Disney is replacing Christopher Robin in an upcoming Pooh TV series with a “tomboyish girl.”
“We got raised eyebrows, even in-house, but the feeling was that these timeless characters really needed a breath of fresh air that only the introduction of someone new could provide,” Nancy Kanter, of the Disney Channel, told USA Today.
Disney says that the series will target preschool children. “The young character will elicit physical, cognitive and emotional responses from the viewing audience and will also address them directly,” said a spokesman.
The series is an attempt to increase Disney’s share in the pre-school market, worth an estimated £11.9 billion, the company said this week. Industry observers consider the new character a clever move.
There are no bad characters, only those not used properly. If Disney’s not been able to get Christopher Robin to “work” in their productions, thrashing about to find a new character doesn’t seem very productive.
(One problem they may have had is either (a) not being consistent as to CR’s accent, or (b) not being consistent about CR’s presence at all.)
For his part, Mr Tucker thought the new character a huge error. “All of the stories are based on Christopher Robin’s questing relationship with the characters,” he said. “They’re built around a boy who arrives and puts things right, like little boys do.”
Perhaps — but, then, the connection between what the books are about and what the Disney productions are about has long been tenuous, and only moreso over the years.
Ah, well. Probalby just as well we never got a Disneyfied Lord of the Rings.
Just when I thought that maybe… Just maybe… Disney had run out of good childhood memories to stripmine and ravage to make new commercial properties. *sighs*
Cynical as I am, I suspect this has less to do with not knowing how to make Christopher Robin work and likely more to do with the fact that, in the end, it is stories about make-believe with stuffed animals and only girls play with stuffed animals, or so those people freakishly concerned about gender roles and family values say…
The other side of that coin are those that think that there needs to be a “postive female image” in Pooh because the only one now is Kanga and she’s *gasp* just a mother and a housewife. All she does is “bake cookies and remind Roo to wear his mittens”. There was some such article, that I am too lazy to look up at the moment, to that effect.
I’m sure that’s part of the reason why the “Book of Pooh” series included a female bluebird as part of the animal cast.
For all I harrumphed over the Heffalump movie, I’d rather see characters introduced as additional animals, rather than violate the premise of “the enchanted neighborhood of Christopher’s childhood days …”