Here We Are Now! Entertain Us!

Joe Wright is supposed to be a great director, although this is supposed to be a terrible movie and was a big set-back for his career; also, I haven’t seen any children’s movies in a long, long time: I saw some as a kid, of course, (although back then I would read Narnia as a handbook on how to rule a medieval kingdom), and when I was ill for those years there I would watch some children’s TV to escape, but most if not all actual movies made me afraid—Jesus, why is there conflict! I feel afraid!—and then when I got better, I started to become much more book-y, and since I’ve decided not to have kids, I thought I might never watch another kids’ movie, you know. 

But I was going through some John Powell film music albums, kids’ movie film music, actually, since I thought it would be delightful—I’ve given up mantra music, you know, since it’s…. monastic, basically, and now I would like to get married, even if I think that the time isn’t going to be right for kids—and then, wow: re-writing the lyrics of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”! That’s boss! And I was like: I’m going to have to watch this movie! 

And it’s good. addition to being boss, it has elements of vulnerability—your mother believes in you, even though she was never there for you; and religion/the nuns you only wish were not there when they are, and they Certainly Do Not believe in you—as well as elements that are, sure, primarily visually appealing: like, it’d make a good painting, like the RAF fighting flying pirate ships, which is kinda boss, you know…. 

And Peter Pan was kinda punk, you know. He’s Kurt Cobain. He’s the classically gendered male. He looks adorable and cute…. But he’s a pirate, you know. And a little crazy. Sometimes with movies from past decades, you lose that aspect of his character, because of how we put the past through this lens. Peter Pan isn’t Cinderella’s groom; he’s not Prince Charming. 

He’s boss. 

…. I think you can appreciate little things in a movie like this. Like on the soundtrack album, one of the tracks is, “Air Raid/Office Raid”, you know, like the association of those two things, the juxtaposition: your fight against the killjoy IS “the Battle of Britain”, you know. (Wink smilie) 

…. I could only watch twenty minutes at a go instead of thirty, but it is okay, you know. Enemies started out as friends; childhood isn’t a tea party—it’s scary; we dream a world a bit like this one, scary, only it’s better and more magical, but maybe it’s death—it’s all true, in a way…. “Real should be a very fluid concept for you right now”…. 

…. But I guess I have to take away a point for the White Tiger Lilly thing, which means I am admitting it’s the worst movie I’ve seen in awhile…. I mean, in an amusing if generic way they try, in the world building, to do the pirates (mean colonists) vs natives, but then  only let the chief of the natives be an Indigenous guy, and have their main fighter be Korean (all people of color are the same? Two Indigenous people representing an Indigenous plot line would be too much? “I just like people in general”, but I have no idea what the world is really like? Where are we going with this?), but then the one Native girl who has at least an important-for-a-girl role, Tiger Lilly, is Not Native, and Peter Pan’s mom is also a Native-just-kidding-white (although the amusing but generic world building was all a little hard to follow, and it came mostly in One Awesome Conversation, right), and so Peter Pan is actually half-Native (or is it half-Asian?), but, no just kidding, he’s 100% white, you know. 

So I mean, it is a racist movie. I guess we don’t know how to make these characteristically Anglo movies without being flaming racists, yet. The racism does have a different flavor from the 1950s animated Peter Pan movie’s racism—which bothered me even when I was an uncritical One Direction fan—but, you know, you know what that one tribe of white men says, La plus ça change…. Right? Racism has survived, children. (shrugs) I wanted to believe that it wasn’t as bad as I was worried it was, because it seemed like they were trying, a little, but…. You know, you try, until it gets hard, if you’re a saddie, right…. 

…. So, I’m going to keep the title the same from when I liked the movie, but you understand that now I hear “I know it’s day but it’s dark outside” as the characteristically elegant Anglo girl’s unconscious meditation on the survival of racism…. Or, as Paul McCartney once said, “Yesterday came suddenly”—a line that in my Beatle-mania phase, admittedly the same as my symptomatic period, when I had a thing about Hitler being everywhere—always made me think of the Nazis, you know. Why does love die? Well, you know, “yesterday came suddenly” (as Nazis do their thing in the video portion, lol)…. 

And, you know, I have memories of my symptomatic days, and 99.9% of those weird thoughts are a combination of unmerited fears/anti-social attitudes/racism-and-prejudice, you know, but every so often there’s a thought where it’s like, Yeah, pretty much. (laughs) “Something’s not right; because I know that it’s day but it’s dark outside….” (laughs) Gee whiz, I guess that Harry Styles didn’t really take down Adolph Hitler, after all…. “Yeah, kid, pretty much. (to someone else) What, what do you want me to tell him? Do you want me to make something up?” 

Yeah, that’s kinda what we do! 

…. Although Zayn Malik could have played Smee: that’s progress, children. “What, you’re Pakistani? Get the hell out of here—I thought you were white!” (laughing cat emoji) 

…. Also: I don’t think there’s a Tinker Bell in this movie, since Tiger Lilly is white, and there’s not a big desire in this movie for female characters, so she got the ax, which I think is sad, because Tinker Bell is arguably the first Disney princess-type who had a real sense of agency, right. Three steps forward, two steps back: life is not a straight line, now is it. If God is a mathematician, he’s not a naive one…. 

…. This website needs to stop coughing up smilies and deleting shit automatically when I put them in. For real. 

Okay, again: 

As hard as it is to sink lower than the White Tiger Lily fiasco, I just feel like this movie got worse and worse the longer it went on. I mean, I’m not one to want a Sheldon Cooper Talk about fairy-dust, but as far as origins/backstory/explanation goes, are we Seriously walking away from this without explaining why Captain Hook: (a) is Peter Pan’s enemy, and (b) has a big HOOK for a hand? You’re going to call it a complete work of art, and not do that? 

And just more generally, I’d forgotten how clumsy, Pompous!, and superficial little British boys in magic movies can be. It’s like, why is Pan such a hero? What does he evolve into, aside from the beneficiary of special effects? And I’m not saying that the movie had to do something else, like with more flirting, although I think it’s bad how it makes flirting something that only semi-unlikable people do, you know, it’s like—be fair, or leave it alone. And it’s like, bloody hell, you know, if you’re going to take a little British boy and train him to be a hero, at least do it right, you know. If you’re going to do it, do it right—don’t lie to me!