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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Christopher Robin to be replaced by a Tomboy.

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21:15 / 09.12.05

The Devil promised him sweeties, but the Devil lied!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:57 / 10.12.05

Heh. I was gonna make that joke, but I didn't think anyone else would get it. Poor Christopher Robin- his soul is confused.

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

17:42 / 11.12.05

she's discovered boys and no longer needs to clutch his tubby-little-cuddly-all-stuffed-with-fluff body between her rhythmically-flexing thighs in the middle of the night, and you've got the makings of a great coming-of-age movie.

Hinterland! Too much information!

...though it explains SO much about Pooh's mental disorders. Past traumas indeed!

THough honestly I'd like to see our new "Christopher Robin" continue to reiterate that her name is "Christine Robinsky". But a half hour into the movie she finds the tattered, blood spattered notebook of one "Christopher Robin", the final page of which reads:

"The animals have turned against me. I think that damn bear is leading them. He's never been the same since I fed him that psychoactive honey as part of the Grand Experiment. They're all so grand, the teeth fold so nicely into their plush frames. But...I fear for my safety here. The orange one has damn near achieved the ability to fly. Thank god I killed the owl, though. His house is the highest building I could find. I can hear them scratching at the doors now. The rabbit and the pig are moaning for flesh. God save me."

22:15 / 11.12.05

She's discovered boys, etc.

This would, I agree, make for an interesting 'coming of age movie,' especially if Christine(?) Robin was continually revisted by the girlhood chums she'd deserted on her thirteenth birthday, when she started having teh sex, during the tortured adolescence she'd inflicted on herself by 'leaving the 100 Mile Wood' in the first place. It would be difficult for her to come to terms with all this, so she'd start taking drugs, and lots of them. Each of the characters would then represent a kind of party treat - Pooh would be cannabis, Tigger, speed, Owl, LSD, Eeyore, Ketamine, and so on, they'd flicker in and out of her ascent to the top, A-level revision, Oxbridge and such, until the final scene where Christine, bereft, having been done over by an older man and having not got that job at Goldman Sachs, finally saw her way back to all her old friends again, all at once, and so found her road back to AA Milne land - the last lines of the original text could then be read over scenes of Christina being driven away in the back of a car to The Priory, but this probably isn't the movie they're going to make, sadly.

09:56 / 12.12.05

Christopher Robin is one of the least gendered characters in children's fiction, and I honestly can't see what on earth difference making him a girl would make - it has about as much relevance to his characterization as making him two inches taller.

Disney's Pooh is a horrible thing with little relation to AA Milne, I cheerfully agree, but Christopher Robin's gender has got nothing to do with any of that. Making her a girl is actually rather heartening, given how few people are bothering with female protagonists in children's writing these days, instead of just accepting as eternal truth that girls can identify with boys but boys can't identify with girls because OMG GIRLS ARE ICKY.

11:11 / 12.12.05

I've heard their periods attract bears.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:07 / 12.12.05

Now we are sick.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

23:43 / 12.12.05

Why is this a bigger deal than the other non-canon characters introduced into the series for no better reason than to make the overall representation of fauna more... American?

Ummm.

Look, I've been trying not to say "Dudes, what's another beaver?" since this thread started and I just can't do it, okay? I JUST CAN'T!

11:39 / 13.12.05

I wonder if the main reason why Chris R is potentially going to be sex-altered is that hir relationship with Pooh Bear would otherwise seem a bit 'camp.'

It'd be a dark and depressing world if that was true -'Piglet, dude... man, try and control yourself... At least try and control yourself... Man, put that away... Shit...'

14:21 / 13.12.05

I know that this is considered by some to be a female empowering decision or whatever, but I sense that in reality there is an underlying sexism behind this transformation.

After all, God forbid there should be little boys having picnics in the woods with stuffed animals. Stuffed animals are for girls! Little boys should only be interested in monster trucks and violence. Christopher Robin was a sissy, nobody wants their son to grow up to be a sissy.

We need to reinforce masculine stereotypes, dammit!

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:23 / 13.12.05

What have you used to "sense" that underlying "reality", my friend?

14:44 / 13.12.05

I dunno, maybe it's just my inherent cynicism.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:54 / 13.12.05

But in that case, why make her a tomboy? Disney seems to be altering the gender but not the characteristics...

15:09 / 13.12.05

Is it really so difficult to presume that it may simply be because the stories feature a lack of female characters and they're trying to address the imbalance?

15:09 / 13.12.05

A "tomboy" is still a girl, she just doesn't wear pink.

I don't mind a new character being introduced so much as I mind the idea of Christopher Robin being replaced.

Maybe I'm just reading too much into all this, but I don't see why it's OK for girls to be rough-and-tumble but it still doesn't seem to be acceptable for boys to show a gentler, more "feminine" side without being called "genderless".

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:16 / 13.12.05

it still doesn't seem to be acceptable for boys to show a gentler, more "feminine" side without being called "genderless"

This seems like an interesting point of discussion.

What does it have to do with Christopher Robin?

He hasn't been "replaced", you know. If you look in the books, he's still there!

15:22 / 13.12.05

He hasn't been "replaced", you know. If you look in the books, he's still there!

But I don't see why he can't be visible in the new series as well. He's as much of a character as Pooh or Tigger. Imagine the uproar that would occur if one of them were sent out into the woods to "play" and (possibly) never seen again...

I just don't want him removed entirely, that's all.

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:27 / 13.12.05

Yes, imagine the uproar! On the internet. From people who don't believe new versions of old stories should ever change anything. Also, once more, I don't know how I can stress this enough, but as far as I'm aware nobody is going through old Pooh books cutting out Christopher Robin and sticking in a picture of a girl.

agent darkbootie

18:37 / 13.12.05

I think what really upsets people about this (well.. me) is just how much Disney has taken the "Focus Group Uber Alles" mentality.

If it hadn't come up in a focus group, nobody would even be considering it, but that random group of people picked out of a mall and stuck in a featureless room seem to have more sway over them than a Two-Fisted Axe-Weilding Mighty Jesus would if he descended from heaven into the board room.

What most people forget is that you put a bunch of kids in a room and they'll tell the woman with the clipboard what they think she wants to hear.

And more importantly, these people have no idea how just the random act of replacing a character with someone more "likable" or "relatable" could change the dynamic of a whole story. Would it in the case of Pooh? I dunno. I can see all kinds of fun ways to bend the Pooh legend to amuse us jaded oldsters. But would it have dat same "Poohness" we all fell in love wit? (Or didn't. Pick your own personal case.)

It's like when Warner Bros. decided to do a cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny fighting crime in the future, all cyberpunked up. "The kids went nuts for the designs!" Of course they did. But that doesn't mean it's not a terrible idea. The kids went nuts for Jar-Jar Binks.

I've actually known people on the inside at Disney, and heard stories people who've had pretty good projects until focus groups came back with unmoored ideas. It's called the "put a princess in it" mentality. They don't know a good story from a bad, they only know what they think their market wants.

And thing is, people usually don't know what they want until someone does it well in the first place.

Blah, blah, blah... I'll put it to rest now.

18:53 / 13.12.05

It's like when Warner Bros. decided to do a cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny fighting crime in the future, all cyberpunked up. "The kids went nuts for the designs!" Of course they did. But that doesn't mean it's not a terrible idea. The kids went nuts for Jar-Jar Binks.

And you didn't. Answer: you're not the intended target audience.

agent darkbootie

19:02 / 13.12.05

I see that point. We should let kids have what they want.

But I still believe there's a difference between a big corporation trying to give a "target audience" what it wants through a committee process, and, say, a creative artist trying to explore the details of a new twist on an old format. (There are plenty of authors I'd love to see write a Pooh story where Christopher Robin is a girl.)

And it's worth pointing out it was a kid -- ten years old, I believe -- who started an internet campaign against the Looney Toons of the Future show.

So yeah, I just think it's more complicated than a "target audience" issue.

19:22 / 13.12.05

Focus groups are fun, though. You get to sit in a room and pretend you're someone you're not and have imaginary arguments with people you've met several times before who have chosen a different persona that week. Then, when the nice marketing types ask you a hard question about what you really feel, you start having arguments with people you have lived with for years because it's a bit of a laugh and you still have 20 minutes until you get paid 30 quid cash-in-hand, so why not? If you get the chance, have a go. It's great.
Did I say I don't give a shit about Disney's Pooh and never have done (well, the first film was OK)? While I'm loath to agree with Fly on anything, he's right that they can't take the original books away.

09:26 / 14.12.05

Just so long as they never make Robin a girl in the Batman comics.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:00 / 14.12.05

That'd be balls nasty.

11:15 / 14.12.05

but as far as I'm aware nobody is going through old Pooh books cutting out Christopher Robin and sticking in a picture of a girl.

Pictures of cyborgs yes, but not pictures of girls.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:15 / 14.12.05

You know, when I say Disney seems to be altering the gender but not the characteristics...

And you say

A "tomboy" is still a girl

You look like you're not paying attention, Moominliger.

11:31 / 16.12.05

it still doesn't seem to be acceptable for boys to show a gentler, more "feminine" side

Yeah, moominliger, that's the only argument against the new girl character that makes sense to me: Christopher Robin is a feminine boy, and replacing him with a 'tomboy' is actually masculinizing the reader's point-of-identification. I have a mild worry about the lack of femme characters in books for young children (and the lack of femme boy characters in, well, books), and what I sense is the increasing propagation of the idea that girliness is icky - both for boys and girls. It might just be a coincidence brought on from reading two picture-books in a week about how wearing a dress was inherently bad,m though.

What will become of my tiny nephew when he's old enough to want to dress up as a fairy princess, eh?

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:45 / 16.12.05

Did Christopher Robin ever dress up as a fairy princess, though?

11:50 / 16.12.05

In Milne, Disney, or my head?

12:35 / 16.12.05

Maybe this tomboy girl thing will blow up in Disney's face, and then they'll do a back to basics approach, using the source material very faithfully. And then, the Beatles will reunite, and there'll be no poor people, and no strife, and... you get the picture.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:54 / 16.12.05

It's a very ambiguous picture. Some good things will happen, but the Beatles will get back together. Swings and roundabouts.

13:27 / 16.12.05

Sweet zombie Lennon!

Henningjohnathan

17:49 / 03.01.06

"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."

Hmmm...

Isn't there something inherently contradictory between "timeless" and needing "a breath of fresh air?"

07:40 / 04.01.06

Even the perpetual motion machine needs a bit of greasing and polishing now and then. And, apparently, a sex-change and personality rewrite to butcherfemmify the lone human of the Hundred Acre somewhere or other. Of course, this makes Christopher that much closer to every Disney heroine of the past twenty plus years, and so there's an off chance it'll lead to him hooking up with a dashing and misunderstood Prince Charming he's not stopped pining over and yakking about. And teach children wonderful morals like, 'if the prince don't get pretty after at least three nights of romantic entanglement and four kisses... leave him in a dark room somewhere and start over' or 'don't support your local bookstore even when it's on its last legs; borrow instead of buying anything off them and remember how you're better than anyone else.'

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:40 / 04.01.06

People, people!

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