Captain Jack Syndrome

Last Halloween, I rode the hay wagon with a pirate. A full-grown man, dread locks and eyeliner—Captain Jack Sparrow, incarnate with Captain Morgan. He swilled rum in a goblet and had beer bottles stashed between the bales. He had to sit on the back of the wagon so he wouldn’t set the hay on fire with his cigar.

Johnny Depp has given us a new male psychosis: Captain Jack Syndrome. It’s what Peter Pan would have grown into if his nuts hadn’t been clipped off in a flying harness. Those early theatrical flying harnesses are the reason it’s tradition to put a woman in the role of Peter Pan. No matter what sex you send into the fly space of a stage, it’s going to come down in castrati range.

The play, PETER PAN, debuted in London in 1904, and introduced a new myth into modern culture: the boy who won’t grow up. Historians can argue, but I’m guessing childhood was a relatively new fad with the rise of the middle class. The new middle class economy of the Western World afforded families enough disposable income to allow offspring a luxury between infancy and the workhouse.

The Disney animated feature film was released in 1953. Then Disney released a live-action film in 2003 by the same title, and FINDING NEVERLAND in 2004, which explores the story behind the story, starring…Johnny Depp.

Who else has played this role? Robin Williams, as an amnesiatic Peter Pan in HOOK, who faces the formidable profile of Captain Dustin Hoffman, who later plays a the formidable theater manager in FINDING NEVERLAND—a wonderful continuance of overlapping metaphor of reality with the fiction, mimicking the tradition of the role of Captain Hook being played by the same actor who plays Father Darling. And Kevin Costner…yes, I said Kevin Costner, in WATERWORLD. Everybody thought WATERWORLD was an over-budgeted flop; they didn’t realize it was a futuristic remake of PETER PAN.

Peter Pan committed suicide in 1960. Peter Llewelyn Davies threw himself in front of a train, unable to reconcile himself as a person, and a fictional character. He failed to remain in Neverland. He landed.

Only in honesty do we have lies. Perhaps truth is a lack of memory.

Childhood is the formative period. But humans live a lot longer now. When will other stages of life be recognized as formative? What about middle age? If you have a survivorship of your fifties, shouldn’t that hold formative significance? I wonder if dementia and Alzheimer’s are symptoms of our recent past of more limited lifespans. Maybe over the next thousand years, mental disorders associated with aging will decline as we make the lifestyle shift into longevity. Or, maybe only in childhood is where we make memories; whereas, as adults, we forget how to make them, except around formal occasions like weddings and anniversaries. Legal events only.

Boys do grow up. Their bodies, despite their minds, take on mature form. Scientists have found the human male has closer genetic affinity with a chimpanzee than with a human female. Any woman could tell you that. Men make terrible house pets. If you want to live with someone who will obey, get a dog. Or how about a fish, if you’re seeking a quiet companion who will stay confined? Men are men. And sometimes they’re Captain Jack.