Please forgive me for using this image from last week, but a flying kid is still on my mind.
My flying dream boy, along with my airplane and whimsical bird recollections, might erroneously suggest that I harbor a secret desire to revert back to childhood. Or maybe wish I never left it.
Here’s where I have to confess some inconsistencies. If you’ve been reading Art and Whimsy these past several weeks, you’ve rightly judged that I place a high premium on fun, cute, nostalgia, and images that draw out deep longings for safe places.
And yet, I don’t really like Peter Pan. I must admit I’ve never read J. M. Barrie’s classic story, I’ve only seen it on TV and in movies. It was one of those annual Television Events that came but once a year in the days before Netflix, Blue-Ray, and Hulu.
Like the Wizard of Oz (which I DO like), and A Christmas Carol (another thumbs-up), it was an anticipated night of popcorn, homemade fudge, and the adventures of the elf-boy who refused to grow up. And it never failed to disappoint.
It’s that thing about refusing to grow up that bothered me then, and bothers me now. Maybe I’m missing the deeper longings Peter Pan is meant to evoke, but I don’t find value in perpetual immaturity. All play and no work makes Peter a dull boy.
I Want to Take You Higher
“But Ed,” I imagine you saying, “your whole career is built on fun, childish, cute, whimsical, immature art.” This whole blog has been a defense of Whimsy!” Well, yes I have, and yes it has.
If the Peter Pan story was a collection of recollections, calling us to remember our safe home, I might have been his biggest fan. Peter Pan, I think, calls us to refuse to grow up, and that will not do. To refuse to grow is to refuse to soar. But growing is painful and in pain we need reminders.
I think whimsy and cute remind us of safe places. We need reminders because we are in an unsafe world that says this is all there is or ever will be, until even this is no more.
The children for whom I illustrate stories don’t need to stay perpetually 8 years old. Likewise when they reach adulthood they don’t need to kill their longing to return to a place where stars are safely reached, fears quieted, and tears dried. The first order of business for my art is to engage children and draw them into the true good story.
The order of business for my writing is to remind us that this place is unsafe and broken, and that we are prone to harden our hearts against hope; hoping to just cope. I promote whimsy to help work against that. Whimsy is like faith. It’s childish, but it’s not meant to keep us in perpetual infancy.
There’s No Place Like Home
I contrast Peter Pan with The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy never landed in Oz so as to stay in that weird place. The goal was always to get back home. Dorothy’s travails were not supposed to be perpetual, as though her dangerous adventures were some kind of interesting ends to themselves. That would not do. Dorothy needed to get back home.
Dorothy’s three friends were reminders of home. Each shared a whimsical trait of hired hands on Uncle Henry and Auntie Em’s Kansas farm. They were familiar all along. They helped Dorothy remember, in spite of witches and poppies and flying monkeys demanding her surrender.
While I love whimsical, fun, and yes, even cute things, that doesn’t mean I harbor a secret desire to be a man-child. I don’t really like man-children; they not only refuse to grow up, they refuse to feel. They refuse to engage the battle. They surrender.
Long live Dorothy, the Wicked Witch is dead!
Images ©2015 Ed Koehler