Textual Poaching - Remember your place

For this assignment, it took me a long time to come up with an idea. The aspects of myself that I felt were most impacted by media related to gender. I watched a lot of Disney movies as a child and found myself trying to act like the princesses I saw. After some research, I decided upon the 1953 version of Peter Pan. Here is the scene I chose:

I found this on google with the caption, "Yes Wendy, remember your place..." When I visited the site hosting the image, I found it was a blog pointing out the racism and sexism of the movie; however, there are still plenty of people in the world who share the sentiment that women should "remember their place." Once, on my mission, I was even told by someone on the street to let the men teach the gospel and get back to my kitchen. Thinking of all of the pressures put on women and the jokes that went around in high school about women going to make their man a sandwich, I decided to swap Peter and Wendy.

Wendy gets to be the adventurous one, sitting carelessly back while Peter is kneeling on the floor with a needle and thread, doing the work for Wendy. The chain around his neck represents the shame messages that women in society often receive, pressuring them to do certain things, dress a certain way, and be a certain person. I actually thought of the image of slave Leah as I drew the chain around his neck. In her skimpy slave outfit, the chain is found to be seductive and alluring, but around Peter it is quite disconcerting and dark. My position is that there should be no chain around either Wendy or Peter. Genders should be equal with freedom to be adventurous and the respect from others to be taken seriously.

I could use an assignment like this in my future theater classes to help teach my students about production concepts. An image and interpretation can change the way an entire show is directed. I want them to see that even plays that have been around for quite some time can be reformed with a new concept to say something new.