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Rebecca Krijt ๐Ÿ’œ๐Ÿ‘‘๐ŸŽญ๐Ÿงธ๐ŸŽถ๐Ÿ“ ๐ŸŽฅ โ˜ฎ๏ธ๐Ÿ’„๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ผ

@rebeccakrijtofficial

Last name is pronounced like great but with a K
25, Full of Love, and Unstoppable!
YouTube: Rebecca Krijt

i hope the barbie movie is a cultural phenomenon. i hope it leaves the next christopher nolan film in the dust. i hope it changes modern cinema forever and all movies made after it is influenced by it in some way. i hope the most academic, in-depth essays are written about it. i hope it's studied in film classes. i hope it remains in the human psyche for generations

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On Winnie the Pooh & Paddington, Honey & Marmalade

Oh, something sweet on bread! To crave only sweet things: marmalade on toast, marmalade straight, another jar of honey. To subsist on sweet spreads and friendship alone: is this not the dream? To be a very nice bear going around the world, making the world (other people! other animals! hell, the weather!) nicer in turn.

My friend K and I have a running metaphor concerning honey. 11pm, on the backroads around a farm near the New York / Connecticut border, as โ€œAll the Birdsโ€ by Julia Weldon crooned through their beat up speakers, one hand on the wire by the headphone jack to keep the music playing (the wire bent just so)โ€” we were talking about love. We were talking about how we had so much to give but were afraid to give it to anyone for fear that they didnโ€™t want itโ€” which is where the honey comes in, because, we thought, isnโ€™t it like having an armful of honey? So much golden, syrupy sweet to give that we hold on to simply because we are afraid to make of others a sticky mess?

And our arms are not meant to hold viscosity so some of it drips, by accident, onto the grass, the road, someoneโ€™s shoe, but when we finally find somebody who says yes, love me, and I will love you tooโ€” in whatever capacity it may meanโ€” we start to pour onto them and are afraid that they will stay shit youโ€™re getting sticky all over me I donโ€™t want this I donโ€™t want this anymore. So we hold onto our honey. Though it doesnโ€™t want to be held. You tell me to love you but Iโ€™m afraid that you wonโ€™t want it once you know what shape it holds. I donโ€™t want to make of anyone a mess they didnโ€™t agree to. There is so much honey in my arms.

A poem on honey and love: โ€œAunt Roseโ€™s Honey Adviceโ€ by Lorna Goodison:

My aunt Rose told me that it is always good for lovers to keep honey mixed in with their food.
โ€œKeep it around the house at all times,โ€ she said. Replace slick butter with pure honey on bread.
Feed it to your love from a deep silver spoon. Throw open the curtains draw free honey from the moon.
Use it to lend a gold glow to wan lustreless skin. Fold it into honey cakes, drizzle it into honey drinks.
Add a satin honey glaze to the matte surface of everydays. Voices sing polished with honeyโ€™s burnishing.
Shall we then beloved become keepers of bees, invite an entire colony of workers, drones and a queen
to build complex multicelled wax cities near our home by the sea? Would that mean that salt
would be savoring through our honey? And you say, โ€œWhat of it?โ€ and give me a kiss
flavoured with honey and sea-salt mix. Integrated honey you say. Kiss me again is what I say
because the salt in that kiss could be the sting from old tears and we need to make up for all our honeyless years.

Honey as love, honey as effort, honey as a gift that can be both salty and sweet. When I say my love is an armful of honey, what I mean is this: I donโ€™t quite know how to give it out slowly, how to make it just a honeyed piece of bread or a spoonful in the morning. What I mean is this: I am so concerned with its stickiness that I forget how sweet it goes down.

Winnie the Pooh is not a bear concerned with romantic love, but he is a bear concerned with love. Friendship, honey, let me shove my snout into the pot, let me lick out with my long hungry tongue every drop I can manage. Winnie the Pooh is a bear of very great appetite and a bear of very generous loving. His love is a constant loyal warmth, an endless hunger for the presence of the loved, a generosity, a deep and abiding faith. Some exhibitions:

Winnie the Pooh: Itโ€™s always a sunny day, when Christopher Robin comes to play
Christopher Robin: Iโ€™ve cracked.
Winnie The Pooh: Oh, I donโ€™t see any cracks. A few wrinkles, maybe
Piglet: I-I think Iโ€™ll just s-stay hereโ€ฆ Y-you donโ€™t really need me anyways.
Winnie The Pooh: Oh Pigletโ€ฆ but we DO need youโ€ฆ
Piglet: Y-you do?
Winnie The Pooh: [takes Pigletโ€™s hand] We ALWAYS need you, Piglet.
Christopher Robin: Iโ€™m not the person I used to be.
Winnie The Pooh: You saved us. Youโ€™re a hero.
Christopher Robin: Iโ€™m not a hero, Pooh. The fact is, Iโ€™m lost.
Winnie The Pooh: But I found you.

Pooh is not only hungry for honey; heโ€™s generous with it. His actual physical honey may be a kind of love he keeps for his own consumption (I donโ€™t feel very much like Pooh today / There, there, Iโ€™ll bring you tea and honey until you do), there is no denying the very greatness of his heart. His care for his friends (we ALWAYS need you, Piglet) his faith in them (youโ€™re a hero), his devotion and love, the way his life is crafted around loving: is that not its own doling out of honey? So, then, with Pooh we learn that honey is not something to hide from the world: that while we should be mindful of human dignities like boundaries and agency, there is little to be gained in the rationing of love.

And here we come to another bear who doles out love like something only slightly thicker than water.: Paddington. While Poohโ€™s essential task is love, Paddingtonโ€™s is kindness, that cousin of honey, both products of both effort and patience, both sweet & sweet & sweet & delicious on bread. While Poohโ€™s is the story of loving those we already love, Paddingtonโ€™s is the story of how to offer kindness and compassion and respect and dignity to those we donโ€™t yet know. Pooh tells us how to live and love within our inner circle; Paddington tells us to offer love wherever we go.

Some exhibitions of Marmaladeism, both by Paddington himself and his films at large:

Paddington Bear: if weโ€™re kind and polite the world will be right.โ€™
Paddington:ย Thank you, Mr. McGinty. Nuckles McGinty:ย Donโ€™t thank me yet. I donโ€™t do nothing for no one for nothing. Paddington:ย Beg your pardon? Nuckles McGinty:ย You get my protection so long as you make that marmalade. Deal? Paddington:ย Deal.

& how through Paddingtonโ€™s kindness, McGintyโ€™s perspective changes:

Nuckles McGinty:ย [to Paddington] If youโ€™re going to clear your name, youโ€™re going to need our help.
Nuckles McGinty: โ€œThis bear is now under my protection. Anyone that touches a hair on this bear will have to answer to me, Nuckles McGinty. Thatโ€™s Nuckles with a capital N.โ€
Henry Brown: No, of course you donโ€™t. YOU never have! As soon as you set eyes on that bear you made up your mind about him. Well Paddingtonโ€™s not like that. He looks for the good in all of us and somehow, he finds it! Itโ€™s why he makes friends wherever he goes. And itโ€™s why Windsor Gardens is a happier place whenever heโ€™s around. He wouldnโ€™t hesitate if any of us needed help! So stand aside, Mr Curry. โ€˜Cause weโ€™re coming through.
Aunt Lucy: Long ago, people in England sent their children by train with labels around their necks, so they could be taken care of by complete strangers in the country side where it was safe. They will not have forgotten how to treat strangers.

While both Paddington movies are completely wonderful, Paddington 2 is more effective in communicating its point: through a surprisingly nuanced look at the prison industrial complex, capitalism, and the insidious nature of evil (and how it roots from believing oneself superior to everyone else), it tells us that by offering people kindness, human dignity, compassion, and even love, we can often coax out their better selves from the protective shell of their worse ones.

These are times like any other: by which I mean, times in which we often learn the correct rhetoric, the correct stances, the correct politics, the correct opinions, and forget what all this is meant to be in service of: honey & marmalade, love & kindness. We speak out against prejudice (racism, sexism, classism, ableism, prejudice against LGBTQ people, etc.) rightly soโ€” I donโ€™t mean to say that we should stop activism or protest or a careful monitoring of languageโ€” but we must remember what we do this all for. Yes, structural change is crucial. What else is important? Treating the people you come across who are of these minorities we claim to support and defend well, treating them with kindness, with compassion, loving them well, as they need and want to be loved. Large-scale rhetoric is shaky and doomed if it doesnโ€™t come from some deeper, sweeter instinct to ensure we are all fed: in food, in shelter, in education, in joy, in honey & marmalade. Let us not forget this.

I think we need to watch more kidsโ€™ movies. I think we need to reteach ourselves the fundamentals. I think itโ€™s a goddamn shame that kidsโ€™ movies are dismissed as uncomplicated and unimportant, that wonder, hope, naivete, whimsy, charm, warmth, sweetness (those 2 secret sauces) are not granted the same gravitas as misery and grittiness, that there is somehow nothing important to say about them, that only cynicism and brutality are intelligent. One is not smarter for being miserable. One is not smarter for their pessimism. One is not smarter, is not better, is not more morally responsible or ethically aware or more worldly for refusing to place in their mouth a piece of bread spread with something sweet, for refusing to say yes, this is , in Leslie Jamisonโ€™s words (again, I know) significant, thisโ€œ single note of honeyโ€.

paddington bear pride flag

red - represents his little red hat, and the love he brings to those he meets

orange - represents the marmalade which he eats

brown - represents the color of his fur and the brown family, of whom he is a member

blue - represents the color of his iconic duffel coat

grey - represents how empty and meaningless my life would be without his presence in it

yellow - represents the joy he inspires