A DARK RIDE THROUGH PETER PAN

 

All things considered it is puzzling that 1953’s Peter Pan is of all of Walt Disney’s animated adaptations the one least structurally altered from the source material. And yet, the tonal differences from J.M. Barrie’s play and (later) book are significant. Structurally there are but little changes inevitable when taking something first written for theater then molded into a children’s book and then into a whole new medium. The most obvious one is the piece requiring audience participation (“clap if you believe in fairies”; though this was retained in the book). But, overall, it is truly astounding how closely Disney followed Barrie’s plot down to small details.

Being introduced to Neverland and its characters through the Disney classic and then watching thematic elements start to emerge with later adaptations of Barrie’s work it is a pleasant surprise to find that Barrie never hid the work’s deeper and sometimes darker undertones. They were there from the start when Peter Pan was written as a play in 1904 and then as a book in 1911. What was done in P.J. Hogan’s 2003 film and later in ABC’s series Once Upon a Time were hardly revisionist interpretations. Rather, they were touching upon subtexts that Barrie had always intended to be there. The writers of Once Upon a Time admitted as much, stating that what may seem like a dark spin on the narrative to those raised on Disney’s version was in fact a deeper reading of the work.

To Walt Disney’s credit, with what he took from Barrie, he made a thoroughly delightful film; in many ways his best film from the 1950s, mixing beautiful animation, some of the studio’s greatest characterizations (Captain Hook remains one of Disney’s greatest villains) and a memorable score. Perhaps this was the only way Disney could adapt the work as the soul of Barrie’s story, at its core, is an angst filled tale about the fears of growing up and sexual maturity and the repressed rage with which they are manifested by children. These were not areas Walt could dig too deep in film that would, among other things, be used as the basis for one of the original rides in the park he was developing in Anaheim. This is not to say that Disney ignored the sexual awakening between Peter and Wendy and the sexual tension in Tinker Bell. It’s there even at a casual glance. Still, the bluntness with which Barrie presents it is surprising.

In recent years Captain Hook has also received a kinder reimagining, but Barrie stated to his readers that he was not “all bad” and one can sense Barrie’s sympathy for his iron clawed antagonist when he offers an explanation as to his hatred for Peter Pan. It’s not even that the boy cut off his arm and fed it to the crocodile (does he really need more?). It’s Pan’s cockiness that grinds the sea dog.

Ultimately, though, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is a tragedy about a lost boy who never forgave his mother for abandonment and refused to join her world, the world of grownups. His disdain for adults is evident in his insistence to build a land for other lost boys and his need to “rescue” children from becoming one. There is a contrast between Wendy’s description of a mother (unconditionally loving, nurturing and a safe refuge) and Peter Pan’s memory of his (best understood after reading the book Pan first appeared in, The Little White Bird) as his betrayer who easily replaced him with another little boy when he ran off with the fairies of Kensington Gardens. His need to remain a child is born of fear from becoming the person who hurt him when they were supposed to love him. His whisking away of children to the safe haven he created for them is less an act of revenge than an act of compensation, bringing them to a place in which they cannot be hurt as he was and their innocence never shattered. And he protects this refuge fiercely.

This may also reveal the origins of his conflict with Hook. Barrie’s Hook is an adult as seen through the eyes of a hurt child; ignorant of the ways of children and so hostile to them. In his malignancy Captain Hook exaggerates the worst traits of adults in the real world. Indeed, Hook is the fantastical counterpart of the real world adult. Tellingly Hook and the Mr. Darling (father of Wendy and her brothers) were always played by the same actor and even in the Disney film both were voiced by Hans Conried.

But even at their worst, adults are not all bad and, in Barrie’s own words, neither is Captain. Most children can see this. All children, that is, but one. The boy who was irrevocably hurt by the only adult he would ever trust.