Found on reddit.
Pooh and Friends
July 24, 2010
8 Comments | 
diagnosis, ex situ, psych, Winnie the Pooh | Tagged: ADHD, OCD | 
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Posted by The Editor
Ex Situ: Fear and Trembling in the Hundred Acre Wood
February 6, 2009
I’m a big fan of the classic Disney Winnie the Pooh shorts.
Well, except for the later one where the characters started to look all Don Bluthy.
And that one they did in the 1980s with Jim Cummings instead of Sterling Holloway; the animation in that is almost unwatchably poor, and Rabbit sounds a little off.
But and the Honey Tree and and the Blustery Day are brilliantly conceived, witty, well-animated, and charming.
The latest lucrative incarnation, My Friends Tigger & Pooh, if that is it’s real name, leaves quite a bad taste in the mouth.
- First of all: Tigger (a one-note sidekick character if there ever was one) is given top billing.
- Secondly: There’s some sort of Blue’s Clues/Scooby-Doo knock-offery nonsense about super sleuthing by super sleuthers. Despite being wholly inappropriate and out of character, I’m not even sure “sleuth” is a real word.
- Thirdly: Christopher Robin has all but been ousted in some sort of phantasmagorical coup d’état and replaced by a girl named Darby.
It’s this last point which is the rub. I imagine Disney created Darby in order to have an original, and therefore unambiguously copyrightable, work. However, this leads to philosophical quandaries, as Xen has noted:
The Hundred Acre Wood does not exist. This is self-evident to most of you, but let me clarify. Those of you familiar only with what Disney has done with the intellectual property may be unclear on the fact that Christopher goes from the real world into the imagined world of the Hundred Acre Wood in a way quite reminiscent of darling Alice into Wonderland. To reiterate, the Hundred Acre Wood is a projection of Christopher Robin’s imagination and is therefore contingent on him to exist. If he does not perceive it, it simply is not.
…
This tomboy should have her own imagined world in which to walk and work through a repressed sexual encounter or first awareness of her own mortality. The Hundred Acre Wood is personal and off-limits to persons not stuffed with cotton and psychoemotional detritus.
It’s a good point about fictional characters intruding on other fictional characters’ meta-fictional fictions. Seems kind of creepy and unfair. Xen also goes into detail about how each Hundred Acre Wood denizen symbolizes a different aspect of Christopher Robin’s personality, but I’m certainly not going to spoil any of that.
Fear and Trembing in the Hundred Acre Wood
> Catena Ex Situ
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8 Comments | Blue's Clues, ex situ, gender, knock-offery, My Friends Tigger & Pooh, philosophy, Scooby-Doo, Winnie the Pooh | Tagged: Blustery, Christopher Robin, Darby, sleuth, Winnie the Pooh | Permalink
Posted by The Editor
