BALOO AND BAGHEERA

Has it ever occurred to any of you that Baloo and Bagheera might very well have been lovers and may very well have lived happily ever after together once Mowgli had left them in the jungle for the girl, head-carrying water to the man village?

No?

Just me then.

There's just a certain tetchy camaraderie and competing for who should be the dominant surrogate parent for the orphan Mowgli that reminds me of an old married couple when I see the two of them together on screen.

If I were to fit them into some conventional stereotypes of such an arrangement (without getting cancelled here) then I would say that Baloo is far more the easy-going layabout father type while Bagheera is the fastidious, double-checking mother type. This might explain the bear and panther's continuous flare-ups over the best way to teach Mowgli life lessons about surviving in the jungle in that brief time they have together in order to get him to the man village.

Strangely though, it's Baloo, not Bagheera who demonstrates the greater emotional attachment toward Mowgli when it comes to saying goodbye at the end of Disney's 19th animated feature-length movie. And if you notice, it's Bagheera who strongly urges Mowgli to leave, possibly because he wants Baloo's full attention and company all to himself.

He's a greedy panther that Bagheera. And a sly one too.

Of course, this is just a casual theory of mine and it bears (pun intended) no importance to the film as a revisionist take but it does give me some small comfort to know that Baloo and Bagheera might have found love deep in the jungle and who knows, maybe even run a kind of gay mafia type of operation to keep the Kaas and Shere Khans from asserting their toxic patriarchy over everyone else in the animal kingdom.

Next week I'll be addressing the literal elephant in the living room which is the confusing sexual androgyny amongst the elders of Colonel Hathi's elephant troop in the very same movie. Winifred has always confused me from a vocal standpoint.

Anyone else?

No?

I guess I'm on my own here.

Unlike Baloo and Bagheera. ^^