Peter Pan vs Hook
I guess, before I get started on whatever it is that I need to get started on (I am sitting in the library at school on a Saturday with the intent of writing a final paper for my Lit 251 class), I want to write about what is currently on my mind.
Specifically, I want to talk about the movie Hook compared to the book and play Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. A book Ive read, an adapted movie Ive seen, I may have even seen the play. There is a magic to J.M. Barries work that interestingly, isnt translatable to the kinds of things we do today with our movies, our literature, and, in many cases, even our plays.
The reason for this entry is that I decided to turn on the T.V. downstairs when I got up and was finished talking to Rebecca about the combinations of flower that I purchased and mixed last night. More on this later. It was expensive.
Anyway, the T.V. went on and I spent a few minutes surfing the channels to see if anything was on worth listening to, and barring that, to leave something on that wasnt worth listening to but, at the same time, didnt entirely offend my senses and cause me to want to take J.D.s T.V. and throw it through the front window.
However, on TBS they were broadcasting Hook. So, having seen the movie in the past, and thinking, What they hey, I sat down and started watching. In part because I put my computer through a series of downloads and operations last night and it was sitting on the coffee table or what were using as a coffee table and this morning I decided to delete all of the MP3s off the spare computer and then setup software to do on that computer what I was doing on my principle PC.
As a side note, one of my many intentions for that computer, other than as a backup was to run it as a media server of sorts. Run speakers out of it, use it as my music player. Maybe put Linux or BSD on the machine with a nice GUI interface that would handle media better through the Intel processor than Microsoft Windows does. In short, I spend a lot of time using this computer for writing and research and surfing the web and other stuff. However, having something that I can use for media: audio, some video; lends itself to improving what quality of playback available me.
So, I was sitting there watching Hook and it occurred to me that I was watching a bastardization of the Peter Pan story that there were a lot of problems in the adaptation. The problems began to exist in the sense that there are some definite directions that J.M. Barrie chose to take Peter Pan. For example, as the story draws to a close Wendy grows old, has a daughter who grows old and has a daughter, who grows old and has a daughter. Each successive daughter goes off the play with Peter for a period of time, to do spring cleaning, and then to return home to live out her life, fall in love, get married, and have a daughter of her own.
In the story, Peter goes back, year after year, and takes Wendy with him. Finally, she becomes too old, says, Ive forgotten how to fly, implores Peter not to take her granddaughter, and Peter, having fallen in love with the idea of Wendy, decides to stay behind and become a mortal boy. Peter would not have ended up with Wendy, or at least that Wendy, but rather a daughter and granddaughter and great-granddaughter many times removed.
Next, Tinkerbell, though a staple to the Disney version of the story, doesnt survive Peter. Fairies dont have long lifespans. Thats important to the story as it juxtaposes the fact that Peter doesnt have a long memory. He easily forgets about the Lost Boys. Even when he was taking Wendy, Michael, and John to the island, the story has him forgetting everyone, on occasion, and only returning by mistake or when a memory of a memory was sparked. Tinkerbell, but the time Peter Pan had grown up, wouldve been dead. Fairies are alive with their child, and die with childhood. They cannot be recovered. That is why people are encouraged to clap at the end of the play. Its a sign that you havent forgotten what it means to be a child you havent lost the ability to have fun and to play.
In Hook Peter Pan is found by Tinkerbell and taken to Neverland. Again, the problem is that Peter Pan is without age and Tinkerbell is of the fairy persuasion who would die and be forgotten in the blink of an eye. Truth told, I think Tinkerbell was merely a vehicle for Julia Robert who has suffered on her acting career because she wants to be taken seriously as a real actress and really isnt one. People pay to see her smile and in that movie, well, they wouldve been disappointed.
As an aside, I wonder how some actors and actresses make it in Hollywood and why people keep going back, film after film, to watch them bumble and stumble through their parts.
Regardless, if Peter Pan were to leave Neverland and if he were to decideto have a family, Neverland would cease to exist. Lost Boys, and girls, would have nowhere to go, no Pan, or playmate, to lead them on their quests. They would have nothing. In essence, the mythos surrounding the story would have to change and, in changing, the story would have to become something far different than what J.M. Barrie wrote as a play and adapted into a book.
I found it a little weird to sit there and watch the movie. I remember watching it originally and not knowing a lot about J.M. Barrie or Peter Pan and thinking, Theres something off here, and not knowing what it was that you could point at as being off. And yet, you look at Tinkerbell, shes off. You look at the idea behind Wendy, and thats off. You look at Peter leaving Neverland and the notion of childhood and fun behind him and that is really off. And you look at Captain Hook putting together a larger crew, a village, and somehow adapting to be something that he was never meant to be, and that was off.
Truth told the relationship between Captain Hook and Shmee seemed a little off as well. As though the writer and/or director were trying to imply a homosexual relationship. And yet, even that wouldnt be so bad as to imply that a mere child could stand in for Peter Pan, that fairies, according the Barries mythos, lived longer than people, and that the idea of the lost boys, a similar set as what was in the book and play, could still be on the island.
No, I think Hook is a very poor representation of Peter Pan. Its poor because it removes the basis of the story, it removes authors intent, it removes the story and rewrites something that could never be.