Line #18 YMMV/PippiLongstocking


1	* AdaptationDisplacement: Few children nowadays are introduced to Pippi by reading the books. More often, they watch the movies or cartoons first and might read the books later.
2	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
3	** Blom and Dunder-Karlsson in the 1997 animated movie. Considering how they mean no real harm towards Pippi, and how their motivations are revealed to be relatively harmless in their IWantSong, they could be analyzed as a couple of tragically poor buffoons who desperately want to live a better life. On the other hand, they make no qualms about robbing a little girl blind, and they had to have done something to land themselves in jail in the first place.
4	** Mrs. Prysselius in the animated adaptation as well. In the 1969 TV series, she was certainly a bit overbearing, but she was genuinely concerned for Pippi's well-being, considering how Pippi was possibly an orphan who needed proper adult supervision to avoid running into dangerous situations, or even causing any trouble, as she was admittedly a rather loose cannon. However, in the 1997 film, it seems she has no concern for Pippi's safety, only wanting Pippi in the children's home so she could maintain her vision of order in the town by having Pippi out of the picture, and the fact that she sends two (albeit harmless) criminals to capture her supports this, making her a persistent ControlFreak.
5	* AluminumChristmasTrees: Swedish policemen were indeed armed with swords at the time the book was published. Until the 1960s, in fact.
6	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The 1969 TV opening song has gone memetic. Just about every child in Sweden knows it. It's especially popular in Germany, to the point that it's been [[http://youtu.be/nrT5gXkOzYg covered by punk bands,]] [[http://youtu.be/2b_RrsQbHFk remixed by techno DJs,]] [[http://youtu.be/1o9FecbI1OU and even big crowds at soccer games will spontaneously sing it.]] Also ''very'' popular in Finland.
7	* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: From the 1997 animated movie, Blom and Dunder-Karlsson's song of wishing for a bowler and a gold tooth, respectively. While it does have a catchy tune and offers an introduction to these two and their motives, it comes right out of left field and is never addressed again afterward.
8	* DesignatedVillain: Mrs. Prysselius is your standard "social worker/nosy busybody just doing her job" brand of Designated Villain depending on the writer.
9	* EscapistCharacter: Pippi is essentially a power fantasy for children.
10	* ItWasHisSled: All through the first book and most of the second, everyone except Pippi thinks her father drowned in a storm. At the end of the second book, he turns out to not only be alive and well, but pretty much ''all'' of Pippi's tall tales and speculations about him [[TheCloudcuckoolanderWasRight turn out to be completely accurate]]. Surprising when the book first came out, but by now everyone with even the slightest bit of knowledge about the franchise knows that he isn't dead.
11	* JerkassWoobie: Despite being small-time criminals, Dunder-Karlsson and Blom can count as this. They're so poor that their time in jail is one of the few times when they're relatively happy.
12	* QuestionableCasting: Astrid Lindgren was not happy with the 1949 film partially due to nine-year-old Pippi Longstocking being played by then-26-year-old Viveca Serlachius.
13	* ValuesDissonance:
14	** Lying is SeriousBusiness; Annika doesn't like that Pippi is a ConsummateLiar, even though Tommy points out that anyone can realize that Pippi is just being TheGadfly and it's more like her telling stories. A lot of people take offense when they realize Pippi is a liar, even though her stories are too ridiculous to be true. These days, she'd just be seen as an imaginative child.
15	** Pippi's father is titled "Negro King of the South Sea" or "Cannibal King". The books were written in the middle of the 20th century, when this was still considered socially acceptable. Lindgren made it clear early on that the Kurrekurredutt were not really cannibals, having given it up many years before Ephraim was there. The AnimatedAdaptation from 1997 tried to soften it by changing it to "Rear Admiral of the Kingdom of Kurrekurredutt" with someone else introduced as head of state, and recent Swedish editions of the book as well as the modern Norwegian audio adaptations refer to him only as a "King of the South Sea". Astrid Lindgren herself later expressed embarrassment at giving him that title.

Context YMMV / PippiLongstocking