"Rather Boggy and Sad"
January 10, 2019 4:27 AM Subscribe
Winnie-the-Pooh, it turns out, is a story about mental health. Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: a neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne.
Sarah Burnside writes in The Guardian about Pooh and emotions.
In other Winnie-the-Pooh-related news, Pooh finds himself at the centre of a meme-scandal involving the Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Winnie-the-Pooh as sectarian literature.
Reviews of the recent V&A exhibition about Winnie-the-Pooh: The Arts Desk; Culture Whisper; New Statesman. And an out-of-date job ad for a researcher for that exhibition, for anyone who wants an alternative life and can time travel.
And the real Winnipeg-the-Pooh.
Sarah Burnside writes in The Guardian about Pooh and emotions.
In other Winnie-the-Pooh-related news, Pooh finds himself at the centre of a meme-scandal involving the Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Winnie-the-Pooh as sectarian literature.
Reviews of the recent V&A exhibition about Winnie-the-Pooh: The Arts Desk; Culture Whisper; New Statesman. And an out-of-date job ad for a researcher for that exhibition, for anyone who wants an alternative life and can time travel.
And the real Winnipeg-the-Pooh.
(And Tigger is surely the narcissist?)
posted by clawsoon at 5:25 AM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 5:25 AM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Poor Eeyore and his anhe(haw)donia!
posted by sockermom at 5:27 AM on January 10, 2019 [12 favorites]
posted by sockermom at 5:27 AM on January 10, 2019 [12 favorites]
These remind me of The Pooh Perplex, Frederick Crews' devastating satire on criticism. Benjamin Hoff's The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet are also worth looking at.
posted by ubiquity at 5:59 AM on January 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by ubiquity at 5:59 AM on January 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
And Tigger is surely the narcissist?
I thought he was just manic
posted by schadenfrau at 6:21 AM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
I thought he was just manic
posted by schadenfrau at 6:21 AM on January 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Benjamin Hoff's The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet are also worth looking at.
Tao of Pooh: Definitely.
Te of Piglet: Meh.
YMMV
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:27 AM on January 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
Tao of Pooh: Definitely.
Te of Piglet: Meh.
YMMV
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:27 AM on January 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
I've developed a stage adaptation of The House at Pooh Corner that will, someday, damn it, be produced. So I have some opinions about this.
Pooh is not OCD. He is simple, but not stupid. He may be slightly autistic, and it would not be a category error to portray him as on the spectrum.
Piglet does have anxiety, but there is also the issue of self esteem, and in his case they are related.
It's easy to read Eeyore as depressed, but he's not particularly. He may be the most complex character in the stories. A bit of narcissism, some social anxiety, and a bit of rebelliousness.
Tigger is excitable and distractable, but that's natural because he's a child, just learning his way in the world. If that's a clinical diagnosis of ADHD then there's a problem with our society.
Rabbit has a touch of the old conservatism. He's neurotic.
Owl doesn't have a freaking reading disorder, he has early stage senile dementia.
Christopher Robin doesn't have gender identity disorder, for fuck's sake, gender is simply irrelevant in the context of the story. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME. In the casting notes, I point out that characters shouldn't be cast with any attention paid to gender at all.
I did a fully cast staged reading a few years back and it was amazing. Our Tigger, Rabbit, Roo and Piglet were played by women and Kanga was played by a man.
I could probably go on for hours about this stuff but probably not here. Buy me a cider sometime.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:43 AM on January 10, 2019 [31 favorites]
Pooh is not OCD. He is simple, but not stupid. He may be slightly autistic, and it would not be a category error to portray him as on the spectrum.
Piglet does have anxiety, but there is also the issue of self esteem, and in his case they are related.
It's easy to read Eeyore as depressed, but he's not particularly. He may be the most complex character in the stories. A bit of narcissism, some social anxiety, and a bit of rebelliousness.
Tigger is excitable and distractable, but that's natural because he's a child, just learning his way in the world. If that's a clinical diagnosis of ADHD then there's a problem with our society.
Rabbit has a touch of the old conservatism. He's neurotic.
Owl doesn't have a freaking reading disorder, he has early stage senile dementia.
Christopher Robin doesn't have gender identity disorder, for fuck's sake, gender is simply irrelevant in the context of the story. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME. In the casting notes, I point out that characters shouldn't be cast with any attention paid to gender at all.
I did a fully cast staged reading a few years back and it was amazing. Our Tigger, Rabbit, Roo and Piglet were played by women and Kanga was played by a man.
I could probably go on for hours about this stuff but probably not here. Buy me a cider sometime.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:43 AM on January 10, 2019 [31 favorites]
Flagged as fantastic. Please consider doing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with the muppets. (Not kidding.)
posted by schadenfrau at 6:51 AM on January 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by schadenfrau at 6:51 AM on January 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
I appreciated the literal interpretation here: "Pooh is also clearly described as having Very Little Brain. We could not confidently diagnose microcephaly, however, as we do not know whether standards exist for the head circumference of the brown bear."
posted by GrammarMoses at 7:18 AM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by GrammarMoses at 7:18 AM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Please consider doing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with the muppets.
Someone proposed that you could cast 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' with four men.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 8:21 AM on January 10, 2019
Someone proposed that you could cast 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' with four men.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 8:21 AM on January 10, 2019
"Rather Boggy and Sad"
Wait- is this the Brexit thread?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:55 AM on January 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Wait- is this the Brexit thread?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:55 AM on January 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Please consider doing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with the muppets.
How about “Who’s Afraid of Statler and Waldorf?”
posted by New Frontier at 1:35 PM on January 10, 2019
How about “Who’s Afraid of Statler and Waldorf?”
posted by New Frontier at 1:35 PM on January 10, 2019
I believe Kanga is a better mother than Shea, et al., do. I'm sure she's concerned about her child's playmates, but if she were never to let Roo out of the pouch, he would have no friends at all. What would that say about her overprotectiveness?
Also: "perseveration." A good word, and one I can't remember having encountered previously.
posted by bryon at 9:51 PM on January 10, 2019
Also: "perseveration." A good word, and one I can't remember having encountered previously.
posted by bryon at 9:51 PM on January 10, 2019
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posted by clawsoon at 5:12 AM on January 10, 2019