Paddington: The Unaccompanied Minor

Photo via Fandango

We’ve written about Paddington before, noting that he’s a “model immigrant” who humanizes the migrant experience.

I took my boys to see Paddington this weekend, and I can report that Paddington is something more. He is a child. And he doesn’t travel to London because he wants to. He travels to London because he has to. In short, Paddington is an unaccompanied minor.

SPOILER ALERT – the next two paragraphs contains plot points from the first part of the movie.

Paddington is an orphan. The uncle who cared for him is dead, and his last remaining relative, an aunt, is too old to care for him anymore.

But it’s the parting words of his aunt, sending him onwards to London because she can’t think of how else to provide for him, that really hit home the UMC angle of this movie:

Long ago, people in England sent their children by train with labels around their necks, so they could be taken care of by complete strangers in the country side where it was safe. They will not have forgotten how to treat strangers.

It’s that last bit that really gets me: They will not have forgotten how to treat strangers. I think, unfortunately, we have.

-KitJ