Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

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LadySekhmet
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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by LadySekhmet » Wed Nov 09, 2011 9:28 pm

Hehhehe, thanks :hug ...I'm not sure who would be more upset, Duran Duran, that they were chucked out by a pirate, or Hook, that he has to share my heart with "others" (and landlubbers at that!). :bag:

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by Marie » Thu Nov 10, 2011 8:15 am

One of my costumes that I wore this year at the Zoo (Boo at the Zoo) and handing out candy at my house - was a pirate. I did decide a needed a more ornate coat and hat and really pattered my finds after Jason's Hook. (Minus the hook thank you!)Perhaps it is because I live so close to the Caribbean - or perhaps because there are wreaked ships off our coast and very cool stuff still washes onto the shore once in a while - but I find Pirates to be very interesting - both the fictional and the real (at least the historic ones.)

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by laurielove » Sun Nov 13, 2011 11:02 am

Good to see people posting about this.

I think it's a beautiful film and one that AT LAST tries to convey the truth behind the book. I wasn't terribly keen on Jeremy Sumpter, but thought he got away with it. Apart from that, it was a glorious film in terms of cinematography, characterisations and honesty.

And as for Mr I's Hook ... those who know me know how I feel about him. Very inspirational.

I showed this film to a group of kids recently, most of whom had not seen it. The older, mature girls (sort of Wendy's age) were more taken with the Pirate Captain than anyone else, believe me - it was interesting to see them become much more engaged whenever he was on screen. And when he got eaten ... there was much despair all round (from them). It starts early ... :roll:

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by LadySekhmet » Sun Nov 13, 2011 12:38 pm

I have to admit that even as a little girl I never liked the character of Peter Pan (often played by strangely creepy, older women on stage?- ewww! :gah:) or Tinkerbell (an angry, bitter fairy?). I liked Hook (the character) even as a little girl. Hook has a very valid bone to pick with Peter Pan- I mean - who can't understand Hook's motivation and dislike? Finally Hook is given more dimensions, and he's a more successful character!

I suspect that anything (i.e., non Disney) that shows a less than perfect Pan and a multi-dimensional Hook is probably not welcome on this side of the pond by general audiences (and didn't LOTR:RotK come out in December 2003 at Christmas-time as well? Could any movie (except, perhaps, HP?) survive *that* competition?). I agree- the film, aside from Hook, is just gorgeous. It certainly captured my idea of Never Land that I had when I was small.

Disney has a lot to answer for in sanitizing the world of fairytales for us Americans - all of which were teaching tools, and - as someone else pointed out a few replies back- with grim plots, and often unhappy endings. (And if anyone is interested there is a classic folklore study (1975?), by Bruno Bettelheim, "The Uses of Enchantment," which discusses the purpose of fairytales, and there is not a giant, talking Mouse in sight! He doesn't talk about Barrie's stories unfortunately. Some of it is a little outdated, but it makes for an interesting read.)

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by Helen8 » Sun Nov 13, 2011 10:20 pm

Disney has a lot to answer for in sanitizing the world of fairytales for us Americans

This is what makes ABC's Once Upon a Time so interesting. It's the way the fairy tales were originally written.

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by laurielove » Sun Nov 27, 2011 4:37 pm

LadySekhmet wrote:I have to admit that even as a little girl I never liked the character of Peter Pan (often played by strangely creepy, older women on stage?- ewww! :gah:) or Tinkerbell (an angry, bitter fairy?). I liked Hook (the character) even as a little girl. Hook has a very valid bone to pick with Peter Pan- I mean - who can't understand Hook's motivation and dislike? Finally Hook is given more dimensions, and he's a more successful character!

I suspect that anything (i.e., non Disney) that shows a less than perfect Pan and a multi-dimensional Hook is probably not welcome on this side of the pond by general audiences (and didn't LOTR:RotK come out in December 2003 at Christmas-time as well? Could any movie (except, perhaps, HP?) survive *that* competition?). I agree- the film, aside from Hook, is just gorgeous. It certainly captured my idea of Never Land that I had when I was small.

Disney has a lot to answer for in sanitizing the world of fairytales for us Americans - all of which were teaching tools, and - as someone else pointed out a few replies back- with grim plots, and often unhappy endings. (And if anyone is interested there is a classic folklore study (1975?), by Bruno Bettelheim, "The Uses of Enchantment," which discusses the purpose of fairytales, and there is not a giant, talking Mouse in sight! He doesn't talk about Barrie's stories unfortunately. Some of it is a little outdated, but it makes for an interesting read.)
You make some very good points. I forget (rather naively) that most Americans preconceptions of Peter Pan stem from Disney and Mary Martin etc. Most Brits these days probably are influenced mostly by vomit-inducing pantomimes where Hook is an archetypal, two-dimensional villain. Apart from seeing the Disney cartoon version perhaps once when I was a child, I knew Peter Pan from the book and from an awareness of where Barrie was coming from when he wrote it. With that in mind, this is a glorious film.

Is Peter Pan a fairy tale? In so much as fairy tales are cautionary tales and allegories for milestones of life, then yes, I suppose it is. Peter Pan is a tale about mortality. It is Wendy's story and Hook's story mainly - Peter drives their tales along, but he is almost peripheral to the main purpose of the story. It is Wendy and Hook who represent what we must all be - ie realistic, rational and mortal.

On a different matter, like you say, original fairy tales are as far removed from kitsch technicolour happy endings as you can get. These were tales designed to scare and warn and bring out the brutality of life to people who would have to confront it at its most stark.

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by LadySekhmet » Sun Nov 27, 2011 7:34 pm

Ah yes, the Disney-fication of fairy tales - and now myth (Hercules) and history (Pocahontas). Gah! I think that many of us (Americans) have a love-hate relationship with that Mouse.

Are you suggesting that the formation of fairy-tales has stopped? I don't think that the creation of fairy-tales has stopped. The good teaching stories will morph into fairy-tales or fairy-tale-esque stories. Most fairy-tales are also widely known, which is needed in order to be an effective teaching tool, which PP is. It is not just about mortality, but also responsibility. It also discusses the threshold between child and adult and how scary that moment is and how hard we all try to fight it (and, I suspect, we all know men who still suffer from the Peter Pan syndrome). It also investigates the question of love and what it really means, such as the conflict of avoiding love (and its responsibilities) like Pan versus searching for love (and perhaps failing?) and becoming bitter like Hook (as well as the innocent vs. not-so-innocent ideas of love and sexuality). But then I am just preaching to the choir, y'all already know these things. ;-)

Hook does sum up the whole set of ideas in one moment, "Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience...and pimples. And then the mess starts. Feelings come." And I suspect, at that moment, that we all went, "Dang, that handsome bastard is totally right. Damn him." ;-)

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by laurielove » Mon Nov 28, 2011 1:16 pm

If you look back to page four of this thread (about half way down) you'll find me rabbiting on about my rather expansive views on Peter Pan, book and 2003 film. It's something I've thought a lot about, so much so that I started a comm on LJ devoted to Captain Hook (this version). PM me if you want to know more ... :cool:

Such an extraordinary book, and, yes, a fairy tale. I don't think fairy tales are dying out at all, far from it. In fact they are probably becoming closer now to their original purpose.

It still depresses me that the only thread about this film is one that starts with it being decried, although I think that's been redressed a bit since, thankfully.

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by LadySekhmet » Mon Nov 28, 2011 9:56 pm

Ahh, laurielove, I saw your older post. It took a while. I kept getting distracted by the photos of Hook sprinkled liberally through the posts (it doesn't matter how many times I see them -I suddenly get the attention span of gnat for anything else :adore ). It seems that you and I are on the same Hook soap box. :D

I spend a lot of time engrossed in ancient mythology, ancient religion, ancient life/culture (for my non-Hook/Lucius life), so I guess the concepts of teaching stories and fairy-tales are not always so far away from me. Plus, it's been very Harry Potter vs. Twilight in actual life right now -soon- I expect my friends will square off like the Sharks and the Jets (and, no, I am not on Team Twilight). So, there seem to be a lot of conversations, in which I've been participating, about modern myths forming for our time. So I've started to be rather fascinated by that line of thought.

Unfortunately, I was severely traumatized by the earlier Hook movie (Hoffman/Williams) :gah: , and I still haven't successfully scrubbed that creepy looking Hook entirely out of my brain (but 2003 Hook is doing a valiant job at rescuing me :hug ).

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by Cabritilla » Wed May 30, 2012 4:17 pm

Does any of you know which is the original book on which the movie is based?
I did some research but there seem to be several books/ versions.
Peter Pan first appeared in the book The Little White Bird written around 1902 and two years later Barrie wrote the play Peter Pan, or The Boy That Wouldn't Grow Up.
In 1906 another book was published called Peter Pan in Kensigntons Garden and in 1911 Barrie wrote Peter Pan and Wendy.
That is a lot of Peter Pan books and I'm a little bit confused right now which one is the "real" one.

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by Hilary the Touched » Wed May 30, 2012 7:36 pm

Hm--I had to visit Wikipedia for a quick refresher.
I was familiar with Little White Bird, which WP describes as intended for adults; the Pan of the play and Peter and Wendy is slightly older than the Pan of Kensington Gardens. "The stage play became the basis for Barrie's 1911 novel Peter and Wendy (later published under the title Peter Pan and Wendy in 1921, with subsequent publications using the title Peter Pan)."
Mr. Barrie appears to have been quite taken with his invention.

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by Cabritilla » Thu May 31, 2012 5:56 am

Thanks Hilary!
I found a copy that contains both Peter Pan in Kensigntons Garden and Peter and Wendy as well as some comments of other authors, background information and interpretation suggestions. It sounds really interesting and I think I will order it.

And you are right, Barrie seemed to be really fond of his own idea. :D But it is the same today... people invent/create something and try to gain as much money as possible with just one single idea.

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by Hilary the Touched » Thu May 31, 2012 6:25 pm

Annotated versions of familiar things can be really eye-opening sometimes--and the fact that Peter Pan is still such a visible character all these years later suggests he touches something deeper than one might first expect.

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by inamac » Fri Jun 01, 2012 4:01 pm

I had assumed that the film was based on the stage play version - it's the one I'm most familiar with (from years of pantomimes and amateur productions) and uses the casting conventions from the play - even making a good stab at the 'clap hands if you believe in fairies' audience interaction.

I do believe in fairies. I do. I do!

Like all plays, this version has been adapted for production over the years, and the original Barrie text is rarely played. It's like trying to identify an 'original' version of 'Romeo and Juliet'.

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Re: Peter Pan...AAIIEE!

Post by laurielove » Fri Jun 01, 2012 5:45 pm

I produce and direct plays for children (ie with children in the cast), and over the years have done just about every decent children's story with a decent script going . I've never done Peter Pan.

It's only recently dawned on me properly why not.

I don't consider Peter Pan to be, at heart, a story for children. It is so rich and layered and intense that in order to do it justice you need to approach it with far more integrity and insight than one could muster with a cast of children. That said, I have in the last few years considered doing it with an adult playing Hook. I think you could get away with the other characters played by children (apart from Mr and Mrs Darling, and we all know how to get around the Mr D aspect of that. Or they could simply be referenced.) But Hook has to be an adult. The adult. The only adult. That would work. Oh, I think I'm going to have to do it.

Then there is the small matter of stage flying. Hmm ... Budget, health and safety, budget, health and safety ... repeat as necessary. Are children even allowed to do that (stage flying, that is???)

Anyway, I would want to use the original Barrie script.

Just need to find someone to play Hook ... :cool:

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