Friedman on Peter Pan's Origins
10 December 2014 Friedman on Peter Pan's Origins
Just prior to the recent NBC broadcast of Peter Pan Live! Professor of Media and Society Lester Friedman was interviewed for an article on Peter Pans origins that appeared in The Week. Friedman is co-editor of the 2009 book, Second Star to the Right: Peter Pan in the Popular Imagination.
In the book, Friedman and Allison Kavey, associate professor of history at CUNY John Jay, explore the Peter Pan story from the perspective of cultural studies, World War I, the stage, childrens literature, The Walt Disney Company and animation, film and television.
Peter Pan has captured audience imaginations since the early 20th century, be it on the page, the stage, the movie screen or, most recently, live television. His fierce determination never to grow up represents a dashing image of freedom and eternal youth, or less appealingly, the embodiment of masculine juvenile behavior, the so-called Peter Pan Syndrome,' explains Friedman. Peter Pans encounters with Captain Hook and Mr. Darling represent classic battles between the forces of social repression and psychological castrationthe cultural demand for men to assume the dreary tasks of adult responsibilitiesand their innate desire to tarry (or perhaps stay forever) in the golden fields of childhood.
In the article in The Week, author Charles Moss discusses different adaptations of the Pan character since its inception. He says, The most notable thing about all these adaptations is how different they are from one another. When it comes to your average adaptation, changes are inevitable particularly when youre working in different formats, like film, TV, or theater. Peter Pan is no different, but those who think they know his story might be surprised just how much hes changed along the way.
Friedman interprets the storys hungry crocodile as time, and Captain Hook as death two forces that the never-aging Peter Pan is obsessed with avoiding, writes Moss.
Friedman joined the HWS faculty in 2005. He earned his B.A. from Alfred University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Syracuse University. His recent books include Citizen Spielberg (University of Illinois Press, 2006), Fires Were Started (Wallflower Press, 2006), American Cinema of the 1970s (Rutgers University Press, 2006) and Cultural Sutures: Medicine and Media (Duke University Press, 2004).
The full article from The Week follows and is online.
The Week
The surprisingly morbid origins of Peter Pan
Charles Moss December 4, 2014
Those who grew up loving the Disney animated classic might be surprised by how much the boy who never grew up has changed along the way.
Its been more than 100 years since Peter Pan made his debut, but hes never been more popular or more difficult to pin down. The first trailer for Pan, a star-studded Peter Pan prequel, debuted in November. He played a major role as a villain in ABCs Once Upon a Time. Jake and the Neverland Pirates, a cartoon spin-off of the 1953 Disney film, has been showing up on TV since 2011. And tonight, you can tune in to NBC for the holiday event Peter Pan Live! starring Allison Williams as Pan and Christopher Walken as Captain Hook.
The most notable thing about all these adaptations is how different they are from one another. When it comes to your average adaptation, changes are inevitable particularly when youre working in different formats, like film, TV, or theater. Peter Pan is no different, but those who think they know his story might be surprised just how much hes changed along the way.
Peter Pan originally debuted as an infant in The Little White Bird, a novel written by J.M. Barrie for adults in 1902. Though hes only prominent in a few chapters, the books popularity due, in part, to readers attachment to Pan led Barrie to write the 1904 play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldnt Grow Up. (Barrie eventually adapted his play into another, better-known novel: Peter Pan and Wendy.) The play was the first to introduce audiences to characters such as Captain Hook, Wendy, and Tinkerbell, and to a fleshed-out version of Neverland.
But despite these familiar trappings, Barries version of Peter Pan is quite darker than the character audiences know and love today. Barries original draft depicts Pan as a villain, kidnapping children from their beds; Captain Hook was only added later, as a theatrical device to distract the audience while stagehands changed the scenery. To die would be an awfully big adventure, says Peter Pan in one of the novels most famous lines a sentiment, coming from a child, thats both courageous and ghoulish.
How did we go from that grim version to the cheery Disney version most remember? I reached out to a pair of experts: Dr. Lester D. Friedman and Dr. Allison Kavey, professors and co-editors of a 2008 book about the cultural history of Peter Pan called Second Star to the Right: Peter Pan in the Popular Imagination. Both have developed unique takes on the storys darker edges. Friedman interprets the storys hungry crocodile as time, and Captain Hook as death two forces that the never-aging Peter Pan is obsessed with avoiding. Kaveys interpretation goes all the way back to The Little White Bird, in which, she argues, Pan escapes aging only because hes already dead. There is the sense that Neverland is the place that sick children go in their minds. But some never get to come home, she says.
But Barries Peter Pan isnt entirely different from the character popularized by Disney. The darkness of Barries Peter Pan is tempered by an equally important quality: his childishness. The Peter in The Little White Bird and Peter and Wendy is among the most honest depictions of a literary child I think I have ever read, says Kavey. He is selfish, devoted to his own entertainment, and except in battle scenes, incapable of taking care of himself. He also loves like a child, without thought to the effect his love has or what it will mean if he forgets for a while.
Its no surprise that Walt Disney excised some of Barries more sinister traits but in making the character a young teen instead of an infant, Disney synched him up with the cultural standards of the time. Disneys Peter Pan is well in line with the expectations for an American child in the 1950s: resourceful, spunky. As the decades have passed, similar changes have kept him similarly relevant. Most recently he has become an adult symbol of eternal childhood, an appeal to the inner child who never truly goes away.
To be a kid again to not have to worry about the obligations and responsibilities of adulthood is something everyone struggles with, and Peter Pan offers an appealing escape. The character may have strayed a bit from his bleak origins, but as long as people keep reinventing him, hes not going anywhere.