The 'Teddy' Bears

The Goldilocks character invade the house of the bears. They are a happy family who have furniture, cook food, and love one another. This snot comes in and eats their food and sleeps in their beds. She takes the little toy bear belonging to the little bear. When they chase her a guy with a gun shoots and kills the mother and father, even though they are wearing human clothing. Then they arrest the little bear and give his toys to the little girl. I found this a horrible lesson.

I had the good fortune some fifteen years ago to catch a British television documentary (the name of which escapes me now) the subject matter of which was the pioneering years of animation. During the course of the programme were shown several frames from this early film. Whilst obviously jerky and completely devoid of modern animation techniques, I was particularly impressed by the innovation used here by Ed Porter.

Actually produced in 1906 and following on from the critical success of another chalk-board animation that same year, THE HUMOROUS PHASES OF FUNNY FACES, directed by Stuart Blackton, THE TEDDY BEARS was in fact a stop-frame production, using real stuffed teddy bears! In this respect, Porter was creating true "animation" but not a cartoon! It was in hindsight, the absolute ancestor of today's "Claymation." It took Ed Porter 56 hours work to complete just one minute of "moving" film.

Perhaps when viewing today such spectacular computer-generated animation as the recent DINOSAUR, the product of armies of programmers, artists and technical designers, you might spare a thought for pioneers like Ed Porter who sat alone in their studio crafting the framework for future generations with agonising slowness, but dedication.

The first part of this short is a nice adaptation of the fairy tale about Goldilock visiting the house of the the 3 bears when they are not home. They have added a sequence where Goldilock peeks into a room in the house, and sees some quite impressive acrobatics done by a group of teddy bears. The stop motion animation here is nice and smooth, including sequences where the bears jump through the air.

The story continues as it does in the fairy tale, up until the end, where Theodore Roosevelt is involved. Modern audiences might not recognize the character, but this movie was made not long after the bear hunting incident, which gave birth to the "Teddy bear" toy. The turn in the end is quite brutal, and might that the fun away from the movie for younger children. It might open up for some good discussions though. Maybe about the relationship between people and nature? The costumes and sets were all quite nice.

This is a bizarre sit. It's supposed to be, from what YouTube told me in the video description, a 'satire', but of what? It's one of those tall tales around the great Theodore Roosevelt that he got his name 'Teddy', and in conjunction with this the 'Teddy' bear, because while he was hunting and killed a mother bear, he didn't shoot the bear cub. This is mixed in with the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, where Goldilocks breaks in, eats the Porridge, goes to bed, and then the three bears come home to get the little girl out and, you know, kill her.

It combines these two stories so what you get is 10 minutes of the Goldilocks tale told with some degree of competency - that is, you can follow it - with one rather surreal digression where Goldilocks looks through a room into where four or five or six teddy bears are doing dance movements in stop motion(!) And as others have noted, this is the best part of the short, and reminds me of the zany exuberance of something like Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' video, and for the time it holds up rather well. The people in the bear costumes... not so much. And then the last three minutes is this Roosevelt-bear story, only here he kills both the Mama Bear and Papa Bear and lets the Baby Bear live so... the Baby Bear is spared I guess.

I don't know what Edwin S Porter's politics were, but I'm suspecting this was *against* Roosevelt for some reason (was Porter pro-bank or something? Might make sense given the Great Train Robbery, though that proves nothing). I just didn't get the "satire" part of it; what does the Mama and Papa bear represent here, as far as them being shot and killed? Is it a satire on American imperialism, as the little girl is invading a foreign territory and yet the Americans end up killing the foreigners anyway after f***ing up their s***t? It might take a few drinks to really get into what the deeper meaning is here.

For now I'd say it's worth watching simply for the wild spectacle of seeing these actors in bear costumes and this girl peering in on these stop motion little bears. It's a nice dose of WTF that won't make sense without fuller context - and even then you may be confused!

This Edwin S. Porter feature combines solid technique with an odd mixture of material that raises some interesting questions. One thing that is certain, though, is that it includes an excellent stop-motion sequence that is as enjoyable to watch as it is impressive in its technique.

The plot combines the familiar story of Goldilocks and the three bears with some chase sequences and some political commentary about then-President Theodore Roosevelt. Besides the unusual combination of topics, it also has a sudden and, in some respects, rather unsettling change of tone. The first part would work very well as family or children's entertainment, but the last part could well be distressing to some children, as it rejects or even contradicts the tone and atmosphere of the earlier part.

In itself, its portrayal of the Roosevelt figure could be somewhat ambiguous, and open to interpretation. But given the negative portrayal of Roosevelt in Porter's earlier feature "Terrible Teddy, the Grizzly King" (made in 1901, when Roosevelt had recently been elected Vice President), it is most probable that this one also was meant to satirize the President's sporting habits.

Regardless of the rest of it, the sequence of the dancing 'teddy' bears makes it more than worthwhile. It is a charming and entertaining scene, and it could only have been done through creative and painstaking work with the toy bears and the camera. It still looks very impressive and detailed. The rest of the movie does not come up to that level, but even overall it is certainly interesting and unusual in several respects.