Geraldine McCaughrean’s Peter Pan in ScarletA couple of weeks ago, a reader of this blog wrote to me to ask if I’d read Geraldine McCaughrean’s book, Peter Pan in Scarlet, released on October 5 of 2006. It is the much celebrated sequel to J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan which started out in the early 1900s as a short story and then a play.
The original had stereotypical portrayals of American Indians. The Disney film brought those images to the big screen, and that same stereotypical Native imagery is present in the Julie Andrews film, too.
It is surprising (and not) to learn that Native stereotypes are in McCaughrean’s sequel.(Excerpted from Debbie Reese's
American Indians in Children's Literature, 1/4/07.)
For more on Neverland's Indians, see
Tiger Lily in Peter Pan: An Allegory of Anglo-Indian Relations.
The context for a stereotype is almost always "unreal" in some way. E.g., a movie, a sporting event, a TV commercial. But the stereotype sends the same message whether its context is real or unreal.
ReplyDeleteTo repeat myself, a stereotype sends the same message whether its context is real or unreal. If you think "stereotype" means "context" and "real" means "present," you're sadly mistaken.
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