James and the Giant Peach, 1996 and The Wizard of Oz, 1939
It was suggested to me that a comparison of what kind of figure James becomes in the end of the book and the film would be a great addition to my previous post. However, when I tried to fit it into the post it just felt out of place. So, I pushed the idea aside, passed the fringe of my own thoughts and thought “this is a waste of my time. I’ll just leave you over here with my other forgotten, disregarded and worthless pile of -”
I am sure you get the point.
But then I looked at the idea from another view and thought that a post on the abject could be useful; that maybe I was wrong to delegate the idea to the abject of my mind in the first place; that maybe I should not be so narrow-minded to presume that something that did not fit my idea of “useful” was truly worthless.
I am sure you get the point.
Abjection, is the placing of somebody or something so far out of the public sphere that an actual physical reaction can be felt by just looking at, mentioning or acknowledging it. In our world, and the world of James and the Giant Peach insects are just that. We do not hesitate to kill spiders or even think that they are “up to something”.
James is abjected by his aunts to the same degree. They “beat him” (Dahl 9) and dehumanize him to a “worthless little nothing” in the film version. So then, as his adventure begins who does James befriend? A collection of abjected insects who all prove throughout the film and the book their worth. Each character helped in one way or another in getting James across the Atlantic Ocean safely. The ending is where the book and film differ. In my previous post I analyzed the film ending and found that James becomes more of a classic hero. He overcomes his own fears and conquers the creature that murdered his parents. The book takes James’ fate in a different direction. The end of the book is really a stressing of the importance of not only written story telling but of oral story telling as well.
…so many of them were always bugging him to tell and tell again the story of his adventures on the peach, he thought it would be nice if one day he sat down and wrote a book. So he did. And that is what you have just finished reading (Dahl 146).
In the end of the book James becomes a figure not of a classical heroic figure who has overcome some great evil but more over of a storyteller who regaled children with the story of how a handful of abjected creatures overcame a great obstacle. Moreover, the insects are accepted into the American culture. They got married, ran for office and became entrepreneurs and musicians. The book then, more than the film, becomes a story of not just James and the giant peach but James, the insects and the giant peach.
So what then is the opposite of the abject? I would say it is the privileged; people who, in one way or another, are seen as more superior than somebody else. In the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz”, the privileged is Glenda the Good Witch. She holds all the answers for Dorothy. However, her role is changed by her appearance in Munchkin Land. In the book, Dorothy is not met by Glenda until the end of her travels, who then reveals how to get home again. In the film, Glenda appears just after Dorothy arrives. This is problematic because Glenda has seen Dorothy with the shoes but chooses to not tell her that she could go home right there and then if she so wanted. Watch this scene here for the explanation of why Glenda does not tell Dorothy before sending her on a life threatening trip:
Glenda and Dorothy become the spokes models for living a “good ol’ American life”. That is, a life where all you need to succeed and be happy is a strong back because the U.S. of A. has everything you need right there in your own backyard … his is quite different then the lesson James learns on his travels (yes he is only happy in the United States, but that is not his home country). James learns that travel and experience helps to nourish the mind and open it up to new ideas (like befriending and rehumanizing the abject). Dorothy is taught that the world outside of your own home and land is a scary place where the only thing you can learn is that “there is no place like home” (Wizard).
AdaptingMediums 