27 February

Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions -- concluded

This line was spoken by the main characters both in the original Peter and Wendy and in the movie Peter Pan, and it was directed at Peter Pan.
　In the concluding scene of the movie Peter Pan, each of the Lost Boys returns to the real world and is given a happy ending. There’s even a very convenient episode depicted in which the treasure of the pirate ship that Michael has stolen will support the Darling family’s finances, which have increased the number of dependents. The voice of the narrator concludes the story as follows:

There could not have been a lovelier sight. But there was none to see it… except a strange boy who was staring in at the window. Peter Pan had countless joys that other children can never know. But he was looking at the one joy from which he must be for ever barred.

Seeing Wendy and the others have returned safely, Peter, who is left alone, mutters.

To live would be an awfully big adventure.

This line, in which Peter, the existence of divine phase that transcends life and death, tells the joy of mortal beings, was not in the original work. It was an all-too-famous reversal of the line that he spoke, for Wendy, the film’s protagonist who is both a human and a girl. As Peter is about to leave alone, Wendy says goodbye to him and asks him to come see her again. Peter vows to never forget her. However, the final scene of the movie Peter Pan concludes with the following narration:

But I was not to see Peter Pan again. Now I tell his story to my children. And they will tell it to their children. And so it will go on. For all children grow up… except one.

In this final scene, it is revealed that the narrator of the film was grown up Wendy. This film was one of the stories told by Wendy, a grown-up storyteller, about Wendy, a girl who likes story-telling. However, the description of the concluding part of the original Peter and Wendy contains peculiar inflections and deviations that do not allow the reader to easily find peace of mind. In fact, this eerie tendency as a dark fantasy was an important element that became a basic condition for establishing its identity as a fictional work, depicting the eternal child Peter Pan. It had already been hinted at in the scene just before Wendy and her two brothers returned to the Darling family. In the children’s room, Mrs. Darling began to play the piano at Mr. Darling’s request, and Mr. Darling had just fallen asleep.

… and she went into the day-nursery and played, and soon he was asleep; and while he slept, Wendy and John and Michael flew into the room.
Oh no. We have written it so, because that was the charming arrangement planned by them before we left the ship; but something must have happened since then, for it is not they who have flown in, it is Peter and Tinker Bell.


As has been shown in several previous scenes, in the original Peter and Wendy, the narrative that constructs the story world is presented through multiple parallel descriptions, making use of the author’s role as a narrator. (note)

note:
Typical parallel description that alludes to the branching stories introduced in the original Peter and Wendy was as follows:

In introducing the various adventures undertaken by the children in Neverland, the narrator says that he has prepared several episodes. However, the author says that it is impossible to tell all of them without a thick book of the size of an English-Latin dictionary or a Latin-English dictionary. (p. 119) After listing some of the possible episodes to be told, the narrator continues:

... but we have not decided yet that this is the adventure we are to narrate.... （p. 120）

Then, as if the narrator is still undecided, he brings up the idea of telling a story about how the pirates baked a cake to trap the children, or how Peter saved his friend bird’s nest when it fell into the sea. However, the episode that the narrator actually tells the reader is thus arbitrarily determined.

Which of these adventures should we choose? The best way will be to toss for it. I have tossed, and the lagoon has won. （p. 121）


The substance of the narrative world was given in the form of an amorphous picture that allowed the thoughts of the narrator and the listener to selectively determine the framework of the story. This trait should also be regarded as a meta-characteristic that defines the genus of the original Peter and Wendy as a fictional entity. And in the story, which is said to have been re-chosen by the author with the introduction of the above scene, Peter preemptively plans to close the windows of the Darlings’ house and brutally prevent Wendy from returning. (note)

note:
In the movie Peter Pan, this episode, which was told in the original story with an emphasis on the impression of parallel descriptions, is used as the main story. Shortly after his initial breakup with Wendy and his denial of his feelings of “affection,” Peter goes to the Darlings’ house alone and plots to close the window which Mrs. Darling kept open, so that Wendy can never return.


Peter was an ideal image that everyone admired, and it was a paradox that could never be formed by embodying a definite personal figure. (note)

note:
This kind of indeterminacy discovered in the character images is discussed in the author’s study of the identity of fictional existences; “Figure, Fiction and Identity: Ceci n’est pas une figurine”, included in Existence, Phenomenon and Personality: Individuality in Figurines, Anime and Game; Bokka-sha, (2014); centered on the fictional character Hatsune Miku and several other figures, through figurines modeling study.


But this aspect of dark hero “deviation” about Peter occupied the essential part and claimed special attention in the original Peter and Wendy. (note)

note:
This mechanism of the generation of the dark side of the heroic figure is discussed in the author’s study of video game, “Identity of Summoned Heroes: Aspects of Psyche and Phases of Persona in Fate/stay night”, included in Existence, Phenomenon and Personality: Individuality in Figurines, Anime and Game; Bokka-sha, (2014). The derivative phase of a fictional character revealed as its shadow has been studied through the idea of “materialization of the dark side”, centered on the heroic character of King Arthur and its shadow self, described in Fate/stay night, in the author’s responsible course “Culture Today”.

There are versions in which a character becomes several “dark ones”. Saber becomes “Black Saber,” and in various Fate series, the persona of “Saber” is assumed by Arturia, Nero, or Mordred. And the same example can be applied to Hatsune Miku as well.

Please refer to the link below, for the record of the entire lecture on the fictional characters and their phases of representation.

Culture Today:
https://twitter.com/mackuro3/status/1260209979920773122



Reflecting this fact, the appearance of Peter Pan in front of Wendy, who returned to the real world, which was told as a later story, is described as follows in the original Peter and Wendy.

She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind.
“Who is Captain Hook?” he asked with interest when she spoke of the arch enemy.
“Don’t you remember,” she asked, amazed, “how you killed him and saved all our lives?”
“I forget them after I kill them,” he replied carelessly.
When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see her he said, “Who is Tinker Bell?”
“O Peter,” she said, shocked; but even when she explained he could not remember.
“There are such a lot of them,” he said.  “I expect she is no more.”


Peter is an echo of uncertain utopia that never truly fills people’s hearts with satisfaction until the end, that always leaves some kind of discomfort. The rebirth of the pagan god Pan did more than contribute to the liberation of the human spirit from the obstinate Christian dogma, it also brought about the destruction of the Logos of Greek civilization that human culture had succeeded to establish. And the concluding part of the original Peter and Wendy, which is a dark fantasy full of pitfalls that has a theme even more severe than any realistic fiction, is narrated by the author as follows:

As you look at Wendy, you may see her hair becoming white, and her figure little again, for all this happened long ago.  Jane is now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret; and every spring cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter comes for Margaret and takes her to the Neverland, where she tells him stories about himself, to which he listens eagerly.  When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.


The theme of the phenomenalization process of ideas embodied through the narration of stories, which was a characteristic style of writing pioneered by the original Peter and Wendy, has been faithfully reflected in the psychological battle employed by the strategist, Captain Hook, as an intellectual manipulation identified with the game world mechanism of make-believe, which was Peter’s specialty, in the movie Peter Pan. Instead, the film’s concluding part seemed to depict a typical happy ending by showing the Lost Children returning to the happy real world. Interestingly, however, the DVD version of the movie Peter Pan contains some extra footage. And here are some parallel scenes presented, that were not in the main body of the movie. One of the scenes seems to correspond to the description of the ending of the original Peter and Wendy. It is an additional episode named “Another Ending”.
Wendy, who has become a mother, is shown talking about Peter Pan to her young daughter, Jane. Wendy tells. “That was the last time I saw him.” When Jane asks if she minded very much, Wendy replies: “No, I knew he would forget. He has many adventures.” Jane falls asleep when Peter enters the children’s room through the window. However, Wendy and Peter’s reunion after a long absence is quite awkward. Peter refuses to acknowledge Wendy as a grown up, and even pulls out a dagger and tries to stab her daughter to death while she sleeps in bed. Jane wakes up and asks Peter a question. “Boy, why are you crying?” In this way, the same scene as the night Wendy first met Peter is repeated, and the episode ends with Wendy standing by the window and watching Peter and Jane fly out of the window into the sky. As a result of the isolated destruction of the main body, Hook, the opportunity for the unification of the personality, which had been separated and generated as a shadow, was also lost, and his fellow Lost Boys returned to the “banal and ugly” real world, and the story of the deity, the remnants of utopia, which had to be sealed in people’s minds in a barren “Eternal Recurrence”, is thus told in “parallel description” using the gimmick of the DVD.
　The metafictional description that embodied the attempt to describe the protoplasmic state in anticipation of the yet unformulated quantum interpretation of existence, reflecting the congested zeitgeist on the eve of the publication of Einstein’s theory of relativity, at the beginning of the 20th century, at the time of the publication of the original Peter and Wendy; is now adopted in various animation and game works in the 21st century. Moreover, it has come to form a completed norm of fictional presentation. It was the story of Peter Pan, which branched and phenomenalized in two ways, into the original story and the movie version, that was supposed to illustrate the origin and completion of the fictional description adopting the world-formula of Totality Universe and Archetype, applying quantum logic.