[wrp]

First, I'll say that I find this characterization of Weltman to be relevant to understanding his intended point.

Second, I'll say that Weltman seriously misunderstands children's literature. The point has been made by many famous children's writers that kids love comic gruesomeness. When J.M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan, Britain had just ended the Victorian era, when children's literature was serious, morally upright, and deadly dull. Peter Pan upended that and became a smash hit, possibly even bigger than Harry Potter has been.

[r9550684]

I think addressing child's inner world on its own terms was attempted by the victorians to begin with, they had the whole cult of child thing, lewis carol serenading a prepubescent girl. but I think j.m. barrie did it with gusto, recognizing the symbolic and the gruesome, like you said. the grab bag of sword fights, scalps, pirates is an old time-y equivalent of going "and then the transformer shot his laser at the dinosaur, and the whole thing EXPLODED!!!"

the deliberately constructed world is essential to the various actual points of the story. it strongly delineates peter pan's world of childhood imagination and whimsy, from the various intrusions into it: Wendy as a romantic partner and a mother figure, the various lost boys accidentally growing up, etc. this is not a complicated idea, and Jim hart and nick castle have a field day with it in their Hook adaptation. like the amazing food fight scene.

[bitwize]

Kinda like how Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a parody of Horatio Alger's moralizing novels. Tom is the opposite of an Alger hero: instead of succeeding through hard work of his own, he succeeds by manipulating others.