But then we come to chapter 5, and I think it gets a bit murkier.
In chapter 5 we turn our attention to fiction and psychology: cue a consideration of Peter Pan. The Pan story is interpreted for its psychological dynamics of growing up: Wendy, on the cusp of the transition from girl to woman, temporarily 'abandoned' by her parents, especially her father, decides to take up the chance to prolong childhood with Pan though ironically she ends up being 'mother' to the lost boys. She has become "blocked". The solution to this is piratical: pirates unblock things when they have become jammed and stultifying. Kester encourages us to see the enclosures of the commons as a blocking process and the monopolising and slaving of 17th century maritime merchants similarly.
So the pirates come along and force a change, even though they are defeated by Pan. This allows Wendy to see that she needs to move forward. So far okay. Though I have a difficulty with the role of the pirates in Peter Pan which I will come to a bit later.
Kester then relates this to Jungian psychology. I have to say that this is where I really got lost, not because there isn't a logic to the argument, but simply because I don't find Jungian psychology convincing particularly when it comes to archetypal stuff. I just don't think that there's evidence in scientifically respectable terms for it, so I found myself wanting to go along but not quite able to. And that, combined with my difficulty relating to the way that the role of the pirates in Peter Pan is construed, made this an unsatisfying chapter for me.
So, what is the difficulty with the pirates? I think it is the sudden change from heroic pirates who could even be thought of as 'goodies' in disguise, to the Never-Neverland Pirates who quite clearly are baddies. In respect of this latter point, I kept finding myself thinking of the film Hook, (Dustin Hoffman playing the eponymous anti-hero). Where the pirates quite clearly are baddies -though Hook proves to be brutally honest at times.
Early in the film we learn that the character Peter Panning (played by Robin Williams) is actually Peter Pan grown up -after generations of wooing Darling girls away, he finally decided to settle down with one. His career is some kind of corporate whizz-kid in mergers and acquisitions. His roughly 8-year-old son describes his job in terms that make granny Wendy (guess who?!) exclaim "You've become a pirate, Peter".
It's that scene that keeps running through my head: clearly in this film, 'pirate' is more aligned with the kind of people that Kester is concerned about as . And to be frank, I don't see anything about them in the original story that draws me to consider them a good thing. They are self-absorbed, greedy and cruel. I think the film-Hook characterisation is a true trajectory from the original story.
So I find it hard to think of the Peter Pan pirates in the kind of way that Kester wants to employ them. In fact, I think that they would better serve an examination of the dark side of piracy where it has simply become villainous and bullying. So if Captain Hook is to serve the argument, it is in a more 'making the best of' way: they serve the good despite their own intentions and despite their malevolence. But then, if you're seeing them redemptively like that (that is that the ill they intend and do is somehow transformed to serve the good) then it is the agent or process of the conversion that is the real interest, not the pirates (in this case Wendy's own growth in insight, however inchoate). To pat these pirates on the back for "unblocking" seems to me to be dangerously close to proposing that we sin so 'that grace may abound'. It seems to me in the end that Barrie's pirates don't well serve Kester's main thesis, rather they muddy the waters.
I think it may have been better rather to have used Barrie's pirates -perhaps partly through the lens of the film Hook- to examine the difference between 'healthy' (or at least somewhat justifiable) piracy and mere criminal mafiosism which is actually the stark reproduction of the attitudes and actions of the predatory elites within oppressed communities: the abused become the abusers. That's quite an important discussion which the book doesn't really get into, though I know that many of Kester's interlocutors have been keen to consider.
Kester sees Barrie's pirates as "more playful", yet it seems to me they are precisely not that: Hook has it right, I think: they are bullies and braggarts intent on their own satisfaction represent repression and blockage. As such they may stand for the adult world which chooses the way of 'childish' tantrums and egotism as against the childlikeness of supportive playfulness, loyalty and hopeful daring which Panning has to rediscover to win back his own (alienated) children: he has to de-pirate himself.
The problem that this outlines is that it depends what form of pirate is being employed. It makes a big difference whether the pirate figure stands for uncaring self-serving violent scary-ness or jolly freedom-loving adventure. I think that the problem in this chapter is that the two sorts are confused. And as cultural archetypes it makes some difference whether what emerges is someone like the godfather or someone like Han Solo. Both types of pirate exist in the cultural repertoire. One is emancipatory the other is far from it. Kester does (p104) contrast 'brutal juvenile villains' with 'bold and mature radicals'; but it seems to me that Pan's pirates are the former not the latter.
Next post on this book, I want to look at chapter 6 where we delve into 'playing pirate with the gods'.
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