'Final Fantasy X' and 'Peter Pan'
No the FFX portion of my site still isn't up but it is not completely my fault. I have, of sorts, uploaded it, but the HTML needs severe editing, and for some utterly peculiar reason, I am unable to edit it, it just keeps coming up with an error page.

Hmm. Oh well.

Meanwhile, I got the Peter Pan DVD. I so love that movie - best interpretation of J.M. Barrie's book that there ever was, in my humble opinion.

Some critics would accuse the interpretation as being too dark, and others still object to the underlying sexuality of it.

Personally, I am not entirely sure which version of Peter Pan such critics have read. Perhaps they have only read the abridged versions to be found in pictue books. Perhaps they have only seen the Disney movie of Peter Pan.

I first encountered Peter Pan as a young child, watching the Disney movie. When I was about six years of age, my mother bought me a beautifully illustrated picture book of Peter Pan which I read every night and took with me everywhere. It was a heavily abridged and in some places retold version of Barrie's novel, and it appealed to me as nothing more than a magical, inspiring adventure.

This fascination with Peter Pan grew into something more meaningful when I was given the complete version of J.M. Barrie's novel at age twelve - about the same age as Wendy was when her adventures in Neverland began. When I read the full novel (being myself a girl on the edge of adolescence and womanhood), I realized first of all that Neverland was sometimes a dark and haunted place; and second of all I came to understand that there was 'something' going on between Wendy and Peter, something that always left me sad at the end of the book when Wendy had grown up without Peter. Maybe it was because I was around the age Wendy would have been, but I was very in touch with what Wendy must have been feeling throughout the novel, and I connected with and understood the story in a way that I had not before.

And so when the movie came out seven or more years later, I was enthralled by its very true and honest portrayal of the book. Everything was exactly how I imagined it. But then I read some critics' views: that it was too dark, and too filled with romantic (bordering on sexual) thematics.

My understanding of the book, since I last read it when I was thirteen, had been that there was a romance between Peter and Wendy; and an odd sort of triangle was formed between Peter, Wendy, and Hook. But perhaps, I thought, my memories were askew. So I read the book again, a few days ago.

I was both shocked and not so to discover that the book was precisely as I had remembered it. There is a triangle between Wendy, Peter and Hook. Wendy is a girl on the verge of womanhood. She is in love with Peter, but he, though the same age as Wendy, is too young for love; and then Hook comes into it, and he is very much a man, and though perhaps Wendy most certainly does NOT love him, or even like him, Barrie does stress in a passage of the book that Wendy is 'entranced' and 'fascinated with' Hook.

So what I concluded in the end was that J.M. Barrie's tale, while it poses as a children's book, is, far beneath the surface, a psychological novella about the uneasy transition from childhood to womanhood and the bittersweet overload of feelings prominent during that time. The references are subtle in the book, but by all means there. I suppose around the 1910s, it is difficult and in most social circles improper to convey feelings like love and romance in explicit tones. A young woman telling a young man how she felt would certainly not have been appropriate.

However, P.J. Hogan has adapted these undertones and manipulated and utilized them effectively for today's audience, today's youth. I felt that it was very true - incredibly true - to the book and to what Wendy must have felt. I didn't think it was overdone at all - I think it was done to perfection. I loved the scene where Hook and Wendy sit down to dinner because it showcased the themes present between them; and felt sad, inspired and mirthful during the scene where Wendy and Hook are dancing. The bit where Peter cries, "Why do you spoil everything? We have fun don?t we?" made me laugh and think to myself, "How typical of the male race!" (I'm sorry, I don't mean to be derogatory or a male-basher, but if I had a dollar for the amount of times I've heard a guy say something along those lines to girls...)

And as for the darkness ? The presence of killing ? Hello?! The book runs rife with it. In fact, the movie, in my opinion downplayed the killing that goes on in the book. In J.M. Barrie's version, Hook and the pirates massacre almost a whole race of Indians - not to mention all the pirates Hook kills for displeasing him in the most petty of ways. The book is very, very dark indeed.

I can't really convey the undertones of the film as much as I would like, however, I would like to point out a range of websites that do this to perfection.

There are also some sites that offer J.M. Barrie's book of Peter Pan so you can read it for yourself.

'Pan' Sexuality Article
J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan
Interviews with the Cast and Crew of Peter Pan
Buy the original book of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan