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juushikaOnce Upon a Time has this fascination with interconnection. That was fine in the first season when it functioned to knit together the parallel storylines; now it makes for a plot which hinges on coincidence. I'm catching up on season 3, and the reveal of Pan's identity is uncalled for.
I finally got around to reading Barrie's Peter Pan this year, and it lines up with Mary Poppins and the Alice books in that the source material can be pretty creepy and that's fantastic. Poppins is a little inhuman, capricious and cold. Wonderland is as much nightmare as dream, denying Alice bodily autonomy and questioning her identity. And Pan is what Valente calls "heartless" in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making:
He is incapable of seeing the world outside himself, unaware of consequence; a consummate child and, given the power he has in Neverland, that makes him scary. I love the idea of dark retellings of children's classics like these books, but the truth is the source material often does it better; compare the disconcerting undercurrent of Pan's nature within the wonder of Neverland to the artless, racist, excessive gothic parade of Brom's The Child Thief which, as you may gather, I rather disliked. I love to see subtext turned text, but it's hard to find retellings that are actually loyal to, or even as effective as, what it is that makes the text intriguing or unsettling or dark.
Once Upon a Time's Pan isn't perfect but he's surprisingly good--in part because Robbie Kray can act; in part because his dynamics with other cast members intrigue me; in part, and to the point, because Pan has that same heartlessness and because he treats his machinations as a game--and while that phrasing grows stale, it's effective. The Lost Boys are older in OUaT but it works, it makes them more rebellious and as such more dangerous. But Pan still feels like a child, capable of leadership and responsibility but with not just a refusal but an inability to fathom compassion, relationships, selflessness, sympathy.
Finding out that he hasn't always been a child, and putting him in a parent/child relationship with another character, undermines the shit out of that. It makes him seem pathetic, even a little gross; a desperate play-actor rather than a precocious, heartless child. All because the narrative wants to make one more madcap, half-written, coincidental interconnection, sigh.
Watching OUaT is an exercise is missed opportunity (not even gonna mention Mulan right now), but this one stung.
I finally got around to reading Barrie's Peter Pan this year, and it lines up with Mary Poppins and the Alice books in that the source material can be pretty creepy and that's fantastic. Poppins is a little inhuman, capricious and cold. Wonderland is as much nightmare as dream, denying Alice bodily autonomy and questioning her identity. And Pan is what Valente calls "heartless" in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making:
All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one.
He is incapable of seeing the world outside himself, unaware of consequence; a consummate child and, given the power he has in Neverland, that makes him scary. I love the idea of dark retellings of children's classics like these books, but the truth is the source material often does it better; compare the disconcerting undercurrent of Pan's nature within the wonder of Neverland to the artless, racist, excessive gothic parade of Brom's The Child Thief which, as you may gather, I rather disliked. I love to see subtext turned text, but it's hard to find retellings that are actually loyal to, or even as effective as, what it is that makes the text intriguing or unsettling or dark.
Once Upon a Time's Pan isn't perfect but he's surprisingly good--in part because Robbie Kray can act; in part because his dynamics with other cast members intrigue me; in part, and to the point, because Pan has that same heartlessness and because he treats his machinations as a game--and while that phrasing grows stale, it's effective. The Lost Boys are older in OUaT but it works, it makes them more rebellious and as such more dangerous. But Pan still feels like a child, capable of leadership and responsibility but with not just a refusal but an inability to fathom compassion, relationships, selflessness, sympathy.
Finding out that he hasn't always been a child, and putting him in a parent/child relationship with another character, undermines the shit out of that. It makes him seem pathetic, even a little gross; a desperate play-actor rather than a precocious, heartless child. All because the narrative wants to make one more madcap, half-written, coincidental interconnection, sigh.
Watching OUaT is an exercise is missed opportunity (not even gonna mention Mulan right now), but this one stung.
