‘Kindness is like marmalade – a little goes a long way,’ Paddington Bear tweeted recently. But it isn’t only imaginary talking bears who take this approach on social media. The News Agents’ Emily Maitlis was inspired by the rather sickly – and given the seriousness of current events, rather inappropriate – chummy love-in between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer at their final Commons encounter last week. ‘Just imagine if PMQs was like this every week,’ she tweeted wistfully, ‘Conciliatory. Helpful. Bipartisan. Passionate and compassionate.’
Paddington’s thoughts on social media are enthusiastically greeted by the kind of grown-ups who feel tewwibly sad about Brexit
Thankfully, as it turned out, Rishi Sunak was faking. His Budget response displayed the fire down below that only gets switched on in some people after they’ve been utterly trounced. Poor Emily, her bipartisan dreams smashed so soon. I pictured her sighing sadly and taking a consoling bite from the emergency marmalade sandwich she keeps under her hat.
Because what we can only call Paddingtonism – ‘Oh, isn’t it sad. Why can’t people agree? If only we could all be a bit more like a CGI teddy’ – is rampant among certain adults. It’s the acme of passive aggression and comes with a plaintive twinkle and a pensive little shake of the head. Jeremy Corbyn was forever at it.
We are about to get a sugared avalanche of it with the release on Friday of Paddington’s third big-screen excursion, Paddington In Peru. A big-budget West End musical is in the works. Paddington’s thoughts on social media are enthusiastically greeted and retweeted by the kind of grown-ups who like to feel tewwibly sad about Brexit, ‘populism’, and people objecting to mass uncontrolled immigration. Because Paddington is a refugee, you see, and wouldn’t it be nice if we were all a little more kind?
There is something terribly appropriate to our times about a cuddly creature that doesn’t actually physically exist, something you couldn’t actually touch because it’s a collection of bytes of data, becoming a cult figure. I’m not a ‘furry’ – someone who likes anthropomorphic animal characters – but the 21st-century Paddington is a strangely unadorable creature. Surely the appeal of such beasts is meant to be that they are like our pets, warm and soothing to pat and stroke? To me, CGI Paddington looks cold and dead-eyed. He’s an untrustworthy sort.
I accept that I’m hopelessly in the minority here, as things which aren’t actually there are wildly popular and lucrative. But the artistic wisdom of blending real people and animated characters (of any kind) seems questionable. Something about it gives me the ick, the same way it did watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks when I was five.
The 1970s TV version of Paddington was mercifully brief – a mere five minutes a shot – and it was entirely animated, with its own unique aesthetic of moving line drawings. Paddington himself looked cuddly. It didn’t look like anything else. The 21st-century Paddington franchise looks exactly like everything else.
The charm and innocence were there too, as they were in the books by Michael Bond. But the big difference is that then they were implicit, understated. Now, they are repeatedly spelt out. Paddington has that most deadly of things, franchise ‘brand values’. One of the biggest and most disconcerting changes to the national character in my lifetime has been this shift from a simple, unspoken acceptance of general civility (even in children’s fiction) to the aggressive statement and restatement of ‘values’ in everything. We used to groan and lament when Americans did this. Whenever Captain Kirk in Star Trek launched into one of his end-of-episode homilies, my father – a not-uncritical viewer at the best of times – would turn red and start hurling nearby objects.
We used to know that people telling us, at length, how nice they are, meant that they were a rotter of some kind.
The trailer for Paddington In Peru shows us lots of big-name actors (Hugh Bonneville, Olivia Colman, etc.) doing the kind of twee, simpering acting they wouldn’t dream of turning in for any other kind of film. During my own time working in kids’ TV, I saw this syndrome – ‘now’s the chance for me to have a spot of fun’ – very often at table readthroughs of scripts, after which the director was dispatched to have a quiet word.
Cynicism in kids’ entertainment is deadly, yes, and it’s nice to have something that isn’t ‘dark’. But there are ways to engage with the world in a family film – Up, Finding Nemo, etc. – that aren’t so saccharine and schmaltzy.
However, maybe that British goo-resistant spirit lives on. When the Paddington account tweeted, with astonishing inappropriateness during the riots in August, ‘Perhaps it’s time for a little more kindness’, the furry Fauntleroy was met with a pleasing series of replies including ‘Shut it, you little hat-wearing gimp’ and ‘Get to the taxidermist, you little marmalade nonce’. That’s the Britain I know and love.
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