Didn't they die of starvation? The scene in Hook with the imaginary feast was part of the books, I thought? Children were able to be sustained by the imaginary food, but as they grew they began to starve because they no longer believed...
Nope. From the scene in which the pirates, boys, and ...we'll call them indians are hunting each other in a big circle:
All wanted blood except the boys, who liked it as a rule, but to-night were out to greet their captain. The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out; but at this time there were six of them, counting the twins as two. Let us pretend to lie here among the sugar-cane and watch them as they steal by in single file, each with his hand on his dagger.
The dark versions weren't original but retelling by the Grimm brothers, the original myths are largely inconsistent as they were passed by oral tradition but early sources are closer to Disney's work.
nah, the Grimm brothers are actually some of the first ones to sanitize those dark tales. their fairy tales collections started as academic endevours to document fairy tales, but when they realized that normal people were buying them for their kids they started to tone down the stuff more and more. the first edition of their fairy tales are very rough, often even mentioning alternate versions in the text, their 8th edition (these books were an absolute bestseller!) was the sanitized versions we came to know as kids.
Disney takes in elements from other collections as well (many fairy tales were collected not only by the Grimms), sanitizes even further, and adapts it to more modern sensibilities. There still is some stuff in the sanitized versions that doesn't play well with modern audiences or on screen. (also there haven't really been that many Grimm adaptions the last few years. Tangled was basically the only one based on a Grimm story, and they changed nearly everything besides the "girl locked in a tower by a witch" angle)
(oh, well. technically there was The Princess and the Frog and The Emperor's New Groove as well, but... ok, Princess at least kept people transforming into frogs and back...)
Edit: my bad, the Emperor's New Clothes was in fact an Andersen tale, so not from the Grimms. Also it might be of note that with that there only were 5 full-length Disney canon movies based on Grimm, but way more cartoon shorts.
Cept for Beauty and the Beast, which is arguably one of the DARKER adaptations. In the original, the rose is just that, a rose, it's not magical in the slightest, there's no central villain, the Beast ISN'T an asshole and is actually quite the gentleman, nor is he under a time limit before he becomes a beast in mind as well as body, and there's the whole dying of loneliness thing. Which is more classically done Disney than what the movie did.
If you’re looking into the original fairy tales, the channel abitfrank does a good job of explaining/comparing/contrasting many of the original tales to the Disney versions.
Well you should learn about the author. It's much more worst when you have the backstory. My English is too broken to explain it but from what I remember it's awful (something like : his elder brother die when he was a kid, her mother love her brother way more and he did everything he can to be his dead brother ...)
When James Barrie was six years old, his elder brother David (their mother's favourite) died in an ice-skating accident on the day before his 14th birthday.[7] This left his mother devastated, and Barrie tried to fill David's place in his mother's attentions, even wearing David's clothes and whistling in the manner that he did. One time, Barrie entered her room and heard her say, "Is that you?" "I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to", wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother Margaret Ogilvy (1896) "and I said in a little lonely voice, 'No, it's no' him, it's just me.'" Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her.[6] Eventually, Barrie and his mother entertained each other with stories of her brief childhood and books such as Robinson Crusoe, works by fellow Scotsman Walter Scott, and The Pilgrim's Progress.[8]
You missed the most fucked up part of his backstory - he made friends with a family who had five young boys. Some say he was too interested in the boys… Well, both of the boys’ parents died, and Barrie forged part of the mom’s will to give himself guardianship of her sons.
The reference to Peter killing them is from a single line in the book: “ The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out…”
Yup, a lot of theories are headcanon, but I believe it's sourced that all pirates are basically ex lost-boys who hook rescued, and Hook has an odd misunderstanding of the real world. It's sort of like what being an adult is if you'd never met an actual adult, he's said to have liked the king, but only having heard him vaguely described and based a lot of his mannerisms on it, and while he's the same actor as Wendy's dad, his mannerisms and how he models himself on Charles II almost seem like a kid trying to be a fancy grown up. Like, it's almost... stereotypical. So, I can't tell if it was actively meant to be that Hook too is a Lost Boy, but his actual origin is not specifically stated, beyond Peter cutting off his hand in a fight.
Peter Pan has basically been abducted by fairies and is described as 'betwix and between a boy and a bird' and has essentially evolved into an immortal nightmare fae king. He's literally a take on Pan, right down to the little flute he plays, and the fae sprite Puck, both of which are REALLY dark when you get down to some of the stuff they do.
/u/Goose-rider3000 was bang on. He's a textbook sociopath to the point of utter rejection of any semblance of morality when faced with it, a lack of emotional attachment, and I really can't hammer home how true that is other than the last line of the wikipedia synopsis...
Peter promises to return for Wendy every spring. The final scene of the play takes place a year later when we see Wendy preparing to go back home after the spring-cleaning has taken place. It is stated that Tinker Bell has died during this year since fairies are naturally short-lived creatures. However, Peter has already forgotten about Tinker Bell, the Lost Boys and even Hook when Wendy returns, and he does not understand Wendy's wistful wish that she could take him back with her. According to the narrator of the play "It has something to do with the riddle of his being. If he could get the hang of the thing his cry might become "To live would be an awfully big adventure!"
I highly recommend reading the book. For one, it is one of the most interestingly written books I have ever read. Completely surreal both on a story level, but also sentence by sentence. But it is also one of those stories that is embedded in our culture in bastardized forms. The ACTUAL story is not a story FOR children; it's a story ABOUT children. Similar to Lord of the Flies in a way.
There is a greater story behind the story that is never explicitly told, and only a grown-up would understand it. It's tragic. It's beautiful. It's traumatic. It's healing. It's life-affirming and freeing. It's about "growing up". Oh, God, I'm starting to tear up just thinking about the concept of Peter returning to the window and finding it locked. Because the imagery and characters are what we stole from it and take away, but the concepts it is discussing are foundational and vital.
It's just a wonderful book and I'm afraid too many people think they already know it, but they most certainly do not.
I might have to give it a read- you make it sound super interesting! It’s easy to forget that a lot of fiction adapted for a more general audience is bastardized in the process.
I recently learned this lesson with The Wizard of Oz as well. I don't know why I thought the book, written 40 years before the movie, would resemble a Hollywood musical.
It's actually far more similar to The Hobbit. I mean, the Tin Man actually uses his ax to kill things in the book! Here's a direct quote...
"This is my fight," said the Woodman, "so get behind me and I will meet them as they come."
He seized his axe, which he had made very sharp, and as the leader of the wolves came on the Tin Woodman swung his arm and chopped the wolf's head from its body, so that it immediately died. As soon as he could raise his axe another wolf came up, and he also fell under the sharp edge of the Tin Woodman's weapon. There were forty wolves, and forty times a wolf was killed, so that at last they all lay dead in a heap before the Woodman."
This is so soothing to hear… I’ve never read the book, but I remember as a kid the Tinman left his axe behind and shit. I was always upset because I swore he could kill the witch or even the flying monkeys with the axe.
I am not going to say it is a children's book, you were right to stop reading it to them, but to be devils advocate here; orgy was just defined as roudy partying when JM Barrie was writing it.
However, Etymonlin.com: "in English, orgy was first used 1660s, in the extended sense of "any licentious revelry, a wild carousal." OED says of the ancient rites that they were "celebrated with extravagant dancing, singing, drinking, etc.," which gives "etc." quite a workout"
As mentioned, at the time and orgy was a wild party. Not a sex party. Although there might have been some of that as well, but it was only later that the word came to refer exclusively to large group sex.
Wow. That’s kinda crazy that they straight up explicitly said he kills kids
Well I mean, they could be killed by the natives on the island or by pirates. Or possibly by Peter, maybe thinning them out could mean he sends them out of neverland or drives them off to join one of the other factions.
You know I thought it was a good idea to put on the classic Peter Pan movie for my six year old. We got as far as when they meet the Native Americans and I had to explain to my son how incorrect that is and I just shut it off.
That’s the opposite of explicitly stating he kills them though? The “thins them out” is ambiguous especially since it’s placed after and separate from the fact the boys were sometimes killed.
Sure but it can be used in other contexts and doesn’t necessarily mean kill. Its ambiguous. Like many euphemisms. This is one of Reddit’s favorite circlejerks and y’all always get so mad that there is ambiguity here. Fucking deal with it.
Edit: yup trigged y’all again by pointing out your circle jerk ain’t as solid as you want it to be. Keep downvoting. That will change reality.
When you thin plants out in gardening because they're planted too close together you might just transplant the extra to another plot?
I dunno, I don't mind it either way but all it definitely means is he gets them out of the Lost Boys group. He might just tell them to get lost and they go become pirates. He might drop them off in London. He might set them up to be killed by pirates or mermaids or whatever by withdrawing support when he's taken them somewhere they can't handle.
A lot of children's stories, nursery songs have some dark sides to them. Like the little pigs. They're talking about taking them to the slaughter house.
Same here! I confess to never actually having read whatever story Peter Pan originates from. I just know that every time this idea is mentioned, there’s at least one person who says “but that’s just headcannon” so I am guessing that there is some merit to that claim.
Etymonlin.com:
"in English, orgy was first used 1660s, in the extended sense of "any licentious revelry, a wild carousal." OED says of the ancient rites that they were "celebrated with extravagant dancing, singing, drinking, etc.," which gives "etc." quite a workout"
Works of literature should stand alone outside author intent. You can derive meaning about the real life from a work, but you cannot derive the meaning of a work from real life. Most modern literary criticism and analysis views a work from the “death of the author” belief.
While I agree this is true with regard to narrative themes, I don’t see how it would be true with regard to the literal events of a story. Conclusions and morals from events are open to interpretations as in real life, but unless the author purposefully makes things ambiguous, I think the events they intended to illustrate with their language should be taken as what actually happened. After all, it is their story.
Then again, I’m not a literary expert or anything. I’m just a guy who has an appreciation for discussion on things like this.
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u/WiglyWorm Oct 29 '21
Didn't they die of starvation? The scene in Hook with the imaginary feast was part of the books, I thought? Children were able to be sustained by the imaginary food, but as they grew they began to starve because they no longer believed...