Little trouble in big China this week, as Winnie-the-Pooh has been suppressed by the politburo. In olden times, rhetoric about the neoliberal devils at Disney might have been offered for the disappearance of the chubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff. Nowadays, however, it is simply the vanity of the Chinese premier, Xi Jinping.
President Xi bears an unfortunate resemblance to the honey-addicted bear. In 2013, the image of short, fat Xi and long, thin Barack Obama juxtaposed with one of Pooh and Tigger was widely circulated on the nation’s social networks. In 2014, one of Xi shaking hands with Japan’s premier, Shinzō Abe, circulated alongside a picture of Pooh gripping Eeyore’s hoof.
Xi has apparently grown tired of the simile. This week, typing “Little Winnie Bear” into social media engines such as WeChat pulled up the notification: “This content is illegal.” All Pooh stickers have also been removed from the site’s gallery.
Xi is not the first leader to vow to crush innocuous children’s entertainment. In 2003, Russian lawyers said they were preparing a suit against Warner Bros, the maker of the Harry Potter franchise, on the basis that Dobby the Elf, a sort of pencil eraser with toxic neediness, had been based on Vladimir Putin.
In 2015, unhappy Ukrainians took the ball and ran with it. A statue appeared in the town of Luhansk showing the Putinesque house elf cradling a bullfinch. The crumpled bird’s presence mocked reports that Ukrainian schoolchildren had killed a bullfinch because its plumage matched the Russian flag.
Donald Trump has spawned an entire industry of things that look like him – from an ear of corn to Back to the Future’s Biff Tannen – but it was when he was compared to JP Richfield from the 90s Jim Henson sitcom Dinosaurs that the truest Trump came into focus.
Comparisons with Cruella de Vil have been routinely thrown at Theresa May, more on the basis of haircut and love of Vogue-approved eveningwear than Cruella’s policies on tower cladding. But not all cartoon lookalikes are negative. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau hasn’t been investing too much of his personal authority in quashing those comparisons to big-eyed, lantern-jawed Disney princes, most commonly the post-op Beast of Beauty-and-the fame.
The Disney prince comparisons became endemic with the election of Emmanuel Macron, who shares many of Trudeau’s tragic handsomeness issues. Although, with his slightly more grownup, less twinkly-eyed face, Macron comes closer to a Boys’ Own hero. Few have so far remarked on his resemblance to the title character from Archer, the spy cartoon for adults. There, the pompous, hypersexual egomaniac continuously messes things up for everyone else, yet glides through life on his looks and plausible manner. Worth taking a few notes.
