Terror Management in Children's Media Katie English

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SCREENING THE NIGHTMARE: Terror Management in Children’s Media

Katie English

Abstract Producers of children’s media often aspire to create content that is both entertaining to children and meaningful to adults. This course of action has resulted in children’s literature and other media that challenge the notion of an “innocent child” audience, engaging with often unresolved themes that are more appropriate to adult society. Such instances threaten the traditional notion of purely naïve, tender childhood. This study focuses on Adventure Time, a Cartoon Network series, as a contemporary retelling of “Peter and Wendy” by J.M. Barrie. I will examine the transformation of the distinctly violent “Peter and Wendy,” a stage play (1904) turned novel (1911), into the deceivingly subdued Disney animated film adaptation Peter Pan (1953), and then into the whimsical yet ominous Adventure Time cartoon series (2010-present). It is important to consider the intersection of Adventure Time with these prior iterations of the Peter Pan story, because all of these versions expose seemingly irresolvable conflicts, such as society’s desire for continued growth and its exhaustion of the environment into a post-apocalyptic landscape.

“I am like a child ready for the apocalypse.” --Jacques Derrida The Animal That Therefore I Am

Introduction WHAT IS THE “TRADITIONAL” view of children’s media for viewers and critics alike childhood in children’s media? As a theme in within contemporary Western society. this paper, I would like to begin by defining it. Jacqueline Rose, in her influential critique In particular, I engage with the norm of assumptions about childhood and children’s propagated by contemporary culture, that media, and of the Peter Pan story in particular, children’s media is a political and social safe notes that children’s literature and related space. The “traditional” view is closely aligned media are often “considered to speak for with a sense of nostalgia, wherein childhood is everyone – adult and child[;] the child and the a period of innocence that terminates when a adult are one at that point of pure identity powerful shock results in a violent break with which the best of children’s books somehow a naïve world-view. Similarly, the traditional manage to retrieve,” (Rose 5) and further that view of children’s literature and related media children’s media “[sanction] the eternal youth that I engage herein dictates that children’s and innocence of the child it portrays” (Rose media honor the code of childhood innocence 6). And perhaps most critically, Rose and seek to preserve this purity of youth. explicates that by treating the child as a “pure Taking the story of Peter Pan as an iconic point of origin” (Rose 8), society imagines that example of children’s media, I explore how the “the child can be used to hold off a panic, a story thwarts this traditional notion of threat to our assumption[s]” and that childhood “conceals all the historical divisions

and difficulties of which children, no less than Eventually, Peter Pan reaches fantastical ourselves, form a part” (Rose 10). Neverland where he is befriended by the fairy Acknowledging Rose’s insights on the traps Tinkerbell and pursued by the pirate captain created by these traditional views of children’s James Hook. And in both instances, the boys media, I also set out to expose the are unique in their worlds and have no peer. not-so-innocent state of children’s media. Further, the cartoon series follows closely on Beginning with a summary of these three the political and economic turmoil affecting texts that iterate the Peter Pan story, I explain recent American society, including the wars why they are representative of evolving following the September 11th attacks in paradigms in how societal conflicts are America and the economic downturn addressed in children’s media. To start, the associated with the housing market bubble. novel Peter and Wendy 1 marks an obvious However, the storylines seem to foundational point in the Peter Pan tradition, significantly diverge on the point of the and is distinguished historically for having environmental conditions: Adventure Time is been published shortly before WWI. set in a distinctly post-apocalyptic landscape, Meanwhile, the Disney film, Peter Pan, was wherein Finn is (apparently) the only human, released shortly after WWII and reveals a rendering it a disturbing vision of the future. contemporary post-war mentality. Conversely, in the original tale following Peter Diverging from Rose’s explicit focus on Pan, Neverland is populated by figures of Peter Pan, I assert that Adventure Time marks a premodern or outmoded societies – children, contemporary instance in the Peter Pan aborigines, and pirates – which are nostalgic, tradition, and is one of the latest and historical, and juvenile images for viewers. increasingly popular manifestations of the These three texts are unique and so storyline, a hitherto unremarked upon disparate that one may question what societal comparison; this point makes my analysis fears or preoccupations draw these texts back unique from not only Rose’s, but other critics’ together and facilitate their analysis. In my analyses. Nevertheless this connection, which I focus, one crucially unifying element is the seek to sketch out below, is perhaps not matter of society’s end. Despite the fact that immediately apparent to audiences. the two are temporally distinct, the Peter Pan Adventure Time follows the life of a boy, and Adventure Time storylines share a mutual Finn, who was not raised by human parents. preoccupation with conceptualizations of the He lives in the bizarre and whimsical land apocalypse, taking an eschatological approach called Ooo whose origins cannot be fully to frequently yield similarly alarming views of explained but which comprises every possible childhood. What is so fascinating about these fantasy or nightmare a child (or adult) might three texts is their shared interest in a sense of conceive of. His adventures often involve the end of the world, or of an apocalypse and defeating his archenemy Ice King, with the subsequent post-apocalyptic states, despite the assistance of his companion Jake the dog. stories’ whimsical elements. These texts offer Correspondingly, Peter Pan runs away from varying eschatological approaches, home as an infant (or so he tells his underscoring the malleability of children’s audiences), and lives with the birds for a time. fiction for the exploration of societal fears.

1 My reference text is the Dover edition titled Peter Pan but I will herein reference the novel by its original title of Peter and Wendy in order to avoid confusion with the Disney film Peter Pan.

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I. Peter and Wendy treatment of childhood; this is the traditionally overlooked image of supreme innocence and Flouting the traditional image of the child as a ignorance, the condition of innocence which, figure of innocence and stand-in for idealized if traced out to its logical conclusion, would be nostalgia, Peter and Wendy employs the state of beyond any civilizing power – either familial childhood as a means of exploring the essence or societal – to control. of the apocalypse, expressing a preoccupation This absolute, unfettered purity of with the eschatological. An apocalypse, when “innocent” childhood represents an ideally visualized as a cataclysmic event marking a blank slate from which one cannot formulate break with the known world and an overthrow notions of morality, since morality is founded of contemporary society, is also identifiable as in bias. And while this blank slate is conjured a return to one’s roots in response to societal with traditional notions of childhood, it collapse. This return to one’s roots inherently remains unexplored in its entirety. A truly occurs at the cost of previous society’s pure point of origin demands that the “pure” organizing principles. individual exhibit neutrality and a sort of In the novel, Peter Pan is presented as a unpredictability in behavior, and not complete “pure” figure, but he is not an image of “goodness,” as the traditional view would security and cohesive identity. This alternate intimate. Thus, if one pursues the logic representation of purity contradicts the situating the child as the “pure point of traditional norm. Throughout the story, origin,” the child becomes a re-imagining of readers are reminded that in addition to the the Big Bang theory – an explosion of rumor of his “[running] away the day [he] was possibility, without a moral focus; a study in born” (Barrie 23), one of Peter Pan’s defining simple existence for the sake of existence itself. characteristics is his inability to remember one Perhaps this is what Barrie means of children moment to the next. This is particularly when he writes that they are “the most apparent through his interactions with Wendy, heartless things in the world” (Barrie 96); a Neverland’s surrogate figure of civilizing perception which consumers of children’s motherhood. In their adventures together, media suppress unconsciously or otherwise in often “[Peter forgets] that he owe[s] his bliss order to preserve the semblance of to Wendy” and he does not appreciate her pure-innocence-as-goodness traditionally assistance but instead admires himself (Barrie associated with childhood. From this revised 22). And later, Peter does not immediately vantage point, the child Peter Pan further recognize Wendy even though he had invited represents a threat to society, as it is a group her to Neverland to be the lost boys’ mother organized and controlled by fundamental (Barrie 35-6). Not only is Peter Pan motivated guiding principles. He is a threat because he is by his impulses, but further, because he has no apparently exempt from commitment to a memory and literally lives from moment to cause other than his own impulse. Relations moment, he develops no morality, and so is a between Peter Pan and other individuals are perpetual risk to everyone as a result of his neither stable nor safe because of his conceit and his unpredictability. Further, it fascination for whim. And it is this becomes apparent that, “it [is the chance to unpredictability in the individual that society demonstrate] his cleverness […] and not the fears and seeks to quash through ideology, saving of human life” that motivates Peter hence resisting such interpretations as this (Barrie 34). Peter Pan is the figure of the child herein of the image of childhood. Thus, the gone wrong, in terms of the traditional absence of morality, achieved through pure

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innocence and awareness of only the self, unmotivated and barren unreality of “pretend.” suggests collapse into an apocalyptic state, via There are times, as this scene foreshadows, implications of voided civilizing powers. that reality and tenuous mortality must The apocalyptic element continues impinge on the game-playing in order to keep throughout Barrie’s Peter and Wendy. In the diversions fresh and enjoyable through particular, the tone of the writing creates a plausibility. And in such cases, the games sense of finality, of being whisked away from become more intense, and thus what is familiar. Ignorant of the pirates’ plot life-threatening, and the children find their to kidnap them from the lost boys’ home under security compromised as the game tends the ground and then to kill Peter Pan, the toward reality. Fear, threat, fun, and playtime children caper before going to bed: are entangled in the children’s experience in a traditionally contradictory relationship, Such a deliciously creepy song it was, in which reminding readers that the children’s desire to they pretended to be frightened at their own (re)create a sense of fear is critical to their shadows, little witting that so soon shadows childlike perspective. Their desire is indicative would close in upon them, from whom they of their inexperience, since they must pretend would shrink in real fear[….] It [then became] to understand fear in order to play the game a pillow fight rather than a dance, and when it well. But, in so pretending, they wish their was finished, the pillows insisted on one bout more, like partners who know that they may fears into existence; once they do understand never meet again. (Barrie 93) what it is to fear the end of their world, the children can no longer enjoy what was once The language of this passage relies on a merely “deliciously creepy.” sense of fear and ambiguity, leading readers to expect a rupture cutting short this scene of the II. Peter Pan children’s amusement. The children do not Looking to Disney’s Peter Pan, one notes foresee the impending separation from their eschatological elements associated with a dear ones, and instead the objects around them desire to escape traditionally normal life are imbued with foreknowledge of this experiences, as well as the theme of war. One disaster. Rather, the children pretend that of the film’s more memorable songs, “You Can darkness will engulf them and they enjoy this Fly!” expresses this desire for liberation: fear they imagine because they are pretending together. When the real threat arrives, Think of a wonderful thought embodied by the treacherous pirates, the Any merry little thought children no longer relish their fear since the Think of Christmas, think of snow threat involves total separation from each Think of sleigh bells other and from their lives with Peter. Instead, Off you go like reindeer in the sky. they must confront the unfeigned terror of You can fly! You can fly! abduction and of death. You can fly! And yet, this very “real fear” is also intrinsic to the amusement of living in Think of the happiest things Neverland. In order for the children’s game to It’s the same as having wings remain “deliciously creepy,” it must be as true Take the path that moonbeams make to life as possible and contain some element of If the moon is still awake risk; otherwise the game collapses into the You’ll see him wink his eye

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You can fly! You can fly! “medicine.” With this apparently drastic plot You can fly! change, one might question trading the novel’s original poison for a bomb in the movie. Up you go with a heigh and ho This change of death’s delivery method To the stars beyond the blue within Disney’s 1953 film could have radically There’s a Neverland waiting for you altered the story’s conclusion by obliterating Where all your happy dreams come true Every dream that you dream will come true Neverland, and at the very least seems an unequal swap to attentive audiences, much as When there’s a smile in your heart if viewers are receiving that notorious thimble There’s no better time to start in lieu of the anticipated kiss (Barrie 26). Yet Think of all the joy you’ll find this switch is not unreasonable. The When you leave the world behind substitution in the film plays upon then newly- And bid your cares goodbye emergent technologies of weapons of mass You can fly, you can fly! destruction in WWII and fears of these

weapons’ uncontrollable nature. Not only [Emphases added] could the bomb in the film destroy Peter Pan

(just as poison in the novel would end his life), This song, while conveying whimsy at the but it would also wholly efface the traces of his childlike wish to fly, with just a bit of pixie existence by destroying the lost boys’ tree- dust and a “happy thought” as Peter explains house and the surrounding parts of Neverland. to his admirers, is more seductively pessimistic The range of the bomb’s destructive force is than audiences’ may initially give it credit for. much greater than the novel’s original method Besides the uplifting thoughts of the proverbial of death-by-poison. Accordingly, the excessive simple joys in life related to tradition and method of the bomb in the film’s plot is in cyclical events (the holiday season and winter tune with the historical moment given that the festivities for example), one also notes the film followed close on the heels of WWII. near-euphoric elation conveyed for the prospect of escaping the gravity of the III. Adventure Time mundane world. And so, even as the nursery is insufficient for the Darling children’s desire for The storylines digress on the nature of the adventures, this song also carries a note of bomb, however, when comparing Disney’s film wistful enthusiasm for something beyond the with Adventure Time. In the film, the bomb physical existence that audiences know. It is threatens to devastate Peter’s world and eerie that this Disney song invokes thoughts of annihilate Tinkerbell, who means “more than various modes of escape in a film marketed for anything in the whole world” to Peter, children. generating a negative impact both globally and Disney’s film version of the story continues individually (Disney). Yet in Adventure Time, to complicate views of simple childhood and the hinted-at nuclear bomb of the past suggests reengages with eschatological fears when that Finn’s environment was created by and Captain James Hook gives Peter Pan a package continues to evolve from that catastrophic wrapped as a gift from Wendy. It is a gift- event. His fanciful world is founded on the wrapped bomb in the movie. But in Barrie’s bomb’s rupture with the past, just as J. Robert original text, Hook secreted poison in the cup Oppenheimer, notable WWII physicist, that Wendy used to administer medicine to predicted of nuclear weapons: “The atomic Peter, counting on Peter to drink this bomb made the prospect of future war

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unendurable. It has led us up those last few though the show is regarded (in terms of its steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there market base on Cartoon Network and identity is a different country” (Cragin). With the as a cartoon) as a form of children’s media. emergence of atomic weaponry, Oppenheimer The depictions instead represent what are expressed the gripping fear that there was no traditionally held to be symptoms of the informed vision of how future societies would downfall of society, and the depicted child can negotiate conflict, and there was no calculating no longer perform as a traditional figure of how the world would change, both politically society’s investment in its own continuation. and socially, and quite literally, geographically. In place of this figure of societal persistence, And Finn is indeed in a “different country” in the child-character undermines markers of the land of Ooo. Adventure Time repositions cultural stability: Language and sexuality. the traditional preoccupation with death as the This purity of language so characteristic of ultimate end (in multiple senses of the term) children’s fiction in traditional treatments is of youth that was utilized in WWII not present in Adventure Time. Most notably, propaganda and that is implied in Disney’s Finn’s frequent exclamations of excitement or song “You Can Fly!” This nuclear bomb and confusion represent deteriorations in language: the resulting widespread destruction make Respectively “Mathematical!” and “What the Finn’s fantasy world possible by erasing a glob?!” In the case of the first term, Finn’s history defined by violence (as inferred by the understanding of the term literally does not use of the bomb suggested throughout the add up, because using this word in lieu of cartoon series) and radically reshaping the something such as “Awesome!” devalues the story’s present moment. Moreover, because context and suggests that he regards the there are no other humans as a result of this referents as interchangeable and consequently bomb, Finn’s identity as a figure of morality lacking in precision. This usage exemplifies a and heroism is predicated on his identity as return to the feared and long-standing theme, the last human. He could not be this Finn if it beginning as far back in Western culture as the were not for the bomb, which was once biblical parable of the Tower of Babel, wherein understood to be a cataclysmic event that language as a unifying element also manifests traditionally precipitates death but here is the power to abolish society as a result of its instead associated with life and a new deterioration. Similarly, “glob” evokes the generation characterized by whimsy. And so, a image of a formless mass, inherently devoid of calamity here leads to a fertile post-apocalyptic describable qualities and meaning, diminishing world, rejecting precedents set by models of the intensity of Finn’s outburst and jarring traditional children’s media. audiences with its insipidness. Such Recalling again Rose’s influential work breakdown of organizing structures and with the earlier discussion of relations between coherent language suggests a parallel failure the apocalypse and Peter Pan will further and disappearance of society. It is a vision of reveal how Adventure Time both engages and the apocalypse wherein all the advancements breaks with the Peter Pan tradition. In of society disintegrate and leave an aimless, particular, these relations rely heavily on the globular mass of individuals without a exploration of societal forces and ways in common language to unify them in a which individuals negotiate society. post-apocalyptic world. Thus, the breakdown Adventure Time’s depiction of the child of language – a civilizing tool of society – is a continues to contradict the wholesome, pure trait of the post-apocalyptic state. Without artifact characteristic of the traditional view, society, language has no value or form and so

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does not exist, just as society cannot exist in these examples of children’s media, rather without the organizing power of language. than offering simplistic comfort to Sexuality, as referencing knowledge of contemporary viewers as a sanctuary for one’s origin and coming into being, is equally society’s values, is actually rendered a threat, complicated by the case of Adventure Time. an agent of chaos within society, and indicator Viewers note that Finn has little knowledge of of as much. The child becomes a breaking his origin (here one recalls the haziness point within the very society that traditionally surrounding Peter Pan’s origin and upbringing seeks to depict it as embodying the integrity of as well). The furthest back Finn remembers is human essence. However, in the case of when he was an infant lost in the forest, where Adventure Time, the child, while representing he is found by anthropomorphized dogs society’s collapse, also represents potential for (“Memories”). Likewise, viewers are given no evolution and society’s refinement, which is clear rationalization how Finn came into only achievable with one final, and apparently existence in a fantastical land situated in the indescribable, violent event that forces and midst of a blighted world wherefrom his cauterizes the split with history. parents have disappeared completely. There Further, child and adult audiences are are evidently no other humans, an observation invited to view these media and the depicted characters corroborate on multiple occasions concerns from a mutual vantage point; one of (e.g. “Her Parents,” “Susan Strong,” “James”), instability and uncertainty. Not, as the explaining why Finn is often specifically traditional view would have, as either a identified as Finn the human. Thus, without condescending or regressive view that caters to an understanding of sexuality (as derived from the two “dichotomies’” needs. In reconfiguring knowledge of his origin), Finn is a curtailed one’s approach to children’s media via these and imperfect child-character, upsetting the texts, it is possible to view this medium as a balance and purity traditionally expected of space in which the child is revealed to be no children’s fiction. longer separate from the adult in terms of Thus, in order to depict and explore a responsibility, and the adult must also post-apocalyptic world in children’s fiction, reestablish a blank, open, and unpredictable one must go against the orderly conventions of perspective, in order to explore and address children’s fiction; language no longer common anxieties preoccupying the society maintains meaning indefinitely and sexuality and those who comprise its whole. cannot be comfortably identified. And so, in depicting one societal fear, one must illustrate Acknowledgments and unite many more: The deterioration of I would like to thank my undergraduate language; ignorance of sexuality as a result of advisor, Frances Dolan, who provided alienation from one’s origins; and ultimately a invaluable guidance and shared in my total break with history and the society on excitement throughout this awfully big which it was founded, all uniting in the world adventure; my friends and family, who now of the post-apocalypse. abide my musings during what once was seemingly innocuous cartoon-viewing; the Conclusion Explorations editors who helped to winnow my Through study of Peter and Wendy, Disney’s observations; the UC Davis community which Peter Pan, and Adventure Time, I have exposed to me a plethora of windows from attempted to show that the image of the child which to fly out of; and my peers and fellow

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readers who recognize that “everything small “Her Parents.” Adventure Time. Cartoon is just a small version of something big.”2 Network. 24 Jan. 2011. Television.

Works Cited “James.” Adventure Time. Cartoon Network. Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan. Mineola: Dover 25 Nov. 2013. Television. Publications, 1999. Print. “Memories of Boom Boom Mountain.” “Business Time.” Adventure Time. Cartoon Adventure Time. Cartoon Network. 3 May Network. 26 Apr. 2010. Television. 2010. Television.

Cragin, Charles L. “Defense Week WMD & Rose, Jacqueline. The Case of Peter Pan or the Domestic Preparedness Conference.” U.S. Impossibility of Children’s Fiction. Hong Department of Defense. Office of the Kong: The Macmillan Press, 1984. Print. Assistant Secretary of Defense, Washington, D.C. 15 October 1998. Keynote Address. “Susan Strong.” Adventure Time. Cartoon Web. 13 May 2013. Network. 7 Mar. 2011. Television. . “You Can Fly!” Disney Song Lyrics. Web. 15 May 2013. Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I . Wills. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Print.

Disney, Walt, Hamilton S. Luske, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Bobby Driscoll, Kathryn Beaumont, Hans Conried, Bill Thompson, Heather Angel, Paul Collins, Tommy Luske, Candy Candido, Tom Conway, Roland DuPree, Don Barclay, C O. Slyfield, Donald Halliday, Oliver Wallace, Edward Plumb, Jud Conlon, Ted Sears, Erdman Penner, Bill Peet, Winston Hibler, Joe Rinaldi, Milt Banta, Ralph Wright, William Cottrell, and J M. Barrie. Peter Pan. Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Home Entertainment, 2007.

“Finn the Human.” Adventure Time. Cartoon Network. 12 Nov. 2012. Television.

2 “The Real You.” Adventure Time. Cartoon Network. 14 Feb. 2011. Television.

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