![]() ![]() ![]() The non-literal reader is invited to find this funny. The narrator explains that “Winnie the Pooh lived in the forest all by himself under the name of Sanders”, which meant “he had the name over the door in gold letters and lived under it”. Milne’s stories gently teach the young credulous reader, who reads literally, that they may be other more rewarding ways of interpreting the world, and what the difference is between what people say and what they mean. We can detect the specific pleasures of introducing the craft of storytelling to his son from a man who made a living from writing. Before he wrote the Pooh stories, Milne worked as a playwright and as a satirist at Punch magazine. Milne shows his real life son Christopher (whom Christopher Robin was named after) how playing with his toys is a kind of writing, just as the playwright makes scenes for his characters. It explains much about why these books have remained so loved. This idea is addressed with humour and complexity in Milne’s writing, and beautifully rendered in Shepard’s illustrations that always emphasise the “toyness” of the animals. They are “like little story machines, narrative catalysers, objects that help make sense of the world”. Toys, argues Herbrechter, are intimately concerned with storytelling. When Christopher Robin and Pooh organise an “expotition” to the North Pole, they find a large pole in the woods and label it accordingly. It is also haunted by the threat of leaving the safe space of the wood for places over the horizon that can’t yet be seen. The pastoral paradise of Hundred Acre Wood was one that Milne, who wrote passionately in favour of pacifism, conjured from his own childhood memories – back to a time before the terrifying intrusion and destruction of the war.Īs such, Milne’s invented world is also saturated with loss, poignantly embodied in the depressed donkey character of Eyore, who sees no reasons to be cheerful. They contain traces of the experiences in the trenches that marked both Milne and Shepard, whose illustrations of carnage at the Somme and Paschendale were the subject of a separate recent exhibition. They came after World War I, when many illusions about innocence, the upper class, Englishness and patriotism had reached breaking point. However, Milne’s books are more poignant and have a slightly different flavour, than other examples, such as Wind in the Willows (of which Milne was a great fan, writing a stage adaptation). This was very much the landscape of Winnie’s home in Hundred Acre Wood.Īs cultural theorist Stefan Herbrechter said: “Children are supposed to live in a world of their own, which is clearly defined and marked out as the space and time for play and in which toys are the main objects and controlling devices of socialisation.” The golden age view of a child’s world was one that was close to nature – the child an innocent before the imposed horrors of school and education, and a figure of loss and nostalgia for the adult. In some variations of the meme, there are multiple renditions of the bear, each dressed fancier than the next.One element of the incredible success of the Pooh books is that they reflect ideas about childhood that emerged in what is widely known as the “golden age” of children’s literature, spanning from the mid-19th century to World War I. The apathetic/bored Winnie the Pooh meme first circulated as a reaction image on 4chan, but has recently gained popularity on the Dank Memes Subreddit channel with it’s new “fancy” format. The original image comes from Disney’s animated featurette, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974). The finest films for meat tenderizing from r/dankmemes On the next line, beside the dressed-up Pooh is a “classier” or more complex version of that same word or statement, the implication being that much like Pooh Bear, the phrase has been “classed up”. In the first, he looks less than amused and in the second, he’s been photoshopped to be wearing a dope tuxedo and in some versions, additional accessories.īeside the dressed-down Pooh is a simple word or statement. Everyone’s favorite bear just got a bit more bougie! This Winnie the Pooh meme features at least two versions of the cartoon bear. ![]()
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