Vinni Puh
Vinni Puh (1969) is the Russian counterpart to everyone's favorite British Bear, Winnie the Pooh (face it Paddington, no one likes you. Marmalade is for elitists).
I'm not sure how many among us count themselves Winnie the Pooh devotees, but I, for one, spent the better part of my early childhood watching the original WtP shorts at least once every few days, and as such had no problem wasting 30 minutes on parsing out the differences between the two versions of the series.
The art direction is pretty awesome, and a lot of the physical humor made the transition intact, but man, I don't care how cute he is, Puh bugs me. The guy who put this translated version on YouTube claims that he "comes across as more real, more complex, and wiser than his Disney counterpart," and I can't disagree completely, but that doesn't mean I'm okay with the soviets turning Pooh into an irredeemable leech, Piglet into a lemming, and Rabbit into a pathetic nerd. Answer me this, Leonid Brezhnev: why you gotta be so down on Pooh? Fuck you. And where's Christopher Robin? Did you blacklist Christopher Robin? Is it too soon to make jokes about blacklisting? It could be waaaaaaay too soon, considering what's been happening to Russian television lately. Fuck you too, Putin.
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ReplyDeleteDO YOU KNOW THAT VINNI PUH WAS MY CHILDHOOD? russian winnie the pooh has great music, actually. maybe not in this episode, but usually he talks too quickly, i can never keep up
ReplyDeleteholy shit! did you watch the disney versions, too?
ReplyDeleteFunny, funny material, Mr. Fry. The first paper I wrote at Carleton was an analysis of the values instilled by the Vinni Pukh and Winnie the Pooh. Unfortunately, I can't remember what I said. Alas.
ReplyDeleteAs for Mr. Putin, as the state unofficially owns all of the major tv stations, he can pretty much do whatever the fuck he wants.
I never liked American Winnie-the-Pooh. I guess he was too nice and sweet and always got his bottom stuck in that cave thing. Winnie-the-Pooh as a huge jerk is better.
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