Disney’s animated traditional Peter Pan secretly hid its largest villain in one in every of its most healthful characters, however right here is the 1953 film’s darkish reality.
As one of the crucial healthful parts of Disney’s Peter Pan, Nana looks like the right caretaker. The big-eyed, bonnet-wearing hound cleans the nursery, straightens the beds, and withstands the Darling kids’s ungrateful father. Nonetheless, one in every of her duties reveals a darkish reality about each the dutiful canine and the period by which Disney’s Peter Pan was written.
The Peter Pan animated function is customized from J. M. Barrie’s darker Peter Pan stage play from 1904. And as is Disney’s method, the corporate swept quite a lot of questionable ideas below the nursery room rug when making their model 5 a long time later. Nonetheless, the principle parts stay: each the play and the film have the Darling kids sprinkled with fairy mud and swooped off to Neverland by the rebellious Peter Pan. The story includes fairies, mermaids, princesses, and pirates all offering an attractive and seemingly harmless journey for youngsters.
Nana’s character can be taken from Barrie’s play, as are her chores, which initially included bathing the Darling kids and administering the four-year-old Michael’s “medication.” Whereas her medication for the younger boy within the play might have been for an undetermined illness, analysis reveals that the commonest “medication” given to kids at bedtime in the course of the period was a mixture of morphine and alcohol. More and more disturbing, in Disney’s (quickly to be remade) Peter Pan, the only dose of medication is expanded to incorporate a spoonful of “tonic” for every of the Darling kids, with the healthful Nana educated to drug the younger kids to sleep.
The early 1900s was a time of “tonics,” with opium getting used to treatment almost all the things. As is identified by James Nevius (by way of The Guardian), by the mid-Nineteenth century, “opiates have been the principle ingredient in all the things from teething powders to analgesics for menstrual cramps.” This included a product known as Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup — a typical tonic used on the time to assist subdue rowdy kids. As famous by Nevius, the so-called “tonic” was truly “a morphine and alcohol concoction that was marketed to oldsters of fussy kids as a ‘completely innocent and nice’ option to produce a ‘pure quiet sleep, by relieving the kid from ache.’”
It’s curious that Disney (topic to many darkish theories) selected to incorporate the unnamed substance within the movie, particularly contemplating they not solely included the product however expanded its use to all the youngsters. Moreover, in an act harking back to the development’s unique advertising and marketing duplicity, Disney relabeled the product, opting to name what Barrie initially known as “medication” the extra unassuming “tonic,” and had it served by the movie’s most healthful character, Nana the canine. As if to make sure the aim of the “tonic” was not missed, Disney’s Peter Pan even encompasses a scene by which Nana will get the “tonic” on her paw and begins to lick it off earlier than stopping, distressed on the considered taking the substance herself.
This particular inventive liberty that was taken in Disney’s Peter Pan, appears to indicate a distrust of authority that was prevalent on the time the animated movie was made. As America was in the course of the Chilly Conflict on the time of Peter Pan‘s unique theatrical launch, it may very well be that Nana’s darkish doings have been meant to vilify the healthful character and instill a distrust of authority in America’s youth. Nonetheless, as McCarthyism was additionally at its peak when Disney’s Peter Pan debuted, additionally it is attention-grabbing to notice that the Darling kids are by no means seen taking the “tonic.” Thus, alternatively, Nana may very well be seen as an authority determine wh0, had the youngsters obeyed, would have protected them and ensured they handed the evening safely at dwelling, by no means tempted to fly away to a international land filled with hazard. In both occasion, Peter Pan’s villain is not only the infamous Captain Hook, but additionally, and maybe extra so, the unassuming, drug-wielding canine nursemaid.
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