Thursday, April 04, 2013

TEDDY BEAR SYMBOLISM


Even in the hard-boiled and cynical (supposedly) world of Swedish murder mysteries, the teddy bear -- a stuffed toy that looks and acts nothing like a bear, not even the original yellow teddy bear that got its name from Teddy Roosevelt -- has a clear symbolism: the child’s attachment to a nurturing caretaker.  

I have a photo of myself with my beloved king-sized stuffed panda with whom I took naps when I was hardly bigger than the bear.  In a sermon I once told the sad story of this first lover, how it got so filthy that my mother stuffed it into the furnace, badly searing my emotional attachment which she always underestimated. The day after I told the story an earnest older lady brought me a little stuffed panda.  I was 45 -- she was 70.  The bear was more about her than me.  So far no one has challenged my relationship with my mother except for myself.  I have to admit I got a bit of a shudder from reading a sci-fi novel in which terraforming on another planet included the planting of real live panda bears which in an unforeseen consequence became like ferocious man-eating polar bears, except that they traveled in packs.  

I guess some people see lovers as being like that.  It depends upon how you define lovers, which are as prone to being misunderstood and morphed into psychic categories as bears are.  Non-human species and human anatomy are useful metaphors for talking about “felt” concepts that are hard to define, because definitions depend upon social agreement.  A rousing essay that ought to be read by all pre-adolescent young men is at  http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/hesaid-in-search-of-the-magic-pussy/  It’s by Dr. Adam Sheck, a marriage counselor who blogs at http://passion101.com/blog/about/   He’s one of those guys that Dear Abby is always recommending.  (She’s pretty much given up on recommending clergy.)  Dr. Sheck has great hair, but keep in mind that he’s in California.  On the other hand, he could be in Sweden.  Whether he works for you depends on where and who you are.

The “Magic Pussy” is a phenomenon that can actually cause pre-adolescent and adolescent boys to plunge into despair so deep that they kill themselves.  Because the Magic Pussy is their new teddy bear, the one that means they have graduated from mother to lover.  (If the lover they find is male, the magic anatomy will have a different name.  If we’re talking about girls, it’s obvious that the Magic Wand is not quite what it was in Harry Potter movies, but it’s similar.  When a Magic Bit-of-Anatomy takes the boy in and is effective, it returns him to the Eden that was Mother.  (Assuming she was a good mother, which is a prerequisite for the yearning metaphor.  Abused and neglected boys do not yearn for a magic pussy, though their physiological yearning may still be there and may transfer to the Magic Drug.)

I’m sorry to use blunt language but it’s time to give up the taboos and fantasies that keep us from coping with reality.  On the other hand, if I use Latinate medical terminology -- which is what my mother raised me to use -- I find that most people can’t figure out what I’m talking about.  They are not in the habit of using dictionaries, so they just stop reading.

We’re not really talking about vulvas and teddy bears and yet we are.  When a child has died, we festoon trees with teddy bears in the same spirit as lighting candles, which are a little more traditional in their symbolism of caring.  Men and boys can be reassured by coition and the clever-as-well-as-magic pussy will make the experience one that truly embraces them.  But even coition is really a metaphor for an intimate relationship -- or ought to be.  People are now writing about how “hook-up culture” and “rape culture” destroy intimacy -- actually make it impossible.  We’re in a culture that burns teddy-bears because it’s good for business.  They hope you’ll buy a new one, bigger and better with batteries so it will talk.  It’s an intimacy toy.  (Of course, sex toys are old news.)

Here comes the twist.  Intimacy, nurturing, and good sex are phenomena of the brain.  The ultimate Magic Pussy is the Magic Concept:  the idea that is so dead-center or so beautifully expressed that it fills a person with joy and confidence.  This is the goal of religious thought because it feels like spirituality.  It can also easily happen as a result of art or rational research and reflection or song or ritual or meditation.  Sometimes another person gives it to you and sometimes you just find it.  It can be pursued or it can just well up or come as a clap of thunder -- entirely unexpected.  Meaning.  Belonging.

This assertion about the Magic Concept might strike someone as a magic concept in itself, but more likely not, because it’s a function of time and place, context and readiness.  This is the great problem of religious institutions:  that they want their own Magic Concept to have meaning for everyone, but there can’t be the same Magic Pussy or Magic Wand for everyone all the time.  At best an institution or a book or a practice amounts to a search, a sharing of evidence.  

Strongly motivated searches can end up with false conclusions, such as believing that “child” or “virgin” pussy is more powerful than any other kind.  Resentment against the withholding of praise is a pretty good clue that the person is really demanding confirmation of his own possession of a Magic Wand,  which is not about the other person at all, thus eliminating all possibility of intimacy.  Intimacy takes two.

Surely this neglects our felt intimacy with pets, which is reciprocal, at least with dogs, or with imaginary (maybe remembered or made-up) people who are not us, a kind of internal reciprocity.  But the Magic is about something “felt” rather than pinned down and explained.  It’s what beloved stories like “The Velveteen Rabbit” or “Pinocchio” or “The Little Prince” are about, that felt relationship we find nurturing, reassuring, and therefore “intimate.”  If that felt relationship is intense enough, it can become transcendent.

The traditional stiff yellow tightly-packed rather species-accurate bear cub has gradually morphed into a soft, floppy, chubby-limbed, flat-faced creature.  I think it is meant to be easier to handle for a small child, which means that the youngster who needs a reassuring transitional object is becoming younger than Christopher Robin, whose Pooh Bear was like the early version.  These soft and floppy bears are meant to appeal to parents -- that’s who has a credit card -- and they are (to me) disturbingly like the no-stuffing dog toys that the pet is taught to shake and pull in a tug-o-war, not unlike the felt experience of a child of divorce.

This is how the Magic Pussy becomes the Toothed Twat.  It is the deserting mother, the double-crossing dame.  Still -- decades ago one of those old stiff yellow teddies floated around the gay community on the West Coast.  Someone had given it a full set of old-man’s dentures.  It was terrifying.  And symbolic. 

No comments: