A comet hurtles towards earth while an oblivious panda grasps at a stalk of bamboo. It sounds like the setup for another "fiddling while Rome burns" joke, but we are actually a few seconds into the two-minute ad introducing the official Beijing Olympic mascot. Bing Dwen Dwen, whose name roughly translates to "chubby ice child," is an improbably cute bear: a round panda with raccoonish eyes and a ready smile.
The comet turns out not to be an extinction event but a portal to the Winter Olympics. It conveys Bing Dwen Dwen down a slope, which inadvertently summons Plato's allegory of the cave. Except in this scenario, our panda does not ascend toward enlightenment but descends to a mysterious light source. Landing with a soft thump, Bing Dwen Dwen finds itself surrounded by shadowy silhouettes of athletes snowboarding and skiing. The bear is then sucked into the vortex of the iridescent comet. No sooner is it transported into another dimension than it is encased in a transparent astronaut suit with a rainbow ringing its face.
