“Don´t grow up, it´s a trap” : Den androgyne protagonisten Peter Pan

Sammanfattning

The aim of this study was to examine how the protagonist Peter Pan was portrayed based on gender stereotypes in the adaptation from 2003. Furthermore, the purpose was to study if children may be affected by these stereotypes. The research questions are: How is the protagonist Peter Pan portrayal in a stereotypical way? How can children be affected by the eventual stereotypes? Peter Pan is a fictive character created by author J.M Barrie. He was first created for the book “The Little White Bird” released in 1902. The story contains several characters, for instance Wendy, John and Michael Darling, Tinkerbell, and the antagonist of the story: Captain Hook. The method that was used was a qualitative content analysis of the movie Peter Pan via the streaming site Viaplay. Seven key scenes and six scenes have been chosen to discuss whether Peter is portrayed in a stereotypical way or not. The approach to complete this study was through semiotics and five different units to analyze the scenes. These were body language, dialog, choice of words, costume, and environment. Information was gathered from reliable sources of articles, websites, and literature. There were two question formulations that were answered in this study. Finally, the analysis was discussed to determine whether Peter is a masculine, feminine or androgynous character. To conclude, Peter mostly is a masculine character with feminine features, therefore an androgynous character. Children may indeed be affected by the stereotypes that is applied on Peter in the adaptation, due to television´s big impact on its spectators.