MJ was out flying with Peter Pan above Neverland. It was the perfect time of day, the sun was warm against their backs, and the clouds were fluffy little puffs of aerated happiness for them to bounce on.
"This place is amazing!" MJ exclaimed, hopping from one cloud to the next.
"That it is!" Peter replied, tossing a cloud in her direction. She caught it and took a bite. It tasted like candy floss. Normally, MJ would be very grossed out, as candy floss is far from her favorite food, but here it made sense and was ultimately delicious, so she ate it.
"It's a utopia!" she further exclaimed.
"No it isn't," Peter said. "Utopias are perfect, this place isn't perfect." Peter was acting very knowledgeable, but MJ was very aware he didn't know what the word 'utopia' meant until about five minutes ago when MJ first mentioned it. He had also forgotten MJ's name at least six times since the beginning of this adventure. But he was very handsome and MJ had always had a crush on Peter, since she was a wee little MJ hearing Peter Pan stories from her mother.
MJ shook her head as she dived under a cloud to avoid another cloud-ball Peter threw her way.
"Perfect isn't everything about utopia. Utopias are nowhere places somewhere in time and space."
"But that's everywhere," Peter says. "To me, Frederick is like a nowhere place in time-space."
"Time and space," MJ corrected him. She tucked clouds on her feet and they looked like big, fluffy shoes.
"That's what I said," Peter said, huffily. "And besides, Neverland is so much better."
"That's what makes it a utopia," MJ said. "It's better than the society I live in is."
Peter flew under her cloud and gripped her hand, spinning her around. MJ giggled, her heart all twitterpated by this magical boy who would never grow old.
"Of course, any utopia could go bad," MJ said. "To someone who feels differently than you and I do."
"What does that mean?" Peter demanded.
"I mean, if someone thought that the bright sunlight and the big jungles were too bright or too scary, this place could easily become their dystopia."
Peter blinked at her. MJ was very aware this meant he did not understand what she meant by 'dystopia'. But it was true, she thought. What is good for one may not be good for others, and things could go very wrong very fast if things started to change. What if Peter decided that all the Lost Boys had to find mothers, or a new leader took over and wanted them to become someone else, someone they thought would be 'better'?
"This place is better," Peter said, mirroring her thoughts.
"Better is subjective," MJ replied.
Peter laughed. MJ was very aware this meant he did not understand what 'subjective' meant. All the same, he took her by the hands again and spun her around and around in the clouds, while the sunshine shone down on them and the warm, happy presently-a-utopia Neverland sat below them, waiting to be explored.
This was when MJ woke up. She sighed, stretched, and padded out of her bedroom to the kitchen. Her personal angel, who had presently taken the form of MJ's biggest celebrity crush, Benedict Cumberbatch, was already making breakfast.
He turned around and gasped in horror, and then threw the pot he was cooking with down to the floor.
"You hussy!" he cried. "You were dreaming about that boy again!"
MJ looked down in shame. The cloud-shoes were still on her feet.
Neverland and Utopia ("no place" in Greek) are very similar words, and both denote fictional locations with ideal conditions (utopias aren't always perfect, just optimal). In Neverland, that condition is of course that no one grows up. But that in and of itself is subjectively ideal. While some might want to retain childhood, or long to go back to it, for others it's a difficult, frightening time that they're glad to be rid of (one of the reasons I like the adaptations of Peter Pan that are not all happy-shiny, that are dark and threatening. I think they hold that dichotomy better). So, definitely an interesting approach to take with utopias: that they're not only "no place" because perfect or optimal conditions do not exist in real life, but because "perfect" and "optimal" do not truly exist in the Platonic sense since each is different from person to person.
ReplyDelete(Why yes I was a philosophy major, how could you tell? :) )