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!
We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.
We both have super-serious personas in our "day jobs." No, really. Emily is a Finance writer who used to be a classroom teacher. Tracie writes and consults on social justice and mindfulness and works as a copywriter and project manager for non-profits. If you really need to see the bona fides, please visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com
For our work together, what you need to know is that Tracie is older (3 years), Emily is funnier (by at least 3 percent), and we're both hella smart, often over-literal, and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction and murder mysteries, good storytelling with liberal amounts of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find there.
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video version, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
Comments