Pan, Hook and innocent cruelty

In this the panto season in Britain, a post involving a play that is often put on as part of a pantomime season offering may be apposite. I have a number of memories from early childhood  and quite a few from what I think of as mid-childhood (roughly primary school age). One of these was shaken loose by this article about Peter Pan in which early on we are told:

... the Boy Who Won’t Grow Up is—in actuality—a terrifying protagonist .Peter Pan’s “Greatest Pretend” is Heroism | Tor.com

It reminded my of my first reaction to the Peter Pan story when it was read at school in class (you know, that carpet time thing at the end of the day). I recall actually not liking Peter Pan very much. I remember thinking that he reminded me of school bullies: that sense of what I would now label 'entitlement', being full of himself and the carelessness for others. It all just seemed to me that the kind of characteristics I was, in most other parts of my life, being encouraged to emulate were spectacularly absent from this boy's character, not even in embryo were they there nor was this a story of a journey to wisdom on his part. And worse, this lionising of Pan seemed to be empowering to the attitudes of those who swaggered around the playground and the classroom assuming that if they could take it, it was theirs and if anyone objected, we were to be agressed into line.

Now I've got that flashback of my chest ...

The article linked to reminds us how never Neverland is some kind of virtual world (programmed by Tinkerbel who seems to be of a piece with Pan's negligent insouciance) with Pan at the centre.

Peter Pan is lord dictator of Neverland. His word is law. His adventures take precedence. His desires are paramount. Super fun as an avatar for any child, but what about everyone else who occupies space, who breathes Neverland’s air? What happens to the indians, the Lost Boys, the pirates? They are only relevant in terms of how they play into Peter’s story.

So in some way, fair enough: if it's his 'party' then he can be the centre of it. Note, though, there's an interesting Christological counterpoint we could explore on the back of this.

Not only, though, is he dictator; he is a kind of pagan god (I had to say it that way because I was intrigued as a child by his apparent naming for the Greek mythological god of woodlands).

Barrie states—in no uncertain rhetoric—that when the Lost Boys get too numerous, Peter Pan thins out the herd. ... . And we have to assume that he either deliberately leads them into danger, or that he does the deed himself.

Perhaps apt for a character who shares a name with a woodland god: a survival of some version of the fittest -fittest in this case to capture and hold Pan's interest. It really does feel like a version of a pagan sprite or deva has been narrated into this tale.

Again it is hard to avoid thinking of the this god's carelessness in contrast to another Centre of the/a world who self-empties and submits to death rather than condemning others to it and in order to bring life to those others.

So I found this piece somehow affirming of my 7 year-old self's distrust of Peter Pan. interestingly it was because, at that age, I was taking a view from the margins, from the point of view, more in a sense, of the lost boys who outlive their usefulness to Peter Pan and are 'thinned out' of the herd: I knew what it was like to be one of those.

So it is worrying to realise that this is still the world we live in. Emily Asher-Perrin, who wrote the article makes a good point (and I defer to her as she studies Barrie's Peter Pan as a life project, and I don't). I think it is right that what I was as a junior-school child reacting to was the heartlessness of Pan. Dimly aware that something was wrong about it. In this case, we are invited to consider ...

as Barrie states, Pan will always come back to steal our runaways and
lost boys, and will continue to do so as long as children are “Innocent
and heartless.” The genius of Pan’s tale, is that innocence does not automatically denote goodness. Instead, it makes a child’s lack of experience a very frightening thing after all.

it is that important point: innocence does not necessarily mean goodness. Not only children, but animals are innocent. However, the levels of what we would consider cruelty, exploitation and bullying in primate bands, for example, are horrific by our standards. 'Frightening' might be the right sort of term. indeed. But it is the discomfort of the fact that we are considering human children not chimpanzees.

But there's a further discomfort. In part we can see this played out in the film Hook (which I think is brilliant in many ways). Where we meet what turns out to be a grown-up Peter Pan who has been lured back into the grown up world by love. (In this context, this is an interesting reflection in itself: the way into goodness is through love). This Peter Panning (as he becomes) makes his living by mergers and acquisitions -as 'granny' Wendy says, he has become a pirate. But in this case, it is the grown-up who has become hardened against the simple delights of love and joyfulness who needs to discover the innocence of delight and, actually to rediscover the love of and for his own children. But the interest is in how the man mirrors the carelessness of the Pan though in this case by being lured into 'piracy' -a macho, game-playing, status-seeking heedlessness of human costs. So this discomfort, I'm saying, isn't about the cruel innocence of children but the fact that the selfish cruelty runs through into adulthood.


And there's a question as to how far it is right. I'm not convinced by this innocent lack of goodness. I think, theologically, I'm committed to the insight that goodness is basic and evil is dependent on, parasitic even, on goodness. There can be goodness without evil but no evil without goodness. Evil is always derived from, a twisting or negation of what is good. This is rooted, for me in the Genesis declaration, which the early church understood to rule out gnostic attitudes to the material world, that "It is good". So I'm suspicious of something that appears to see 'good' (and by implication 'evil') as human impositions on a 'neutral' cosmos.

But is that what the phrase 'innocent but cruel' implies? The word 'cruel' seems to be about a lack of kindness or love, well more than lack; in fact, will to harm or hurt. 'Innocent' however, seems to be about not having a will to wrong. So I'm wondering whether 'innocent cruelty' is not an oxymoron. But of course, the words attributed to Barrie are "innocent but heartless". So the question is about whether heartlessness is evil, in truth.  I've translated 'heartless' as careless and cruel, above. Is that fair?  Well, to me 'heartless' seems to mean something like 'lacking empathy' on the basis that 'having a heart' seems to mean being kind, understanding feelings or in some way having empathy. Not having a heart seems to involve being, to some degree, cruel. So I think that these are words sharing a huge amount of semantic overlap. However, I wonder whether cruelty has connotations of deliberate intention of harm whereas heartlessness has the same connotation: could it mean ignorant harmfulness?

All of which, to me, indicates that in Barrie's estimation, children lack empathy or fail to understand others' feeling and are unkind. But could that unkindness stem from simple inability to understand others' feelings and to have empathy. So, is their innocence, in fact, not having yet developed the capability to be empathic? But if so, then I'm not convinced: child development studies indicate children mirroring and matching emotions with those around them, particularly those with whom they share bonds. -Perhaps that is it: the heartlessness comes from not sharing bonds or not having developed them. If that is so, then the difficulty is one of failing to extend the circle of sympathy, perhaps of even refusing to. There may be a degree of willed carelessness arising from an inarticulate understanding that to do so would mean giving up the advantages that their 'lordship' can confer. Such power over others requires the cultivation of heartlessness, learning to suppress or evade sympathy. And perhaps this is what name-calling is about: a distancing mechanism; framing the other in a way that rules out empathy by emphasising distance and making difference a cause for repugnance.

So, it's not so much that children are innocent but cruel as that their (actually 'our') emergence from innocence involves distancing and suppression of empathy. Of course, this is why love of God and of neighbour is a cardinal virtue in many spiritual paths: it is not so much an attempt to restore innocence as to weigh against the creeping distancing and growing repugnance. Peter Pan is not testimony to innocent cruelty but to the loss of empathy and acquisition of the attitudes of objectifying others which allows us to instrumentalise them and even to justify cruelty.

I can't, however, leave it there. One of the other memories shaken loose by this article was that, having got over my dislike of the heartless Pan, I did manage to identify with one aspect of his character: the love of action-adventure. And it is here that I think that Pan's appeal to us really resides. When I watch my nephews playing rough and tumble, when I remember my own children doing the same and when I think about my own childhood, then I realise that it is the exuberance of physical movement and of pitting yourself against something that draws out your abilities particularly when it puts you in a story where you are winning the acclaim of others perhaps by rescuing them or winning a prize for them. (Of course the story may be one that justifies distancing, repugnance and cruelty). So where Pan scores for us as story is identifying with the sheer joy of physical expression and the excitement of deeds of daring-do, especially when these can be framed as the heroism of the smaller or weaker standing up to and defeating the mighty (Pan the child with a knife against the adult Hook wielding a sword). (Again, interesting to note a resonance with a gospel theme here). I guess this further illustrates, in fact, how evil is parasitic on the good.

There is something in this that resonates with the Biblical theme of growing in wisdom, perhaps.But that is an exploration for another post, perhaps.