"The name's Bear. Edward Bear."

[nmg]

Seen here on officialgaiman:

I see from USA Today that Christopher Robin is being replaced by a "tomboy girl" in order to appeal to the youth of today. http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2005-12-06-winnie-the-pooh_x.htm. Undoubtedly Disney have done lots of marketing research on this. As we learn from the article, "We got raised eyebrows even in-house at first, but the feeling was these timeless characters really needed a breath of fresh air that only the introduction of someone new could provide," says Nancy Kanter of the Disney Channel.

Whatever next? Antidepressants for Eeyore?

I know that Milne's books aren't perfect. They're a little sugary at the best of times ("Tonstant Weader fwowed up", as Dorothy Parker wrote), but the existing Disneyfication makes my pancreas ache with the way it replaced whimsy with sentimentality. I'm not even going to start the rant about my intense hatred of the Disney illustrations compared to E.H. Shepard's elegant originals, since it's a bit of a long one. Since they're not content with butchering it once, they're going to do it again, except this time they're getting rid of the central character, namely the young boy to whom the stories are being told.

I knew I shouldn't have bothered getting out of bed this morning.

Comments

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

timeless characters really needed a breath of fresh air

So not THAT timeless, then, eh?

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

my thoughts exactly

[elseware.livejournal.com]

Sorry Nick, I meant to tell you.

Last week, Steve and I sold Disney the rights to TOTL.

They promise to stay true to the origional.

Except that Al has been replaced by a talking Toucan.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Well that rather puts the kibosh on the "TotL Members' Wives" centrefold feature that I'd been negotiating with Hustler magazine, doesn't it...

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

cool! i get a wife!

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Da-ave? Da-ave! He's your wife now!

[pinguthegreek.livejournal.com]

It's Americans. Do you expect Americans in the entertainment industry to have a brain cell each to rub together ??

[nmg.livejournal.com]

It could always be a way of weaning the US off its dependence on fossil fuels by hitching up generators to the spinning corpses of A.A. Milne and Christopher Robin Milne.

[pinguthegreek.livejournal.com]

And I thought I was cynical !

[hsw.livejournal.com]

A tomboy girl? So presumably, later, they can inject a breath of fresh air by giving her a makeover. I'll just go vomit now.

H

[gmh.livejournal.com]

I think it's a mark of how desperately short of ideas Disney are; they're churning out such timeless classics as The Jungle Book 2.

('...Winnie the Pooh went thump-thump-thump as another Disney executive slaked his depraved lusts on the bear's rotting carcass.')

I agree entirely about the superiority of Shepard's illustrations; it's one of the (many) reasons I loathe Disney as an entity.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

('...Winnie the Pooh went thump-thump-thump as another Disney executive slaked his depraved lusts on the bear's rotting carcass.')

That rather puts me in mind of this. I'd almost be more willing to see a new W-t-P project along these lines that what Disney are proposing.

[angua.livejournal.com]

Awwww.. that brings back memories, that was my first ever email forward sent to me.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

The one they can't sequelise is Mary Poppins, as they were only sold rights to the first book, har har.

My loathing for Disney was scarcely reduced when the Ladybird noverisation (!) of The Hunchback of Notre Dame appeared, sans any mention of Victor Hugo.

[makyo.livejournal.com]

I'm not even going to start the rant about my intense hatred of the Disney illustrations compared to E.H. Shepard's elegant originals, since it's a bit of a long one.
I agree wholeheartedly, as might be expected.

I could get distressed by Disney's latest stripmining of other people's culture and ideas, but I think the most sensible approach is to just not regard the Disney versions as having anything to do with the works of A.A. Milne, but to continue cherishing the latter for the qualities they have. Disney have made a few short films containing characters with familiar names and passing resemblances to Pooh, Piglet, et al, but these should not be considered to have any connection with the real Winnie the Pooh stories written by Milne.

These are not the stories you're looking for. Move along. Nothing to see here.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

The parents of my elder god-daughter wisely shielded her from most of the Disney stripmining of Milne's work, the dealbreaker being Pooh's American accent.

[christiffer.livejournal.com]

I also note that tigger has been subjugated by the health and safety daemons, and is now wearing a helmet.....


GaaaH!

[opadit.livejournal.com]

Next time they feel it needs an update, they'll make the tomboy girl a princess.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

I now have visions of Christopher Robin as the recipient of the makeover received by Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club, as envisaged by Disney. They're not pretty visions.

All this now makes me want to seek out a copy of the Soviet Winnie-the-Pooh films made by Soyuzmultfilm in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

[coffeeandtv0.livejournal.com]

Those films are great. We used them as source material in a Russian language lab session in my first year. Great fun. If you find anything, let me know.

- Rob

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Arse. This means that Bath has VHS copies of them, and I didn't take advantage of this before ias left :/

[coffeeandtv0.livejournal.com]

Ah. Should have mentioned that one earlier shouldn't I? It wasn't, however, on VHS - it LOOKED like it was an MPEG on the computer or some such thing - I'm not too sure how the computer lab works in 1WN but I'm sure someone would tell you if you asked nicely.

- Rob

Even though I'm a cat person, personally I love that dog...

[killtest.livejournal.com]

"I'm not even going to start the rant about my intense hatred of the Disney illustrations compared to E.H. Shepard's elegant originals"

Ditto. And for a LONG time. As a kid I didn't even know there WERE different illustrations to the Disney fodder. I loved them when I found them a few years on. But it is the whole Pooh debacle that FIRMLY put me on an anti-Disney footing; no mercy, no compromise.

The dog in question is from the story a few years ago concerning when the Disney Stormtroopers in grey suits. Having finally got control of the property outright - already in the process of the ethnic cleansing of all imagery in marketing relating to the Shepard drawings as opposed to the Disney version - these filth turned up to claim the original toys the characters were based on, to take them to the Disney Museum in one of their two American coastal abominations. As they were being handed over a dog grabbed Roo and ran off. Into what's left of the Hundred Acre Wood.

No amount of searching, following the dog, bribing the dog analysing the dreams of the dog etc etc would result in the recovery of the original Roo.

So somewhere, there is small stuffed baby kangaroo toy, alone in a damp English wood, probably by now wholly decomposed - but forever beyond the vile satanic claws of the most nauseating superpower on the planet. Free.

I love that dog.



(I should make the admission here to still being very fond of, and being able to sing, the cartoon Tigger song.. I'm sorry.)

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

At least it oughtn't bother Christopher Robin, who, as I understand it, loathed his lifelong identification with the books.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Well, that and him having died in 1996...

[jorune.livejournal.com]

http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/dorktower/images/comics/dorktower489.gif

John Kovalic's take on this.