Fairy Tale and Film

particularly notable, clearly having grown up in a generation where gender 
expectations were altering, although the film also affirms how easily retrench-
ment occurs. While the mother is alive in this case, Lesley Mann performs 
her usual role as a goofy mother, somewhat frustrated with her lot, seeking to 
establish a separate identity – offering another interesting role reversal.
14. Carlo Collodi’s 
Pinocchio
was initially serialised in a newspaper and later 
published as a book in 1883 due to its immense popularity. The story has an 
obvious mythic quality in terms of the rite of passage undertaken by the pro-
tagonist. A wooden puppet is carved from a log, mysteriously imbued with a 

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180 
Notes to Chapter 2
spark of life, and wishes to become a real boy. Initially making his adoptive 
father’s life difficult through continual misbehaviour (running away, acting 
without consideration, led astray by others and doing as he pleases), he 
eventually matures as he discovers a sense of responsibility and conscience, 
and ultimately has his wish granted.
15. Peter Pan first appeared in J.M. Barrie’s novel 
The Little Bird
(1902) and his 
adventures were reissued as 
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens 
(1906). In 1904, 
Barrie produced a play in which ‘the boy who wouldn’t grow up’ takes the 
Darling children to Never Land. The play was such a success Barrie rewrote 
it in book form, published as 
Peter and Wendy
(1911). The book was revised 
and shortened in 1915, with variations remaining in print ever since. While 
little is revealed about his past, we are informed that Peter left home and 
was not able to return, subsequently finding company in the form of Lost 
Boys – who fell out of their prams as infants and have since gone to live with 
Peter in Never Land. His reason for wanting Wendy is claimed to be for the 
boys’ benefit, rather than his, but although they act as figurative parents she 
eventually tires of mothering everyone and grows weary of Peter’s failure to 
reciprocate her love. Much speculation has been attributed to the meaning 
of the character and his reluctance to grow up, with many biographical fea-
tures awarded significance by critics. The most salient and undisputable of 
these is that Barrie modelled Peter on his own brother, who died tragically 
young. This lends a somewhat morbid factor behind Peter Pan’s failure to 
mature: the idea that he is himself dead, believed by some, as is referenced 
in the book, to accompany the spirits of dead children to heaven. He is thus 
not simply a mischievous sprite, or even a ‘boy’ who refuses to acknowledge 
the adult world, but a typically Victorian attempt to imbue the spirit world 
with sentiment, with Never Land a child’s version of paradise. For more on 
Peter Pan’s associations with the dead see Purkiss (2000).
16. While Spielberg has tended to romanticise Peter Pan (conspicuously refer-
enced in 
ET 
and 
Hook
), and P.J. Hogan’s 2003 film is a thwarted love story, 
he acquires more sinister meaning in recent appearances, depicted as a child-
snatcher in the TV series 
Once Upon a Time
and upcoming film 
Hooked
.
17. In interview Burton has commented on the links between 
Edward Scissor-
hands
and ‘Beauty and the Beast’, collaborating with Caroline Thompson on 
the theme (2006: 84–99).
18. There are parallels to be drawn here with 
RoboCop
’s Alex Murphy, who is 
taunted about his inability to offer his former wife ‘a man’s love’, and we 
might note 
Edward Scissorhands
’ appearance among a range of cyborg films 
in the late 1980s and 1990s that similarly question masculinity itself. See my 
book, 
Cyborg Cinema
(Short, 2011a), for further discussion of this theme, eval-
uating the male cyborg in film as an example of ‘reconstructed masculinity’.
19. See Johns (2004), who explores Baby Yaga’s intense ambivalence, noting 
that depictions of the character range from a monstrous figure, accused 
of stealing the souls of dead unbaptised children, to a protective mother, 
with links to Persephone. This contrariness is interestingly depicted in the 
animated film 
Spirited Away
(2000) in the form not only of Yu Baba (whose 
fearsome appearance is offset by the devotion with which she coddles her 
overgrown baby) but of her more amiable twin sister, who insists on being 
called ‘granny’ and helps the heroine return home.

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Notes to Chapter 3 
181