You mean Teddy?

I recently viewed an bizarre documentary called Grizzly Man. The documentary was about Tim Tredwell, a grizzly bear fanatic who died being killed by a ferocious bear, ironically trying to save the grizzly himself. Although alot of the film made me really thing-k, one thing that caught my eye was when the director showed shots of Tim cuddling up with a plush furry bear. My mind couldn't help but see how he treats the toy bear and the real bears so similarly. Tim runs up to the animals and talks to them and touches them, the kind of behavior that got him killed.

What I found fascinating was thinking about how hazardous these animals were, and how innocent the toy representation of them was. The way that Tim treated these bears, and his stuffed bear, reminded me of when I was a child playing with my own stuffed teddy bear. I would cuddle up with it, bring it all over my house, and even outside into my backyard. I loved my stuffed bear, as many children do, but until recently did I really begin to wonder why it is a bear that seems to be the quintessential toy for every American child. An animal that is so dangerous and ferocious somehow made into the most adorable fuzzy creature a child can get their hands on. I think it is funny that out of all the stuffed animals made, it is the bear that children seem to be most drawn to, or that our society portrays children to be drawn to. It is in our society that I have begun to notice other cases of where we try and take something that is actually big and scary, such as the grizzly bear, and make it something cute and fun and innocent. Take toy soldiers for example. Many will agree war is not a fun thing, it is very serious, heavy, and devastating, yet children play with toy soldiers, and play games of war, for fun.
I wonder what these things say about our society as a whole? Are we good at taking things with a grain of sand, and not really worrying about the significance behind them, for it is all fun and games? Or are we disrespecting those who give their lives for our country, and comprising all of their troubles down into a plastic green figure for children to laugh about while hiding in their sand boxes?
    I personally feel that it is a somewhat combination of the two but mainly the fact that we take these things with a grain of sand to save us the trouble. We take things that are really a big deal and make them not seem like a big deal to save ourselves the distress. Take the government shutdown as an example. Although it seems so strange to think that currently the people who represent our country have all just stopped doing their job, we do not really fret about it. No one has mentioned it in school, and my parents do not seem to be in fear that it is that big of an issue. I think we do this because if we worry too much about something we cannot control, and something that will soon be back to normal anyhow we will cause ourselves unnecessary distress. We take these things as less of a big deal, or look at the happier side of them for our own good. If we worried that anything closely relating to war or soldiers was directly correlated with death and despair, we would drive ourselves crazy! Just as if we looked at every child's teddy bear as the one who killed humanitarian Tim Tredwell, we would be living in a world of grief.