Do we or don’t we need Heroes?

I think we need mentors and leaders, but not exactly heroes.  It is my firm belief that mankind has slowly been advancing in terms of understanding of surroundings, and that as that understanding has advanced the simpler ideas that satisfied our more childlike ancestors have also slipped away.  And heroism is one of the simpler ideas; heroes’ stories having strangely similar parts that seem to have satisfied some basic social needs.

But some of these simpler concepts are perhaps age appropriate, and when we are raising children it is necessary to simplify complex concepts, and so the notion of the hero as an achiever to be used to inspire youth is perhaps a baby not to be tossed with the bathwater.

Which leads me to something that has stuck in my craw for a long time:

I am mad at Disney for, amongst other things, ruining the message of  The Blustery Day, a Winnie the Pooh classic that those morons just had to make into a modern porridge of underachievement winning confusing praise and accident taking the place of the intelligent actions by “everyman”, in this case played by Winnie himself, to save his hommie, Piglet.

In this important story about perseverance and friendship, Piglet finds himself trapped in his house, watching it rain, and rain and rain.  Being a resourceful Piglet, he remembers a story he was told about a man on a desert island, and manages to write a message and stuff it into a bottle and toss it out the window.  Winnie the Pooh is having a somewhat similar difficulty, only he is sitting on a branch eating honey.

The crisis hits for Pooh when the honey runs out, but it being a story, the bottle Piglet threw out the window happens to float by in a timely manner,

and with one loud cry of “Honey!” Pooh plunged into the water, seized the bottle, and struggled back to his tree again.

“Bother!” said Pooh, as he opened it. “All that wet for nothing. What’s that bit of paper doing?”

He took it out and looked at it.

“It’s a Missage,” he said to himself, “that’s what it is. And that letter is a ‘P,’ and so is that, and so is that, and ‘P’ means ‘Pooh,’ so it’s a very important Missage to me, and I can’t read it. I must find Christopher Robin or Owl or Piglet, one of those Clever Readers who can read things, and they will tell me what this missage means. Only I can’t swim. Bother!”

Then he had an idea, and I think that for a Bear of Very Little Brain, it was a good idea. He said to himself:

“If a bottle can float, then a jar can float, and if a jar floats, I can sit on the top of it, if it’s a very big jar.”

So he took his biggest jar, and corked it up.

“All boats have to have a name,” he said, “so I shall call mine The Floating Bear.” And with these words he dropped his boat into the water and jumped in after it.

For a little while Pooh and The Floating Bear were uncertain as to which of them was meant to be on the top, but after trying one or two different positions, they settled down with The Floating Bear underneath and Pooh triumphantly astride it, paddling vigorously with his feet.

Making it to Christopher Robin, who is now on an island, he gets the important message read.  Appalled at his friend’s dilemma, Winnie the Pooh has another brilliant idea for a bear of little brain:

“Now then, Pooh,” said Christopher Robin, “where’s your boat?”

“I ought to say,” explained Pooh as they walked down to the shore of the island, “that it isn’t just an ordinary sort of boat. Sometimes it’s a Boat, and sometimes it’s more of an Accident. It all depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On whether I’m on top of it or underneath it.”

“Oh! Well, where is it?”

“There!” said Pooh, pointing proudly to The Floating Bear.

It wasn’t what Christopher Robin expected, and the more he looked at it, the more he thought what a Brave and Clever Bear Pooh was, and the more Christopher Robin thought this, the more Pooh looked modestly down his nose and tried to pretend he wasn’t.

“But it’s too small for two of us,” said Christopher Robin sadly.

“Three of us with Piglet.”

“That makes it smaller still Oh, Pooh Bear, what shall we do?”

And then this Bear, Pooh Bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, F.O.P. (Friend of Piglet’s), R.C. (Rabbit’s Companion), P.D. (Pole Discoverer), E.C. and T.F. (Eeyore’s Comforter and Tail-finder)–in fact, Pooh himself–said something so clever that Christopher Robin could only look at him with mouth open and eyes staring, wondering if this was really the Bear of Very Little Brain whom he had know and loved so long.

“We might go in your umbrella,” said Pooh.

“?”

“We might go in your umbrella,” said Pooh?

“??”

“We might go in your umbrella,” said Pooh.

“!!!!!!”

For suddenly Christopher Robin saw that they might. He opened his umbrella and put it point downwards in the water. It floated but wobbled.

Pooh got in. He was just beginning to say that it was all right now, when he found that it wasn’t, so after a short drink, which he didn’t really want, he waded back to Christopher Robin. Then they both got in together, and it wobbled no longer.

“I shall call this boat The Brain of Pooh,” said Christopher Robin, and The Brain of Pooh set sail forthwith in a south-westerly direction, revolving gracefully.

And as A.A. Milne writes,  well, you can imagine his joy when at last he saw the good ship, Brain of Pooh (Captain, C. Robin; Ist Mate, P. Bear) coming over the sea to rescue him.. ..

Christopher Robin throws a party for Pooh, in recognition of his bravery, and all is well in the 100 Acre Wood.

Now that’s a good story.  About clever thinking and resourcefulness, friendship and perseverance and kindness.

So what does Disney do with this once timeless classic tale?  Well, let’s put it this way, you could make a movie called Disney Does Winnie, and it wouldn’t be in the kids’ section.  I will spare you the terrible details so as not to promote their meme, but it all becomes willy-nilly Forest Gump and nothing is deliberate and at the end Pooh has no idea why they are throwing a party for him and is clearly confused.

This loss of direction from the adults in the crowd has left a terrible imprint on the baby boomers’ boom babies, raised without a compass.  It is one thing to decide that there are errors in the ways of the institutions and manners we have inherited, and another to throw up one’s hands and let the cards fall where they may.

I never did read my kids the ending of the Winnie the Pooh books, because it struck me as unnecessary that they should have to experience the pain of Christopher Robin growing up – bad enough to have to do it oneself!  I want my literature to be uplifting, not a depressing account of the horrors of life with the saturation turned up too high.

So I say heroes turning into mentors as one grows wiser, and avoid Disney whenever possible.  What they did to the Grinch is on an equal if not greater level of iniquity, but he is gnarlier and more worldly-wise than Pooh, and I will save him for a Christmas special!