Peter Pan and Moi. Cos it's always about Moi.
Wednesday, 28 April 2004 21:55![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apollaJust got done watching Peter Pan (the new Jason Isaacs version, not proper Disney Peter Pan. Have seen that trillions of times). As always, I have a particularly ambiguous love/hate relationship with the story. I remember once searching for JM Barrie's story online and only finding the last chapter of the book and being totally beside myself at the unhappy ending.
I love Peter Pan because it's about a boy who never grew up and about a girl who doesn't want to. I hate it because at the end she does. Perhaps I hate it because I've yet to grow up, because I don't want to grow up and because I never want to have to actually do it.
So I loved this particular movie... except that at the end she really does grow up. They don't just sail off into the sky on Hook's ship like they do in the Disney version... he says he'll remember her and then never comes back. She grows up and has children. The fact that she tells the story of Peter Pan to her children doesn't matter. All children grow up except one, and it is the deepest cause of bitterness inside myself that I am not that one. I will admit to you right now that I was beside myself at the end of this otherwise fantastic movie... because I don't consider her going back to her parents and growing up to be anywhere near happy ever after.
It has been said that everyone has an 'inner age' that they remain however old they become. Mine, I think, is about 11/12. I can tell this because before that, I always felt a little more grown up than everyone else in my class. I don't mean that in an arrogant sense, and I was just as childish as they were... I just felt older. Of course there are days now that I feel older than Moses or Bob Dylan, but in my heart, soul and mind, I am still eleven or twelve years old. It was then (ironically, one of the least happy times of my life) that I began to feel a little younger than everyone. It was after that that I began to feel even more detached from everyone, and not just because of that. In my heart I will always be eleven years old. In my heart I will love riding my bike through the woods with my best friends, and it is probably the greatest tragedy of my life that the most 'right' time of my life has already passed.
I should've been like Peter Pan. Except not in a Michael Jackson/Cliff Richard creepy kind of way. Just... I shouldn't have ever been allowed to get older. I should've remained forever that little girl with a giant smile, sarcasm beyond her years and not a worry in the world. It turns out after all that the summer of 1993 was the last time I was allowed to be myself. Before Stanborough and all that entailed, before being forced to become older, before being made to grow the fuck up.
I love Peter Pan because it's about a boy who never grew up and about a girl who doesn't want to. I hate it because at the end she does. Perhaps I hate it because I've yet to grow up, because I don't want to grow up and because I never want to have to actually do it.
So I loved this particular movie... except that at the end she really does grow up. They don't just sail off into the sky on Hook's ship like they do in the Disney version... he says he'll remember her and then never comes back. She grows up and has children. The fact that she tells the story of Peter Pan to her children doesn't matter. All children grow up except one, and it is the deepest cause of bitterness inside myself that I am not that one. I will admit to you right now that I was beside myself at the end of this otherwise fantastic movie... because I don't consider her going back to her parents and growing up to be anywhere near happy ever after.
It has been said that everyone has an 'inner age' that they remain however old they become. Mine, I think, is about 11/12. I can tell this because before that, I always felt a little more grown up than everyone else in my class. I don't mean that in an arrogant sense, and I was just as childish as they were... I just felt older. Of course there are days now that I feel older than Moses or Bob Dylan, but in my heart, soul and mind, I am still eleven or twelve years old. It was then (ironically, one of the least happy times of my life) that I began to feel a little younger than everyone. It was after that that I began to feel even more detached from everyone, and not just because of that. In my heart I will always be eleven years old. In my heart I will love riding my bike through the woods with my best friends, and it is probably the greatest tragedy of my life that the most 'right' time of my life has already passed.
I should've been like Peter Pan. Except not in a Michael Jackson/Cliff Richard creepy kind of way. Just... I shouldn't have ever been allowed to get older. I should've remained forever that little girl with a giant smile, sarcasm beyond her years and not a worry in the world. It turns out after all that the summer of 1993 was the last time I was allowed to be myself. Before Stanborough and all that entailed, before being forced to become older, before being made to grow the fuck up.
