those who want something other than I’m giving.
2. Overcompensate by targeting other keywords and attempting to rebrand myself as a non-kangaroo person, perhaps even going so far as to delete the original transgressionary post.
3. Run with it. If my readers want to read about cartoon kangaroos, then maybe that’s what I should have been writing about in the first place. It’s a niche market with little competition, but obviously sufficient interest. And I know the perfect thing–I just saw the new Winnie the Pooh movie. I can write about that. So here it goes.
My Review of Winnie the Pooh (2011):
The trailer, for your viewing pleasure…
Winnie the Pooh was truly a delightful film, and unlike certain comic book remakes, can please both original fans and new viewers. I admit, I fit in the “original fan” category. Growing up, I read the books, watched The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (made before I was born–who knew!), watched some of the newer films (like Pooh’s Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin), and watched dozens of the cartoons (my favorite were the Private Ear ones featuring Tigger as detective).
I was a little worried about a new movie, but was thrilled with what they did with it. Perhaps the only thing that bothered/annoyed me was Owl’s voice, perhaps because the rest of the voices matched my memory, but Craig Ferguson was too far of a departure. The new version of the Winnie the Pooh song played at the opening didn’t work for me (it shifted to a female voice)
But now for what worked. Winnie the Pooh provided a nice mix of old and new, referring to the Winnie the Pooh Canon (yes, it is a canon) without simply replicating it. For example, when Tigger enters we get the refrain of the classic “Wonderful Thing about Tiggers” song, but then we’re treated to a brand new, catchy, fun Tigger song. Throughout, the new music is excellent, and makes we want to buy the soundtrack in addition to the movie.
You know it’s a Canon when the Winnie the Pooh poster doesn’t even include the title of the movie on it.
A lot of the classic Winnie the Pooh tropes are there–Eeyore has lost his tale; Christopher Robin goes missing (Pooh’s Grand Adventure); Pooh needs more honey, etc. But it all feels fresh, not stale, partaking in the genre while reinvigorating it. The things that are departures largely add. For example, Kanga is more motherly, which is rather useful seeing as she is the only female in the cast.
Like in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, the fourth wall is broken by a narrator who talks to us and to Pooh. We also read some of the words of the book, which in turn reflect the narrative (for example, when Pooh starts thinking only of honey, we see several pages of the word “honey” on the screen).
It was a beautiful, well-crafted film. My husband and I loved it, and so did my daughter (in her first exposure to Winnie the Pooh, besides her Pooh bear bibs). She loved the music and the colors, even if she was a little too young to get the story.
Winnie the Pooh has been rather under-appreciated in terms of box office numbers, but no movie should release the same weekend as the final Harry Potter. It’s not flashy like some of the Pixars and the newer Disney’s, but it’s beautifully made, and I’d definitely recommend it as part of your family movie collection.
My Favorite Screenshots, Edition 2
Long, long ago, in a galaxy called our own, I posted some of my favorite screenshots. While organizing my digital workspace I realized that I’ve collected many more, but have neglected to post them. So here’s another batch of 5:
1. Team Edward
Actually… he’s not pasty and I’ve never seen him sparkle, so maybe Team Jacob is a more apt comparison. Regardless, our president is young, attractive, and knows it.
2. A False Dilemma
Either I click like because I have a good marriage, or I choose not to click (and not to be a fan of a page of a random company) and obviously have an awful marriage.
When faced with a False Dilemma (aka the Either/Or Fallacy) I choose not to participate. So I didn’t “not click”, I simply pretended I hadn’t seen it….
3. Google Search Predictions
How did Google know those were precisely the things I was going to search? Once again, I’m floored by Google’s mind reading technology.
4. Quarterlife Crisis
Childhood angst, teenage angst, mid-life crisis…all of those had special names. Now, with quarterlife crisis, I can feel validated anytime I’m not in a good mood and puzzle over the future.
5. Hurry!
I’m all for original arguments…. but why am I supposed to hurry? I recall there was something I learned this one time about Supply and Demand…
Why I’m Still Going to Tell my Daughter That She’s Beautiful
Last week Lisa Bloom wrote an excellent article in the Huffington Post titled “How to Talk to Little Girls.” I agree that it’s sad that “twenty-five percent of American women would rather win America’s Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize.” I agree that you should talk to little girls about their minds and “model for [them] what a thinking woman says and does.” I pretty much agreed with everything she wrote and how she wrote it. But a day later I found myself a little bothered by Lisa Bloom’s argument.
What Bloom proposes is that you should not talk to little girls about their looks, clothes, hair, etc., because “teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything.”
Thus, when I tell my daughter that she is beautiful or when her grandma complements her on a cute outfit, we are ruining her.
I can’t bring myself to believe that this is true.
I agree with Bloom’s intent, and believe that our culture has major problems. I find myself regularly angered by the objectification and sex-tification of women, and increasingly so with the male-as-eye candy (“let’s objectify men because they objectified us first”). And I believe that a focus on appearance can feed into these things, as well as a list of other problems.
However, I feel much more comfortable with a modified version of Bloom’s argument: “Only focusing on physical appearance will cause long term damage on the well-being of little girls.” I think the word only is the key.
Let’s imagine the reverse. A little girl that grows up, never once having anyone complement her physical appearance. To me, this could be just as damaging, even if all little girls were treated that way. The problem is that it devalues the body, says that the body is not important, an annoyance even. Something that should be, at best, ignored.
But the body is important. Our minds are made up of physical matter. Our eyes experience wonder at the world. Our ears hear sounds, and with our mouths, make communication possible. The way we take care of our bodies through food and exercise makes it possible for us to run, breath, live, move, experience. Our fingers can type and turn the pages of a book.
Taken to an extreme, taking care of our bodies becomes destroying our bodies, and our society is filled with this extreme, so I appreciate Bloom’s argument even if I don’t agree with it completely.
I admit, part of my perspective on this subject comes from my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Our theology teaches that our bodies are as essential as our spirits. For us, original sin was more of a transgression than a sin, the forbidden fruit necessary so we could have a full range of experiences with our bodies and spirits. Recently, one of our church leaders, David Bednar, gave a discourse entitled “Things as they Really are.” As Bednar points out, one of the challenges and risks of cyberspace is that online interaction can devalue the body, causing us to “miss the richness of person-to-person communication”; “many forms of computer-mediated interaction…can displace the full range of physical capacity and experience.”
The physical body is essential and good. Ignoring the physical body as we speak to little girls will hurt them just as we can hurt them by focusing only on physical appearance. I agree with Lisa Bloom–I want my daughter to be smart and to value her mind. I do not want her to not kill her body by dieting or change her body with plastic surgery or succumb to the propaganda that a particular physical form equates to happiness and success. And so I read my daughter books on trucks and animals, sing her songs and rhymes about both pirates and princesses, and try teaching her ridiculously big words for a child under the age of one (I couldn’t help it–incandescent is such a good word). I also help her exercise her muscles, teaching her to crawl and stand, to grab and to reach. And on some days, I dress her in an absurdly cute, frilly yellow dress covered with flowers and tell her that she’s beautiful. I hope she feels good in the same way I feel good when my husband tells me “You’re beautiful” before he asks me about what I’ve been reading, thinking, and doing.
(my daughter enjoys her physical body)
In fact, every single day I tell my daughter that she is beautiful. And every day, I teach her what it means to be a beautiful woman. A beautiful woman is appealing both inside and out. A beautiful woman is smart, and maybe some day will be like her mom and grandma and go to graduate school. A beautiful woman is spiritual and sensitive to the needs of those around her. A beautiful woman is healthy and strong, and while she takes care of her appearance, she feels confidence in her body as it is. Dearest daughter, you are beautiful.
Forgetting (or never knowing) Real Kangaroos
Today I learned what a kangaroo looks like.
Not that I didn’t know what a kangaroo is. A marsupial that can carry its young, it has ears, can hop, and lives in Australia.
The problem being that this is the only image of a kangaroo that I could bring up in my mind:
Yes, these are the kangaroos from Winnie the Pooh. (Kanga and little Roo.)
This is disturbing to me on multiple levels.
Mostly, I’m disturbed because of this painting by Rene Magritte:
The piece is called “The Treachery of Images.” The description reads, “This is not a pipe.”
To me, the point is, we’re so attached to images that we intentionally mistake them for reality. Someone holds up a picture of a pipe and asks, “What is this?” and we respond “It’s a pipe.” When really, it’s a representation of a pipe. It certainly can’t be smoked.
This brings me to Saussure. A linguistic theorist. Basically, he says that we have signs, that we use to communicate and interpret the word. A sign might be the word “kangaroo”; I’d go so far to say that a picture of a kangaroo could also be a sign. A sign is made up of two things–the signifier (the form of the sign, whether it’s the letters that make up the word “kangaroo” or the cartoon outline) and the signified (the concept that is represented by the sign–a real-life kangaroo hopping along in Australia).
So what happens when the first and only thing that I can bring to mind with the word kangaroo is a picture from Winnie the Pooh? The word no longer means a real-life marsupial, but a cartoon image to me. And if I look at a picture of Kanga and little Roo, (and get songs about Christopher Robin stuck in my head), and I can’t remember what this image of a kangaroo is actual supposed to represent, then the sign, the image, is not pointing to anything after all. It’s an end unto itself. And the kangaroo has officially become extinct–at least to me.
My husband helped me rectify this situation. We spent half an hour on youtube tonight watching kangaroos jump, drink water, box, and have baby kangaroos (called joeys–who knew?!?) climb in and out of their pouches. For good measure, we watched videos of other marsupials, like koalas and tasmanian devils.
I feel much better about life now. My representation (the word kangaroo, and the cartoon picture) is once again a representation, and not an end unto itself.
(Note: I have put no pictures of real kangaroos in this post. If you don’t remember what a kangaroo looks like, you should google it. Also, I didn’t want to think about the implications of a video of a kangaroo still being a representation, and no the actual thing….)
3 Months of Nonfiction (Jan-Mar 2011)
This next week or so my plan is to review all the books/films I’ve read in the first three months of 2011.
For today, I’ll post my nonfiction reads/views.
1. Aurora: The Mysterious Northern Lights
by Candace Savage
Did you know that for every time there are Northern Lights they are mirrored by coordinating Southern Lights over Antarctica? Or that in some mythologies, if you disturbed the Northern Lights people believed the lights might decapitate you or whisk you away?
To me, this is the ideal for nonfiction–educational and entertaining. A mix of science and mythology, of past and present. It’s filled with great photography and has a beautiful layout. And the writing is stellar. My favorite quote from the book:
By rights, we humans ought to live in constant wonderment, amazed by every star, cloud, tree, leaf, feather, fish and rock. Amazed by the supreme improbability of our own intricate existence. But except for a gifted few (artists and mystics), we lack the stamina for so much mystery. It takes a shock–a sudden burst of beauty–to wake us to the wonder of our reality.
I loved reading this book. It really just made me want to learn again, about everything from astronomy to electromagnetics to Aristotle to mythology. And if something can reinvigorate my love for learning, it’s well worth the read.
2. 49 Up
I admit, a couple years back I went through a marathon, watching almost every documentary in Michael Apted’s Up series. The gist is that every seven years, the same (charmingly British) individuals, from all arenas of life, are interviewed and then edited into a documentary. (Roger Ebert has reviewed each of the film’s–read Ebert’s review of the whole Up series.)
I admit, 35 Up is still my favorite in the series–perhaps because I saw it first, and it’s the only Up film I’ve seen multiple times. But 49 Up maintained the quality of the other films, reforming a mosaic of individual lives by refitting together the pieces of their pasts in extraordinary new ways in an attempt to capture the present.
In the documentary, one of the character’s says something along the lines of, I know this series is entertaining, but the question is, does it have value?
I think so. Every time I watch an Up film I reevaluate where I am and where I want to be in 7 years time.
3. The Remarkable Soul of a Woman
I always find myself uplifted by Dieter F. Uchtdorf, and this was no exception. His Latter-day Saint take on the role of women was both motivational and comforting. He focuses on compassion and creation as keys to life’s happiness. I love his focus on how creation is God-like, and how we create any time we write, re-see something, inspire a smile, bring order to chaos, and through so many other things. I find this is true–when I’m creating and adding to the world, rather than just consuming its products, I find so much greater joy in day-to-day living.
4. Waiting for “Superman”
Well-edited, heart-wrenching documentary that reaffirms, our educational system can be fixed. It works so well because of its focus on individual hopes, dreams, and aspirations.
I mentioned this documentary to a friend and she expressed strong feelings that our educational system is not broken, that we do provide a strong educational system to most people. Yet 5 minutes later she was talking about problems with a school principal, children with special needs and interests not being taken care of, and other problems she and her family have experienced. To me, our educational systems may not be broken in the sense that they are still usable, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to fix them.
5. Babies
This was a fun documentary that followed four babies from different parts of the world–Namibia, the US, Japan, and Mongolia–during the first year of their life. It’s not one of those documentaries that’s out to change the world. Rather, it’s a poetic celebration of life itself and the common humanity we share no matter where we’re from.
In conclusion…
I think I’ve done a good job of choosing my nonfiction reads/views this year–I’d strongly recommend each of these books/films.
Look for my upcoming reviews later this/next week, on these categories (links will be added as I get the posts up):
- Parenting Nonfiction
- Literary, Adult, and Film Fiction
- YA and MG Fiction (including a few graphic novels)
- Crafting
- Picture Books
Northern Lights image by Beatrix Rose Photography
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