Dichroic Reflections

Small is Beautiful

These days, cartoons aimed at little kids generally have some sort of moral in them . I can deal with that as long as the story is sufficiently engrossing to sugarcoat the moral so that it slides down easily, but every once in a while you get one that doesn't quite convey the message it's meant to get across.

This morning I was erging (only 9000 m, despite having skipped Tuesday's erg piece because I am a wuss) and watching The New Adventures of Pooh. I'm not as fond of this as I was of The Book of Pooh, which I used to wacth until ^%$^ Disney changed the schedule on me (presumably either they ran out of episodes of that an Madeleine or they thought older kids would be up at 5AM once the school year started) because in this rendition Rabbit is grouchier (though his expressions are wonderfully drawn), thre's an annoying added gopher character, and Pooh has gone beyond being a Bear of Little Brain to the point of idiocy and is furthermore such a glutton that he usually can't talk about anything but Hunny for more than about half a sentence.

Actually, Pooh was a little better than usual in this particular episode. In this one, Piglet, after needing a bit of help from his larger friends, (who were nice about it but kept referring to him as Little Friend) became very depressed about being such a Very Small Animal. First, his friends decided to console him by sneaking in while he was sleeping, taping magnifying spectables to his eyes and big boxes to his feet so that he was much taller and everything else looked tiny. At this point he began calling everyone else Little Friend, helping them by dint of his superior size and strength (and Rabbit's pulley system, unbeknownst to Piglet) and all but patting them on the head.

AFter the ruse was revealed, Piglet was so depressed that he decided to leave and get out of everyone's life. (Various characters do this about every third episode, whereas in Milne's original writings, the Hundred-Aker Wood was the whole world to them.) First his friends tried making Pooh a subsitute best friend by dressing Eeyore in Piglet's clothing. When this was unsatisfactory, they settled down to throw Piglet a Welcome Home Party on the theory that he'd have to come back home for it.

Meanwhle, Piglet finally turned around after a bunch of ants he'd helped along the way made him a cupcake to show how thankful they were for his help, and he realized that at least he was bigger than they were.

Presumab;y Disney was trying to show that everyone is important, but if I were a logically-minded little kid (as I was), I think the messages I'd have gotten would be:

I. Bigger people tend to be patronizing to smaller people. (True, that, and it's something kids often know well before thy learn the word "patronizing", though many forget it once they become Big.)
II. Bigger people are better than smaller people. It wasn't realizing that he could help someone that consoled Piglet, or realizing that his friends loved him as he is (as they plainly did, and said so) but realizing that he was bigger than someone else.

I don't think those are lessons I'd want to teach my hypothetical kid. (Especially if said kid was, like her mother, the smallest one in class.) And I bet whoever wrote that particular episode was Big. I don't mind being a Very Small Animal; it has many distinct advantages (except for rowing purposes). But I do mind the unthinking attitudes that tend to assume Bigger is Better for everything except women's waist sizes.

Posted by dichroic at September 30, 2005 03:59 PM