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Hook with Jenn Book Haselswerdt: Deep Thoughts About Peter Pan's Perpetual Prepubescence in Pop Culture
Manage episode 501187880 series 3493147
"To die would be a grand adventure!"
Emily is delighted to welcome her dear childhood friend--and lifelong Peter Pan enthusiast--Jenn Book Haselswerdt to the podcast this week to discuss Steven Spielberg's 1991 film Hook. Although this fantasy film suffers from a lack of editing as well as some lazy 90s pop culture stereotypes regarding fatphobia and distracted dads, Jenn explains how magical it felt to see this love letter to Peter Pan in the theater as a child.
While the storytelling gives Peter a number of strange opportunities for romance (which is partially a vestige of J.M. Barrie's personal antipathy to romance and his period-typical view of women as jealous), Jenn finds some delightful feminism in the film, especially in the form of Peter's daughter Maggie. The 7-year-old girl never backs down, even in the face of Dustin Hoffman's campy turn as the evil Captain Hook.
Jenn and the Guy sisters also talk about the deeper meaning the Neverland myth, considering the fact that Peter Pan was based on Barrie's deceased brother who never had a chance to grow up. Together, they wonder why pop culture has embraced the concept of a boy who never grows up and what it means to be a child who is never and adult, as in the original story, and an adult who was never a child, as Robin Williams' Peter Banning is at the beginning of this film.
Your adventures aren't over! To listen...to listen to this episode would be an awfully big adventure!
You can find Jenn on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/sunbonnet_sue_is_tired/
We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our family as the Guy Girls.
We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com
We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find.
Chapters
1. Introduction to Hook and Peter Pan (00:00:00)
2. Hook Synopsis: Peter Banning's Journey (00:10:56)
3. The 90s Dad and Forgotten Childhood (00:21:13)
4. Neverland as Death, Wonder, and Game (00:29:18)
5. Peter Pan's Relationships and Forgetting (00:38:12)
6. Hook as a Love Letter to Peter Pan (00:48:45)
7. Episode Wrap-up and Final Thoughts (00:53:27)
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