Winnie The Pooh returns to embarrass China and disappears from cinemas. Disney’s teddy bear, often compared in shape to Chinese President Xi Jinping, will not be released in Hong Kong theaters with the horror film “Winnie the Pooh: blood and honey”. The non-screening would be attributed to “technical reasons”, but it is not the first time that Disney’s teddy bear has hit obstacles, in China
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The first time was in 2013, when Xi met US President Barack Obama for the first time in the United States. The image of the two leaders walking side by side was compared to that of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger (more similar to the former US president in the features) and went around the web
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A comparison that made many smile at first, but the cute teddy bear later aroused the attention of censorship for its association with dissent towards the Chinese leader
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The comparisons between Xi and Winnie the Pooh have followed one another over the years, always running into the blackout of the Beijing censors
A clearly disgruntled Xi shaking hands with former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing in 2014 has been likened to an image from a cartoon, in which the honey-loving teddy bear shakes the despondent donkey’s paw Eeyore (Ee-oh): Again, the similarity in poses and expressions between fictional characters and political leaders is very high
Years later, in 2018, the television station HBO was also targeted by Beijing’s censorship, blocked for a month in China after a sketch in which comedian John Olivier cited allegations of human rights violations by of the Chinese government. In the sketch, the British comedian parodied the Chinese president and mentioned the resemblance to the Disney teddy bear
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Winnie The Pooh resurfaces periodically, along with criticism of China, and even last year, in November, Disney’s teddy bear made an appearance in a protest against the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in Bangkok, at the opening of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit
Before that, Winnie the Pooh had also been used in relation to increasingly evident nervousness about Beijing’s restrictive policies on the Covid pandemic. Also on Twitter, a short video had spread which portrayed a cup of cappuccino with a gelatinous sweet in the shape of Winnie The Pooh sleeping blissfully on top: with a teaspoon, the author of the video tried to “wake up”, obviously without success, the friendly teddy bear, with increasingly energetic movements
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Winnie the Pooh has been banned in China since 2017, and China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in 2020 to shut down the city’s pro-democracy movements. No wonder, therefore, that the horror film directed and produced by Rhys Frake-Waterfiled has encountered difficulties in appearing in theaters in Hong Kong
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There have been no comments from China’s special administrative region on the decision not to release the horror film starring Disney’s teddy bear, but the authorities’ failure to green light the screening could have to do with an approved law in 2021 by Chinese territory that bans the screening of films that “encourage activities that could jeopardize national security”, in one of Beijing’s (many) crackdowns on the former British colony
The comparison between Winnie the Pooh and Xi Jinping is now a weapon to be used without fail for the most critical (and sarcastic) observers of China. Among the latest examples, one cannot fail to mention the former US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo: last month he posted on Twitter the image of the teddy bear descending from the sky holding the string of a balloon, in a clear allusion to the diplomatic incident triggered by the Chinese spy balloon shot down by the United States off the coast of South Carolina
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Source-tg24.sky.it