Writing for Children for the Child in You
Hey Disney, I understand why you want to make remakes of classics, why you want to take animated films and turn them into live action blockbusters. I see you wanting to attract the younger generation because our old-fashioned ways may not make their entertainment worthy cut. I see you wanting to put right some of the wrongs of the past, I get it, I see you going to extremes to make everyone feel included but… of course there was a but coming… why not write a new narrative.
Let me just get this Ariel discussion out of the way before I get into what I really want to say. So, just in case you missed it, the upcoming musical fantasy film The Little Mermaid features Halle Bailey in the role of Ariel. Half the world is upset she is black and the other half is praising the choice. As a friend said, if Sebastian can be Jamaican, why can’t Ariel be black? And is Jesus really blonde with blue eyes?
I leave these questions open. Ariel didn’t feature much in my childhood, Cinderella and Bell were more the gals for me and even then, I associated more with the Beast — being bullied and made to feel ugly will do that to you.
The film of my childhood was Pete’s Dragon. You know the original one in the good old 70s, featuring an animated dragon that would magically appear to Pete every time he needed him. I watched it over and over again, I still watch it sometimes now, so when Disney wanted to work its magic with this one in 2016, I couldn’t watch it. It didn’t show my Eliot, I wouldn’t see the tears of my Pete, my lighthouse wasn’t there. It had nothing to do with physical representation, Eliot is Green, he is a dragon, Pete is a boy, and I am none of the above. It had to do with Disney wanting to renew my memory, to adjust my childhood memories and, somehow, bring them into the real world — I think not Disney, I think not.
That Brazzle Dazzle feeling would be ruined, the Candle on the Water would be blown out, and Every Little Piece would fall apart for me — plus, as far as I could tell, this new version had no one singing. I had to protect my Pete’s Dragon the way Nora protected orphaned Pete from the Gogan family who said he was their property. It seemed as if my childhood would be ruined if I even glanced at the remake, and I had a pretty good childhood.
With my childhood still intact, Disney is still at it. For another little girl Ariel is the mythical creature she would run to when things weren’t going so well, for a little boy Aladdin is the boy who made him believe in wishes and being able to change his status is life. And the reason that now, as adults, we still love these characters is that even though we have changed, even as everything else around us changes and we now understand how unfair life can really be, we can always trust they will be there, always the same, always constant.
Don’t the children of today deserve their own original characters? Don’t they deserve characters who represent them in a new narrative?
As a writer I take this very much to heart. I write my stories for children based on what I believe children want and should know and I lean on my imagination. I write to surprise the child in me, to entertain her, to give her new characters to save away in the back of her mind and go to when times are tough. Perhaps that is what we all really need in this mad world where it seems we can only seek refuge in the imaginary.
