12 October 2015

140 Characters on My Favorite Characters


The original Tigger, Kanga, Pooh, Eeyore, and Piglet (photograph colorized by me)

I've been on Twitter for almost three years, and I've tweeted 210 times since starting my account. That's about a tweet every five days, and the vast majority of those are links I share for new blog posts. But I've noticed this year in particular that there's one thing that will invariably break my Twitter reticence: when somebody is potentially ruining something I love from my childhood.

In case you feel equally appalled at some of the things happening with beloved childhood characters in film and television lately, here's a round-up of my tweets with some further thoughts and background:

April 2, 2015: Disney Announces a New Film About Winnie the Pooh and the Milnes



It's no secret that I love all things Pooh and Milne, so it was a crazy coincidence that this news came out on my birthday. After loving the trailer I was hugely disappointed in the Winnie the Pooh movie released by Disney in 2011, so I'm very wary on this. I'm also concerned about how the film will portray the complicated relationship between Christopher Robin Milne and his father, as Disney decided to totally rewrite history in Saving Mr. Banks, their film on P. L. Travers and the making of the Mary Poppins movie adaptation.

July 30, 2015: The CW Announces a New Television Series Featuring the Characters of Little Women


You don't have to know much about Little Women to know why this series concept is the stupidest, laziest, most insulting use of another person's creative work ever.

September 14, 2015: Disney Announces A New Mary Poppins Film


For once I was actually intrigued by and optimistic about news of a new take on a favorite childhood book--but oddly enough, most of Twitter seemed up in arms about this one. I love P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins books and feel (much like Travers herself did) that the Disney film does not reflect them well at all. Since the new film will supposedly be drawing on stories from the books and set at the same time the books were written--the original movie was set a good few decades earlier for some bizarre reason--I'm looking forward to learning more about this project.

September 21, 2015: On the New Movie Pan


The film Pan bills itself as an origin story for J. M. Barrie's famous Peter Pan. Either somebody didn't do a modicum of research of they simply didn't care, since Barrie himself actually wrote about Peter's early life before he ever wrote the play Peter Pan or the novel Peter and Wendy (also usually called Peter Pan). Peter makes his first print appearance in a section of Barrie's novel for adults The Little White Bird, and the chapters detailing his history were later published separately as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. It's in the public domain and you can read it for free at the link in my tweet.

September 30, 2015: On the New Muppets Television Series



There's been a lot of buzz about ABC's television revival of The Muppets, and a lot of it has centered on the "adult" quality of the humor. As someone who grew up with the Muppets of the 80's and 90's (Muppet Babies, A Muppet Family Christmas, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island) and has recently fallen in love with the original three Muppet movies and The Muppet Show, I couldn't bring myself to actually watch this seemingly so misguided incarnation. Instead, I shared a couple of quotes by Jim Henson on the Muppets and innocence from It's Not Easy Being Green And Other Things to Consider that I hoped would send a little reminder into the world about what the Muppets are all about--click the photos to go to Twitter, then click each photo square to see the full quote.
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