I saved Peter Pan for the day before my birthday because it has always been my favorite. The first time I hear the "dun dun duuuuunh" I get chills each time. I honestly don't remember this being much in my conscientiousness as a kid. We didn't have it on a clamshell and I don't remember it on a boot leg VHS. I am not sure when I first saw it. My family never really road the ride at Disneyland until I was a pre-teen. Something clicked though when I was a teen and this became my favorite Disney movie. Often times, when i was an angsty emo teenager, I would watch this movie late on a Sunday night while washing my PE clothes for the next week or while finishing a shitty last minute essay on Frankenstein or Gatsby.
I love this story because for a long time I wanted to escape the ever closing world of being an adult. I grew up in a house that very much valued responsibility from a young age. We learned to budget when we were in early elementary school. We were taught about sin and debt and college and driving and marriage and all of the trappings of growing up really young and Peter Pan was my escape from the constant pressure a teen feels as they are becoming an adult. The same disk I have had for 15 years has always served as 77 minute escape from everything to a world where what you want manifests but maybe isn't quite as ideal as you though. It allows you to get away while shedding perspective on how what you have may not be ideal but maybe nothing is ideal.
Nowadays this movie is all about nostalgia. I know it so well but am mesmerized each time I see it picking up something new. Similar to Indiana Jones there is just something that always draws me into the movie it has a special place in my heart.
The movie gets a bad wrap for it's lack of political correctness and I have to agree that the treatment of Native Americans is inappropriate by today's standards. I get that but I can't buck something that has such a special place in my heart.
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