Where the Big Shaggies Are

I showed Where the Wild Things Are to my class on Thursday night, and I am hesitant to write very much about it because the movie requires a pretty thorough analysis that I don't have the energy nor inclination to write in this hallowed format. My course is an investigation about children and literature, not children's literature, but children and the way they receive canonical literature. I am bookending the course with two films from 2009, both of which were "contested sites" of children's reception, Where the Wild Things Are and Coraline. I should admit up front that both are wonderfully provocative movies that take children seriously. I should also say that Fantastic Mr. Fox falls in this category. My own kids have not seen the former two, but they did watch Fantastic Mr. Fox, and they thought it fantastic, which relieved me to some degree. Seems like our culture, me included, is in the business of underestimating our children. I should explain that: many of my friends overestimate their children in some ways, insisting they read by the time they enter preschool or kindergarten for example, but underestimate their child's ability to absorb complicated human relationships and problematic ideas. They underestimate a child's ability to experience, essentially. So let me explain what Where the Wild Things Are is like so I can use it to make this argument.

On the first day of the course (Tuesday), students and I read the David Brooks column in the NY Times from that morning. It is about the necessity of learning the humanities, and it refers to something he calls "The Big Shaggy," which acts like a code word for what has traditionally been called the "soul." He discusses how looking into the big shaggy, which consistently defies comprehension, allows us to deal with it a little more honestly. I liked his basic argument, even though he tends to confirm outsiders' feelings about what the humanities is good for, and I happen to think there is a lot more to it. The article actually came up in a recent church interview with a member of the Stake Presidency. How about that?

The article naturally led into the film, which involves many Big Shaggies that occupy the moral consciousness of Max. What those Big Shaggies do is both within Max's child-like worldview (they destroy, they have fun, they hug, they create, they bicker, they tell stories, they believe stories) and beyond it (they have deep-seated anxieties, they don't understand things, they willingly hurt eachother, they consider eating him). But this introduction into the unkown world of the soul confounds and fascinates Max, exhilarating him and frightening him simultaneously, an effect that certainly moves through into the audience. The Big Shaggies defy conventional wisdom, common sense, and structurally coded behavior, yet they exist in a very real way, and their existence has major consequences.

My students observed several profound moments in the film, including moments in which levity turns to anger, joy to despair, as well as variations: anger to sorrow, sorrow to joy, rage to love. Towards the end of the film, Max hides in one of the Wild Things's belly, finds a raccoon inside, and sits with the dual sense of security and dread. The scene ends with Max, a slimy mess, being pulled out of the Wild Thing's mouth in a kind of rebirth. My students wanted to claim this as the turning point in the film, but I argued with them that the turning points are simply at every moment in which Max confronts the unknowns of his world. He is a child, after all, and turning points, epiphanies, new creations are the raw materials of his minute-to-minute existence. My own sense is that the movie captured that in ways that are insightful, powerful, often disturbing, and finally moving.

I honestly don't know what kids make of the film. I guess it depends on the age and so much more, but I get the sense that it is one of those films that doesn't allow itself to be just watched. Perhaps this is why so many of my friends have objected to it for their children. I am not going to quibble with them--the movie might be more intense than a child is prepared for--but that is also its strength.

The final scene of the movie has been noted for its subtle power, and my own response to that final scene is reassuring to me, a guy who often wonders if his own love is fit for fatherhood. Yet the final scene is a nod towards parents, a gesture on the part of the filmmakers that Where the Wild Things Are is relaying its concerns to them as well, and I am not sure the rest of the film functions that way, thankfully. The whole film, it seems to me, is an emotional topography of anxious adolescence, not the kind that looks outward and sees the sometimes disappointing world we have created for children but rather the kind that looks inward and sees the confounding meanings of having a human self. This, to me, is the right way to start a humanities class.