On Pandas

The panda bear is truly a much maligned creature. Just look at what Hollywood has had to say about the panda, for instance Toby on The West Wing discussing the challenge of acquiring a new panda for the National Zoo: “Get a couple of regular bears, a can of black spray paint, a can of white spray paint, what's the difference?” To say nothing of Jack in Fight Club, when he describes the orgiastic fury of violence that made him wreck Angel's face by saying, “I wanted to put a bullet between the eyes of every panda that wouldn't screw to save its species.” Why so much anger? The panda has certainly tried to reach out and make friends, only to be rebuffed at every turn. When she opened a restaurant to share the simple dishes of her native homeland at affordable prices, certain snooty members of the Chinese diaspora couldn't wait to heap their derision on it, and through their relentless harping, drive diners away from the Panda Express.

Some people have lovingly adopted elements of the panda bear's unique style, but that may have only made the problem worse. Much like the zebra and the penguin, the panda's two-tone style is intriguing in a Detroit minimalist techno sort of way, and doesn't clash with anything. The problem for these animals is their look got adopted by The Man: referees picked up the the zebra's gear, and wealthy capitalists started dressing up like penguins, but the pandas got it worst of all when the police introduced the panda car. Now at parties when a panda shows up, even the red pandas are like, “Who called the po-po?” But before the poor panda can explain, “No, my name's Ling-Ling, not Po-Po,” everybody's already gone climbing out the back window.

I think you can see the effect this has on the domestic life of pandas, like when Cho Cho and Chi Bai or Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing or whatever the pandas Nixon got for the National Zoo were called were clearly going through problems in the bedroom. Despite Ling-Ling's coaxing, Hsing-Hsing never seemed to rise to the occasion, and they weren't getting any younger. I can see how Hsing-Hsing might not have been feeling too excited about life, when he moves to America for a fresh start and the folks back home have already picked out a girl for him. I'm sure Ling-Ling's nice and all, but what if Hsing-Hsing just wanted to find a blackbear life-partner and adopt some orphaned polar bears whose mothers had drowned? Instead he's living in a fish bowl with flashbulbs going off in his face and strangers asking when he's having a baby... this is why Brad split on Jen. To keep trying to make it work, Ling-Ling certainly puts up with a lot. I mean she's obviously open-minded and committed to making it work, she's tried some things like finding some porn movies from Thailand that show other pandas mating, so she and Hsing-Hsing could watch them together to help him get in the mood. (I'm not making that one up, zoologists in Bangkok really have produced panda porn and it's been showed to pandas in other zoos to get them horny.) Maybe it's too much time together... I don't think grizzly bears even like salmon, they just know the importance of having a hobby that gets you out of the cave for a while so you're not getting on each other's nerves, and it was either golf or fishing.

But let's face it, if Hsing-Hsing wants to be picky that's up to him, but he's going to have to put down that bamboo and do some stomach crunches, and maybe hit Banana Republic to get a real shirt to put over that undershirt. In general a make-over could really help out the pandas, when you consider the level of style and class shown by their peers. In America, a brown bear won't go out to steal picnic baskets without first putting on a tie, and Smoky's got that hat he wears. Grizzly bears don't sit around slouching over their dinner, they know what posture says about them, so they rise up to their full monstrous height when they greet visitors. Koala bears down in Oz probably know better than anyone the importance of appearance and presentation. For years they've been exploiting that professorial image, putting up such a front of respectability that nobody ever comments on how their breath always smells of cough syrup. (Yeah, yeah, you were just “chewing eucalyptus leaves”, sure you were, now why are your pupils so dilated?) So ditch the white trash look with the wife-beaters and the thick eyeliner. Even the raccoons, when they come dig through the zoo's garbage cans at night, have to be telling Hsing-Hsing, “Dude, we're raccoons and we think your girlie needs to ease up on the mascara.” (Come on, raccoons are about the most white trash animal there is, scavenging for crawdads and digging through other people's garbage, there's no way they'd pass up the obvious joke about an Asian immigrant's eyes.)