Why an evil Peter Pan is no great surprise

It may not be very festive to criticise the childhood hero of many a tot. But it's high time I blogged about something book-related, so here goes. I had my eye on Christina Henry's Lost Boy since a while back, especially after having enjoyed her Alice books (even if they didn't have that much to do with Alice in Wonderland), but I held back, as I felt it only fair that I should read the original Peter Pan story before I got to Henry's dark take on it. Though I have seen a good many adaptations of and riffs on Peter Pan, until recently I had neither seen the play by J.M. Barrie nor read his novelisation of it, Peter and Wendy. Now I've read the latter, considered the most important Peter Pan text by those responsible for Penguin Classics. It's easy to see what they mean, as Peter and Wendy offers a more detailed narrative than any play could, but I do still need to catch the play - in unadulterated form - some day. I still can't say for certain whether Skull Rock (not in the book) is a Disney invention or not.

Anyway, having read Peter and Wendy, I thought I could in good conscience move on to Lost Boy. In Lost Boy, Peter Pan is a villain. Strangely, though, this was no great shock to me, nor I suspect to a great many other people. In fact, my own reaction is more or less "Well, duh" or "Tell me something I don't know". I don't think I'm alone in thinking there is something a little off about J.M. Barrie's creation. Youtube videos on "dark stories behind Disney films" like to point out that J.M. Barrie more than hints that Peter killed off lost boys who committed the crime of growing up. As for the Peter Pan-as-villain idea, it has been done before: in Once Upon A Time (still my favourite TV series: how I miss it!), Peter Pan was one of the most memorable "guest villains", being the main threat of the first half of season 3.

So why is it less unlikely that Peter Pan should be a villain than, say, Winnie the Pooh? How similar are the two villain Peters in Once and Lost Boy to the original, and what can be said in defence of J.M. Barrie's version?

I didn't much care for the versions of Peter I came across as a kid, but this wasn't because I thought there was something sinister about him. The explanation was quite simply that I was Team Hook (that was long before Once nearly ruined the Captain for me). It's when you revisit the story as an adult that you start to question the good intentions of the protagonist, and the feeling of unease is only strengthened when you actually read Peter and Wendy. Neverland in the book is a pretty creepy place. Unlike in the Disney film (which, to do it credit, otherwise follows the original story rather faithfully) childen actually both kill and get killed on the island, and Peter is largely responsible for it. When he is away, the Lost Boys and the pirates are content with "biting their thumbs at each other", but that isn't good enough for Peter. Early on, he makes a careless comment about killing pirates, and one must assume that the skirmishes with the Indians were equally lethal until there is a truce. What's more, he isn't a very good leader. No-one is allowed to know more than him, so as he doesn't quite know what a twin is, the Twins live in existential uncertainty. As he's unable to distinguish between when he and his gang have had a real or a make-believe meal, the boys often go hungry. And yes, the Youtube videos are right: "The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according to as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out".

As for his relationship with the Darlings, Peter is actually only interested in getting Wendy to Neverland as she can tell stories: the two boys just come along for the ride. When they keep falling from the sky in their flight to the island, Wendy is constantly afraid that Peter will tire of preventing their fall, as he sees saving them as a game rather than caring one way or another whether they live or not. Once in Neverland, Peter has no intention of ever letting the Darling children go back to their home, and nearly sabotages their attempt to do so, though he is finally reluctantly moved by Mrs Darling's plight. The boy who never grows up is a thoughtless, selfish one, and there is even something off-putting about those supposedly beguiling milk teeth.

However, the reimaginings of him in Once Upon A Time and Lost Boy are pretty harsh. The Once Peter is probably the one who would have upset J.M. Barrie most, not because he's villainous, but because he is really an adult, an irresponsible small-time crook called Malcolm who abandons his son in exchange for (almost) eternal youth. "A child can't have a child", he explains as the crying boy is carried away from the island by the Shadow (a separate, malign entity). Reinvented as Peter Pan, a name taken from his son's lost toy (the little'un having a flair for names), Malcolm lives it up for many, many years. He lures other children to the island to keep him company (doubling as the Pied Piper), until the time comes when he has to prolong his life by getting hold of the heart of his great-grandson. Not a problem for this Peter, who sets about it, until the boy's friends and relatives put a few spanners in the works.

The Peter Pan in Lost Boy is closer to the original, not least because he is a child, though a mad and malicious one. Lost Boy is essentially a back story for Hook, though the protagonist Jamie isn't very Hookish, and could more or less be any intelligent Lost Boy who gets disillusioned by his leader and friend. The trouble starts for real when Peter brings Charlie, a boy who is really too young for the Neverland life, to the island. Jamie starts caring for him which makes Peter jealous. Through the ensuing adventures it becomes more and more apparent that Peter is a monster who has to be the centre of the universe for all of the boys, Jamie especially, and who will try to get rid of anyone who stands in his way.

The dark Neverland of Lost Boy isn't so far removed from the original Neverland as the setting of Henry's Alice books was from Wonderland. J.M. Barrie's Neverland was, as I've mentioned, rather unsettling already, so Henry's interpretation doesn't feel altogether "out there". But while I liked Lost Boy quite a lot, and hugely enjoyed the dastardly Peter Pan in Once (brilliantly played by Robbie Kay, who must be older than he looks), I feel that neither Henry nor the creators of Once have quite grasped J.M. Barrie's intentions. Nor do they have to, obviously, as long as their riffs on the Peter Pan story work as their own thing, which they do. But it would be wrong to judge J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan on the basis of these reinterpretations. Barrie's Peter often behaves questionably to say the least, but that is because he is supposed to be the eternal, typical child: "gay, innocent and heartless" (I don't have to explain that "gay" means "carefree" in this context, do I?). Barrie's view of children is unsentimental, and Peter isn't the only one who acts selfishly. The Darling children, at first, have no intention of coming home to their grieving parents until years in the future, when they blithely envisage getting a hero's welcome. Their parents' distress isn't real to them - even Wendy, who is almost grown-up and should know better, dallies. When the "do you believe in fairies" scene is written into the novel's narrative, Barrie is aware that not every kid would play ball in the circumstances: "Many clapped. Some didn't. A few little beasts hissed."

To sum up, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan is selfish not because he is Peter, but because he is a child. To make out that he's much worse than all the other children in Neverland is not completely good form. Then again, I never went to Eton, so I don't complain.