Cocaine Bear, and other bedtime stories: what to watch this weekend

If you're looking for something to watch this weekend, look no further.

Culture journalists Syrus Marcus Ware, A. Harmony and Falen Johnson join Elamin Abdelmahmoud to get into the biggest pop culture news from this week.

For instance if you're looking for a kid-friendly watch, you could revisit a childhood favourite from the Roald Dahl universe, in the wake of the news that a British publisher plans to make edits to the authors beloved works like Matilda and The Witches.

If you're looking to get out of the house, you could always check out the new comedy film Cocaine Bear

Or, you could try something new from the comfort of your own home. There's a dynamic new series on Disney+ celebrating Black women's identity, beauty, culture and humanity called The Hair Tales.

The group discusses all this and more for our weekly wrap-up panel.

We've included some highlights below. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

James and the Giant…rewrite?

Elamin: I'm excited to get to the story because it's so controversial, everybody's been talking about it all week. But, I think maybe it's better to start on a personal note, because I think Roald Dahl books kind of have this deeply personal dimension, you know? Books like The BFG mean something very special to people, and A. Harmony for you, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has a pretty special meaning. Can you share?

A. Harmony: Yeah, so I remember first hearing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the third grade; my teacher used to read a chapter a day, it was like a treat for us to look forward to at the end of the day, so it became one of my childhood favorites. And now I find that every time I do something ultra adult and depressing, like doing my own taxes, that's the way for me to come down and get back into my inner child — by reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So it's like an annual read for me.

Elamin: That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard in my life…the idea of pairing your taxes with,
"you know what? I'm going to return to my third-grade self." I love that. I love everything about that.

A. Harmony: It's got to be a spoonful of sugar.

Elamin: I guess. So then you get this news, where these books are going to be updated. How do you think about children's books being updated? Should we stick with the originals, should we be updating them? What do you think?

A. Harmony: So, I get the sentiment behind wanting to change the stories because I'll be the first to admit, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory did not age well in many ways. But, I feel like editing the story, a) lets Roald Dahl off the hook for being a terrible person with antiquated views, but it also b) takes away an opportunity to teach children critical thinking skills. Let's have a conversation about what we just read — how do you feel about it? Is there anything you're going through today that you can connect to something that happened in the story? 

I think in this age of misinformation and propaganda and fake news, etc., kids are going to need to know how to think critically about what they've read, consider the source and the context of what they've read, and challenge what they've read if they see something that they don't agree with, or something that makes them feel some type of way. So this is a controlled environment for them to start learning those skills.

Elamin: But there's something about children's books that I think heightens this conversation, Syrus. To me, the idea that you read a book to a child and it sticks with them, it becomes a part of the fabric of their being so that they return to it 30 years later when they're doing their taxes…there's something about the fact that this is a thing that we're giving to children for comfort. And when we're editing it, we're saying, you know what, these ideas might not be comforting anymore. You're an academic, you're also a parent. How do you land on this conversation about censorship?

Syrus: I mean, I think it's really essential to be updating our content. I worked in an art gallery, [and] we updated the titles of paintings all the time when they had offensive words in them. We saw what happened with the Dr. Seuss books, with some of them being pulled and some of them being taken down. Look, I grew up reading Roald Dahl, my teacher also used to read stories to us, and I have an 11 year old. I would love for her to get to experience some of these stories. I mean, there are some gruesome parts of these stories—

Elamin: They're quite violent, yeah.

Syrus: —where if there's a car crash and someone slices off part of their nose, but of course, it's told in a funny way, it's told in a humorous way. So I want her to experience these books. I appreciate the edits, to be honest, because otherwise I'm just going to have to be doing the editing myself. My daughter is growing up in a social justice household. There are certain things we don't say. We believe in disability justice, we believe in liberation, there are words that we don't say in our house. So, I appreciate the edit.

Cocaine Bear is exactly what you'd expect

Elamin: We're going to move onto our next topic, which I know that you guys are really excited about: the new comedy Cocaine Bear. It's not a complicated plot. The plot is, there was a bear. The bear did cocaine, and then all kinds of hell broke loose. Some are calling Cocaine Bear one of this year's best films. Good lord, Lord help us all. A. Harmony, what's the premise of Cocaine Bear?

A. Harmony: You said it all. It's this year's Snakes on a Plane, in that the title just says it all.

Elamin: You know, you hear the story, Syrus, and you go, "why this? Why are we doing this?" But also, it is based on a true story. Would you like the honor of telling people the true story of the real-life cocaine bear?

Syrus: Absolutely. I can't believe that this is what I do for my job. Okay. So there was in real life, on September 11th, 1985, Andrew Thornton was trying to bring cocaine from Colombia. And as was described, he had to eject the cargo, and the cargo landed in the forest. I think it was something like 75 pounds or 34 kilos valued at $2 million. And a bear found the cocaine. 

WATCH | Official trailer for Cocaine Bear: 

I just want to clarify that the bear didn't go looking for the cocaine. It wasn't like the bear had a mirror, laid out some lines. The bear didn't do cocaine. The bear found cocaine. And as bears are curious beings, this bear ends up taking a significant amount of the cocaine. I think the bear ingested 3 to 4 grams, and ended up dying. So it's a comedy, but there's a sad ending for the bear, at least.

Elamin: Syrus, long after my career is over, when I'm on my deathbed, I'm going to be thinking about the words, "the bear didn't lay out some lines on a mirror." That's what I'm going to be thinking about. Falen, I have to say, I would like to think that we are sophisticated creatures and that life can't be as simple as, you put a cocaine bear on a poster and people get excited about it. However, I am regularly proven wrong about who we are as a people. Why is there so much buzz about this? Is it literally, "hey, a bear did some cocaine?"

Falen: Oh, yes. I mean literally, that's it. Lest we forget Sharknado. I think people just gravitate towards animals in extreme circumstances. The bear may not have put out a line of cocaine on a mirror, but it did do a line of cocaine off of someone's decapitated leg in the trailer. And I just want to mention that when I was reading up on this, the true story of Cocaine Bear, the nickname was given Pablo Esco-bear, which I think is just too good to not mention.

Elamin: That is a crucial piece of detail. Were you excited to see this movie?

Falen: I was excited to see this movie. So I'm Indigenous, and my people have a clan system, and I'm Bear Clan, so I generally gravitate towards bear movies. I loved the Paddington series. Elizabeth Banks directed the film and I've loved her comedic work, so I was really excited to see what she was going to pull off. But I think more than anything, Cocaine Bear for me functions as a PSA against campers and curious hikers to leave the bears alone because you don't know, they could be on cocaine.

Elamin: Thank you for this nugget of wisdom. Thank you so much.

The beauty of The Hair Tales

Elamin: There's a new show on Disney+, it's called The Hair Tales. A. Harmony, can you do us the honors of telling us what the show is about?

A. Harmony: Sure, so The Hair Tales is a docuseries about black hair, and particularly the relationship between black people and the hair, the politics around their hair, the journeys with their hair. It was co-created by Tracee Ellis Ross, who also has a line of hair care products, and she sits with a bunch of people — Oprah, and Chloe Bailey, even Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley — and talks to them about their hair journeys.

Elamin: Well, I'm always likely to defer to Oprah. Syrus, The Hair Tales offers what I would call a cross-section of black perspectives. There's new ones, there's older ones, there is a nonbinary perspective on black hair. What's your favorite episode of the show so far?  

Syrus: I have to say, I've only watched a couple episodes so far, but I can't wait to watch the rest of the series. I skipped ahead, and Chika right now is my favorite episode. You have this young, non-binary, queer person talking about their hair journey and about how their sexuality and their identity was connected to wearing their hair natural, ended up deciding to get dreadlocks, and just sort of talking through that in that episode. We also hear from some heavy-hitters in trans communities — from the Marsha P. Johnson Institute and some other folks talking about how hair relates to our experience of gender. As a trans person, that episode really spoke to me and really stood out.

Elamin: A. Harmony, what about you?

A. Harmony: I liked Issa Rae's episode the best. I felt it was the most relatable because I felt like we were going through our individual journeys at the same time. She talks a lot about being really ashamed of the way that her hair grew out of her scalp, her natural texture, because she was aware that it was socially unacceptable, and so she used to wear hoodies a lot and hide her hair a lot, which is something that I used to do. 

WATCH | Official trailer for The Hair Tales: 

She talks a lot about the push and pull with her mom, who was like, "I can't understand why you don't like your hair," and I went through that with my mom as well when I was a teen. She also talks about being in university and cutting all of her hair off and that being the first time that she really owned her hair journey. For me, I had a similar experience in university; it wasn't cutting my hair off, it was embracing my natural texture for the first time and actually leaving the house with my hair natural on purpose, and really starting to get to know my textures. So I saw a lot of myself in Issa's story.

Elamin: Falen, you identify as Mohawk and Tuscarora. You have your own cultural relationship with hair. Do you want to talk about that?

Falen: Yeah, so I know in my community and other communities, hair is considered sacred. I think a lot of people know that now, and there's been a lot of trauma around that in our history. Think of residential schools and young children getting their hair cut off as soon as they entered those spaces. So it is sacred, and it is political. But growing up, I had really curly, lighter hair. My hair pushed me into the category of being white passing, which was really hard on the rez. As I got older, I wondered if my hair was sacred? And as I became an actor and I started auditioning for film roles and plays and things like that, I went in for an audition for a film and I had flat ironed my hair because I knew that to be seen as Indigenous, my hair would need to be straight. And so I got the part, was really happy, went to the table read, and I didn't flat iron my hair that day, and the director turned to me and said, "what did you do to your hair?" And so from that point on, I knew what it meant to have straight hair, and I knew that if I wanted to work, that's what I would have to do. So when Oprah said, "now your hair is the way it should be," I really identified with that.

Elamin: Syrus, the topic of black hair has been tackled before. We've seen documentaries, we've seen TV shows that have sort of revolved around this. What do you think makes The Hair Tales different?

Syrus: I think what makes this show different is, 1) that it's made and produced and created by Black women, for Black women and non-binary and trans people. There are too many examples of misogynoir pieces that have talked about hair in a really problematic way (and I'm looking at you, Chris Rock). I love that this is one that is really celebrating and anchoring itself in Black women's stories, and Black queer and trans women's stories. I think that that's really essential and that's quite different. Also, this show is really looking at a wide range of hair experiences, including the experience of non-binary people, which I think we haven't heard talked about as much. So I really love what they're doing in this series.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.