Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Regional Features
- Part 1 Backtracks: Landscape and Identity
- Part 2 Silences in Paradise
- Part 3 Masculine Dramas of the Coast
- Chaper 5 The Sunshine Boys: Peter Pan and the Iron Man in the Coastal Cinema of Queensland
- Chaper 6 A Pacific Parable: Cave and Coastal Masculinities in Sanctum
- Part 4 Regional Backtracks
- Conclusion: On Location in Queensland
- Notes
- Filmography
- Works Cited
- Index
Chaper 5 - The Sunshine Boys: Peter Pan and the Iron Man in the Coastal Cinema of Queensland
from Part 3 - Masculine Dramas of the Coast
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 July 2017
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Regional Features
- Part 1 Backtracks: Landscape and Identity
- Part 2 Silences in Paradise
- Part 3 Masculine Dramas of the Coast
- Chaper 5 The Sunshine Boys: Peter Pan and the Iron Man in the Coastal Cinema of Queensland
- Chaper 6 A Pacific Parable: Cave and Coastal Masculinities in Sanctum
- Part 4 Regional Backtracks
- Conclusion: On Location in Queensland
- Notes
- Filmography
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, ‘To die will be an awfully big adventure.’ (From Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie 1996, 96)
Peter and Wendy is a novelisation of J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan. The excerpt (above) occurs when, in a confrontation with Captain Hook at Marooner's Rock in Mermaid Lagoon, Peter Pan is wounded and left alone on the rock as the tide rises (96). In the inner thrill of this rare moment of fear, Peter hears the oft-quoted words, ‘to die will be […] an adventure’. In dramatisations of the story, typically, Peter utters the words to signify his defiance of Hook and his indomitable optimism. Also overlooked in many adaptations of the Marooner's Rock episode is the Never Bird, who rescues Peter by desperately paddling her nest to him and abandoning her two eggs. Peter manages to raise a flag on the nest and shift the eggs to a pirate's hat so that he sails away and the eggs are saved (Barrie 1996, 100). The Never Bird rejoices and Peter crows and more adventures ensue. An unlikely bridge to the film industry in Queensland it might seem, yet Peter's survival is no more remarkable than the industry that now flourishes.
The story of Peter Pan, a touchstone myth of adult masculinity, is filtered in this chapter in accounts of two films made on Queensland's Gold Coast, namely The Coolangatta Gold (Auzin 1984) and Peter Pan (Hogan 2003). The fortunes of the productions and the quests of heroes, both, like Peter, near-naked boys, and of their mentors and enemies, are compared as fables of adventure and choice. The Coolangatta Gold dates from the shady years of industry start-up under the later disgraced state government led by Joh Bjelke-Petersen. The film was conceived with the aim to showcase the Gold Coast to the world. Peter Pan was produced in the sunshine years of the Gold Coast as a ‘local Hollywood’, as the term is coined (Goldsmith et al. 2010).
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- Information
- Finding Queensland in Australian CinemaPoetics and Screen Geographies, pp. 71 - 84Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2016