Various Claims on Peter Pan - Essay Example

?Explore Peter Hollindale’s claim that Peter Pan “retains its magical elasti and its ongoing modernity” (Reader 2, p. 159), with reference to different versions since its original production. Ever since the appearance of J.M. Barrie’s play entitled Peter Pan was first performed in the UK in 1904, it has exerted a fascination for children and adults alike. One of the reasons for its popularity is the whimsical fairy tale world that it conjures up, including a boy who can fly and never wants to go up, a group of “lost boys” who follow him around, and a collection of exotic characters like fairies, Indians, mermaids and pirates, along with a crocodile who has swallowed a clock and a St Bernard dog who acts as nanny for human children. This fantasy world is well suited to the need which parents and children have for storytelling and imagination. Another reason for the success of the play when it first came out was the depiction of characters who could fly: a technical feat that added to the entertainment value of the play, and inspired stagecraft like the use of a lightbulb to depict Tinkerbell. Because of the limitations of the stage quite a lot was left to the audience’s imagination. By all accounts J.M. Barrie himself was unsure about the play when it was being written and rehearsed, and he frequently changed the text, including names of characters, and details of the plot. (Carpenter and Prichard, p. 405) Some of the characters were drawn from real people, or indeed animals, in the author’s own life, for example his older brother who died in a skating accident and his pet dog who was the inspiration for Nana. The persona of Peter Pan, however, made Barrie immediately famous and captured the imagination of the literary world. Just as Barrie had reworked elements from his own life history the play, so he later reworked elements of the play into a novel, and others created films, cartoons, and even ballets and musicals out of this initial play. Peter Hollindale remarks that the play “retains its magical elasticity and its on-going modernity (Reader 2, p. 159) and describes how the character of Peter Pan himself contains endless sources of fascination. There are elements of innocence and childishness, like the fairy dust that makes people fly, and a lot of childish boasting but also some deeper psychological undercurrents that suggest more serious messages for an adult audience: “this is a play about the boundaries between childhood and adulthood.” (Reader 2, p. 161) There is something tragic about a boy fighting against his destiny to grow up and become an adult, a point not lost on Michael Jackson who named his home “Neverland” after the Peter Pan’s fantasy world. In the play Peter Pan steadfastly resists any hint of growing older, the human children all gradually give in to their fate, even to the point where Wendy no longer has any need for Peter and his childish world. The story operates on two levels: the childish insistence on unrealistic and impossible things, and the adult realisation that there is no way to stop the passage of time and the loss of innocence. As Hollindale says: “The play provides a shared arena for children and grown-ups, playfully living forward and living back.” (Reader 2, p. 161.) The children get a taste of what lies ahead for them, while adults can indulge in some nostalgia for their childhood. There is a dark side to the play, and this can be seen in some of the far-fetched explanations that Peter Pan gives regarding the world he inhabits: “Wendy Where do you live now? Peter With the lost boys. Wendy Who are they? Peter They are the children who fall out of their prams when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to Never Land. I’m captain.” (Peter Pan: 1:1, lines 441-443) This is an indication, perhaps, that death is the ultimate way of resisting adulthood, and that Peter Pan in some respects represents the author’s way of working through the loss of his dead older brother, by making an image of him live on in a fantasy world. When the play was shown in wartime, both in the first and second world wars, this very sub-text about the life and death of young men proved to be a powerful factor in the play’s success with grieving adults. Hollindale quotes Ann Yeoman, who remembers the consolation that the play provided for the incredible loss that many families suffered: “Right after the First World War, when everything was looking exceptionally bleak, that’s what we needed to know… that image of the special divine child, that helps us meet the future.” (Reader 2. P. 159) In other words, the fictional “Never Land” becomes a comfort when reality is too hard to bear. When Walt Disney made a cartoon version of the play in 1953, a new post-war generation of children were thrilled by the cute characters including a coquettish and smaller-than life size Tinkerbell. In this version there are stereotypical representations of Indians and pirates (who are the villains), and the target audience is very much younger children. The cartoon effects make all the fairy dust and other magical elements seem like a natural part of this fantasy world, and the characterization of Captain Hook and his idiot sidekick Smee has an element of comedy in it. The cartoon is altogether more colourful, and lighter in tone than the original play, and this is reflected also in the child-friendly change of the name Neverland to NeverNeverLand in the Disney version. Later film versions like P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan of 2003 manage to incorporate modern computer animation for Tinkerbell alongside real life actors, and Peter Pan is played in this film by a young male actor (as opposed to earlier stage, silent film and pantomime traditions which tended to cast the part to a female actor). Hollindale believes that this particular version recaptures many of the ambivalences of the original play: “His Peter is on the verge of adolescence, a fact perceived by others, especially Wendy, but repressed and unidentified by him.” (Reader 2, p. 163) This film deals with the adult themes like death, growing up, and the passing of time as well as the childish adventures and magical elements. Visually, the lost boys in the film are not so much idealized, as somewhat threatening, and more like the abandoned boys in Lord of the Flies than a happy childhood band. It is a coming-of-age film that revives the interests of teenagers and adults in the deeper psychology of the Peter Pan story. The universal themes of the original play, and the updating that various later adaptations have made, ensure that the work will have a lasting influence on both children and adults. As one critic sums it up: “Peter Pan reminds us, in short, that we just can't win. …. Both imagination and reality can turn treacherous. Childhood fails to satisfy, and so does adult life. If you love--like Wendy--you're asking for trouble; if you don't--like Peter--there's something wrong with you. And no matter what happens, time stalks us like a crocodile, and death, though an awfully big adventure, is not one we care to undertake.” (C. Wren, last page). References Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan and Other Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 73-154. Carpenter, H. and Prichard, M. The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Hollindale, Peter: Referred to from the Reader as “Reader 2.” Wren, C. “Fear of Flying: The Perennial Peter Pan Is Buoyant Children’s Fare, Right? Think Again.” American Theatre 20 (2) (2003), pp. 44 ff. Available online at: http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/2003/fear.cfm Read More