The Berenstain Bears/Fridge

Fridge Horror

• In one of The Berenstain Bears picture-books, Sister Bear is threatened by, and later punches, a girl who's bullying her at school. The bully physically assaults Sister bear off-screen (the book opens with Sister coming home in tears with her clothes and fur dirty, her bow ripped, and God knows what else), is later seen throwing rocks at a baby bird, while the two are waiting for the principal the bully is shown crying and admitting that her parents will probably hit her if they find out what she did, which causes Sister to think she must get hit a lot at home so that's why she bullies people...put it all together and what do you get?
  • The real horror is that Sister has this revelation and does...absolutely nothing with it. You can almost see her going home and having this conversation:

Sister: Mama, guess what? That Tuffy who's been picking on me? Turns out her parents abuse her. That must be why she's a bully.
Mama: Oh, what a relief! I thought she was just a bad cub. Do you want vegetable soup or lasagna for dinner?

• • The book did mention that Tuffy got therapy.
    • But the parents don't, of course.
  • Plus, Sister's a kid. What could she do? Even if she told her parents, what could they do?
  • Call authorities? Of course, that might not help either. Anyway, if I remember the book correctly, the bully had to see a counselor three times a week.
  • No mention of the image showing Sister imagining all the things she wanted to do to Tuffy when she was going home after being beat up? To reiterate: We see her in a tank, with a morning star, in a bomber plane with a bomb under it, on a horse with a javelin, her in superhero pose, all facing the same direction. Okay, now, most kids would likely just imagine the bully being humiliated. Sister imagines Tuffy about to be killed in so many different, horrific, and painful ways. Not so nice and innocent, now is she? Oh, and in case you forgot: She's thinking all this because she got beat up by Tuffy, whose initial crime was to lob rocks at a bird.
    • Well, she IS about five.
  • Do most five year olds think about killing the bully in so many gruesome, horrific ways? Do they even know that most of the things we saw her imagine can and ARE lethal if used on someone else? The implication here is that she knows exactly what those things could do to Tuffy, and is imagining each and every one of them bearing down on her.