Friday, April 13, 2007

Christopher Robin will not be ignored or forgotten!

There's going to be a lot of posts tonight, probably anyway.

I couldn't find the article on Newsweek's site, but fortunately it's a short one, so I can just type it up on here:
Oh Bother! It's Darby.
The Hundred Acre Wood had welcomed only one human: Christopher Robin. But fans who tune in to the May 12 debut of Disney's latest Pooh series, "My friends Tigger & Pooh," will find the boy has been largely replaced--by a 6-year-old girl named Darby. In the new show, Tigger and Pooh don superhero duds and solve mysteries (who's stealing Rabbit's rutabagas?). Executive producer Brian Hohlfeld thought Christopher Robin was too old for such sleuthing, so he designed Darby. She was a huge hit in the postproduction testing. But Pooh purists won't be pleased: Christopher Robin appears in only two of the 26 episodes. British journalist Hugh Fraser, who launched a "Save Christopher Robin" campaign on his blog, says Darby subverts A. A. Milne's vision. "For a girl to intrude breaks the spell of the story," he says. "They aren't
her toys."-Sarina Rosenberg, Newsweek

The blog mentioned is here.

I'm really set against the idea of Darby on the show. The whole point of Winnie the Pooh is that everyone in the Hundred Acre Woods is a stuffed animal of Christopher Robin's; does this not mean they are part of his imagination? So, who is this new girl to just show up in the Woods and play with Christopher Robin's stuffed animals, steal from his imagination in a way. Of coarse, she seems to have made a few changes when imagining these timeless characters: she made them superheros, but not just that even, superhero detectives. I must admit, the whole superhero detective thing only works with Jamie Madrox, and I think I'm a little biased towards that because it's Jamie; if it were anyone else I might think this was odd like I do now with Pooh and Tigger. But, okay, sluething superhero stuffed animals...that's a little over the top. Another thing, I may be probably the biggest Tigger fan for miles (okay, am) and I love that he's getting the recognition he deserves (outside of the Tigger movie, that is), but still, even Tigger shouldn't take higher billing than Winnie the Pooh on a Pooh-themed show. It's wrong. Okay, more on Darby because I got off topic there and don't see a way I could change it and still keep the superhero/detective thing the way I want it. I think Disney's just trying to work with a different gender on the show so they don't seem sexist. Of coarse, this fails. Darby is a tomboyish girl, and it would still be sexist (if it were to begin with, which I don't think it is) because they took out Christopher Robin, so it's just switching one gender out for another. And this is a lot less important compared to the other things I just mentioned, but it's also a 3-D animated show, which I find well, odd, compared to the style everyone remembers with Winnie the Pooh.

Needless to say, I'm against the idea of this new show...but I will still watch it because I like to have means behind my madness on occassion. This is just a first impression thing you're reading.

Save Christopher Robin! (use the link above please)
"They can't get rid of Christopher Robin because there's a song about him!"-Susan W.

2 comments:

Prince Bertie said...

Thanks for retyping the Newsweek story which I hadn't seen - our site -Storynory - is, of course, a children's podcast with a blog attached.

Best wishes

Hugh - Storynory

Steve C. said...

I hated what happened to Pooh far abck as thew 1980s..I've read the StoryNory blog for two or three years now, and my ourage at what hqappened to Pooh goes back to at least 1989 with the Sat AM Show - which had the NERVE to have Pooh dream that he's a rooten tooten sheriff..and people thought the ORIGINAL Disney ones were "Americanized"..then Sterling Holloway replaced, either willfully or not, then Paul Winchell forced out...by that Jim guy. [Whose name most know and I will but I'm too teed off to even continute..] Then this show..

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