What is the point of Where the Wild Things Are?

The critics were puzzled and faintly irritated by Where the Wild Things Are. So, it seems, were the film's producers. This isn't, however, the fault of director Spike Jonze. He's done his best to provide clues for those who can't see what he's getting at.

This, in essence, is the way he tells it. People have been trying to make a movie out of Maurice Sendak's much-loved children's story since the early 1980s. Previous efforts have come to nothing, and this isn't too surprising. The picture-book contains barely 200 words. These put across the cheerful story of a boy who goes off to have adventures with monsters after getting cross, but returns home to find that his supper's still hot. Jonze felt that the big screen would require something more.

One night, when he was tossing and turning and puzzling over the problem, inspiration struck. He wouldn't make a children's film at all. Instead, he would use Sendak's story to convey an insight of his own. It would have less to do with children than with adults, and the crazy way in which they've started behaving. "It would be a story about emotions," he has said. "The way we relate to each other and imbue everything with our own emotional perspectives is insane."

Once you've clocked this (and perhaps Warner's executives never did), any puzzlement evaporates. Where the Wild Things Are turns out to be a thorough and perceptive critique of a world in which grownups are encouraged to behave like spoilt children, valuing emotion above thought and believing they enjoy the right to have their whims indulged however impracticable this may be.

Self-indulgence, self-destructiveness, self-delusion, jealousy and vanity loom far more starkly when attributed to zany monsters than they would if acted out by flesh-and-blood humans. Similarly, the stupidity, evasion, opacity and psychobabble with which such behaviour is every day justified take on an apothegmatic overtone. The wild things' doings aren't boring if you see them in this light. What Jonze and his co-writer Dave Eggers have managed to devise is an elaborately unfolding portrait of the folly of our age.

Some might say that if adults want to infantilise themselves they should be left to get on with it. Unfortunately, they face troubles that need intelligent collective attention. The insistence that reassuring fantasy must be favoured over harsh reality can make this difficult. So Jonze examines the problems involved in governing the soft-headed.

Once Max, the film's young hero, has been appointed king of the wild things, it's his job to resolve the social problems that their neuroses have engendered. They expect him to provide magically painless solutions, and to retain their favour he pretends that he will. When these fail to work, his baleful subjects turn against him and return to their old and foolish ways. Barack Obama recently told a White House audience that Where the Wild Things Are is one of his favourite books. If he gets to see the film version, it won't do much to cheer him up.

Children who go to see it may be encouraged to overcome their rage against life's disappointments as Max does, and begin to grow up. For kidult cinemagoers, the message isn't much different. They seem to have sensed that it might be worth hearing, in spite of the critics' efforts to put them off. People aged 18 and over accounted for 43% of the audience during the film's opening weekend in the US, while parents with children made up only 27%. As a kiddies' Christmas blockbuster, Where the Wild Things Are may fail to deliver, but it's still doing well enough. That US opening took it straight to No 1 at the box office, where it brought in $32m (£20m).

In the face of the economic horrors, intercommunal strife and environmental perils confronting us, we could do with less solipsistic emoting and more sensible reflection. Maybe Jonze's film will do its bit to help us all grow up.

PS: There's a free mince pie awaiting the first commenter to post that oh-so-devastating riposte, "Lighten up, it's only a movie." Please include a stamped addressed jiffy-bag with your claim.

Three Things that Where The Wild Things Are Teaches Us About Tantrums

Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak is so much more than an adventurous tale. Buried deep in its storyline are meaningful truths about how to think carefully about tantrums and big scary feelings. So here are three important messages in this beautifully sophisticated story.

But first, let’s remember the story

In the book little Max, dressed in his wolf-suit, is sent up to his room without supper for misbehaving. From there, Max sets sail to an island inhabited by the ferocious Wild Things, who name him king and share a wild rumpus with him. But then from far away across the world, Max smells good things to eat and longs for home where “someone loves him best of all.” For a full reading of this book click here.

So what does Where The Wild Things Are teach us about tantrums?

• We ALL have wild things in us!

In the story misbehaving Max is sent to his room in an absolute flap. He is seething with anger and beyond furious with his mom. In his imagination he meets the wild things who “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.” Now while this presents as a dream of sorts, all this “terribleness” is actually a reference to Max’s enormous feelings of hostility and rage he is feeling in those moments. These overwhelming feelings take him far away, over stormy seas and transport him into another dimension. This doesn’t feel too far from the experience of an inconsolable toddler (for example) whose wild tantrum possesses his body and mind and no one can soothe him. The truth is that angry feelings can feel wild and terrifying. Not because they’re bad, but because of how out of control they can feel when experienced, as if they could gobble you up if they get too big. But don’t worry there’s hope…

• We can survive our wild feelings

As the story goes, Max eventually tames the beasts “with a magic trick of staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once.” But this isn’t magic at all. Because what Max is really really doing is feeling his anger, riding out his “rumpus” thoughts, remembering what is good again and ultimately surviving it all.  It’s important to remember that the wild feelings themselves are not so terrible – they are just feelings after all. But it can feel pretty nasty to experience them. At the end of the story Max realises that he can have the wild feelings in all their glory, but that mom will still love him and all his big feelings no matter what! This understanding that mom loves ALL of him, is what helps him pull himself back together and ultimately re-centres him.

• It’s not just kids that feel wild … but adults too.

Psychoanalyst Joan Raphael-Leff, points out that this story acknowledges that when a child is in a crazed tantrum, they lose sight of all the good in that moment. What is often overlooked, she says, is the effect a child’s emotions has on the carers, and all the wild things they stir up within the grown-up. When a child screams at you, this is extremely triggering and anxiety levels rise in both parties. Either consciously or unconsciously it drums up our own “terrible roars” from childhood. This results in a confrontation of sorts where our wild things meet theirs, anxiety rises and once anger subsides, guilt takes over. So what causes some parents to lock horns and others to disengage, many to disengage and other to verbalise all the mixed feelings. There are many ways we as parents manage our kid’s tantrums. Raphael-Leff suggests this boils down to our own childhood experiences and how (once upon a time) our own big feelings were handled or mishandled. If your child’s tantrums feel too out of control, it’s important to go and talk it out with a trained psychotherapist to try and name these left-over feelings that may well be lurking in your own jungle. This will allow you the parent to separate from your child in their wildest moments, be more objective and allow the situation to simmer down.

The bottom line

I’m not sure we can master all our gnashing feelings, but I am sure that we can organize them better. The beauty of stories like these is that they put into words what feels abstract and overwhelming. When a child and their carer sit together and read stories about unspeakable things, something important happens between the two of them. So that at the in spite of all the terrible beasts that cause a ‘rumpus’ inside us, we can all lovingly find eachother again (like the “still hot” porridge)  and at the end of the day remember that someone still loves us “best of all”.

References:

Raphael-Leff, J: Introduction to Parent Infant Psychodynamics “On wild things within- An introduction to psychoanalytic thinking” (2004) Karnac Books

Sendak, M: Where the Wild Things Are (1984)

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