What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary?
Sendak: I would tell them to go to hell. That’s a question I will not tolerate.
Sendak sounds off on overly protective parents and other matters in a Newsweek interview. He also gives us his take on the MGM film Wizard of Oz and points out the irony of the phrase “There’s no place like home.” You could say that about almost any place–there’s no place like it.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216997/page/1
I’ve always had a private theory that when she gets home and she’s in bed, and Frank Morgan [the Wizard], at the window, says something like, “Is she all right?” And her uncle makes it clear that they might lose her. It goes by very quickly, but then she tries to tell them her adventure, she tries to tell them what it was like when she was in Oz, and her aunt says, “It’s all right, Dorothy, just lie down.” In truth, the grown-ups just don’t want to hear her death fantasy. They don’t want to think that Dorothy could be in so much trouble that she might not survive. And she lays back in bed and says, “There’s no place like home.” And there were people who were very critical of that—sentimental—but for me it was pure irony. There is no place like home. Where the hell else is she gonna go? It’s the opposite of sentimental—it’s the hard truth. Grown-ups are afraid for children. It’s not children who are afraid. That movie is unbelievably great.
Thanks to Claire Massey for sending the Newsweek interview my way.
Intriguing article. I agree with Sendak that it’s parents who are afraid.
Claire Massey is a great member of the fairy tale lovers community. She’s also a good writer. I am using one of her poems in Enchantedconversation.org, a new fairy tale blogazine I am editing.
Okay, maybe telling parents to go to Hell is a little much, but Sendak does have a point. The very parents who complained about the movie were readers of his books when they were little. So, what gives? Let this next generation of children enjoy Sendak’s work in print and on the screen.
There are movies rated “G” out there that are far worse than what I saw in the Sendak film.
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