Lesson 4) (But Most of All There's) Winnie the Pooh
Surprise! Another lesson before the House Cup. I managed to find a spare moment to pop back in to give you yet another lesson. I love spoiling you! But don't expect another one until mid next week.
Happy to welcome back Professor Batyaeva who will be teaching you about Winnie the Pooh today.
You'll also hear from Professor Octavia Proctor, your Arithmancy professor (https://www.facebook.com/pages/HiH-Arithmancy/1516621018620438) in today's lesson.
EH
http://www.hogwartsishere.com/emmahart/https://www.facebook.com/emmaharthih
Lesson 11: (But Most of All There’s) Winnie the Pooh
A
female black bear was born in Canada in 1914. That bear cub was
purchased on a train platform on August 24 for twenty Canadian dollars
by a Lieutenant in the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps (CAVC) who hailed
from Winnipeg, Canada. One day, that bear would inspire playwright and
author Alan Alexander Milne (A.A. Milne) to write a book about a teddy
bear that would influence children for generations to come. That bear
was - you guessed it - Winnie-the-Pooh. An iconic book for both magical
and non-magical children alike, I remember even my own mother read me
the story in Vienna, and there was even a Russian adaptation made in the
late 1960s.
Hello, it’s Professor Batyaeva again, and I’m excited to return to you again to discuss this famous and well-loved “silly old bear.”
Lt. Harry Colebourn with Winnie
Winnie-the-PoohWhile many Disney stories you covered during this Lit Week dealt with retelling of fictional stories, the basis of Winnie-the-Pooh comes from the history of a very real black bear who became a legend - at least to author A.A. Milne’s son, Christopher Robin Milne.
Winnipeg the Bear - affectionately “Winnie” - was purchased in White River, Ontario on August 24, 1914 by Lt. Harry Colebourn, who was heading to England to eventually be deployed during the First Muggle World War. Winnie’s mother had apparently been killed by a hunter, and a trapper brought the cub into town to sell her. Colebourn brought the bear to England with him, and it became a mascot and beloved pet for the CAVC. When he found himself being deployed to France, Lt. Colebourn turned Winnie over to the London Zoo to maintain her care.Zoos in those days were much less restrictive in their protective measures, and Winnie’s kind and affectionate demeanor made her a favorite for many. Being raised on a Canadian Infantry Base in England likely contributed to her mannerisms and love of other humans. Despite her rather sudden separation from her mother, she had always known love and kindness from Colebourn and the men of the Canadian military before being transferred to the London Zoo. A.A. Milne’s young son Christopher Robin was allowed to play with Winnie one-on-one in the zoo, and developed such a fondness for her that he named his teddy bear Winnie. In fact, his son’s affection for the bear was what prompted the creation of the popular children’s character Winnie-the-Pooh.
The World of Pooh, featuring illustrations by A.A. Milne
Inspired by his son’s love for the bear Winnie and the teddy bear he named after the real bear, A.A. Milne began writing short stories within an entire world that revolved around Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin. There were two books that resulted from these short stories, entitled Winnie-the-Pooh (published in 1926) and The House on Pooh Corner (published in 1928). These stories featured all of the notable - and zany - characters that we associate with the latter adaptations, including Owl, Piglet, Rabbit, Kanga, Roo, Eeyore, Tigger, and of course Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh himself. All of these characters were portrayed as anthropomorphic (animals possessing human qualities) stuffed animals with very extreme interpretations of human personality and character.
Mrs. Agnes Brush of Long Island,
commissioned by Stephen Slesinger, Inc.
to make Winnie the Pooh toys by hand in the 1940s
During the Second World War, Stephen Slesinger, Inc. hired a woman named Mary Alice Clark to take responsibility for creating toys of the inhabitants of the World of Pooh. Clark hired a woman named Agnes Brush of Whitestone, Long Island in order to hand make all of these toys. While she did employ assistance to help create these toys, Mrs. Brush had to have final approval of all Winnie the Pooh toys manufactured. She also took responsibility for finishing touches, including the eyes. Mrs. Brush is also the person who gave Piglet his well-known knitted scarf.
Christopher Robin’s Original Toys (minus Roo, which he lost in the 1930s)
It is interesting to note that, if you look at the original Pooh bear, he does not have the iconic red shirt that he sports in all of the feature films and products many of you will have seen. This red shirt was added by Slesinger in 1932.Interestingly, while The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was released in the 1970s, the next full length features do not appear until the 2000s, including The Tigger Movie, Piglet’s Big Movie, Pooh’s Heffalump Movie, and Winnie the Pooh. Of these later films, only Winnie the Pooh bases its plot on the previous stories by Milne. The other three films instead take the personalities and characters developed by Milne in order to create entirely original stories, albeit related to the plots found in The World of Pooh. There have also been animated shows on Disney periodically from the 1980s through the 2000s.
There is one more notable adaptation to Winnie-the-Pooh: in 1969, there was a Soviet cartoon known as Vinni-Pukh that was based on the very first chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh in which Winnie-the-Pooh (Vinni-Pukh in the story) disguises himself as a little black rain cloud in order to infiltrate a beehive to get honey. There are some notable differences in the film and the book, however, particularly in the appearance of Winnie-the-Pooh, who seems in the Russian film to be more of a brown ball of fluff with floating appendages. However, the film does attempt to keep more closely to Milne’s original story. There were two other films released in Russian that followed the second chapter of the book (Winnie the Pooh Pays a Visit, 1971) as well as the fourth and sixth chapters (Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, 1972).
Michael Fassbender’s Lt. Colebourn with an Adult Winnie in A Bear Named Winnie
A Bear Named Winnie
In
2004 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) put out a
made-for-television film called A Bear Named Winnie. The film was made
without any involvement of either Disney or the Milne family, which has
earned it some scrutiny. The film purported to tell the original story
of Winnipeg the Bear and her relationship with Lt. Harry Colebourn
starting from his purchase of the bear cub on the platform in 1914.
Rather than ending with Lt. Colebourn delivering the bear to the London
Zoo, the tale continues to follow the bear. Initially, the bear is kept
in a cage and, used to and dependent on human companionship, she begins
to waste away. Soon it is discovered how friendly and kind she is,
however, and she is given more freedom to roam. Following his return
from the war, Lt. Colebourn visits the bear, who remembers her first
companion and the man who saved her on that Canadian train platform.
Given our recent hiring of Professor Octavia Proctor, I thought I would give you all a treat by inviting her in today to give you a taste of how Arithmancy works should any of you wish to take it.
Please welcome Professor Proctor!
It is with great pride I provide this short aside as to the importance of Arithmancy in Winnie the Pooh. For those of you yet to join us for an Arithmancy class, Arithmancy is the act of giving words, places and events a value based upon letters, dates and their assigned values. Each value, when reached, can be used to provide a divinatory view on a event or the personal traits present in an individual. As covered in Year Three, an individual’s name is perhaps the most used form of Arithmancy as this can be used to gain a Character number, Heart Number and Social number which are believed to provide a list of internalized personal traits and the inner desires of an individual.
The Hundred Acre Wood by Ernest H. Shepard
Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood
The World of Pooh contains two collections of ten short stories each from Winnie-The-Pooh and The House on Pooh Corner. Within the first collection, we get many of the iconic stories of Pooh, such as Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets into a Tight Place, the tale which features Pooh visiting Rabbit and eating him “out of house and home” (eating everything Rabbit has in his house). After learning there is no more food to eat, Winnie-the-Pooh attempts to take his leave of Rabbit. However, for those who have seen a rabbit’s burrow, you know that there is simply a relatively small hole that allows people to enter and leave the home. On his way out of Rabbit’s burrow, Winnie-the-Pooh finds himself stuck! Ultimately, even with the help of Christopher Robin, the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood are unable to do anything except wait for Winnie the Pooh’s girth to go down once again. Once he was thin enough, Christopher Robin, Rabbit, all of Rabbit’s relations, Piglet, and all of the woodland creatures took Winnie the Pooh by the paws and, with a collective pull, Pop! Out Winnie-the-Pooh came tumbling “just as if a cork were coming out of a bottle.”
The first collection also introduces the character Eeyore, a melancholy donkey whose pinned-on tail frequently goes missing. Although Disney tempered the donkey’s personality a bit, in the original tales he’s sarcastic and rather intolerant of the other inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood. His name connotes a variation on the hee-haw sound that a donkey makes. There is also the neurotic piglet named, tellingly, Piglet. In the original tale, Piglet wears a green jumper, which was changed to pink in the Disney version. During this short story collection, Kanga (a kangaroo) and Roo (her joey) also arrive in the forest.Although the
original characters feel some trepidation about the characters, Kanga
proves to be a very sensible, loving mother, while Roo is a fun-loving
childlike spirit. Owl, a live owl, is the only character in Milne’s
stories who is not based on any of Christopher Robin’s stuffed animals.
It is thought this is why he appears more like a “real owl” in
illustrations than the other characters. While he is respected as the
oldest and wisest of the animals in the Hundred Acre Wood, it is largely
through feigned intellect on his part.
Throughout the tales, Winnie-the-Pooh is himself a somewhat dim and gluttonous, though well-meaning and loyal, character. He lives in a house that has a sign above it that says in gold letter “Mr. Sanders,” but Winnie-the-Pooh’s name, it should be noted, is not Sanders. It is thought that this is instead the name of the previous occupant of his house. His driving force is honey, particularly in the Disney film, although he also enjoys condensed milk.
In The House At Pooh Corner one more character named Tigger, an energetic tiger is introduced. Tigger is a very friendly and occasionally overbearing character - in fact, his high energy level puts Rabbit, who tends to be very logically-minded, on edge. During one story in the collection, Rabbit tries to lose Tigger in the woods. However, while many of Tigger’s bragging is unfounded, one attribute that does appear to be true about him is that he has an excellent sense of direction: even as Rabbit and Piglet get lost in the forest, Tigger is able to make his way out. Tigger also appears very adventurous in both the original books and later adaptations: while there is a large assortment of things that Tiggers (“tigers”) do not like, throughout the story Tigger typically discovers these preferences through trial and error. Owing to his bounciness - both in personality as well as his physical means of transport - he quickly becomes close with Kanga’s son, Roo.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Original Theatrical Poster, 1977
The Many Adventures of Winnie the PoohOn March 11, 1977 Disney released their theatrical adaptation of Winnie the Pooh, a 74 minute film that provided an abbreviated version of The World of Pooh. Notably, in the Disney version of the story, the hyphens were taken out of “Winnie-the-Pooh.” The film was based on shorter approximately twenty-minute featurettes that Disney had released previously that included adaptations of the following chapters from the original text:
- We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and some Bees
- Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets into a Tight Place
- Piglet is Entirely Surrounded by Water
- Christopher Robin Gives Pooh a Party
- Piglet Meets a Heffalump
- Tigger Comes to the Forest and has Breakfast
- Piglet Does a Very Grand Thing
- Eeyore Finds the Wolery and Owl Moves Into It
- Tigger is Unbounced
- It Is Shown That Tiggers Don't Climb Trees
At
the end of the film, Disney incorporated a concluding vignette from The
House at Pooh Corner called Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an
Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There. A poignant moment even in the
original text, the scene opens in the film with Pooh and Christopher
Robin playing Poohsticks, a simple game in which all players drop a
stick off of a bridge into a body of water below. Whichever stick
emerges first on the other side is deemed the “winner.”
In the closing,
Christopher Robin and Pooh discuss what is to become of Christopher
Robin. In particular, the young human boy mentions that he’s going off
to school, suggesting that he’s reached five or six years of age.
Previously in the film, Christopher Robin provided something of an
observational character or a catalyst for action. When the characters
find themselves in tight spots, such as in Pooh Goes Visiting where Pooh
visits Rabbit, eating him out of house and home, and then finds himself
stuck in the rabbit hole, Christopher Robin is called to assist and
take charge of the situation. This reflects the dynamic of Christopher
Robin as the story-maker, the small child that ultimately determines the
course of the narrative.
However, in this final anecdote, Christopher Robin appears much less certain of his destiny as he embarks into this “adult” world of schooling. One of the notable exchanges - apparent both within the book and the movie - is his conversation about doing “nothing” with Pooh. He informs Pooh that his favorite thing to do is “Nothing,” and Pooh asks what that means. He replies, “Well, when grown-ups ask, ‘What are you going to do?’ and you say, ‘Nothing.’ And then you go and do it.” After reflection he adds, “You know something, Pooh? I’m not going to do just nothing anymore.” It provides a relatable moment for all of the adults in the audience, remembering when they were little before schooling, careers, significant others, and other obligations. Going to school marks an end to the whimsical, carefree life that Christopher Robin previously led with his stuffed animals.
Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin play Poohsticks in the close of the film
That is not to say, of course, that the world of Winnie the Pooh and the other characters will be lost forever. As in any safe haven of the imagination, the memories and affinity for childhood play will always be present. The narrator reflects this in the end of the film, echoing a similar sentiment in The World of Pooh, saying, “Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in their enchanted place on top of the forest, a little bear will always be waiting.”One of the
more interesting and enjoyable qualities of the film is that it is
structured as though it is a book being read. As the film progresses,
the story moves as pages flip, and different vignettes within the story
are marked by new chapters.
Additionally, the movie takes what is known
as a meta or self-referential approach to the story insofar as the
characters appear to be aware that they are living within a book. They
often break the fourth wall, or “break character” in a sense, conversing
with the narrator and using the very words of the book in order to
advance and interact with plot.
For example, during It Is Shown That Tiggers Don’t Climb Trees, when Tigger gets trapped in the tree, he asks the narrator to help him out of his predicament. You can see the scene here:
This scene is actually a nice example both of the structure of the film, as a narrator reading from a book, as well as the interactions of the characters with the narrator and the audience. This scene is, in fact, a departure from the original story, in which Christopher Robin, Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore use Christopher Robin’s tunic in order to help Roo and Tigger out of the tall tree.
Heffalumps and Woozles
There are small differences in the story. Notably, the film introduces the character Samuel J. Gopher, who appears only a few times in the film and was not present at all in the books. Gopher is an engineer who has knowledge of explosives, which is not necessarily surprising, as he seems primarily occupied by constructing his tunnels. Even this difference is noted in commentary by the characters, namely when Winnie the Pooh visits Rabbit, eats all of his food, and finds himself stuck in Rabbit’s door when he tries to leave. Gopher appears and lends his opinion as to what kind of dynamite could be used to blast the door wider and save Pooh. However, he then disappears. When Owl comments on this, Pooh replies, “After all, he isn’t in the book, you know.”Another addition to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is the inclusion of songs. While the original books and stories do contain poems and songs sung by the characters (particularly Pooh, who is known to hum and murmur songs to himself while walking), ten entirely original - and very catchy - songs appear in the film. These include the famous title song Winnie the Pooh, The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers, and the more disturbing Heffalumps and Woozles, which features a psychedelic nightmare scene that Winnie the Pooh has about Milne’s mythological versions (or possible more Christopher Robin’s childish mispronunciations) of elephants and weasels.
If you interested in exploring different types of creatures here at HiH, be sure to check out Professor Anne's Magizoology Career Path:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1550699978539216/.
Contemporary Winnie the Pooh toys
Playtime!
We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
- J.K. Rowling, speech to Harvard Alumni Association, 2008
The German theologian and mystic Jakob Böhme spoke of the balance of intuition, vision, and imagination that produces “magic.” Taking those concepts into our own magical world, we can say that it is both natural instinct and creative drive that can create innovation in magic: by using our natural and biological proclivities in association with dreams of what we desire to make in the world, we can innovate with brand new inventions. But how do we develop our imagination and our creative perceptions of the world in order to better our surroundings and innovate? Many agree that the seed of that success is relatively simple: child’s play.Multiple studies have shown the positive attributes of playing as children in developing cognitive, physical, and emotional maturity in both magical and non-magical people. The Muggle “Creativity Theorist” Roger van Oech said, “Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.” When children play “pretend,” play games, and generally interact with toys as well as each other when they are quite young, they are subconsciously developing the skill sets that will enable them to become creative and logical young adults. There has also been evidence that links lack of play to depressive symptoms in teenagers and young adults.
So what was the purpose of Christopher Robin’s playtime with all of these creatures in the Hundred Acre Wood? Although they were all components of his own imagination, if one reads the story, it’s easy to see the various life lessons he is teaching himself (or perhaps occasionally learning in play with guardians, although they are not present in the story) in order to prepare himself to go to primary school. Through his time with Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, Rabbit, and all of the others, Christopher Robin is exploring means of problem solving, expressions of love and loyalty, and other means of socialization. While we could express the “magic” of Winnie the Pooh and all of his friends as stuffed animals coming alive and speaking, it’s truly more the dynamic power of Christopher Robin’s imagination as he embarks on all of these adventures with his toys that provides the true charm and relatability that has made Winnie-the-Pooh famous for almost one century.
And with that we conclude our
lesson on Winnie the Pooh. Before completing your assignments, please
feel free to take ten minutes (or twenty or more) to exercise your
imagination, pull out some old toys, and play! Especially since this might help you with one of the EC assignments.
Works Cited
Ginsburg, Kenneth R., MD. "The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds." PEDIATRICS 119.1 (2007): 182-91.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Dir. John Lounsbery and Wolfgang Reitherman. Perf. Sterling Holloway, John Fiedler, Junius Matthews, and Paul Winchell. Walt Disney Productions, 1977.
Milne, A. A. The World of Pooh: The Complete Winnie-the-Pooh and The House At Pooh Corner. New York: Dutton Children's, 1957.
Wood, Matthew. "Intuition, Imagination, and Magic: The Basis of Jacob Boehme's Doctrine of Sophia." Intuition, Imagination, and Magic. Natura Sophia, 01 Apr. 2011. Web. 06 Apr. 2015.
If you would like to participate in further discussion about today's lesson, please go here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kBvL3TLPndbQOT7zeMAs_cB_9iR-RYvZiMfPXp4Z8SI/edit?usp=sharing
The next lesson most likely won't be posted until next Wednesday or Thursday. Thank you in advance for your patience!
EH
https://www.facebook.com/HiHMagicalLiterature
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Professor-Studies-Track/491893090968681
