Overcoming Paddington

My lovely friend Abby got me this Paddington from THE Paddington Station. My prized possession.

*Spoilers for Paddington (2014) and Paddington in Peru (2024)*

    On March 18, I watched the 2024 film Paddington in Peru with my dear friend, Gracie. There were little things about the film that I was mildly dissatisfied with. For example, they recast my beloved Sally Hawkins and I didn't like the new actress as much. But all in all I quite enjoyed the film. I love Olivia Coleman and Antonio Banderas's iconic performances that live up to the long tradition of high profile actors having a great time performing delightfully quirky villains, and I love it when Paddington runs toward Aunt Lucy and gives her a big hug (it never fails to make me a sobbing mess). It is without a doubt the weakest entry in the Paddington trilogy, but that speaks less to the poor quality of this film and more to the life-changing beauty of the first two films. 

    There is, however, a persistent critique that is levelled against P in P, and I fear it is quite a valid one. Despite being set in Peru, P in P seems terribly uninterested in the country, its culture, and its people. A usual UK-centred Paddington story stresses Paddington's relationship with the UK, his interaction with its people and his struggle to form a unique British identity. Paddington is situated in the UK and the story explore how this situated-ness shapes and drives him as a character.  P in P on the other hand doesn't feature any speaking Peruvian role nor any (human) populated Peruvian locations. After a pretty stereotypical travel montage featuring bustling marketplaces, locals in unfamiliar attire, and many, many llamas, the narrative moves into the hidden-away home for retired bears, and eventually, the empty darkness of the Amazon forest. The only speaking local roles are reserved to the (stunning) English actress Olivia Coleman and Spanish actor Antonio Banderas, who are later revealed to be gold-lusting treasure hunters descended from a line of Spanish colonizers. 

    P in P is, above all else, a take on the classic treasure hunting narrative -– that uniquely colonial trope and tradition. After all, what is a good treasure hunting story but a fantasy of a rugged individual embarking on an adventure to an uncharted tropical jungle –– one where the natives are either nonexistent or bone wielding savages –– to extract an ancient resource previously unharvested? While at the end of the day, P in P might want to condemn endless greed of its colonial treasure hunters, it nonetheless exists in the shape of a colonial dream. It is unable to challenge the narratives that strips the colonized of their voices, agency, and humanity.

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     Paddington is no stranger to postcolonial critiques. This is because at the core of the Paddington story is an assimilationist narrative. Coming from "Darkest Peru", Paddington must learn proper English etiquette, he must forgo his bear name in favour of a name easier for English speakers to pronounce. To be sure, it celebrates the new life immigrants bring to the community, yet it takes for granted the disproportionate accommodation expected of immigrants, as well as the erasure, or at least dilution, of their identities. Paddington is one of us, but not before the Browns guide him to shed his savagery and embrace the ways of civilization. 

    Yet having re-watched Paddington (2014) last night, I find the film's handling of this material to be destabilizing, exciting, and odd. To start, the film presents the opposite of the assimilationist position –– the exclusionary position –– in quite an insightful fashion. We were introduced to our first racist, Mr. Curry, who is the archetypal working class racist. Mr. Curry's racism is really rooted in ignorance and his lack of understanding of the other. His objective is to maintain the imagined British way of life. Yet Mr. Curry's racism is presented as toothless and abstract. It is only mobilized and concretized by Nicole Kidman, who espouses an entirely different form of racism. For Nicole Kidman, the end goal is never to expel the other, but to stuff, taxidermize, and display them. The other is, for Nicole Kidman, useful. As Susan Sontag observed in Regarding the Pain of Others, the display of the other automatically objectifies the other and solidifies the spectator as an "us". She wrote about the disproportionate coverage and display of the suffering Non-European bodies, 

The exhibition in photographs of cruelties inflicted on those with darker complexions in exotic countries continues this offering, oblivious to the considerations that deter such displays of our own victims of violence; for the other, even when not an enemy, is regarded only as someone to be seen, not someone (like us) who also sees.

    So is the case with Kidman's view of Paddington. The other must be exhibited for all to see. He must be emptied of subjectivity, stuffed with European projections and ideas, and ultimately frozen in his abject barbarity. The savages are made as much as they are found. Power is, as Foucault observed, as productive as it is repressive. 

     The characterization of the assimilationist position in the film is just as surprising. The film presents the assimilationist view not only through the Brown family, but also through an original character created for the film –– Montgomery Clyde, the explorer. In an especially intriguing part of the film, the members of the Geographers Guild ––  supporters of the exclusionary-exhibitionist position –– question Clyde as to why he did not kill one of the bears and bring it back as a specimen. Clyde's response states clearly what the Browns say only in a repressed form, "Gentlemen, these were no dumb beasts, they were intelligent, civilized." 

    The members are not impressed. "Come off it Clyde," they retort, "they don't even speak English. Did they play cricket? Drink tea? Do the crossword? Pretty rum idea of civilization you've got." 

    The scene moves on and Clyde does not get to reply, but it makes one wonder what he would say to the geographers. Why would he use this word, civilized? Does he understand civilization to be something more than the superficial signifiers that the members list out? Or perhaps he was merely thinking of his own list of superficial signifiers: they love marmalade the way we do, they yearn for London the way we do...the narrative, staunchly on the side of Clyde and the assimilationist position, seems to indicate that the latter is true. After all, the film suggests that Paddington may be incorporated into British society precisely because he is civilized in this superficial sense, because he speaks English, enjoys tea, and maybe even plays crickets and does crosswords. When all is said and all is done, the bears are included with the exact logic by which they are excluded.

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    It is in this nuanced understanding of the exclusionary-exhibitionist position and the complicating of the assimilationist position that the film reaches its most astonishing dialectical insight –– Nicole Kidman is the daughter of Montgomery Clyde. The seeming contradiction between the assimilationist position and the exclusionary-exhibitionist position is revealed to be working within the same colonial framework of the Geographers Guild. It is in the colonial encounter that the colonized other, that quasi-subject stuck between beast and man, becomes a problem to be solved by the European man; and it is through the same colonial gaze, the same will to power-knowledge, the same need to domesticate and master the other that these opposing solutions are articulated. 

    Assimilate Paddington into the dominant culture or freeze him in his savagery for all to see. It doesn't matter which side you choose, the logic of colonialism remains intact.  

    As much as Paddington praises the possibility of assimilation, as much as it tries to tame Paddington's otherness with his English politeness and love of marmalade, it cannot help but undermine itself, to gesture at the unity of the seemingly opposite positions. Under the loud and apparent privileging of one side as opposed to the other, it can't help but ask under its breath: Is there a possibility of overcoming this contradiction? What might be lying beyond?