Peter Pan Critique

Peter Pan by Disney 1953

I have watched this movie hundreds of times in my life.  It has been one of my favorites for years.  Today however was the first time I watched it with my eyes wide open. 

I noticed a few interesting things.  The first thing I noticed were the stereotypes that were displayed about women.  It showed that women were in charge of all of the domestic responsibilities, including taking care of the children in the movie.  The mother was doing it.  Then, the oldest daughter was very motherly to her brothers.  People might be concerned with this because she is doing the mothers job instead of being a child.

 

It depicted that a woman is to be quiet when her husband makes a decision in the family.  I saw this in the part when the children all ran over to make sure Nana the dog wasn't  hurt when Father tripped over the toys and Nana crashed.  Then Father drug the dog outside.  Mother just watched even though the children were all sad.

The next thing I noticed was a lot of dangerous activity and smoking. Captain Hook is smoking not one but two cigars.  In one of the the pirate scenes they were putting knives in their mouth and throwing them.  I know that this is not something that parents want their children watching. It is interesting that now my son thinks that only bad people smoke cigarettes.  Such a hard thing to try to explain.

Please listen to the following video on mute.

 

The movie continues on to a part where Captain Hook kidnaps Tiger Lily, the Indian Chiefs daughter.  How extremely terrifying for a child to think that they might be kidnapped by a pirate! 

Then the whole tribe comes after The Lost Boys and the Darlings to try to get Tiger Lily back.  They take them as prisoners and tie them up with plans to burn them at the stake.  This is when the worst stereotyping comes into play in the movie.  Disney has the "Indians" all very large in the belly, toothless, and they seem ignorant.  Not to mention that they are colored red and singing about it.  It doesn't show a lot of respect to the culture or the race.   

Plus, they have the children smoking pipes!

There are also parts where they show bullying between Wendy and the mermaids.  The mermaids make Wendy feel so bad about herself that she wants to leave Neverland.  This kind of behavior is very unacceptable in our schools today.  As a parent I don't love this.  I remember how hard it was, too.

Peter Pan is talking to the mermaids about how he cut off Captain Hooks hand.  Throughout the whole movie there is an extreme amount of violence.  The bomb that was sent as a present to Peter Pan that blew

up Tinkerbell, please mute

the sword fights, the knife fights, gun please mute

fights, and the alligator that is hunting and continually is trying to eat Captain Hook.  It is hard to explain to a child not to fight when the hero in the movie is considered good for doing it.