When you’re a kid, you don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about the historical basis for the narratives in the fantasy films you grew to love. It’s all about the anthropomorphic Robin Hood figures, talking parrots and genies, flying beds and walking suits of armor, an astronomically large collection of Dalmatians, or a magical cartoon dragon who roasts apples for his child companion. That describes much of my early experiences with Pete’s Dragon (1977), which saw Disney attempting to recreate the live-action-and-cartoon musical magic some thirteen years after Mary Poppins. It’s a film about a little boy and his magical dragon, about a small New England seaside town, about larger-than-life hillbilly villains, and about familiar Disney things like the power of family (even found family) and even the “value” of children.
Value would normally have an obvious meaning here. Something like “hey, we should listen to kids because what they have to say matters,” for example. And Disney certainly has that here. Pete (Sean Marshall), the lively redheaded boy who is taken in by lighthouse keepers Nora (Helen Reddy) and Lampie (Mickey Rooney) gets his fair share of moments to remind the adults around him that what he thinks does matter – though other adults, such as the strict and draconian schoolteacher, Miss Taylor (Jane Kean), find little of value in the words of children. Yet, it’s the other value that I found particularly shocking upon rewatching the film for this feature.
The central premise of Pete’s Dragon involves the titular character escaping from the Gogans, a group of cruel, extremely dirty farm folk who are led by matriarch Lena and who have purchased Pete for use on their farm – there’s even a song about it (“Bill of Sale”). Helping him on his journey is a dragon named Elliott (voiced by Charlie Callas). Pursued mercilessly by the Gogans, Pete makes his way to the fictional town of Passamaquoddy (though there is a bay and an indigenous group with that name) and is taken in by Lampie – the town drunk and lighthouse keeper – and his daughter, Nora – whose fiancé, Paul, was lost at sea and is presumed dead. Meanwhile, traveling charlatan Dr. Terminus (Jim Dale) and his alcoholic assistant Hoagy (Red Buttons) roll into town and once more woo the townsfolk with their nonsense health remedies. When they discover that Elliott is actually real, they hatch a plot to capture him and convert him into a lucrative (and finally legitimate) sea of health remedies. Intermixed are a series of utterly delightful songs, which you can listen to on Spotify (and you should listen to them because they are, as I said, utterly delightful). Most folks also don’t know that it is based on a short story by Seton I. Miller and S.S. Field (“Pete’s Dragon and the U.S.A. (Forever After)”) which Disney optioned in 1957.
Coming back to this film as an adult has considerably changed my perspective on Pete’s Dragon. Before, it was a light hearted and fun movie involving dragon shenanigans and some of my favorite things in the world: the ocean, roasting things on fire, and fun musical numbers. Now, well, it’s still light hearted to a degree, but the darkness lingering in the background is such that it’s a wonder the movie didn’t terrify me. Dr. Terminus and Hoagy, for example, sing an entire song about brutally murdering, chopping, and grinding up Elliott (“Every Little Piece”) – but with smiles! There’s such glee in their performance that one becomes infected with it. And how can you really dislike Hoagy here? Red Buttons is positively delightful in the role. Sure, he may be following in Dr. Terminus’ footsteps, tricking unsuspecting townsfolk out of their hard earned money in exchange for nonsense and, with a bit of coercion, partaking in a particularly gruesome crime (if one could call it that), but he sings those lines – “can you hear that jingle jangle song (oh yeah)” – and you’re sucked in. To be fair, dragon cartilage apparently keeps you thin, so…
Of course, this is Disney. Literally every Disney film meant for children has featured terrible things, from the horrific murder of parents to threats to murder to threatsof skinning people (or animals) alive, and so on. Disney is a twisted company. Effective, but twisted. Yet, little did I know that in watching Pete’s Dragon as an adult, I’d be sent on a journey into the history of child trafficking in the U.S. Given that one of the two major conflicts in this story involves the Gogans trying to acquire their property and the film is set sometime in the early 1900s (many decades before its release), I should have picked up on it. Here, Disney’s motive is one of a moral message about the treatment of children as property, both in the film’s more passive examinations of the early school system (Miss Taylor) and in the more aggressive kidnapping antics of the early U.S. adoption (and related) systems (the Gogans). It quite reflects the ethics of the 1970s, which saw a rise in criticism of the longstanding rules about how we view children. In 1977, for example, Ingraham v. Wright upheld the constitutionality of corporal punishment in schools, which still remains effectively legal in a number of U.S. states even if most of us don’t realize it. By the release of Pete’s Dragon, four states had outlawed corporal punishment in public schools (and New Jersey added on bans in private schools). Today, we might look back at Ingraham v. Wright and wonder how you could uphold as legal a punishment which sent a child to the hospital after he was restrained and beaten with a paddle. In 1977, it was controversial, sure, but the tide hadn’t quite flipped over. Arguably, it hasn’t flipped over today either. It’s still legal in nineteen states and practiced in fifteen, albeit mostly in private schools.
If that weren’t horrifying enough, Pete’s Dragon’s explicit reference to the history of child trafficking in the U.S. prior to effective bans is arguably more grim and equally as moralistic. The Gogans – who, again, literally sing a cheerful song about the bill of sale for Pete – are presented here as ignorant, dirty, cruel, and deceitful rural folk whose obsession with Pete amounts almost entirely to getting their money’s worth out of him in the form of labor on their farm. That “bill of sale” is their contract, one which has considerable historical precedence. While adoption was established in U.S. law in 1851, it wasn’t immediately popular due in part to prevailing (eugenics-adjacent) beliefs about those children being genetically tainted due to the circumstances of their availability – often from poor and immigrant families. In 1854, several institutions put together the Orphan Train Movement, which basically gathered up orphans and shipped them around the country, often to rural Midwest communities where they were meant to provide an extra set of hands and be treated effectively as a true-born child of the families who took them in. Practically speaking, a good chunk of them basically became slave labor, albeit with a technical end point (adulthood). Much of this changed in the wake of Georgia Tann’s work with the Tennessee Children’s Home Society (or, rather, illegally to the side of it). Tann probably helped popularize adoption as a legitimate practice and apparently disagreed strongly with the genetic arguments, but she also spent nearly three decades (1924-1950) abducting and selling children (up to 5,000) to various families selected mostly for their wealth. Tann was, if anything, the prototype of Lena Gogan, a manipulative person hell bent on using legal pressure to get what she wanted.
All of this, is of course, set in the background for Disney’s moral argument against both corporal punishment and child trafficking in the form found in the U.S. up to the moment of the film. The Gogan’s are set up as deceitful monsters who are happy to lie and abuse “the system” to take ownership over a child they clearly only value for a monetary-labor relationship, we’re at no point meant to sympathize with them even if we find their antics – and propensity for getting thrown into the mud and other gross places – amusing. Indeed, the Gogan family is quite funny here in a slapstick sort of way. Miss Taylor, meanwhile, is far too strict, far too cruel, and far too distrusting, abusing Pete after accusing him of things he couldn’t possibly have done right up until the entire town learns that Elliott is, in fact, real and operates as a kind of protector to Pete (a trickster protector). Meanwhile, Dr. Terminus is all smoke and mirrors, a well-dressed, clean, quick-witted, and manipulative man whose acts are both illegal and gruesome.
All of these figures give the film a cast of villains who are all the butt of jokes and analogues to real-world things from yesteryear. And each serves to remind us that there is good and evil, that systems are not substitutes for morality, and that being a child in a world where what is legal and what is right are in constant flux is a dangerous game. The way to beat that game is, predictably, through family, found or otherwise. Pete’s family is a war between an imposed family and a family he chooses for himself, and it is this latter which brings him safety and security in a way that Elliott ultimately cannot. And I’ll just note that Lampie and Nora (and, eventually, Paul, who turns out to have survived) are not a bad family to have at all. Intensely loving, willing to provide stability and lessons while still giving a child space to be themselves and be heard, and happy to break out into delightful song during chores – these are all things that serve as a perfect contrast to the Gogans and as a perfect embodiment of Disney’s message. Every child won’t necessarily have their very own Elliott to protect them, but every child deserves a family that loves them. A “bill of sale” doesn’t matter. Love and stability matters.
It’s no wonder my grandmother was so fond of this movie. While many complain about “message fiction” these days (ridiculously, of course), here is a movie with a clear message – like all Disney movies, really – that both attacks the past while offering us an alternative that is absolutely better. And sure, there is a jolly giant green dragon who sings and can turn invisible. And sure, there are so many delightfully memorable songs in this film with great dance numbers attached. And sure, the film is just so much fun to watch even as an adult. But it’s that deep message, the history, that stuff embedded in there that you might not notice as a kid that really gets me. Pete’s Dragon is a film you can rewatch precisely because you’ll get something new out of it every time. It’s also a film you can rewatch precisely because it’s just so much fun.
