Peter Pan: The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up

Erin Langford

How do you get to Never Land? Well if you have ever watched the Disney classic Peter Pan the answer is easy.  Peter Pan is classic story of a boy who decides he will never grow up and the Darling children who grew up idolizing the concept of Peter Pan but who ultimately make the choice to go back home to grow up. The characters and the music appear to be based on a more romantic time period than anything else."The English Romantics were heirs to the idea of the child as a representation of creative energy, autonomy, potentiality, authenticity, and unselfconsciousness" (Chapman). Peter Pan seems to be the poster child for this thought. 
The movie starts out with the song “The Second Star to the Right” sung by The Jud Conlon Chorus, who had previously sung the music in Walt Disney’s other classic Alice in Wonderland (1951). “The Second Star to the Right” lyric’s contain the answer to the question asked earlier and portrays Never Land as a dream like place to get away from your troubles. The other song sung by the Jud Conlon Chorus “You Can Fly! You can Fly! You Can Fly!” has lyrics like “Think of all the joy you'll find when you leave the world behind” which promotes a theme of leaving the real world for a more carefree world such as Never Land where Peter Pan resides.

The character Peter Pan though symbolizes much more than just the concept of not wanting to grow up, many people believe that Peter Pan is the symbol of youth. In fact the idea of Peter Pan’s eternal symbol of youth had a lasting impact on Michael Jackson’s Never Land Ranch came from Peter Pan, the famous ‘King of Pop’s hope was for children to come and to experience a childhood that Jackson himself could never have.

 (Michael Jackson's Never Land Ranch)

Before Peter Pan was a Disney movie, it was first a novel written by James E Barrie that focused on a different theme besides not growing up. “In Peter Pan it is firmly limited and located within a highly civilized social setting and is motivated by the parents' life, full of stresses and strains, and Wendy's incipient adolescence. This is conscious fantasy, designed by an adult who has a truly remarkable sympathy with children, quite exquisitely shot through with the ironies of a game both sides consciously are playing, though from different points of view” (Green). After the novel came out it was then made into a Broadway. In this version is when the theme of never growing up became more pronounced. With the song “I Won’t Grow Up” featuring Peter Pan and the lost boys displaying their displeasure of getting older. In this particular Broadway play Peter Pan, played by Cathy Rigby who was nominated and won Outstanding Actress in a Musical, was grossed at $18,459,034 by the end of the show, while it was not as popular as other Disney movies turned Broadway it did better than expected(.

 

The lasting affect of Peter Pan on society is solely through the tiny character Tinkerbell, who is ironically the only one who doesn't talk. In fact in the movie Peter Pan her thoughts, feelings, and actions are portrayed through sounds and music. Since the creation of Tinkerbell there have been rumors that she modeled after none other than Marilyn Monroe which has since been proved wrong, but to this day she is considered one of Disney's most well known figures. Even the movie was produced in 1953, Tinkerbell to this day is still so popular with little girls and adults alike that the Disney Corporation created a spin off series purely based on Tinkerbell and her other fairy friends leaving a lasting legacy of Peter Pan to this day.

Works Cited
Amanda Phillips Chapman. "The Riddle of Peter Pan’s Existence: An Unselfconscious Stage Child." The Lion and the Unicorn 36.2 (2012): 136-153. Project MUSE. Web. 19 Nov. 2012. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.

Martin Green. "The Charm of Peter Pan." Children's Literature 9.1 (1981): 19-27. Project MUSE. Web. 19 Nov. 2012. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.