MOVIE REVIEW: Pan (2015)
Michael Jackson is a fascinating human being, and I have my own personal theory on his whole life and how it unraveled — and a lot of it revolves around the world of “Peter Pan”, a fictional character created by J.M. Barrie in 1904 and immortalized in many stage, screen, and print works over its century of existence. It’s easy to read Wacko Jacko’s childlike behavior and naming his property in California “Neverland Ranch” as my rationale, but that’s only the beginning of it — there’s the Arab princess with whom he fathered a child (Tiger Lily), his enchanting fairy-like sister Janet Jackson (Tinker Bell), the increased wear of military garb and ever-present silver sequined glove on one particular hand (Captain Hook), and his own children Paris, Prince Michael Jr. and “Blanket” (respectively Wendy, Michael and John).
Mr. Jackson may have seen himself as Peter — a boy who never grew up because he had no childhood from which to grow, for he was never truly allowed to be a child…by anyone — and he showed us all how to fly in flights of fantasy. What goes up must come down, and he showed us that too. While MJ died amid a liturgy of lawsuits and criminal investigation, the story of Peter Pan persists with movies like Hook (1991), Peter and Wendy (2003), Neverland (2011), and the 2015 re-imagining of the story, Pan.
During the Second World War, young Peter (Levi Miller, A Wrinkle in Time) is an eleven-year-old English boy living in a church orphanage. He chafes at the treatment of the callous and violent nuns and vows to find his mother again — so he swears on his silver pan-flute pendant necklace. During the Bombing of London, he and his fellow orphans are kidnapped by pirates in flying pirate ships! Seems the nuns were actually selling the children into slavery in another dimension called Neverland and the floating sky island that bears the same name.
In Neverland, Peter and the other orphans are forced to work in brutal conditions (i.e., a version of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” that sounds like it was pulled from Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge plays overhead) with dangerous pirates to mine magical ore for the benefit of the pirate lord Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman, Kate and Leopold, Australia). Of those lost boys, Peter meets a rough-mannered American man called James Hook (Garret Hedlund, Four Brothers, Troy, TRON Legacy). The two escape on a stolen flying pirate ship only to crash it into the Neverland Jungles and encounter the locals, including tribal princess Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara, The Social Network, Youth in Revolt). She and the rest of her tribe recognize Peter as “the Chosen One™” who is destined to be the “Pan” and free Neverland from Blackbeard’s pirate horde with bravery and the power of flight. Blackbeard also knows the prophecy, as he can tell more about Peter’s history than the tribe and Tiger Lily permit. James Hook is only along for the ride, one that while beautiful is ultimately pointless.
And now, we’re gonna talk about Tiger Lily — rather the whitewashing controversy about the character, as personified in Rooney Mara.
Author J.M. Barrie describes Tiger Lily in his own temporally limited sensibilities as:
a princess in her own right. The most beautiful of dusky Dianas and the belle of the Piccaninnies, coquettish, cold and amorous by turns.
She’s old enough to be married, but digs on Peter and hates on Wendy & Tinker Bell (who have his attention). Incidentally, the character is depicted as an Indigenous person of the fictional “Pickaninny” tribe — a problematic term on its own! The 1953 animated movie turns her into a child for some reason — perhaps because Peter looks like a child. Since then the world has changed in its depiction of Indigenous Native Americans (see the sports team Washington Redskins/Commanders controversy) while some people choose not to change for their own reasons (i.e., White people in costumes depicting Indigenous Native Americans, Florida State University). As a result, almost every notable live-action depiction of Tiger Lily has been portrayed by an Indigenous person (or a sufficiently brown POC in a pinch) to avoid any cries of racism.
Not so for this particular production using the Peter Pan mythos, as Rooney Mara (a White actress of mostly Irish descent) was cast in the role usually reserved for Indigenous women. Unlike prior productions, the role of Tiger Lily was brought into greater prominence for some reason. She performed admirably, and was beautiful in her costume. The British accent was an interesting choice…but why was all of this done?
Perhaps the creative team wanted this to be SO different from previous iterations of the Peter Pan mythos that they wiped the slate clean — no Indigenous Native American references at all. Instead, they cobbled a “tribe” together with a pan-racial cast of people from the African continent, Indigenous people, Asian people, White people, multiracial people, and many others. Their tribe was dressed in fibers, feathers, fetishes, and fuzzy poms of all colors. Tiger Lily didn’t resemble her chieftain father Great Little Panther (Australian Aboriginal actor Jack Charles, Blackfellas, Bastardy). With no rhyme or reason to the tribe, anything and anyone could be or mean whatever and it all meant nothing unless someone told you.
I can only imagine it was meant to be revolutionary — the tribe perceived as a found family, maybe even a parallel to found families of disaffected LGBTQIA+ persons, and even something to aspire towards as a human race— but it did not happen that way.
Reviewers, viewers and commenters focused on the past: since Tiger Lily WAS designed as an Indigenous woman FROM THE BEGINNING, she should ALWAYS be played by an Indigenous woman. Rooney Mara might have seen the intent of the creative team, but once the public online backlash came down, Ms. Mara was not happy and felt the urge to say something. To her credit, Rooney Mara understood her position as a White person in comparison to the Indigenous role she was playing and all the history that came with it. She acknowledged it was wrong — the unresolved historical interactions, her playing the role — then expressed her regret for taking the role, and apologized.
I say all this because I want to believe in the best parts of people: I want there to be truth in the world. But what if I’m wrong? What if the producers tricked everyone making the film to producing a falsehood at the expense of the “othered”, ensuring and enforcing its production with social shunning and intimidation? If that’s what happened instead, then we’re all in deep shit.
CHOICE CUTS (spoilers ahead; you’ve been warned):
- The scenes of burning and bombed out London in the night, the revelation the nuns were making the lives of the orphans hard on purpose, and the child slavery angle are far too harsh. The whimsy and beauty of Neverland is a hair-pin course correction that makes a good showing, but fails.
- In the tribal village, they already HAVE a Pan named “Kwahu”— an Asian guy with martial arts skills. This version of the Pan is played by taekwondo champion Tae-joo Na (The Kick [2011]) and calls back to my dawg Rufio (Dante Basco in 1991’s Hook). I would watch a movie about this particular Pan as soon as they make one.
- The tribal village was mostly peaceful people of color and they made that massacre as bloody as possible…but I suppose it’s OK to do this because when they’re killed, they explode into colored chalk. In one scene the chief was shot in front of Tiger Lily, and the side of her face was covered in colored chalk. We don't see the aftermath of the invasion and massacre when our principal character escape, but it’s safe to say it looked like a Holi festival — which if the rainbow chalk was correctly translated to blood and gore would have netted the film an NC-17 rating.
- Amanda Seyfried was completely wasted in her underwritten role. Same for Cara Delavigne as ALL the mermaids — I didn't know it was her until I saw all of her eyebrows.
- THE CHOICE OF USING NIRVANA’S “SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT” WAS A BAD ONE
- Despite her part in the whitewashing controversy, Rooney Mara gets choice lines. When Hook says “I didn’t want to watch you die”, she lets him know her dedication to keeping the fairy village by saying “Then you should have closed your eyes.”
- Truly, Hugh Jackman is the best he is at what he does. And it’s more than playing Wolverine. I thought Blackbeard was an irredeemable asshole, and that’s thanks to Hugh Jackman’s acting skills.
- I need Garret Hedlund to scale it back on the “American Accent”, please. If not, please show how Captain Hook’s accent went from exaggerated American to stereotypical British in later works.
- The growing love story between Tiger Lily and the soon-to-be Captain Hook is out of nowhere and goes nowhere.
- When the movie goes out of its way to show Peter Pan and Captain Hook being friends at the end of the movie…but not show an inciting incident between them that would lead to their most notable relationship as enemies BEFORE the movie ends, you know you fucked up.
- This movie was executive produced by Steven Mnuchin — yes, the same U.S. Treasury Secretary that served a full term under American arch-traitor Donald J. Trump. Tie that into the possibility that the entire part about Rooney Mara playing an Indigenous-implied role, and there might be something to it.
