For most of us, the inhabitants of Hundred Acre Wood don't look like the original E.H. Shepard illustrations.
In 1953 the Disney Corporation bought exclusive rights to the residents of Hundred Acre Wood, and it is the Disney version of the characters we know best. The Disney television series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ran for four seasons, from 1988 to 1991. Unlike previous Disney productions of Winnie the Pooh, this was original material, not an adaptation of the A.A. Milne stories. The characters are slightly different than the originals, but not by too much. Eeyore still seems miserable.
My favorite New Adventures cartoon, and the only one I remember, is “A Donkey for a Day” (1988). The cartoon opens with Eeyore sitting on top of his hill in a thunderstorm. The kindly Piglet calls the other residents of Hundred Acre Wood to a meeting to address Eeyore’s continual sadness.
“We gotta do something,” Piglet says. “If I were a very s-s-sad animal, I’d want someone to cheer me up.”
Tigger says, “Tomorrow we’ll all take turns cheering up ol’ Eeyore.”
Only Piglet, of all the friends, doesn’t know how to cheer Eeyore up. “What can I do?”
Tigger replies, “You can just watch the rest of us in action and then just do what Piglets do best. (Whatever that is.)”
Piglet’s search for whatever it is Piglets do best frames the remainder of the cartoon. He watches on as each of the friends attempts to cheer up Eeyore, digging himself deeper into the self-doubt that Anne and Owen Smith (2016, p. 168), following Benjamin Hoff, call "the Eeyore Within, a sense of low self-esteem reflected in an aura of worthlessness in the eyes of others". Every one of the friends believes that what makes them happy will make Eeyore happy. Every one of the friends, contrary to Piglet's belief, is mistaken.
Pooh
The next day Piglet visits Pooh’s house, intending to ask him how to make Eeyore happy. Eeyore is already inside Pooh’s house, invited for lunch.
“Guess you couldn’t get anyone more interesting to come,” Eeyore says. “Serving leftovers?”
“No Eeyore, I’m going to cheer you up.”
“But I’m already cheered up. See?”
Pooh’s way into happiness is the pleasure of food. He force-feeds Eeyore HUNNY. “The way to stay the happiest is to let your tongue lickle and keep your tummy tickled . . . Second helpings are what happiness is all about.”
When Eeyore convinces Pooh that donkeys – especially this donkey – aren’t so fond of honey, Pooh responds, “Let’s find something you do like,” and switches out honey with apples. A sated Pooh then says, “Now that was what I call a happy time.” They have more happy times to come, too, as that was only “what some people would call breakfast, and we still have lunch and dinner to go.”
Owl
“Why do I have a feeling this is not going to be much fun?” Eeyore says.
Owl’s way into happiness is the freedom of travel. He ties balloons onto Eeyore to lift him into the air.
“Oh but it will be fun, Eeyore,” Owl says, circling and swooping around him. “More fun than sitting on your own mountain top.”
Owl wants Eeyore to experience a solo flight as Owl once had, “soaring on high, the wind in my feathers, the whole world opening up before me.” So Owl pops Eeyore’s balloons, one by one, and Eeyore crashes to the ground.
Rabbit
“Happiness is seeing the benefits of good hard work.” For Rabbit that is gardening, watching the things he plants with his hands growing up green from the earth. “And then,” Rabbit laughs like a villain, “harvesting them.”
Rabbit’s capacity for harvesting his crop depends on Eeyore’s labour. He yokes Eeyore to a plow. After Eeyore’s tail falls off, as it tends to do, “not that it is very important,” he asks Rabbit to stick it on again. Rabbit pins it in a delicate place, and Eeyore takes off running, with Rabbit and the plow still attached.
Tigger and Roo
Eeyore says to Tigger and Roo, “I guess this must be Make Eeyore Miserable Day. So what kind of agony do you have in store for me?”
“Don’t worry Eeyore,” says Roo, “bouncing will make you happy.”
For a young kangaroo and a plush tiger who bounces, physical activity is the gateway to happiness. They strap springs to Eeyore’s four legs, but with twice as much spring as the two-legged Tigger and Roo, Eeyore bounces too high. They “abandon donkey,” pull off his springs, and Eeyore crash-lands on a misplaced mattress, falling down a ravine to the river below.
Eeyore
Eeyore returns to the top of his hill. Piglet, dejected and bashful, approaches him.
“Oh, you too, little Piglet?” Eeyore says, putting on a football helmet and covering his face with his hooves. “Go ahead, I’m ready. Cheer me up.”
“I’d love to,” says Piglet. “I’m supposed to . . . I’m really here to apologise. You were always sitting up here so, so sad. Everyone did such a good job of cheering you up, and I had no way to make you ha-ha-happy.”
“So that’s what this is all about. Well, I’m grateful to you all, even if you almost killed me. But I don’t come up here because I’m sad. I come up here ‘cause I’m happy.”
“No?”
“Nope, let me show you something, because you are a good friend." Eeyore points with one ear. “Now watch that cloud.”
Pooh and the others race up the hill.
“My goodness,” says Pooh. “What’s going on?”
“Cloud painting,” says Piglet. To Eeyore he says, “You invented it.”
“Why, it’s spectacular,” says Tigger.
“Aw, anyone can do it,” Eeyore says. “Just use your imagination.”
Piglet
At the very end of the cartoon Piglet gives voice to one of its primary lessons.
“Thank you, thank you for sharing this, Eeyore,” he says. “It’s made everyone so happy.”
“Just returning the favour Piglet. Just returning the favour.”
One of the keys to happiness, then, is sharing. While the others' sharing has only made Eeyore miserable, Eeyore's sharing brings happiness to all the inhabitants of Hundred Acre Wood – for the duration of the cloud painting. Their collective happiness is as transient as the colours falling from the sky.
Throughout, the framing character Piglet embodies the search for happiness. Of all the characters, only Piglet doesn’t know how to cheer Eeyore up. Tigger tells him to observe the others and then to do whatever it is Piglets do best. What Piglets do best, it turns out, is pursuing good and meaningfully relating to their friends. Piglet teaches us the Disney life lesson that virtue is happiness, no matter how miserable it makes us.
*****
“Donkey for a Day” starts with a simple premise – how can we be happy? Though for each of the residents of Hundred Acre Wood “happiness” is getting or doing what they want, each of them wants something different. Pooh pursues pleasure, Owl travels, Rabbit works and amasses wealth, Tigger and Roo exercise, Eeyore creates through imagination, and Piglet extends virtuous relationship. Along the way we learn that happiness doesn’t look the same from person to person, that moments of happiness are transient, and that “happiness” might not even be the best word for what it is they’re experiencing. Neither Eeyore nor Piglet need happiness to flourish, which is being whatever it is they are. It might be more accurate to say that the cartoon asks us to consider, what is the good life? What are the circumstances under which we attain the fullness of being? These are circumstances in which “happy” doesn’t always coinhere with “good"; the good life is not necessarily a happy life.
References
Smith, A. and Smith, O. "The Tao at Pooh Corner: Disney’s Portrayal of a Very Philosophical Bear." Pages 165 to 175 in It's the Disney Version! Popular Cinema and Literary Classics, edited by Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016.