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You’re listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about fantasy, science fiction and fairy tales. I’m Eric Molinsky.

READING: All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

I want to read part of an obituary, which ran in the New York Times on February 27th, 1996.

NYT: Dan Kiley, the psychologist whose 1983 book, "The Peter Syndrome," became an international best seller died on Saturday in Tucson, Ariz. He was 54.

According to the Times, he got the idea for the book – quote:

NYT: …after noticing that, like the famous character in the James M. Barrie play, many of the troubled teen-age boys he treated had problems growing up and accepting adult responsibilities.

It doesn’t mention that Jungian psychologists were actually way ahead of him on analyzing this phenomenon – but it doesn’t matter because when it comes to the syndrome, Kiley was patient zero. According the Times:

NYT: Dr. Kiley freely admitted that he had been a Peter Pan. But even after his success, happiness continued to elude him, at least until he underwent what his agent called an emotional sea change. After his second divorce, Dr. Kiley moved from Chicago to Tucson and became deeply involved in meditation and Zen philosophy. That might have accounted for his newfound peace of mind, but his wife had a different explanation.

"He stopped chasing young babes," she said, suggesting that her husband had found true happiness only after he met and married her three years ago, settling down in a blissful relationship with her and their Maltese dog, Shelly.

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So this is a very different lesson than the one you’d get from the Steven Spielberg film, Hook. In that movie, Peter makes a mistake by kissing Wendy’s daughter – and he instantly grows up and becomes an adult – which is the worst thing that could ever happen to him.

CLIP FROM HOOK

As a Gen Xer, I grew up on Spielberg movies. I got the message loud and clear to hold on to my childhood as tightly as I can because being an adult sucks. But as a kid, I never liked Peter Pan, although I love the story now.

KC: We’re always in this push me pull your relationship with children and childhood and our own childhood, which makes sense to me that you wouldn’t have been interested in it as a child but you’re much more interested as an adult.

Karen Coats is a professor of literature at Illinois State University. She wrote a paper called “Child-Hating, Peter Pan in the context of Victorian Hatred.” She says to truly understand Peter Pan, we have to remember he was invented in a society where children were supposed to be seen, not heard. He embodies some of the worst qualities of children that we want to forget because they’re so cute. And it can be shocking when we come across that ugly part of kids that we think that we know.

KC: The children that we invest so much love in and so much time and attention are very cavalier with our feelings, they don’t mean to be. It’s just that, there’s sort of this recognition at base we’re all very narcissistic, but then you have Peter Pan who is reared apart from human society, and just – he’s murderous, he’s selfish, he doesn’t play by the rules that keep the rest of us in check. Things like memory and morality and even truth, he doesn’t have to play by those rules, we do. We have to bear consequences of our actions.

EM: And I think what’s so infuriating is he keeps forgetting, that he keeps forgetting things he did wrong, even people he loves and lost, it’s sort of inevitable and infuriating at the same time.

KC: Exactly, exactly, because wouldn’t we love to be relieved of the responsibly of remembering the hurts that we have perpetrate on others -- he never talks about the fact that somebody hurts him, and that may be his biggest denial, and I think that gets played up in contemporary version of play, that Peter is a much 3 more sympathetic character because limiting his experience is this tragic loss that his mother didn’t love him enough to come seek him.

READING: They all gathered round him in affright, so alarming was his agitation; and with a fine candor he told them what he had hitherto concealed.

"Long ago," he said, "I thought like you that my mother would always keep the window open for me, so I stayed away for moons and moons and moons, and then flew back; but the window was barred, for mother had forgotten all about me, and there was another little boy sleeping in my bed."

I am not sure that this was true, but Peter thought it was true; and it scared them.

"Are you sure mothers are like that?"

"Yes."

So this was the truth about mothers. The toads!

Still it is best to be careful; and no one knows so quickly as a child when he should give in. "Wendy, let us go home," cried John and Michael together.

"Yes," she said, clutching them.

"Not to-night?" asked the bewildered. They knew in what they called their hearts that one can get on quite well without a mother, and that it is only the mothers who think you can't.

"At once," Wendy replied resolutely, for the horrible thought had come to her: "Perhaps mother is in half mourning by this time."

This dread made her forgetful of what must be Peter's feelings, and she said to him rather sharply, "Peter, will you make the necessary arrangements?"

"If you wish it," he replied, as coolly as if she had asked him to pass the nuts.

Not so much as a sorry-to-lose-you between them! If she did not mind the parting, he was going to show her, was Peter, that neither did he.

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But of course he cared very much; and he was so full of wrath against grown- ups, who, as usual, were spoiling everything, that as soon as he got inside his tree he breathed intentionally quick short breaths at the rate of about five to a second. He did this because there is a saying in the that, every time you breathe, a grown-up dies; and Peter was killing them off vindictively as fast as possible.

As an adult, I seriously can’t believe how much I feel bad for . I mean, I know he’s a murderous pirate, but how much would it suck to find a fountain of youth in your 30s, and then be surrounded by feral kids -- forever?

KC: The adult has a set of memories that matter to him, he has, and in Captain Hook’s expression of form, when he dies even, he says his socks were right, his scarf was right, everything was right so it was okay to die because everything was right according to way he understood what good form was. This is why Captain Hook hates Peter because Peter enjoys himself. Captain Hook has the accepted the terms of society which all aim toward constraining your enjoyment.

EM: As a villain, and as Peter’s opposite, Hook has so much of the trappings of somebody with manner and class, and has very adult clothes and the sort of handkerchiefs and pocket watches and the kind of things that only someone who has mastered adulthood would have it has no cache in Never Never Land.

KC: Exactly. Listen to that word trappings, he is entrapped in his adult in ways that Peter is youth and joy and why wouldn’t you hate that?

READING: What sort of form was Hook himself showing? Misguided man though he was, we may be glad, without sympathizing with him, that in the end he was true to the traditions of his race. The other boys were flying around him now, flouting, scornful; and he staggered about the deck striking up at them impotently, his mind was no longer with them; it was slouching in the playing fields of long ago, or being sent up [to the headmaster] for good, or watching the wall-game from a famous wall. And his shoes were right, and his waistcoat was right, and his tie was right, and his socks were right. James Hook, thou not wholly unheroic figure, farewell.

Peter Pan had always been popular with kids but the Peter Pan that we think of, that we know, is really the one from the 1950s -- because the 5

Broadway musical and the Disney cartoon came out within a year of each other. And suddenly Peter Pan was kind of an American hero.

KC: It was interesting to me is that in 1950s, when Jungian psychologists pick that up, the , the major statement of that was a book called The Problem of – the men who won’t grow up basically. The syndrome including things like an attachment to extreme sports, an inability to commit to a relationship especially with a woman, the inability to commit to long term job and when the book got reprinted later in the ‘70s the titled changed and it was just the Puer Aeternus instead of the problem of the Puer Aeternus. Instead of being perceived as a problem any more it’s actually a privileged subject position now to be that person who doesn’t grow up, because if you think about it, the technologies that we have require us to be in some ways perpetually adolescent, we have to keep experimenting and keep trying new things. You can’t have same cell phone, and you can’t commit to long-term job, you have to be willing to be flexible, and maybe change careers at 50 or something. So all of the things that were presented as problematic in early days of this Peter Pan syndrome are actually ways that actually more functional in today’s world than dysfunctional.

EM: I mean look at Mark Zuckerberg.

KC: Yep. Absolutely, absolutely. Now, as far as Peter Pan goes, from a Jungian perspective, one of the famous ways that Jungian critics look at fairytales is they look at every character is an aspect of your being. We can see them play out in a distance and do some self reflection as well, not even conscious self refection, and in fact that’s another reason we read. There are certain things we can’t bring to the fore. They’re too dangerous. And so reading allows us to work on them without even acknowledging that we’re doing that work, that’s a Freudian insight that comes from Bruno Bettelheim where he talks about if you’ve got a kid who loves story, it read them that story over and over again until they stop love it because it’s doing work for them.

So, I was about to wrap up this segment when I got a really weird text message. I didn’t recognize the number. This person said they heard through the grapevine I was looking for an expert on Peter Pan, and he told me to set up a phone interview with him. So I did.

ERIC: Hello?

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HOOK: Is this Eric J. Molinsky?

ERIC: Yeah, who’s this?

HOOK: Captain James Hook. I understand you’re producing a program about me.

ERIC: Um…this is a 323 area code, so you’re obviously calling from Neverland.

HOOK: I live in Los Angeles, California.

ERIC: So, you’re like an actor?

HOOK: I work at an animation studio.

ERIC: Oh, Disney. Ha. Ha.

HOOK: We are not affiliated with that studio.

ERIC: You’re working on a show about Peter Pan?

HOOK: I work with Peter Pan.

ERIC: With Peter Pan?

HOOK: Do you know what I wear to work every day, Mr. Molinsky? A suit and a necktie. Why? Because that is what an executive producer should wear. Do you know what Peter wears? A bowling shirt and ripped tights!

ERIC: So – wait, what?

HOOK: I was driving to work on the One Hundred and One freeway yesterday. And that little runt flew over my car and started knocking on the windows, making faces. I tried to swipe him, and I got into a “fender bender.”

ERIC: But you’re a pirate?! Why are you in LA?

HOOK: Piracy is a dying business – my kind of piracy. The game is digital now. I don’t know how to work those confounded machines. I’m trying to learn, Smee showed me something called a bite torrent, but I shall never be a digital pirate. 7

ERIC: Smee is there?

HOOK: We moved here together.

ERIC: Oh, are, are you two?

HOOK: Well, I’m obviously not interested in women! We have a lovely home in West Hollywood. We adopted a shelter dog, a pit bull.

ERIC: So you chose animation?

HOOK: I was merely following Peter.

ERIC: Peter came here first?

HOOK: The Lost Boys that he was bringing back to Neverland, they were getting rather long in the tooth – one of them had grey hair and a goatee. They told him how wonderful their lives were in the land of Burbank and he followed them. He filled their whole staff with Lost Boys. They sleep in their cubicles in racing car beds with toys I don’t recognize. I had to keep an eye on Pan, so I applied to run this organization. They were ecstatic to have an adult in charge.

ERIC: Keep an eye on him? Aren’t you glad he’s not in Neverland?

HOOK: No, no. I need to make sure he stays here. You see, a plan is afoot!

ERIC: Ah. So wait -- how do you draw with a hook?

HOOK: I switched my hook with a stylus pen – a “Wacom Tablet.” That bit of technology I can muster. Peter and I had a duel the other day to see who could draw the most storyboards in under five minutes. I won! He threw a temper tantrum and kicked poor Tinkerbell. It was delightful!

ERIC: Tink is there?

HOOK: Well, he calls her Tinkerbell – but she’s not the one he remembers. They don’t live long, you know. She works in the coloring department. The young women here are emaciated! I frequent the gym every morning. Yesterday that little elf shot a Taser at my barbell – which he stole it from the police. Did you 8 know he taunts their helicopters? He plays chases with them and leads them to my home! In the middle of the night we were woken up by the sound of rumbling and a bright searchlight. And do you know whom I found in our swimming pool? That blasted crocodile! There is only one way he could have gotten here.

ERIC: Have you seen the show Once Upon a Time?

HOOK: I’m afraid I haven’t.

ERIC: They did a whole season about Peter Pan, and he was evil.

HOOK: Smee and I have been binging through Breaking Bad. I like that Walter White. I was also fond of Tony Soprano. That’s where I think, people are finally getting it.

ERIC: Where bad is good?

HOOK: But I have something to reveal – a major scoop for you. And even if Peter hears this, it doesn’t matter -- he has the memory of a goldfish. Did you know that know we start aging again every time we leave Neverland?

ERIC: No.

HOOK: I discovered this when I kept going back and forth on the high seas. I suddenly noticed a gray hair. What’s this? So I began to lead him astray. I lead him to the Darling’s home in London, and I had to keep showing him the way. After a hundred and twenty years, Pan has finally hit puberty! His voice sounds ridiculous. He’s confused, and horny.

ERIC: But you’ll die before him.

HOOK: Yes, but I’m slowly killing his spirit. That is the only way to truly kill Pan. After all these years of humiliation, it finally paid off. Yesterday, Peter asked me for a cigarette…and then told me I was “cool.” Any day now, he will stop finding pranks juvenile and spend his days swooning over girls.

ERIC: But you could die before him. You gave up eternal life.

HOOK: Sixty years ago I received word that had died. I felt strangely envious of her. She didn’t give in to Pan’s nonsense. She chose to 9 grow up. The only thing that kept us in Neverland was fear – fear of growing old, fear of dying. It takes courage to face life head on. Peter may torment me for a while longer, but I’m not a coward anymore.

ERIC: Huh. (beat) Did you just friend me on Facebook?

HOOK: Will you accept?

ERIC: Um, sorry, I got to go.

MUSIC BREAK

That’s it for today’s show, thanks for listening. Special thanks to Karen Coats, Lily Dorment and Erik Bergmann.

HOOK: When will this be on the radio?

ERIC: It’s not on the radio, it’s a podcast.

HOOK: A what?

ERIC: It’s a – ah, forget it.

You can like the show on Facebook, or leave a comment in iTunes. I tweet at emolinsky. The show’s website is imaginary worlds podcast dot org.