What America's captivation with bears tell this author about our psyche

Daniel Horowitz has been studying the history of consumer culture for decades. He’s the author of many books, with a particular focus on the American psyche — our fixations on, among other things, affluence, happiness and entrepreneurism.

His latest book is a very specific look at one particular animal that has captivated Americans since the early 20th century: the bear. It’s called “Bear With Me: A Cultural History of Famous American Bears.”

He told The Show it grew, in part, out of conversations between Horowitz and his wife.

Full conversation

DANIEL HOROWITZ: Our pillow talk turned to bears. Specifically — and this is pure fabrication, as you can imagine, to a bear named Polar, who grew up on Baffin Island and migrated to Boston where he went to medical school and became a psychiatrist. And he practices psychiatry in the freezer area of a ... the supermarket we use all the time. Because his reward for practicing psychiatry, of course, fish. ... And and moreover, he has a big fur coat, so it's warm.

SAM DINGMAN: Well, I'm so glad you shared that fantasy story about this psychiatrist polar bear that you and your wife have invented. Because I mean, for one thing, I look forward to reading that book whenever you guys decide to write it. But also, it feels indicative of the strong tendency that we have in maybe American culture specifically to anthropomorphize bears. You identify with them, to make their existence somehow similar to our own.

HOROWITZ: Absolutely. I can think of no other animal who plays such a huge role in our imaginations. Monkeys are more like us, chimpanzees, but .... we don't have children's — many children's stories we talk about monkeys or chimpanzees. And once I started on this book, I would say it almost daily. I got an email from a friend. "Oh, Did you see the bears in the backyard in San Dimas, California? Oh, do you know about this new television show, "Bears," etc. ... So, they evoke such a wide and unending series of responses.

DINGMAN: Yes, well, one of the things that I think is interesting about bears that you're writing about in this book — and that I found myself really thinking about as I was reading it — is something about our presumed psychology of bears that is very fascinating. Because these are some of the most vicious animals in the wild, in some cases. I know some bears don't attack humans, but others can kill you with a single blow of their paw — and will.

And yet we so often turn them into these very tender, very emotionally intelligent, wise, you know, safe figures. Like Winnie the Pooh, Smokey Bear. I'm even thinking of, you know, like Fozzie Bear from the Muppets I have often found to be the most relatable of the Muppets. Because in a way there's not anything very extreme about his personality. He's just somebody who's like, I'd love for you to like me, you know.

[CLIP OF FOZZIE BEAR]

HOROWITZ: You're absolutely right. I mean, no doubt about it. I must say before I proceed, that there are relatively few examples of bears unprovoked actually attacking people. And in the big national parks, Yellowstone, places like that, more people die from car accidents than from attacks on bears.

But, yeah, that's one of the aspects of anthropomorphizing bears. They are transformed from real animals, often dangerous ones into imagined animals. And when they are, we impute all sorts of human characteristics, intelligence, kindness, cuddliness — all of those things.

DINGMAN: Well, you get into this a bit in the book, but how did those perceptions of bears evolve over time? I mean, for example, one of the things that you point out in the book is that teddy bears aren't just this ubiquitous cultural touch point. In some ways they were one of the first pieces of truly mainstream American pop culture.

HOROWITZ: What interests me most is about how bears became famous, and indeed celebrities. Theodore Roosevelt had refused to kill a bear, a bear cub, actually — that his compatriots had captured, although they ate him for dinner. And there emerged almost immediately, the notion of teddy bears and a wide variety of dances in the "Ziegfeld Follies" in stories and songs.

[CLIP OF 'THE TEDDY BEARS' PICNIC' SONG]

HOROWITZ: And then of course some objects. And even more dramatically, I think, is what happens post-World War II, especially with changes in the media. After all, what I'm really interested in is the engines of popular culture that elevated bears into the stratosphere. After the war, Disney, cable television, and indeed, Smokey the Bear.

[CLIP OF 'SMOKEY BEAR']

HOROWITZ: Smokey became so immensely popular that the National Agricultural Library has 115 linear feet of products — ashtrays, posters, paraphernalia, cards — of material about Smokey and Smokey was so popular. And of course, by the way, he emerges as a real bear found up in the top of a tree after a forest fire in New Mexico, but soon he's moved to Washington, D.C., in the National Zoo. And there he had eventually his own ZIP code and received often more letters in a day or a week or a month than the president of the United States.