From teddy bears and Winnie-the-Pooh to Smokey Bear, Yogi Bear, and Cocaine Bear, American popular culture has been fascinated with real and fictional bears for more than two centuries. Bears are ubiquitous, appearing in advertisements, as logos for sports teams, and as central characters in children’s books, cartoons, movies, and video games. In Bear With Me, Daniel Horowitz presents a vibrant history of the pedestrian and celebrity bears who have captured our imaginations and infiltrated our everyday lives. He shows that bears’ ability to represent and evoke both terror and comfort makes them well-suited for their omnipresence. Today, cultural depictions of bears largely encompass examples of human-bear relationships, reciprocity, and emotional engagement. Reminders that climate change threatens the lives of polar bears engender feelings of empathy, while news of bear attacks drives us to fascinated fear. Whether examining the subculture of gay bears or the deadly consequences of anthropomorphizing animals, Horowitz charts the complexities and depth of American culture’s unique and enduring relationship with bears.
- Cover
- Contents
- Preface / Polar Bears, Franz Boas, and Me
- Introduction
- 1. Folkloric Bears and Actual Ones: Sacred and Profane from the Bible to Contemporary Celebrities
- 2. The Stories of Hugh Glass: The Case of a Disappearing and Reappearing Dangerous Bear
- 3. Out of Hibernation and Into Children’s Literature
- 4. Grizzly Adams: Bears He Tamed, Those He Displayed, and Those Responsible for His Death
- 5. Captive Bears and Their Captors as Workers
- 6. Teddy Bear: Another One Quickly Disappears and Frequently Reappears
- 7. Off the Poster and Out of the Zoo: Smokey Bear Goes Everywhere
- 8. Out of the Closet: Bears in the Gay World
- 9. Timothy Treadwell and Marian Engel: Bears, Humans, and Dangerous Eroticism
- Coda. Precarity and Polar Bears
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- Y
- Z
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