Sariah May
As I’ve stated in the project treatment, the relationship between a child and parent is one that I’ve been incredibly interested in. There is a sort of disillusionment that comes along with growing up that affects much of how you see the world, but a big change is in how you see your parents.
This is something I’ve found to be explored in many different pieces of media--much of it would not be considered children’s media, however, and instead would be classified under the category of media about childhood. There might be some overlap there, but for the most part, media that talks about childhood and examines the ins and outs of the coming of age narrative are not typically suited for children as it explores the loss of innocence--something we wish to preserve.
One particular example is the novel Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie--this book works to not only entertain and enlighten children readers, but to shed light on the important issues of grappling with love and passion and anger (adult emotions and issues). And, fortuitously, the relationships between parents and their children. Wendy Darling starts at a place that is a bit distanced from her father and all the children feel the supposed tyranny of their father in their lives. While my project is specifically about the distancing between children and parents, I think it’s important to note the different energies between the children of Peter Pan and their father right from the start. The children start at a place that is misunderstanding of where their father is coming from, and learn at the end of the film to see the value in him and how he loves. This is indicative of an adult man, J.M. Barrie, who was trying to reconcile his own mixed emotions about adulthood and what it means to truly leave behind imagination and childhood and to understand the things that have to change.
So using this as a guide, my project works to expose the same sorts of things about my own father. I have found that much of the things I’ve learned about him as I’ve gotten older have not only shown me that he is a wonderful and loving person, but also that he is a flawed and complicated human who makes mistakes and has problems.
I’ve really enjoyed the sort of naturalistic and home video style representations of family that we’ve watched in this class, and so the style of this project takes after the home videos we might watch nostalgically to remember our family members in the past. This allows us to see unobjectively snapshots of my father as he interacts with different members of my family and even me. This allows us to see what he is like in the present so it can not only be a reference point for us to look back on, but juxtaposes my own perspective of him now with the memory attached to it from my past. It sheds light on some sort of shift in my thought process or a similarity that might exist there in how I used to think about him and how I now think about him.
Overall, the way he is and acts I personally don’t think has changed much, but it’s been important for me to think about the way his influence has either shifted or changed over time and the way he’s impacted the way I am and the way I think about the world. There needs to be some sort of understanding between him and me for me to be able to understand something important about the world and relationships between humans. Wendy must learn to accept her father and to learn about the different ways to love, and I must learn this as well.
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