- by Owen Morton
All right. Before we get too deep into this matter, I think we need a full copy of the lyrics to the Teddy Bears’ Picnic Song. Unfortunately, I’m not about to trawl the web for one, so I’ll just provide the version I can remember. If this is not accurate in the areas which we’re going to discuss today, then we can discount the arguments I raise as null and void, okay? Right, as far as I remember, this is how the song went:
If you go down to the woods today you’d better go in disguise.
For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain because
Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic.
Picnic time for teddy bears,
They love to play and shout,
They never have any cares,
Until at six o’clock their mummies and daddies come to take them home to bed because they’re tired little teddy bears.
Does that sound right to everyone else? It seems like it’s pretty much right to me, and since I’m the one writing this article, I think that I can safely say it’ll do.
Right, the first point I’d like to raise is that in this teddy bears’ picnic, “every bear that ever there was” will be in attendance. Now, I don’t know about you, but this certainly implies to me that every bear that ever lived will be there, which by extension means that a load of dead bears will be there. In fact, since I think there is an extremely good case for the argument that there are a lot more dead bears than there are living ones (if only because bears have been in existence for a long time, and therefore there would be an awful lot of generations of them that are now dead), the song does seem to suggest that – when you think about it carefully – the woods in question will in fact be littered with the carcasses of many hundreds of years worth of bears. Of course, some of them will have decomposed and many will be only bones by now, but nonetheless it’s a rather unpleasant image. And what about the ones that have been cremated, hmm? Does the dust from these creatures somehow make its way to the woods and blow about in the air enjoying the festivities? I think that this is somewhat unlikely, but it is what the song seems to be saying. And the current generation of bears will be “play[ing] and shout[ing]” amongst the remains of their ancestors? It’s not a nice concept, and I for one am horrified, just as I was horrified when, for example, Simba and Nala went to play in the Elephant Graveyard in ‘The Lion King’. It’s desecration, nothing more than that. Of course, it’s not quite the same in this case because the dead bears have made their way to the wood themselves, but still.
And since the song does say that the bears will “gather” there, there is a distinct suggestion that they will all be coming from somewhere else. That’s okay, when it comes to the ones that are alive, but I have a bit more of a problem with the dead ones. How do they get there? Perhaps some of the bears make a bit of cash on the side transporting dead bears to and from the woods for the picnics, though this is rather unlikely as driving dead things around is very rarely lucrative. And anyway, bears can’t drive. I mean, if the song didn’t say that the bears would “gather” in the woods, I would be more than willing to accept the view that perhaps the dead ones stay there all the time, and the alive ones only come at picnic time.
Unless, of course, the song doesn’t mean “gather” in this sense. Perhaps it means that all the bears will be collecting something from the woods. This might make a bit more sense at first glance, but then you stop to consider the fact that if dead bears can’t get to the woods, they certainly won’t be collecting anything in the woods. So either way, it doesn’t make any sense.
Then we have to think about other important matters in the song. As I have already noted, it says “every bear that ever there was / Will gather there”, but it then goes on to say that “Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic.” So what does this mean? All the bears go to the woods, but only the teddy bears have a picnic? And all the others watch? Perhaps the teddy bears are the elite among bears, and while the common bears all have to live in poverty and hunger, the elites gorge themselves on whatever it is they’ve brought for their picnic. Does this seem right and just to you? Mark my words, at some point in the near future, the bears will throw off their chains and – I realise I’m getting dangerously close again to the topic of communism, which I decided a while back I wasn’t going to go on about any more, so we’ll steer away from this point. But even if this Marxist interpretation of the song is incorrect, there is still a contradiction in that all the bears go but only some of them have a picnic. What does it mean?
And lastly, I think it is necessary to mention that although “every bear that ever there was” is there at the picnic, there is a distinct implication that the mummy and daddy bears are not (“at six o’clock their mummies and daddies will come to take them home” does pretty much suggest that their mummies and daddies are not there to start with). So how does this work? The only possible explanation is that mummy and daddy bears are not in fact bears at all, because otherwise they’d be there. But then what does that suggest? That as soon as bears become parents, they instantly become something other than a bear – let’s say, for the sake of argument, a flamingo. But wouldn’t this cause all sorts of childhood problems? Children are generally insecure enough already without having to cope with being of a different species than their parents. I mean, if you were a bear but your parents were flamingos, you’d be pretty messed up, wouldn’t you? And that’s only looking at it from a human perspective. Bears are more likely to attempt to eat flamingos, which could cause even more trouble.
And at the end of this analysis, the only conclusion I can draw is that the author of the song didn’t choose his words carefully enough.