#peter pan – @sarahthecoat on Tumblr

i was talking to a friend about this the last day and it's relevant so like.

TREASURE ISLAND, by robert louis stevenson, which Black Sails is a prequel to (and which Our Flag Means Death is related to, given the presence of various famous pirates), is an adventure novel. pretty much every pirate story you can think of is influenced by adventure novels like this one

J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan is also heavily influenced by RLS' work specifically (Barrie was in love with the man (literally) so that's no surprise), and many of these stories we tell and play with that are about pirates and adventurers come from a legacy of texts penned in the 19th century (with a few big ones from the century before)

now, the thing is, as soon as you're looking at an adventure narrative and the protagonist is a white boy (or man), it is fundamentally a story about white supremacy and imperialism, told from the lens of an imperialist.

the young white boy who goes off on "adventures" and experiences the stuff of exciting tales is able to do so and see it as fun and exciting because of his whiteness

beyond merely being plot armour or genre protection to defend him from extreme physical harm or death, his whiteness is a halo around him - he is a purifying, civilising force, and we are supposed to view through his eyes a savage and intriguing world. if he is not trying to civilise it, he is enjoying the last waves of this savagery before other white men civilise it for him, but make no mistake, he considers that civilisation inevitable, and right. he knows the age of adventure is coming to an end, and why is it coming to an end?

because "adventure", from the perspective given to us as white men, is fundamentally about enjoying a world that is foreign, uncivilised, savage, and "untouched". it's about our "exploration" of a world that's not yet been explored, it's about going where no one has gone before

because as white men "exploring" the world, everything is turned into adventure - strange, exotic animals (that we lead to the extinction of), new habitats and environments (that we overmine for resources and destroy the ecosystems of), and most of all, strange, exotic people (who we don't see as people, or not fully as people: they're just exciting savages for us to take from, "civilise", fight with, rape, and murder)

you literally cannot approach any adventure novel without understanding that this framework is central to the text.

Swallows and Amazons. 20000 Leagues Under The Sea, Journey to the Interior of the Earth, Tarzan of the Apes, The Lost World, Kidnapped, The Time Machine - and you have to apply it to texts that came after or were inspired by adventure novels.

so in the context of Peter Pan, that's a vital part of the text - people are stupid about peter pan and i do get frustrated with a lot of people's poor readings of the text (especially when they've seen that fucking Disney film), but it's a text that's fundamentally about working class anxiety and the desperate terror of burgeoning economic responsibility in a world that's hostile to the Darlings - and how do they escape?

by going back into the adventure novel. back to when their class doesn't matter as much, but their whiteness still means everything. ditto, peter pan is one of the most monstrous characters in all creation, and he is precisely as monstrous as he is, yes, because he's an 8-year-old who was neglected, but specifically because he's an 8-year-old white boy who thinks he owns the world

and this also applies in Our Flag Means Death when we look at Stede Bonnet - this is a man who's hampered by responsibility, so he throws himself into his very own adventure novel, but like. by definition, this flattens the world around him into an adventure for him to have, not a world full of other people living in it

#ofmd meta #literary analysis #adventure novel #peter pan #treasure island #imperialism #colonialism