Peter Pan, Existentialist Fairy Tale? (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Peter Pan, Existentialist Fairy Tale? (2017)

erraticus.co

23 pointsfnwk15 comments

Children getting whisked away by a handsome protagonist and his magical sidekick to fight against "cool things" like pirates and mermaids in a world unlike our own?

Its an Isekai.

---------

Isekai is this modern trend in anime (and US movies sometimes!! Like Ready Player One), where characters are sent to another world. Sometimes due to death explicitly ("Reincarnated in a New World" plotline: like "I'm a Spider So What"), sometimes just "temporarily" transported (Sword Art Online / Ready Player One, they are "just" playing a video game).

From an "Isekai" perspective: people want two things.

1. A world very different from our own. Completely different "physics" or rules. So magic systems, history, culture, etc. etc. that's nothing like our world. Neverland easily qualifies.

2. A character who explores the new world from our perspective. The main character is always someone "like the audience", who can be ignorant about the new world. (The various characters the protagonist meets are therefore given an opportunity to explain the world to the newcomer, allowing the audience to learn about the world in a natural manner). In Peter Pan, Wendy is the Isekai protagonist.

------

Alice in Wonderland, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Wizard of Oz, A Lion, A Witch, and the Wardrobe. The concept happens again and again as a pattern, because its a good framing device. I'm not sure if Peter Pan can be seen as an allegory of death necessarily, any more than "I'm a Spider, so What?" (2021 Anime) could be.

The children are... children... because the main character often should match the profile of the target audience. Not always, but its a good rule of thumb to keep. Children stories will therefore have child-protagonists more often than not (Polar Express, Lion Witch Wardrobe, Harry Potter). There are exceptions (Peanuts has child protagonists but is largely written for an adult audience), but its just the rule of thumb authors seem to use.

The Spider Anime adaption is sadly so badly realised. I recommend to look for the WebNovel (there is an english translation epub out there as a good starting point) or the light novel.

The main character thinks a bunch and speaks little, so anime and manga will miss out. The manga still gets its somewhat good adapted, but the anime is sadly just so bad that it shouldn't be mentioned.

For a good starter isekai anime, "Tensei Shitara Slime datta ken" | "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime!" is a much better anime and gets more points right.

Existentialism aside, it's impossible for a modern viewpoint to make sense of "Peter and Wendy" without knowing that at the turn of the 19th/20th century in the UK, infant mortality before age 5 was around 20%, and this was down considerably from infant mortality in previous centuries, as the germ theory of disease and safety consciousness made in-roads against a number of scourges, from whooping cough and mumps (there's a reason we have childhood vaccines!) to formaldehyde-contaminated butter and arsenical clothing dyes.

Hence the need for a childrens tale to explain to the little ones why their infant brothers or sisters weren't coming home from the hospital: it was something most families grappled with, and "they've gone off with Peter Pan to have adventures beyond the rainbow" is easier on a toddler than confronting them with the enormity of death.

> infant mortality before age 5 was around 20%, and this was down considerably from infant mortality in previous centuries

> Hence the need for a childrens tale to explain to the little ones why their infant brothers or sisters weren't coming home from the hospital

This makes no sense; if the problem was worse before, why would you suddenly need a new story for it? If the need was real, the relevant stories would have originated long before the 20th century.

The approaches that worked for the past 100,000 years also worked in 1904 and still work now.

(Also, the book is explicit that the children of Neverland found their way there by falling out of their perambulators (strollers); they did not fail to come home from a hospital.)

this is because it is not a cause and effect thing like you’re trying to read it as here; the author simply wrote the book when those were contemporary circumstances, even if they had been worse before

meanwhile the book’s words about what happened to those children are a fiction hinting at the truth of the loss of a child and are more symbolic than literal documentary words

The fertility rate in the UK cut in half from 1880 to 1920. During this time the general approach to children rearing began to correspond to a much higher level of parental investment in individual children.

So what? How is that connected to what you tell your surviving children when one of their siblings dies?

It might be asserted that science-fiction plays much the same role as the Pan story - for adults as well. It imagines impossible things (beyond the reach of current science models at least) to deliver potential wonders that might be encountered.

I appreciated the Campbell quote in the article ... "I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive ... so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." Campbell embraced Star Wars for this reason.

Life is a rare and brief thing - and to an extent, It (if not the universe) needs an audience to appreciate It. Woes and the rat-race and buying meaning from vending-machines are a cheezy substitute for 'Drinking life to the lees' as Omar so sagely puts it. More wing-suits please.

Some analysis is lacking (some that things that I'd consider to be important to expand upon are left as is at one sentence, such as the crocodile and the clock), but enjoyable nonetheless. Kudos to you!

Peter Pan figures big in Jordan Petersons lectures. Here is one sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ckxQSutO4

What I find interesting about this clip is that the 1991 movie 'Hook' is literally the opposite. There, Peter does make the sacrifice of maturity but the screenplay demands he re-discover the innocence/freedom of his life as Peter Pan in order to ostensibly enjoy his life. At the end of the movie he tosses his phone out the window after telling his boss whatever he's calling about isn't important as a decision to value the innocent immediacy of his family life. What the screenplay doesn't tell us is whether he had a job the next day and the consequences of that!

I think Peterson is speaking to another tier of freedom that comes with responsibility and concern for one's future and security: it tends to (non-exploitatively) benefit others around you, your community, etc.

Well if you're posting about videos of Jordan Peterson I might as well post an informative, charitable, opinionated and entertaining (to me) video from Contrapoints about who he is and what he's doing. Enjoy : https://youtu.be/4LqZdkkBDas

The video I linked to in my original post was directly relevant to this other take on Peter Pan and philosophy.

I'd like to understand why my comment is being downvoted by you and others?

Did you think the comment wasn't relevant to this overall post?

It feels like it is simply because I mentioned Jordan Peterson and anything that mentions him must be downvoted because he has been declared bad. Okay then.

Given I mentioned Jordan Peterson again, you should probably downvote this comment as well as a thoughtcrime.

I did not downvote your comment :)

I'd downvote this comment as irrelevant whining. Most people who read this didn't downvote you, so you're just wasting our time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com