Welcome to Neverland

We went to see Where the Wild Things Are last weekend, and something's been bothering me about it ever since. Don't get me wrong — I liked it, I think. At least, I mostly enjoyed it. It's very beautiful and fantastic like the illustrations in Maurice Sendak's book for children, and the dialogue and story movement are quiet and spare like the book's text. The complex themes of childhood rebellion and escapist fantasy are covered complexly. You really feel/remember what it's like to be a young, angry child who just wants everyone to be how he wants them to be and to let him be who he wants to be.

I guess what's bothering me is that the book was written for children to relate to, and the movie is obviously aimed more at adults — specifically fashionable young adults who don't want to grow up. The tone throughout is wistful and bittersweet. It's directed by hip rock video and indie arthouse director Spike Jonze, includes many recognizable "intelligent television" stars as the titular wild things, was cowritten by McSweeney's editor and hipster-fiction darling Dave Eggers, and is near relentlessly drenched in an indie rock soundtrack by people from the Arcade Fire and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The monsters are all made by Jim Henson's people and the title is written in the Freaks and Geeks font. It's a nostalgia trip for people like me, in other words, and I'll admit I took the bait willingly.

Is there something wrong with revisiting classic children's literature for purely nostalgic purposes? Not necessarily. I often go back to Through the Looking Glass and the Winnie the Pooh books to marvel at some of the more astounding passages, and I could still watch The Wizard of Oz at least another two hundred times. I actually was reading a few chapters of Anne of Green Gables just the other day, reminding myself how well-constructed and touching it is, despite the awful brand it has become since its publication.

But those works were all created for the enjoyment and illumination of children, and when I enjoy or re-enjoy them as an adult, it is on those terms. The children's-story-for-adults, on the other hand, aims to bring out the child within the adult that she has forgotten about, and this can be problematic. It's very easy, if the author of such a work is not careful, to slip into escapist nostalgia whose only point can be to temporarily distract its audience from the reality of the adult world, in favour of a glorified childhood world that never actually existed.

Sure, there are coming of age tales where we are reminded of lessons learned long ago, and how painful those lessons may have been. That format is perfectly valid for reorienting ourselves as adults by reexamining important pieces of the histories that have brought us here, and I guess that's probably the most charitable way to interpret a film like WWTA.

The problem is, though, that the main character in the book and the film doesn't really learn any lessons. He spends the majority of the story in a world of his own imagination, inhabited by characters who obey his own kid logic about how the world should be. Any conflicts that arise are resolved in a purely fantastical way where the childish ego is restored and nothing is learned about relating to real, independent others. It's kind of like a reverse Curb Your Enthusiasm in that way. And while it's a common complaint that Hollywood movies serve only as fantasy for lazy-minded adults, this one goes one step further in being childhood fantasy that is not even realistically appealing to adults except indirectly through the remembering of what their desires used to be, before they found out how the world really works.

As pure fantasy for children, without much in the way of lessons or moral issues raised, the book still works, because it is a beautiful and relatable creativity pump. It serves as a springboard for kids' imaginations, and shows them that it is understood and accepted in this world that they will use those imaginations for all sorts of incredible purposes, selfish and otherwise. They can feel safe, in other words, dreaming their kid dreams and escaping into their kid worlds, and can see that such escapism could eventually lead to a wonderful gift to others, called art, such as the book they are currently looking at.

It's hard to see how creating a film version of the same story for people who have presumably already read this story and learned its lessons, and who are furthermore too experienced in the ways of the world to be given the same kind of license with respect to escapism, could serve the same purpose.

It could be claimed that this movie is not really for adults, but merely includes elements (such as the indie rock soundtrack) that adults would like so that they're more apt to enjoy it with their children. This was the argument our friend Kasia gave in defense of the film immediately after we saw it (which, in retrospect, was not a great time for me to bring up these concerns because it made me sound like I was criticizing my friends for having actually enjoyed themselves, which I definitely was not). She compared the strategy to that of Sesame Street, which we all agree is or at least used to be great. They would often throw jokes and pop culture references in that only adults would understand, as a little treat for the parents who responsibly watched the show with their kids, rather than just plopping them down in front of it.

But I don't quite buy the argument. For one thing, we all went to see this movie — in fact had waited for it to come out with some anticipation — and none of us has any kids. I can't really imagine having the same reaction to a Sesame Street movie, unless it was one of those post-modern, ironic film versions of TV shows that are popular now — the kind that are more a winking reference to the original than a loving re-creation of it. And if I heard of anyone my own age who had no children but made sure to catch Sesame Street every day, I'd probably think he was a little bit creepy.

For another thing, children are apparently not huge fans of this movie. Parents who have taken their young kids to see it report that the latter are mostly bored. Maybe that's more of a criticism of the general state of children's cinema now, with its fast-cut, action-packed sensory overload that leaves nothing to the imagination and spoils young attention spans for quality storytelling. Maybe. Or maybe the two complaints (i.e. 1. adult cinema is taking the concept of fantasy too far, to the point of infantilizing its audience, and 2. children's cinema is making children prematurely unimaginative) are really two sides of the same problem, which is that the line between adult and children's fiction is being erased.

Think about it. We all watch pretty much the same stuff now. How many of the last Pixar animated children's stories were actually made for children? And if they were, why do my friends keep telling me I have to see them? On the other hand, how many of the recent big budget action films allegedly for adults had a story that wasn't so simplistic any five-year-old could easily explain it to you? How many of those were not based on a comic book? Edward Scissorhands was the first movie I saw that gave me this vague, creepy feeling that could be summed up by the question, "Why is the fairy tale format being used unironically in movies for adults?" But it's probably been going on longer than that.

And it's not just happening in movies, either. The Harry Potter books are considered acceptable literature for a receptionist to read on her lunch break. Political satire on television has to be served up in the form of cartoons like The Simpsons and South Park to get anyone to pay attention to it. And on the Disney channel, shows for children are all about preteens trying desperately to attract members of the opposite sex before the actresses who play them have a chance to make a pop record that is as ubiquitous as it is infantile, marketed by posing half naked on magazine covers for the adoration of their prepubescent fans and titillation of those fans' fathers.

Anyway, maybe I just got upset in this case because this was a work I actually cared about, and because, as I said, I mostly enjoyed the film and even found it quite moving in places. I mean, if they can get guys like Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers and even Maurice Sendak himself to play into this line-blurring, and make it into a reasonable stance for thoughtful young adults to take way before they should be duped by nostalgia for their childhood, then how long can childhood as a real, distinct cultural phenomenon have left?