A patronizing portrayal of children's oppression under the patriarchy:
"Finding Neverland"
"Finding Neverland" (http://www.miramax.com/findingneverland/)
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308644/)
Directed by Marc Forster
Miramax Films
PG / Australia:PG
2004
Reviewed by a contributor January 28, 2005
It would be very easy to write off "Finding Neverland" as being mindless drivel about the cultural and romantic adventures of filthy-rich bourgeois adults in an imperialist country. And shouldn't "Finding Neverland" fall in the exact same political dung heap as "The Phantom of the Opera" (2004) for example? There are not one, but two, sexy, thin white wimmin in semi-biographical "Finding Neverland": J. M. Barrie's (Johnny Depp) wife, played by Radha Mitchell, and Barrie's seemingly adulterous romantic interest, Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet). Busy playwright Barrie hasn't been putting out for gender aristocrat Mary not-quite-madonna Ansell Barrie, who wants to get a divorce; they sleep in separate rooms. Sylvia, on the other hand, is a widow with four children. She likes the fact that Barrie spends time with her children, but seems to long for companionship herself. Sylvia has a bad "chest cold," but insists to her children that it's no big deal. Mary becomes jealous of Sylvia after Barrie begins to spend much time with her and her children. This seems to be a variation on the love-triangle theme, but there is more going on in "Finding Neverland" than a love story or even a story about a child's love for their parent. "Finding Neverlands"'s portrayal of children's perspectives is just as false as the movie's stereotypical portrayal (under the pretext of portraying the content of J. M. Barrie's imagination) of First Nations' peoples as being menacing, with war bonnets and paint.
In several different ways, "Finding Neverland" claims to be about looking at things from a child's perspective, so I will take that claim as a starting point and talk first about what is good in this movie, which is more important than other movies that touch on children's issues only incidentally. The notion that "Finding Neverland" has something to do with the viewpoint of children is interesting to MIM's line on children and their oppression under the patriarchy.(1)
Something that "Finding Neverland" does which is good is to stand the doting-grandmother theme on its head and use it to explore children's oppression under patriarchy. Dislikable Mrs. Emma du Maurier (Julie Christie) is obviously overbearing toward both Sylvia and her children for reasons partly having to do with keeping Sylvia's lifestyle "proper" and acceptable to future suitors. At one point, the youngest of the Davies children (Luke Spill) says: "Is [Barrie] in trouble? Because I've been alone with Grandma, and I know what it's like" (my emphasis). Later, George (Nick Roud), the oldest Davies child, angrily objects to his grandmother's interventions and tries to exclude her from the family verbally.
In the real world, one of the problems relating to children's oppression under the patriarchy is that it is difficult for children to leave a caretaker who is abusive, harmful or obstructive to their participation in the revolution, and then go to another caretaker if necessary. Under the patriarchy, children are oppressed by gender oppressors regardless of who their parent is, but under the patriarchy, the separation problem expresses itself as a relative inability of children to choose their own oppressors. Connected to this is the fact much of parents' disciplining of their children is hidden and insulated from the rest of the community, which is why some of the most damaging and terroristic physical and sexual abuse happens inside the family. So-called parents' rights advocates have whined about some progressives threatening parents' rights. Well, this reviewer is here to say, shit yes communists will in the long term do whatever it takes to destroy patriarchy and all other kinds of oppression, so step out of the way. Even if some groups of exploited and oppressed people experience a temporary resurgence of the nuclear family after imperialism and its interfering effects are overthrown, there will be less and less room for disciplining children in private--and keeping abuse a family secret. The situation that "Finding Neverland" portrays faces eventual extinction. Disciplining children in the privacy of one's own home may not exist forever.
Children are oppressed under the patriarchy. One of the manifestations of this is the pervasive culture of child-hating and a presumption of gullibility, incapacity or ineptitude when it comes to culturally-defined children. In "Finding Neverland," Peter Llewelyn Davies (Freddie Highmore) is deeply affected by his father's death. Barrie is concerned that Peter is growing up too fast. Peter doesn't like to play pretend as much as his brothers, and he is incredulous when Barrie puts on a show with his pet dog and encourages the Davies to imagine that he's dancing with a circus bear. Later in the movie, Peter becomes angry after Sylvia and seemingly all the adults, Barrie included, refuse to let him know what's going on with his mother's sickness. George also objects to being treated like a "fool."
Barrie gets up in Peter's face and puts him down for not going along with the pretending. The idea is that Peter is being difficult or uncooperative. Sylvia tells him to mind his manners. In the real world, a child like Peter would be considered a "brat" or a "snot-nosed kid." By the end of "Finding Neverland," Peter learns to deal with loved ones' deaths by using his imagination. It is as if he had been broken and made a child again, or "put in his place" mentally.
Most of the time, even in imperialist countries, uncooperative children have legitimate concerns and are not just being difficult, or whining, to get economic or social privileges. We should sympathize with Peter when he is being a "snot-nosed kid." In large part, it is patriarchy that makes children have so much affection for their parents even though they may be abusive; it is patriarchy that conditions them to be more emotionally vulnerable than they would otherwise be; and it is patriarchy there waiting to take advantage of their vulnerability when they lose a loved one, in order to reinforce itself.
To the movie's credit at a time when so much attention is being paid to children's so-called mental illnesses, "Finding Neverland" does not end up suggesting that Peter has a mental illness. In the real world, Peter would probably be diagnosed with a mental illness because of his seeming depression symptoms and unusual interpersynal behavior, but "Finding Neverland" suggests an alternative to psychiatry: mentoring and imagination. Barrie encourages Peter to develop his own writing ability and teaches him to use his imagination. However, this is sub-reformism of the weakest kind; it absolutely doesn't even try to end the system.
Some may sentimentalize adults' mentoring children, but children don't need adults, period. This doesn't mean that no child will ever need a persyn, who happens to be an adult, for survival, just that children do not need adults as a group. Even if age segregation and age hierarchies existed for pragmatic reasons, pragmatism does not determine for communists how child-rearing practices should be revolutionized. This needs pointing out because, in some theaters in the united $tates, an advertisement encouraging adults to mentor children appears on the screen before the movie starts. The gives "Finding Neverland" the context of mentoring and makes Barrie look even more like a mentor to the Davies children. This reviewer does not deny that there is something to be said for some adults' mentoring children. However, most movie viewers will not understand what it means for an adult to mentor a child in an imperialist country, like the united $nakes, and encourage them to grow up to be a good citizen without adjustment problems--content. Mentoring is often done explicitly for social control (as when adults mentor children to discourage them from being delinquent), but basically, mentoring is a recipe for contentment and one that does not challenge either patriarchy or the adultist assumptions of many mentoring programs.
"Finding Neverland," like Barrie's play Peter Pan , presumes to bring adults and children together. Within the movie itself, Barrie, whose own "childishness" is a recurring theme in the movie, invites a number of orphans to attend the opening performance of his play "Peter Pan." Barrie purposefully scatters them throughout the mostly adult audience, and they seem to encourage the rest of the audience to laugh with them during the funny parts of the play. This is a feel-good moment for "Finding Neverland"'s own movie audience, but the theme of connecting adults with children detracts from the fact that patriarchy, and the corresponding institution of childhood, need to be destroyed.
At one point, Barrie learns that his relationship with the Davies children has come under suspicion for child-molesting. He reacts indignantly, saying that some people are just trying to squash his (or the Davies children's) moment of happiness. "You find a glimmer of happiness in this world, there's always someone who wants to destroy it." "Finding Neverland" may take the some of the heat off real-world mentors for child-molestation accusations, but the movie does nothing to contribute to the movie audience's scientific understanding of why child sexual abuse or assault happens, or how to end it. Worse, the movie excludes mentors from the category of child molesters without considering that mentors are often adults, too, and participate in the gender-oppression of children and can engage in the sexual abuse of children. (Interestingly, Barrie mentors Peter Davies, but still uses Peter by drawing inspiration from him. Also, the kind of access Barrie has to Peter through Peter's mother may be possible only under patriarchy.) The sentiment that child molestation is perpetrated sporadically by just a tiny group of evildoers, violating "innocent" and "precious" children, supports the patriarchal institution of childhood and is detrimental to children by detracting from a scientific understanding of child abuse.
In "Finding Neverland," Barrie seems to create problems for the Davies by involving himself with their family, for example, the gossip about his relationship with Sylvia, but the idea at the end of the movie is that he was needed after all. "Finding Neverland" pretends to be concerned with the best interests and perspective of one child, Peter Davies, but leaves the oppression of children under the patriarchy virtually untouched and is patronizing toward children in general. In this way, "Finding Neverland" is an insult to the real Peter Davies when he was a child.
"Finding Neverland" never even really deals with its central theme with the Peter Davies character: a certain kind of paternalism toward children and keeping them in ignorance. The movie's take-home message is that children's ignorance is bliss, whether that ignorance takes the form of adult-encouraged wishful imagination or withholding information. Barrie's own fictional character of Peter Pan represents an idealized, and misleading, concept of childhood--an institution by which children are harassed, humiliated, terrorized, silenced without reason, used, attacked and sometimes killed. The makers of "Finding Neverland" should have thought twice about making this movie after finding out that the real Peter Davies detested being associated with the name "Peter Pan" and committed suicide for perhaps this reason.(2) Peter Pan represents an romanticized concept of a group of people who are demeaned and hated, and damaged and exploited, in patriarchal society: children.
Notes
1. MCB52. "The Oppression of Children Under Patriarchy." MIM Theory , no. 9 (1995): 14-17.
2. Michelle Powell. "An Awfully Big ADVENTURE." <http://www.amrep.org/past/peter/peter1.html> (28 January 2005).