Paddington Is a Statement on Immigration
Paddington Is a Statement on Immigration
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| “After a deadly earthquake destroys his home in Peruvian rainforest, a young bear (Ben Whishaw) makes his way to England in search of a new home. The bear, dubbed "Paddington" for the London train station, finds shelter with the family of Henry (Hugh Bonneville) and Mary Brown (Sally Hawkins). Although Paddington's amazement at urban living soon endears him to the Browns, someone else has her eye on him: Taxidermist Millicent Clyde (Nicole Kidman) has designs on the rare bear and his hide," according to Wikipedia. |
The article I chose for this week talked about how the children's fantasy movie series, staring Paddington, an the immigrant bear, implicitly hints colonialism and discrimination and “serves to foster kindness and understanding toward people who are different from the majority of society, specifically people from different cultures.”
Paddington’s “name,” named after a London train station, was given to him by a British explorer who could not understand his nor his family’s real names. The writer says that the Bear family started absorbing the British culture after this encounter, and quickly learned the English language and even how to make marmalade. After this scene, the bears speak English during the rest of the film.
Paddington later had to emigrate from his homeland to London (push factor) after a natural disaster, and immediately noticed how how different the culture and land was from what he expected. While I haven’t watched the movie, the writer says Paddington's experiences reflect that of real life immigrants who have to flee their country. Paddington experienced prejudice several times, including when the British villains tried to deport Paddington back to his home land (one of them even wanted to murder the bears), who also wanted to stop more bears, specifically Peruvian bears, from coming— as the “community [was] overwhelmed with fear.” While it is understandable that the human community feared the bears, this idea of fear and wanting to kick these innocent, educated bears out of their country parallels to “the current rhetoric about immigration… To them, immigrants are all miscreants that cause problems in society… [which] characterizes the dehumanization of immigrants.”
In the end of the article, the writer briefly talks about the second installment of the movie, Paddington 2, where Paddington was wrongly framed and incarcerated due to British system's prejudice towards him. Although mostly everyone, including the victim of the crime, believed that Paddington did not commit the crime, which was his “first offense,” the bear was still sent to prison
, which mirrors, “the recent protests against bias in the justice system.”
Opinion: I think it is interesting that a children’s fantasy movie like this can have underlying messages about immigration and discrimination, and hopefully teach children how to and how not to treat these immigrants nor exclude them. It reminds me how powerful the media can be (depending on how one interprets it) in spreading advocacy not only towards teenagers and adults, but even to children.
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