Extradiagetic: Peter Pan

Peter Pan is Disney’s fourteenth animated feature and a big success after the under-performing Alice in Wonderland.  While the film carries the name of Peter Pan, the movie is really more about Wendy.   The story begins and ends with her, and her arc is the most prominent one.  The other children never want to grow up, and she doesn’t either, at least at the beginning.  By the end she’s come around and realized it’s time to move on.  The movie doesn’t dwell on this story arc, instead preferring to focus attention on the exploits of Peter Pan himself.  But it remains the primary arc for the story, and makes Wendy more of a protagonist than Peter Pan.

Wendy’s story arc begins as the narrator introduces the Darling family.  She is devout believer in Peter Pan and tells stories to her brother’s about his exploits.  When her father declares that it’s time she grow up and move out of the nursery Wendy wants to have nothing to do with it.  

That evening Peter Pan shows up looking for his shadow and meet Wendy in person for the first time.  She excitedly agrees to join Peter Pan in Never Land when the opportunity arises, though she does hesitate to consider what her mother would say.  This prompts Peter Pan to ask what a mother is.  She begins to explain it as someone who loves and cares for you and tells stories.  As soon as she mentions telling stories Peter Pan declares that Wendy can be his Mother.  This suggestion begins a repeated theme of Wendy taking on the role of the adult with Peter Pan and the other boys.  In attempting to escape adulthood she finds herself naturally falling into the role. 

The rest of the children are awoken by the commotion and they all travel to Never Land together.  After a few small adventures they all return to Peter Pan’s hideout where Wendy falls into the adult role she had hoped to avoid, telling John and Michael to clean up and get ready for bed.  She begins to sing a song to the boys about what a mother is, prompting them to attempt to return immediately. As they leave they are waylaid by pirates and take to their ship while Captain Hook leaves a bomb for Peter Pan

On the pirate ship Captain Hook offers them all the dubious choice of joining his crew or walking the plank.  When all the boys rush to join up Wendy again takes the role of adult, halting them with a word and the clap of her hands.  She chides them much like an adult and refused to join Captain Hook’s crew.  She stoically walks the plank and is rescued by Peter Pan.  After quick battle they return to London.  The parents return home, her father with his attitudes switched.  George now decides his earlier edict that she leaves the nursery was too rash, but is taken by surprise when Wendy announces to them that she’s ready to grow up.  

In her attempt to escape her future, Wendy ended up walking the same path naturally.  She realized from her experience that she was already more grown up than she realized.  This isn’t to say there isn’t some character development elsewhere.  Notably, after the explosion and near death of Tinker Bell, Peter Pan goes from sulking that Wendy is leaving, to escorting her back to London himself on a flying pirate ship.  But the main story of Peter Pan really is Wendy coming to terms with growing up.

Extradiagetic: Alice in Wonderland

Stories are usually about interesting characters. But there are times where it’s better to have a more mundane protagonist. Alice in Wonderland is one such story.   

It’s easy to overlook the importance of the ordinary in stories. After all, it’s the fantastic and exciting that captures the audience’s imagination; that grabs them and keeps them interested. But for the fantastic and exciting to stand out, it benefits from juxtaposing it with the mundane.

The titular Alice is the mundane in Alice in Wonderland. Characters often begin from simple origins and start as ordinary people.  That’s part of the hero’s journey.  Alice however doesn’t really change throughout the story; instead she acts as an anchor to reality in the strange world of Wonderland. She provides a baseline against which the strangeness of the world can be measured.   Wonderland’s ability to repeatedly confound her attempts at logic and reason highlight the strangeness of the world.

There’s a sliding scale between the mundane and the extraordinary. The more ordinary the world, the more extraordinary the protagonist should be. This creates contrast so that the main character stands out. If the world is extraordinary and so is the character, neither will seem all that impressive.   

Ultimately the reason for the bizarre world and Alice’s own subdued reactions to it become clear with the revelation it was all just a dream. Stories that end with “It was all just a dream” are tricky, because they can leave an audience feeling cheated. The adventure they had just joined in on was suddenly rendered moot, and without meaning. And that can leave a bad taste in an audience’s mouth.   Alice in Wonderland however, is the perfect story for that ending. It’s so strange and so bizarre that a dream makes perfect sense. Additionally, very little actually ends up happening plot-wise in Wonderland. There are no epic morality plays between good and evil. No great lessons to be learned. There is just a peculiar journey of an ordinary young girl.

Alice in Wonderland is a lesson in contrast. A story needs ordinary characters for the audience to relate to and provide contrast. The more fantastic the world, the more ordinary the character should be. Alice in Wonderland pushes this contrast to the limit with a supremely bizarre environment for a supremely ordinary protagonist to experience.

Extradiagetic: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

At last, the end of the Disney package films.  The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, released in 1949, marks the end of the wartime packaged films era.  These shorts are based on the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Wind in the Willows.   In an unusual choice for Disney, the protagonists in both shorts deeply flawed characters with little redeeming value.  The story of Mr. Toad gets away with it, by telling an interesting story about an interesting character.   Ichabod however, is set up intentionally to be unlikable, so that his ultimate fate is not so unpalatable.

Mr. Toad is a rich reckless playboy who follows whatever whim gets into his head, totally lacking of any self-control or restraint.  Despite that, the story still creates sympathy for him, by having Mr. Winkie maliciously lie to the court.  Reckless or not, the audience understands that Mr. Toad was wrongfully imprisoned, and lets them get behind his later escape.  It also justifies his desire to get the Toad Hall deed back, despite earlier being happy to trade it for an automobile.  It’s now a matter of seeing the true villain get their due.  Because of this the audience is willing to follow along on the adventure, despite Mr. Toad giving little reason to root for him.  And while he says the experience has changed him, ultimately it is not surprising when he lapses at the end.

This complete lack of character development in Mr. Toad is tolerated, and even embraced, by the audience because he represents the unrestrained id.  He is there to do what the audience is too sensible to do themselves.  It offers the opportunity to briefly live vicariously as the reckless Mr. Toad, and experience that rambunctious freedom.  The narrator highlights this at the end, suggesting the audience envies him a bit.  Mr. Toad provides a safe way to explore our own desires to indulge ourselves not care about the consequences.  

Ichabod Crane presents an entirely different approach to the virtue-less character.  One in which the lack of sympathy is very deliberate. Ichabod is gluttonous, manipulative, greedy and cowardly.  His rival, set up as the antagonist is not perfect, but possess more virtues than Ichabod.  He’s boisterous, and prone to pranks, but not truly malicious, he’s even described as the local hero.  Even the love interest, Katrina seems perfectly happy pitting suitors against each other for her own gain.  These other characters are set up this way to make Ichabod not seem quite so bad in comparison, and allow the audience to maintain some impression that he’s still the hero.  

Ultimately there is no great villain in the story.   Even the headless horseman is less a villain than a force of nature, mysterious and unavoidable.   Something that can only be escaped, not fought.  In a more traditional story he might survive the encounter, and change his ways because of it.  Similar to Scrooge, in A Christmas Carol.  If this was a love story, his interest in Katrina might prompt him to better himself.  Instead they make it clear that he’s just as interested in getting her father’s farm and all the money it would produce.  

Despite all the time spent with the rivalry between Brom Bones and Ichabod, this isn’t a romantic comedy, or even really a ghost story in the end.  It is a morality play.  When the Headless Horseman comes, he comes not for a good man, but for one deeply flawed.  It is a cautionary tale, warning of the dangers of following in Ichabod’s character flaws.   

There are many types of protagonists in stories.  And the standard convention is for them to be heroic, and have depth and character growth.  But it’s possible to tell compelling stories without either of those things.  But they have to be supported by the right structure in the story, or the audience will quickly loose interest in an unlikable character. 

Extradiagetic: Melody Time

Melody Time continues the now familiar format of a package movie for Disney in this period.  While there’s other shorts in the film, and in particular a fairly long Pecos Bill short, I’m just going to touch on three of them.  Once Upon a Wintertime, Johnny Appleseed, and Little Toot.  Each of these short stories provide a stripped-down example of themes seen in many other stories.

The Once Upon a Wintertime short provides a simple romantic narrative.  We have a man and a woman on a winter skating date.  The opening romantic song makes the relationship between the mute couple clear.  Since they begin together, they need to be separated to create some conflict.  In this case, the man upsets the woman by showing off while skating by jumping over some logs, inadvertently spraying her with ice when he skids to a stop.  She walks away annoyed, though does give a backwards glance, but the man is upset as well now and ignores her, so she continues away.  The tension suddenly builds as a sign is uncovered revealing she’s headed for thin ice.  The tension increases again as the ice breaks, and the woman starts floating downriver.  The man fails to save her, and it ends up being the horses, birds, and squirrels that had been tagging along to save the girl just before she goes over a waterfall.  Saved from certain death, they are reunited, their brief conflict forgotten.  This is a common romantic setup in stories; boy and girl split up, girls gets into trouble, man saves her, and everything is fine again.  This bit of mini-drama is often slipped into the romantic sub-plot of a larger story, rather than standing alone.  

The Johnny Appleseed story has many of the elements of the hero’s journey in it.  It starts with the call to adventure, which happens when Johnny sees settlers headed west.  This leads into the next element of the hero’s journey where they initial refuse the call.  Johnny gives the excuse that he’s weak and doesn’t have any of the right gear for it.  This leads into the mentor and supernatural aid when his guardian angel shows up and convinces him that he’s ready enough.  Johnny then heads into the wilderness to begin planting apple trees.  Another element of the hero’s journey comes near the end with the Apotheosis, in this case a physical death from which he transcends from planting apple trees on earth to planting them in Heaven.   This leaves out a lot of other steps, but not all steps are necessary and it is a short story.

The Little Toot story can be summed up as a basic redemption story, where the disobedient Little Toot gets into the trouble and is banished, but finds redemption by saving another ship in a storm.  Little Toot is initially shown to be a mischievous troublemaker, but then tries to go straight after having a close call with a police boat.  Unfortunately, his attempt to help his dad ends up just making his biggest mess yet.  This helps generate symphony for the character.  He is able to be banished to move the story along, but the audience also continues to root for him because we know his intentions were good. When he finally finds redemption there’s a brief moment of sacrifice where Little Toot gets totally submerged, creating a metaphorical rebirth to indicate how much he’s changed.  It also helps create a small amount of tension, especially for younger viewers.   The redemption story is a powerful one, and has been a constant theme in stories for as long as there have been stories.  

These simple stories present the seeds that can grow into much larger and more elaborate tales.  Keep them in mind when writing.  These are all themes that can be mixed together in many different ways to tell numerous different stories. 

Extradiagetic: Fun and Fancy Free

 

Continuing the anthology movies of the ‘40s, Fun and Fancy Free takes a slightly different approach by limiting the anthology to two longer shorts with a framing device featuring Jiminy Cricket.  The first short, the story of Bongo the circus bear is interesting to examine as it has the same skeleton of numerous romantic stories.  The second story, a take on Jack and the Beanstalk with Mickey, Donald and Goofy, demonstrates some interesting shortcuts for characterization.

The first short is framed as an audio story narrated on a record.  It is the story of Bongo, a circus bear who escapes to the woods.  The beginning of the short plays out very straightforward.  On the stage he’s the star of the show, but off the stage he’s poorly treated by the circus master.   He longs to escape the drudgery of performing show after show and eventually gets his chance.  Throughout the short the antagonist changes several times. First it is the circus master, but then it shifts to nature itself as Bongo has difficulty initially getting used to life in the woods.  Finally it shifts to a rival for the affections of a cute lady bear he meets.  The romantic subplot of this piece is prototypical of many romantic plots in movies and TV shows.  It goes something like this:

• Boy meets girl
• Boy and girl get along fine
• There is a misunderstanding that forces them apart.
• Misunderstanding is resolved and they live happily ever after.

In this case the misunderstanding is caused by the cultural difference between Bongo and the forest bears.  In the forest it turns out these bears slap each other as a show of affection.  One of many things I doubt these early shorts could get away with today.  But, there is still the issue of the rivalj, but Bongo also overcomes him.  

As the Bongo story wraps up the film shifts back to Jiminy Cricket as he moves the viewer from that story to the next one.  In this case, that involves visiting a small party next door, which consists of a boy and girl, and a ventriloquist with two dummies.  The next story is told by the ventriloquist, with the children or his dummies occasionally chiming in with their own thoughts.   

The story itself is a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk, but with Mickey in the starring role, along with Donald and Goofy along for the ride.   Since it uses characters that are already known, there isn’t a lot of focus on developing them.  It’s more just the established personalities bouncing off each other.  This works well for a short, where there’s not a lot of time for character development anyway, but would fall flat in something longer, since it would really limit the viewer’s connection to the characters.  

Indeed, there’s not much of a character arc at all.  While there is still the trading of the cow for magic beans, there’s never any lesson implied in it.  They never come back to it in either a positive or negative way.  It’s just something that moves the story forward.   

The story overall is not about the characters, but the action going on.  While we see Mickey, Donald and Goofy are hungry at the beginning that still does every little to drive their actions beyond selling the cow.  Throughout the story, the characters are reacting more than they’re acting.  There’s never even a choice about going up the beanstalk or not, it happens to them while they sleep.  They do decide to go to the castle, but not for any particular reason than curiosity.  

Once in the castle, the drive of hunger does come again briefly, as they rush up to eat the food from the giant’s table.  But then the giant is introduce, conveniently singing about his powers, acting as a quick introduction to the audience of his abilities, so when it comes up later as a plot point it doesn’t feel strange.  It is also helped by the ventriloquist explaining the giants abilities, and also building up how evil and cruel he is.  

After the giant discovers the intruders it’s Mickey’s turn to play the hero, initially starting with him trying to outsmart the giant and trick him into turning into a bug so they can swat him.  But when this fails and Donald and Goofy are locked up Mickey takes the lead again, getting the key from the giant and proceeding to escape.  The end of the story comes rapidly, as they cut down the beanstalk while the giant is climbing down, letting him fall to his doom.  

The two shorts are quite enjoyable on their own.  The story of Bongo provides a look at shifting antagonist throughout the story, and also the framework of a very typical romantic story.  The Jack and the Beanstalk short provides some examples at shortcuts of characterization, by using established characters and by using songs and narrators to straight up tell you about a character.  While these aren’t always the best options, they are quick, and work well when you have limited time to tell the story.