Refusing to Clap for Tinkerbell

[ursulav]

It’s the 100th anniversary of the publication of Peter Pan, or something like it, and I spent an hour this morning listening to panelists on NPR sing its praises.

I would like to take a moment now to say that I hated Peter Pan as a child.

Still am not a big fan, honestly. I have mellowed and can appreciate it as a piece of literature of the era,

Comments

[tamnonlinear]

I never read the book. I grew up with a fairly strong lack of Disney, which I suspect was fairly intentional. My mother had definite ideas about me not watching too much that tried to tell me that my major accomplishment in life would be getting rescued by a prince and getting married (I played a lot of Zork and reread Alice's Adventures). Also, watching musicals tended to lead to singing, which was not a good outcome for anyone within earshot. When I did watch Peter Pan, I'm fairly sure my response was something along the lines of "Why does the girl have to take care of all the boys? That's stupid."

(It might have been a little better if Wendy got to take care of a lot of cuddly animals, or magical creatures, but boys? Why would I want to take care of them?)

Plus I basically liked my family, so the idea of being stolen away from them was something I found distressing. Additionally, as an immigrant, I had a different view on the entire 'going away to another land'- I didn't assume it was magical, I assumed it would be confusing and maybe no one would like me and they'd make fun of my accent.

So, yeah, it did nothing for me either.