What keeps a retelling true?

I love classic story and fairy tale retellings as a category. (Given that I write them, I would hope so.) Jane Yolen and Robin McKinley and even James Thurber give wonderful new shadings to well-known stories and bring forward themes and characters with dimension and creativity that show me new meanings in familiar things.

Lost boys, "Once Upon a Time" style. What are you doing, Disney? What?

But reading books like Peter and the Starcatchers and Midnight in Neverland, and watching shows like my favorite scapegoat "Once Upon a Time" has given me cause to examine what I like and what I object to in retellings of classic stories. (Admittedly, OUaT has thrown the original Peter Pan so far out the window that I've started enjoying the show again.)

At first, I thought I don't mind someone reworking the story if the characters are true to the originals. But that leaves out how much I love the Wicked series, and how much Gregory Maguire's characters diverge from L. Frank Baum's, making it a new narrative but one I can embrace.

So then I thought maybe I require either the plot or the character to be true to the original. But ultimately I decided what it comes down to, for me, is respect. If a retelling shows respect for the vision as it was initially created, I can appreciate it even if there are aspects I don't agree with or don't enjoy. But without respect, an author might as well create new characters. Maybe it would make it harder for him or her to get their book published, but I think that says something in itself.

Knowing the source material shows respect. Even when the OUaT writers drive me bats, I can tell there's some real knowledge of Barrie's original as well as Walt Disney's film among the writing staff. Half-done research doesn't show respect. And if one truly loves a work, it's generally clear whether a plot departure is an intentional departure or is a merely half-understood aspect plucked from the original. And I don't have time for that, or respect of my own for the retelling.

I suspect there's more here to be mined, but for now, I leave you with another problem in fairy tale retellings--the temptation to fall back on tropes, even new ones, rather than explore new ideas. Cracked.com has taken note of a few of those in fairy tale movies.

The wrong Jolly Roger

Whatever I may say about the accuracy of character portrayals on "Once Upon a Time," I applaud the show regularly for getting Captain Hook's ship right.

You may also recognize the Lady Washington as the Interceptor from Pirates of the Caribbean.

The producers are using the Lady Washington as their Jolly Roger (some of the filming has been done on the actual ship, the rest on a full-sized replica). And the Lady is a brig, as is the Jolly Roger, according to J.M. Barrie. You will note she has two masts. I know right away when artists haven't done their research, or have chosen to dispatch with Barrie's vision, the moment I see three masts. 

A brig has two masts, square-rigged.

I call Disney as the original instigator of this travesty.

Yes, maybe I'd like to have one of these models, but that does not mean I think this is accurate.

James Coleman, "Moonrise Over Pirate Bay," current fine art for Disney by one of its animated film landscape artists. Beautiful! But not a brig.

I suppose Disney's version has become the popular default.

Nadir Quinto, 1982

But it's hardly just Disney.

Model for the ship in the 2003 film of Peter Pan. Looks to me like a clipper, maybe, not a brig

I don't know why it's hard to get this one right. It's easy enough to do the research, and a brig is a lovely ship--it's not as though it weren't just as pretty as a clipper or a frigate, even if less imposing.

A brig! Robert Ingpen, 2004

Of course, it's not as if I'm not also confronted regularly with the placement of the Captain's hook on the incorrect hand. I just realized even one of my favorite Peter Pan artists' renditions has that issue.

Gwynedd M. Hudson,  1931. It is almost impossible to find biographical information about her online, and I was sorry to discover this may be because she died at the age of 26.  Hudson studied at the Brighton School of Art, and is also remembered for her illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

At least I know artists have used the play as their inspiration at least as much as the book as regards the hook, which is an element that has changed from one production (and actor) to the next. I don't think they have as good an excuse for ship inaccuracies.

Hook vs. Hook

It's hardly a secret by now that I gnash my teeth over portrayals of Captain Hook that clash with the original by J.M. Barrie (possibly I need a bumper sticker that reads "Barrie is my co-pilot.") And ABC television's "Once Upon a Time" has provided rant fodder for me in general for its fast-and-loose handling of classic stories. When the show added Captain Hook to its roster (well after I had started The Stowaway), my objections suddenly became more personal.

The TV Hook is Captain Hook in, er, name and hook only. And actually not even in name. Somehow on the way to the small screen, Captain Hook became Killian Jones. (Admittedly, if he turns out to be related to Davy Jones of "locker" renown, I will applaud a job well done.) I've accepted that--for the most part. But the more I watch--and I feel compelled to watch just so I know what's being put out there--the more I think OUaT's Captain Hook is actually Long John Silver.

Robert Newton as Long John Silver with Bobby Driscoll as Jim Hawkins in the 1950 film of Treasure Island.

Bobby Driscoll was also the voice of Peter Pan in the 1953 animated Peter Pan. Around we go again...

Both John Silver and Killian Jones form alliances as they are convenient and betray them just as easily. Witness how easily Jones changes his alliances with Regina and her mother Cora, depending on who seems to have the upper hand on him or can most benefit him, as Long John Silver did with the officers and crew of the Hispaniola. And both repeatedly face capture and betrayal themselves, which the original Captain Hook would have found too embarrassing to endure.

Silver murders one of the sailors he recruited to his mutiny with apparently no remorse, and Jones both steals Aurora's heart and shoots her, showing no regret about either. James Hook is described as murdering out of temper (and, I argue, sometimes that reaction could be considered justified), but not for manipulation.

Colin O'Donoghue's Hook with Dylan Schmid as Baelfire, the son of Hook's beloved Milah.

Most significantly, perhaps, Jones and Silver have a fatherly side which is completely absent in James Hook. Silver's mentorship and eventual protection of Jim Hawkins are the only demonstration that there is more to the man than duplicity and greed. Jones craves a fatherly relationship with Bae even to the point of sailing to retrieve Bae's son Henry from Neverland, a place Jones swore he would never return.

By comparison, James Hook's relationship with children can be summed up as follows.

F. D. Bedford, 1911

I wonder often if the writers of OUaT have a good knowledge of their source material and are using it as a starting point, or if they genuinely have only the barest conception of their characters' origins. Given that this is a Disney property and all the characters have been featured in Disney films, I'm going to go with the first and hope I'm right. It baffles me sometimes, though, how far afield they go from the original conceptions. I suppose my concern is that people without background in fairy tale lore will take these as the final word, and not be open to other interpretations--including those which are written with the utmost concern for keeping to the spirit and word of the original. It's personal, in other words.

Defending the boy

I can't believe I've been driven to this (and I'm sorry, Captain, sir, I honestly am), but I have lost my tolerance for depictions of Peter Pan as a villain.

I've seen Peter portrayed as a vampire in one than one interpretation, as a fighter who uses foundlings and runaways as his soldiers in his war (Brom's The Child Thief), as a brutal young man who uses children to fuel his immortality (Zenescope's Neverland comics), as a mysterious being whose exact evil nature we will soon learn (the TV series "Once Upon a Time"). Just this morning I discovered a web comic called "The Assassin of Neverland." Only 30 pages so far, but I think the intent is clear.

These versions don't necessarily involve casting Captain Hook as a hero, although sometimes they do--frequently everyone in the story is equally dismal and/or morally defunct, leaving me nothing to enjoy in the telling. I have encountered so much unrelenting grimness in these stories that Disney's Peter Pan begins to come as a relief. Even versions of the character that fly (heh) even further against the original in their portrayal of Peter's origin or age--the Starcatchers series, the SyFy miniseries "Neverland"--shine brighter to me than they did formerly, in the face of such bleakness. The concept of Peter Pan has long provided an escape for children (if not adults) in need of one, and even if my heart lies with the purported villain of the original, I find this one of the story's signal virtues.

Disney Peter had his less-than-benevolent moments, but at least they were transient.

In his recent book, "I Wear the Black Hat," New York Times ethics writer Chuck Klosterman analyzes what makes a person the villain (noting that the same traits would garner different reactions in fiction and in real life--e.g. Batman). One of his characteristics is "knows the most and cares the least," and another is "super-human self-assurance." Looked at through that lens, it's easy to see Peter Pan as the villain. But perhaps because it is so easy to flip the narrative, doing so no longer holds any meaning it might have originally.

Yes, Peter can be seen as a thief of children and a real threat,and Barrie acknowledges the fact. But keep in mind that the Darling children returned home safely once they chose to. And before meeting Wendy, Peter only took boys to Neverland who fell out of their perambulators and weren't claimed by their parents--not children from loving homes. (Girls, he says, are too smart to fall out of their prams.) Remember also that Barrie describes Peter Pan as a psychopomp who meets children after their deaths to escort them partway. And yes, Peter kills blithely, but out of the innocence and ignorance of being an eternal child, not from malice.

It's the ambiguity in the original story which lends it resonance and continued relevance. A cardboard villain is easy to fight against. But a character who isn't quite a hero and isn't quite a villain, who forces you to consider why he does what he does and the effects his actions have upon him, who causes the reader or viewer to give genuine consideration to him and to the story--this character's complexity adds depth to the story, as opposed to eliciting knee-jerk, unquestioned responses. And takes away none of the magic.

Certainly I enjoy dark retellings of classic tales, but only if they're not too easy. Only if they give me some insight the original did not (see Gregory Maguire's "Wicked" series for how to do it right).I won't go so far as to call a moratorium on Evil Peter portrayals--as if that would even work, ha. Occasionally one still entertains me--I admit I enjoy the Zenescope comics more than I probably should. I'm even looking forward to OUaT, if mainly for ranting purposes. But it may be time to put Evil Peter into context.

I really want the shadow to have split apart from Peter into its own evil entity, but OUaT has not been known for listening to me.

As I noted in my review of Midnight in Neverland, I am finding that these interpretations have been written almost entirely after September 11, 2001. (And I hedge my statement only to cover any that I might find in the future, as so far everything I've read or seen along these lines is from this era.) This seems to me a surprising place for Americans' altered sensibilities about their safety in the world to come to rest, but certainly current YA fiction is rife with these themes.

Is is possible that stories for young people now contain enough looming threats and evildoers that we can return to allowing children--and adults--to see Peter Pan as more than yet another bad guy? After the outside threats are acknowledged and guarded against, we still have human nature to contemplate, and that is a mystery we have been unable to conquer, or even fully understand, for many and many a year. Longer, for certain, than there has been a Peter Pan. Even if he is a vampire.

This arrived today, from ABE Books through a store called Turgid Tomes. I gather they sell academic volumes and have a sense of humor about it, for which I love them with all my heart.

The book contains fourteen essays about various aspects of "Peter Pan," which I hope will provide me with some useful context for what I'm writing. Perhaps even enough context to convince me that Once Upon a Time will not steal all my potential readers or convince them to point and jeer and accuse me of Doing It Wrong.

Weekly rant

Yes, I'm watching Once Upon a Time, because I feel obligated to keep up with what they're doing.

I'm so embarrassed for the Captain, I don't even. Barrie's Hook would poison himself before he'd let himself be captured repeatedly and in humiliating fashion. It's in the original. Nor would he be witlessly duplicitous over and over again, or so easily tricked.

Dammit, Disney. I can't write fast enough to make it better.

And wait--wha'? That's Maleficent? 

Additional note: Neverland? No. Oh, don't. Please don't. I may go and cry now.

This may be my least favorite episode yet. The worst part is I don't expect to remain that way.