25 February

Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions -- continued

And this dramatization method is even more efficiently twisted in this derivative work, resulting in the creation of a peculiar vanishing point that determines the unique perspective of the fictional work. In response to Hook’s attempt to forcibly intervene in the middle of Wendy’s story and demand to divulge Peter Pan’s secrets, Wendy proceeds with the story.

He liked my stories. / What stories? / Cinderella. Snow White. Sleeping Beauty. / Love Stories? / Adventures in which good triumphs over evil. / They all end in a kiss. A kiss. He does feel. He feels about you. You told him stories. He taught you to fly. How? / You just think happy thoughts. They lift you into the air. / Alas, I have no happy thoughts. / That brings you down. / How else? / Fairy dust. You need fairy dust.

Wendy and Hook are trying to make a two-way reference to the fictional world, but they are actually trying to establish a future vision of their reality. Instead of Wendy, who refuses to answer Hook’s question, which is an important matter that determines the progress of the story, her brother, who feels that he is in danger, tells Hook an important secret. Thus, Wendy has allowed Peter’s enemy, Hook, to learn the secret to flying that Peter taught her. As a result, the movie Peter Pan introduces a new scene that depicts Hook’s flight, which was not described in the original story, and how the cunning tactician captain plots to gain an advantage in the battle by giving Peter a “sad feeling” that the boy never originally knew. It was Wendy’s words that gave Hook this idea, and it was Wendy’s presence that inspired him to put that idea into action.

What of Pan? Will unhappy thoughts bring him down? /He has no unhappy thoughts. / How if his Wendy walks the plank?

Shortly thereafter, during the battle with Peter, who appears on a pirate ship, Hook is bathed in Tink’s fairy dust and levitates himself in the air after Peter’s teaching. This is a new development that was not mentioned at all in the original story, but it is supposed to brilliantly illuminate the relationship between Peter and Hook, who are contrasting, but maintain a rather solid identity in their natures, centered on Wendy’s presence. This is because a plan will be carried out to pass on the melancholy that has been ingrained in Hook’s mind to Peter.(note)

note:
Please refer to the author’s article “Goodform and Reflection: Captain Hook's Melancholia”, included in Fantasy as Antifantasy; Kindai Bungei-sha, (2005), for the argument of melancholia, the chronicle disease of modern man, represented by the pirate Captain.


Freed from his melancholia for a moment, Hook calls himself in the third person and proudly declares it.

It’s Hook! He flies! And he likes it.

In this way, Hook unravels the “riddle of Peter’s existence” in his own way, which has been pending for many years, and grasps the clue to the strategy of defeating this difficult enemy.(note)

note:
In the original novel, Peter’s “riddle of existence” formed an important theme. Peter was described by the author as something akin to the peculiar expression on the faces of unmarried women and young mothers. It is a description that implies that the discourse, which was regarded as a kind of figurative expression, has acquired substantiality, and has embodied in a unique existence endowed with its own will and peculiar physicality. It is an essential attribute of Peter Pan that can be regarded as the product of an ideological play belonging to an abstract speculation, or as a crystallization of a dangerous fancy that barely asserts its implication only in the ideation space. If we solve the riddle by integrating other suggestive descriptions and applying a modern picture based on the idea of quantum theory, we can obtain the solution as “a shadow generated by polarization from Captain Hook, an educated man who is a slave of reflective self-consciousness.”


In the psychological warfare employed by Hook, Wendy’s presence and the storytelling mechanism are to be skillfully utilized. Hook tries to develop this innovative tactic he gained to make it even more effective against Peter. Hook then tells Peter the story in which Wendy plays an important role.

I know what you are. / I am the best there ever was. / You are a tragedy. / Me? Tragic? /She was leaving you, Pan. Your Wendy was leaving you. Why should she stay? What have you to offer? You are incomplete. She’d rather grow up than stay with you. Let us now take a peep into the future. What’s this I see? ‘Tis the fair Wendy. She’s in her nursery. The window’s shut.

Hook introduces the narrative element of the story into the final battle that should be put to rest on the long-standing feud with Peter. The mechanism of accepting thoughts that come to mind in a dream as facts as they are, is the very world of make-believe, which is Peter’s specialty. Hook, who launches a clever mental attack on Peter’s vulnerability, uses the phrase “Let's take a peep into the future” describing Wendy’s virtual appearance as an adult who abandoned Peter. This descriptive invention he adopted, as expected, would have a profound effect on his foe. However, this very memorable line was uttered by Wendy herself, not Hook, in the original Peter and Wendy, in a completely different scene. Wendy’s line “Let’s take a peep into the future” was used to describe themselves in the story after growing up, in the children’s underground house playing the role of the mother of the Lost Boys.

“Let us now,” said Wendy, bracing herself up for her finest effort, “take a peep into the future”; and they all gave themselves the twist that makes peeps into the future easier. “Years have rolled by, and who is this elegant lady of uncertain age alighting at London Station?”


In the movie Peter Pan, the depiction of the final battle between Hook and Peter on the pirate ship will be completely different from the original Peter and Wendy. It’s a psychological battle intellectually promoted by Hook, an implementation of the game of make-believe told through dialogue.

I’ll open it! / I’m afraid the window’s barred. / I’ll call out her name. / She can’t hear you. / No. / She can’t see you. / Wendy. / She’s forgotten all about you. / Stop. Please! Stop it! / And what is this I see? There is another in your place. He is called husband.

Convinced of his victory, through tactics thanks to Wendy’s revelatory information, Hook triumphantly gives Peter an ultimatum.

You die alone and unloved. Just like me.

Hook’s declaration of victory is also an acknowledgement of the identity of the enemy to be defeated with himself to be the winner. This is a brilliant reversal of Hook’s final defeat scene in the original Peter and Wendy. In the original story, Hook receives a revelation in his final moments that divulges both Peter’s identity and the riddle of his existence. It was the fact that Peter is no other than the shadow of Hook, himself generated as a result of polarization, and it led to the harsh realization that Hook would never have the chance to be united with his inner self and that he would have no choice but to accept his spiritual ruin as his destiny. The following description reveals the intense subject of the original novel.

Hitherto he had thought it was some fiend fighting him, but darker suspicions assailed him now. “Pan, who and what art thou?” he cried huskily. “I'm youth, I’m joy,” Peter answered at a venture, “I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.” This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that Peter did not know in the least who or what he was, which is the very pinnacle of good form.



The obstruction of the psyche, which has trapped him in a somber self-consciousness and will not affirm him any good form, is the basic condition of the identity that defines the personality of Hook, and at the same time, it is the cause of the generation of the inexplicable mystery that is Peter.