Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions -- continued

As if to complement the role played by Aunt Millicent, the episode at school that Wendy caused is told. This is also an interesting scene that had no description in the original story, but is a new creation of this film. Wendy is found by the teacher scribbling on her notebook during class and is subjected to strict scrutiny by the mistress.

If this is you in bed, … what is this?　/　A boy.

Miss Fulsom dispatched a letter of outrage to Mr. Darling…that set new standards of prudery even for her.

By the way, in the original story, the name of the school where Nana, the dog who babysits the Darling family, sends Wendy’s younger brothers, is “Fulsom Academy”. As a result of various disruptions of the semantic information in the original work, the fictionality of this film is reconstructed with a new connection of meanings in different permutations. This will be an interesting case for audiences who have contemplated on a parallel world interpretation based on the uncertainty of elementary particles presented by quantum mechanics theory.
The film’s narration further introduces Mr. Darling as he attends a party and tries to challenge himself in unfamiliar social conversations.

Mr. Darling had been practicing small talk all afternoon. “--I say, it’s nice weather we’re having…. ” And now his opportunity had arrived. Sir Edward Quiller Couch, the president of the bank… was a man who enjoyed small talk almost as much as a good balance sheet.

Mr. Darling is greatly embarrassed in front of his bank boss he approached to get in a good mood, because of a letter sent by Mrs. Fulsom accusing Wendy. The immediate cause of this was Nana, who tried to prevent the delivery of the letter for Wendy’s sake. This episode, which was not told at all in the original story, follows a different forked route than the original story and leads to the same result as the original. Each episode of this film Peter Pan can be interpreted as a description of a branched parallel world extracted from the primordial state of indeterminacy where various contradictions are canceling out in a bundle of possibilities. Mr. Darling vents his anger on Nana and strips her of her position as the honored babysitter, and chains the faithful guard dog in the courtyard. Thus, through fault of his own, Mr. Darling allows Peter Pan to break into his home again. Mr. Darling’s lines spoken here were not present in the original work, but as one of the possible representations that the archetype fictional world of Peter and Wendy can manifest, it is an interesting one that brilliantly reproduces the qualities of the original author Barrie and also the individuality of the derivative work itself.

I have been humiliated! I must become a man that children fear and adults respect, or we shall all end up in the street! This is not a nurse! This is a dog! Tomorrow, you begin your instruction with Aunt Millicent. It’s time for you to grow up!

If this continues, Wendy will be expelled from the hilarious stories and imaginary world that she has been weaving with her younger brothers, and will be forced to have lady’s education. Wendy needs a liberator to save her from the hardships and predicaments she has to overcome. In this way, the film brilliantly embodies another variation of the unmistakable story of Peter Pan that has been reconstructed in a phase shift by swapping the basic axis as “Wendy’s story” in the form of a derivative work constructed with striking visual description.
In the original novel, Peter and Wendy, Wendy’s father, Mr. Darling, was caricatured to the extreme, portraying him as an eccentric figure with a latent infantilism that was not inferior to Peter’s, rather than an overly common-sense adult like a typical bank clerk. He was set in axial symmetry of three striking characters adding Peter’s arch enemy, Captain Hook, who was in many ways contrasted with Peter but also had many similarities with the boy and struggled in contention against him in Neverland. However, in the movie Peter Pan, this character is replaced by Mrs. Darling’s portrayal of a father in front of her three children. Before Mrs. Darling goes to the party, she confides in her children about Mr. Darling’s sealed dream he abandoned in order to become an honest banker and quietly belong to society, and the courage of him who chose to protect his family.

Your father is a brave man. But he’s going to need the special kiss to face his colleagues tonight. ／ Father? Brave?

Mrs. Darling tells them that the formidable opponents that their father must confront are not vicious pirates and terrifying monsters, but his bosses and colleagues at the company where he works. The mysterious kiss that floats on Mrs. Darling’s mouth, which even Wendy could not get in the original story, and Mr. Darling quickly gave up on getting it, is going to be employed as a cover for Mr. Darling at the party, who is not good at social conversation. The children involuntarily question the meaning of their mother’s unexpected words, who praises the hidden virtues of their father. Mrs. Darling confides to tell them. And her explanation goes like this:

There are many different kinds of bravery. There’s the bravery of thinking of others before oneself. Now, your father has never brandished a sword, nor fired a pistol, thank heavens. But he has made many sacrifices for his family, and put them in a drawer. And sometimes, late at night we take them out and admire them. But it gets harder and harder to close the drawer. He does. And that is why he is brave.

It’s a refracted assessment of the bravery of a man that Peter would not have understood, but it is the world of the movie Peter Pan, which is set on a different dimension from the original work, that this admiration for their father is told through the mouth of Mrs. Darling. It may be one of the many latent variations that the fictional archetype “Meta Peter and Wendy” retains without being revealed. Captain Hook, who became a martyr of aestheticism by refusing to accept the norms of the establishment and making a living as a pirate who continued to resist the social system, and Mr. Darling, who lives every day wearing the mask of a mediocre banker for the sake of his family, may actually be no different in their underlying personality substrates.

note:
For the significance of the livelihood chosen by the pirate Captain Hook, the real protagonist of Peter and Wendy, please refer to “Good Form and Introspection: The Melancholia of Captain Hook”, included in Fantasy as Antifantasy, Kindai Bungei-sha, (2005).

Both Captain Hook and Mr. Darling may be masks of personae, temporarily disguised in the perspective of a possible world, by an unknown proto-existence identical in their nature.