#tinkerbelle

We all know about the film's infamous portrayal of Native Americans. Racist and outright dehumanizing. That remains an atrocity. (Also there's a place called Cannibal Cove, which I'm very glad the movie avoids showing)

But I will always be amazed at how people forget what a stone-cold bitch Tinkerbelle is, all the way until the last 15 minutes of the movie.

She's not just jealous and pouty. She's petulant, vain, full-on spiteful and cruel. Her first act upon reaching Neverland is to try and get Wendy killed.

She spends the whole film in an envious rage and will stop at nothing to get rid of these new kids, who she fuckin HATES.

I love it.

Sure she has a change of heart at the end and takes a literal bomb to the face to save Peter, but we don't really address the fact that she still spent this entire adventure trying to get these kids killed. There isn't really a scene of her making peace with THEM.

Now there's LOTS of movies and shows starring Tink that have come out over the years, yet they portray an entirely different person. I don't know, but I don't buy that Tinkerbelle changed from spiteful ball of rage to everyone's cutesy friend overnight. This isn't a NEW observation of course, many have noticed.

While it wouldn't be the moneymaking extravaganza that Disney wants, I would LOVE to have seen Tinkerbelle continue to be kind of a piece of shit. Lessons from the movie learned or not, I believe she would never outgrow her EXTREMELY short fuse.

Genevieve Waite with Tinkerbelle, Paul Morrissey, at Jed Johnson at the Factory in New York, 1969.

In the story The Velveteen Rabbit, there is a theme of love making someone/something “real”… I’m wondering if there is something to that in Peter Pan as well. Loving and being able to accept love from others changes you…but Peter can’t change and so can never be “real.” Wendy loves him but he can’t accept that. He can never be touched, never quite be “real,” always stuck in the in-between. The boys who manage to come back to the real world do so because they can accept the idea of a mother’s love. Arguably, Hook doesn’t really know how to give or accept love at all and so he vanishes entirely from the storyline, with even Peter (who isn’t quite “real” himself) eventually forgetting him. His memory will die with die with Wendy. Tink is a bit tricky because her love for Peter is what kills her. His love for her sort of brings her back, but he can’t do it alone—not without support from real people in the audience…and eventually, in the end, she fades away after her death as well with Peter forgetting her. She never quite reaches “real” status either.