Identity and Individuality of Derivative Fictions -- continued

　Peter is able to successfully bring Wendy into the children’s underground house, the one who is going to play the role of their mother, and immediately proposes a barbaric act of massacring their supposed children in the name of “discipline”. However, Wendy, the protagonist of the movie Peter Pan, is brilliantly tactful and able to deal with Peter’s brutal behavior. The cleverness and artistic intuition that enabled her for instant judgment which was exhibited by Peter only in the original Peter and Wendy, is portrayed as an important possession of Wendy in this derivative work.

I agree that they are perfectly horrid… but kill them and they shall think themselves important……I suggest something…far more dreadful. Medicine. It’s the most beastly, disgusting stuff. The sticky, sweet kind.

Wendy obediently goes along with Peter’s radical views as a strict father, but instead of killing the Lost Boys in the name of discipline, she offers a more horrific punishment. It is torture. Even the Lost Boys, who have become accustomed to rough dealings, tremble and beg for exemption from this horrible treatment.

Kill us. Kill us, please.

But, the “sticky, sweet kind medicine” that Wendy brought up here as a tool for cruel torture that was even more horrific than inflicting death, was spoken of in a completely different scene in the original story. And it was Mr. Darling who spoke of it. In the original novel Peter and Wendy, there was a scene that unfortunately had to be omitted due to the fact that the story divergence occurred in the film Peter Pan. It was replaced by the episode of the letter of accusation sent to Mr. Darling by Ms. Fulsom and the following episode of Nana’s bank mess. Mr. Darling uttered that bitter line “It’s sticky and sweet.”, when he pitifully dug a pit for himself, taking a medicine in order to play the role of a strict father in front of his children, after he had declared that he would take the disgusting-tasting medicine himself that he gave his children every day as the Darling family routine. Mr. Darling, who had promised to take his medicine together with Michael but was reprimanded for cowardly for hiding his own medicine, told John as a lame excuse that line Wendy adopted to tell in order to scare the Lost Boys in the movie Peter Pan.

“John,” he said, shuddering, “it’s most beastly stuff. It’s that nasty, sticky, sweet kind.”
p. 23

This makes a particularly interesting example of the polysemy nature of the meta-fictional archetype space, in which various contradictory possibilities coexist without causal breakdown, in parallel description of the taste of this medicine impressively introduced in the film Peter Pan.(note)

note:
The nature of the polysemy plane of archetype is discussed in the author’s article, “Meanings and Ambiguity in Visual Art: Pleroma Motive in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders”, included in the comprehensive study of fictionality and consciousness; Existence, phenomenon and Personality, Bokka-sha, (2014), targeting the movie Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.

Similarly, in the movie Peter Pan, a new scene has been added in which Peter asks for the help of the mermaids’ clairvoyant powers to inquire about the whereabouts of Wendy’s lost brothers. When Peter invited her to visit Nevarland, the presence of mermaids and fairies was one of her motivations for her decision to abandon her parents and leave home. However, this scene, in which the very hostile nature of the mermaids that Wendy longed for is revealed, results in a retelling of the latent attributes of this fictional world that were not directly described in the original Peter and Wendy. This is also narrated by a female voiceover.

Now, mermaids are not as they are in storybooks. They are dark creatures in touch with all things mysterious. If Hook had captured Wendy’s brothers…the mermaids would know.

The spirits and fairies that were popular in the world of Theosophy and other institutions at the time were the mediators who embodied the world formula that fused psychic knowledge and mystical thought, which was sought by reflective intellectuals at the end of the 19th century who were suspicious of the materialistic rationalism that dominated industrial capitalism in the British Empire, and who sought to obtain a cosmology consistent from a different angle from the scientific worldview.(note)

note:
This ideological trend that formed the background of the writing of Peter and Wendy is discussed in the author’s articles “Lost Religion: Neverland and Make-believe” and “Heartless Children and Pan-religion”, included in Fantasy as Antifantasy, Kindai Bungei-sha, (2005).


But none of these supernatural beings sought by the adherents of pure spiritualism could be the benevolent and friendly ones that Wendy longed for in her heart, which was the hallmark of the dark fantasy of the original Peter and Wendy. Neverland, the island of dreams where all desires are fulfilled, is an eerie spiritual inner world that hides behind it a dystopia that turns to despair as soon as one believes that its ideals have been realized.(note)

note:
This pessimistic ideology is reflected in the conclusion of Barrie’s two novels, Sentimental Tommy and Tommy and Grizel. And this kind of deep pessimism has been also shared by George McDonald, the author of the fantasy, Phantasies, at that time.


Exposing the selfish self-fulfillment psychology behind innocent desires and portraying the bitter reality of human psyche just as it is, was one of the ingenious creative strategies employed by the original novel Peter and Wendy.
The following is a conversation between Peter and Wendy about mermaids that was adopted in the movie Peter Pan, reflecting this cruel subject of the original novel.

Oh, how sweet. …Are mermaids not sweet?／They’ll sweetly drown you if you get too close. ……Hook has your brothers…at the Black Castle.

Thus, the movie Peter Pan, which is set in a “pirate castle” that was not mentioned at all in the original story, not only have Wendy witness the fierce battle between Peter and Hook, but also depicts the girl taking up a sword and joining them in their bloody strife.