Thursday, March 28

Paddington, the bear who has tea with Elizabeth II and only has a bad review


Thousands of people gathered last weekend in front of Buckingham Palace in London to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. But only one lucky person had access to the inner halls and was able to have tea with the monarch: Paddington Bear. The famous and tender character of Michael Bond has become trending topic once again, although in this case in the surprising context of Elizabeth’s 70 years of regency.

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The two minute BBC video has gone viral for two reasons. In the first place, because the head of the English royal house has agreed to make a sketch funny despite his delicate state of health at 96 years old. The last time she did something similar was a decade ago at the London Olympics, where she appeared escorted by Daniel Craig’s James Bond. In addition, her appearance as a guest star at the Buckingham party underpins Paddington as a phenomenon on a global scale and at the same time deeply british.

The international trail of Paddington It began in 2014 with the films directed by Paul King, the highest grossing family cinema that does not come from Hollywood. But the adventures of the bear dressed as a cabin boy began a long time ago. In 1956, BBC cameraman Michael Bond returned home for Christmas without a present for his first wife.

He walked down Oxford Street, spotted an inadvertent teddy bear and bought it to put in his boot. Ten days after Christmas Eve, with Bond sitting tirelessly at his typewriter, the puppet went from desperate gift to inspiration for the best-selling children’s story. A bear named Paddington.

The book told the story of a teddy bear addicted to jam, from “the darkest and most remote Peru” and abandoned in a train station who is adopted by a British family. Nobody wanted to publish it at first. Seven publishers rejected it and Collins ended up paying him 75 pounds to edit it and get it out in 1958. The acceptance was such that Paddington it spawned 13 sequels, was translated into 40 languages, and sold 35 million copies worldwide. In 1975 they turned it into a series of stop motion and exported it to various countries. In Spain, it was broadcast on TVE, ETB and TV3.

In addition to the cuddly toy, Bond’s inspiration was drawn from refugee children in the United Kingdom during World War II, especially the Hungarians, with their trained English and marked belongings. “They all had a tag around their neck with their name and address and a small case containing all their prized possessions,” the late writer told The Guardian in 2014. Paddington, who is an undocumented migrant, was later an allegory for Commonwealth expatriates. But the symbol of tolerance that he represents today began with the movies of 2014.



The bear of the “refugees welcome”

between the premiere of Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017) the largest refugee crisis in recent European history took place, institutional racism settled in countries like the US and the British voted to leave the European Union. Important newspapers such as The Atlantic, Vox, New Yorker or The Guardian began to analyze the film in terms of human rights and as “anti-UKIP propaganda” (the British independence party).

A lawyer specialized in migration analyzed it in the Financial Times“like Paddington be my client”: “In your new environment your customs and manners cause all kinds of misunderstandings. Some open-minded and open-hearted people welcome you. Others reject it. Some just turn their backs on him, but others are more openly hostile, worried that more like him will follow him.” After describing the context and the current legality, the lawyer foresaw that “Paddington he would in all probability be arrested in one of our virulently multiplied immigration detention spaces.”

In both the books and Paddington 2, the bear affably defies authority. The virtue of the Peruvian little animal, as reported in the New Yorker, is that it represents a “healthy fable” about “how vital the contribution of that newcomer could be [el migrante] and how it could enrich with a culture [la latinoamericana] which extends even before the forgotten Anglo-Saxon culture”.

The best film in history (for four years)

Beyond political meanings, world critics embraced the recent versions of Paddington unanimously. The first movie had to settle for 93%, but the 2017 sequel went on to receive the coveted and extremely rare 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. The only tape that had reached the plenary before was Citizen Kane and dropped to 99% because of a bad review. And the same thing happened to Paul King’s bear.

In 2021, the world’s most famous movie platform uploaded the unfavorable review of Film Authority’s Eddie Harrison. The journalist described it as “contrived and ridiculous” and even criticized the film’s social moral: “Considerations of race and identity, key to Paddington’s character, are not addressed,” he assured.

The devastating criticism made Paddington 2 dropped to 99% and lose the label of best film in history four years after its release. The networks responded furiously and Harrison spoke out saying that he would not give in to pressure: he was not going to change even a comma of his review.

The Peruvian bear that eats jelly sandwiches continues to amass 249 positive reviews and an unusual international interest for a children’s story turned into two films. But there it goes. The account that includes it every day with Photoshop in frames of classic films and current series such as the squid game has hundreds of thousands of followers and his tweets accumulate tens of thousands of likes.

Europe’s most iconic royal saga is aware of the phenomenon and has cleverly used it to its advantage. That is why they allowed him to join Brian May, Rod Stewart, Alicia Keys, Andrea Bocelli, George Ezra or Elton John in the great monarchist festival of recent years.





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