"Where the Wild Things Are", a movie that came out today, reminded me that children need their imaginations to work through their real life issues. Imagination is about as complex as the human brain gets, yet as children it is the most natural thing, and therefore the best tool we have.
Max, the small boy who takes up the lead of the story, is a child who means well, but doesn't know how to control his emotions when things get frustrating for him. He takes out his anger in destruction rather than with words, and when he tries to talk he feels that no one listens to him. In order to deal with the problems he feels are occurring in his home, he flees into a world of imagination. In this world, the main players are strange looking beasts who live in a society fraught with its own problems. Max makes them believe that he has come to save them from their pain, and they all begin to live life as though there are no cares. However, when this attitude is taken things never really improve, but are instead shoved aside to be dealt with later. In his time with "The Wild Things," Max discovers that he is not strong enough to conquer so many problems, and that he needs help. This discovery leads to the decision to go home to his mother, who will be able to give him what he needs to move on from his hurt.
This movie made me remember so much about the simplicity of childhood thought. The human imagination has a tendency toward the ridiculous, and is riddled with non sequitur, and I was thrilled to see so many examples of this idea scattered throughout. Each oddity is dealt with in much the same way as any normal occurrence; that is to say nothing is questioned when it seems odd. The questions are directed at important issues which are universally understood and far more commonplace, which seems the most appropriate way to approach the inquisitive nature of a young boy. Young boys are experts at enforcing the laws of ridiculousness, but given the rulebook of real life, a slower process is taken to breaking down the stubborn barrier between reality and fiction.
Example: Give a boy a stick, and he may tell you it is a sword used to kill ghosts. Give the boy the same stick and tell him that he must use it to cook a hot dog over a fire so he will not go hungry. He is more likely to take the stick and wave it around in the fire to see what kind of shapes he can make with the smoke than to try cooking his hot dog. Then he may wonder later why he is hungry. The struggle he will face with feeling hungry may lead to frustration, then the angers brought by an empty belly, and eventually a parent to tell him that he should just cook his hot dog if he is so hungry. Simple right? Well, your simple is quite different from a child's simple. A child's simple is that the world should just work without having to do anything about it. Your simple is that if you try to add something to the world, it may work in your favor. All of this contrary to a child's simple, which seems incredibly complex from where we stand.
And here, at the end of my immediate thought process I am brought back to the first word of this entry. Escapism. This movie helped me to escape...but here I am afterward analyzing the hell out of it, and feeling compelled to take it much further. The older we get, the harder it is to stay out of reality, and that is considered normal and right. But I am often saddened by the knowledge that I am not what I once was, which in essence is a font of creativity. These days it is difficult to write a simple set of lyrics without struggling to see a world in poetry that is different from the room and the walls in front of me.
Lucky for us, Director Spike Jonze never grew up. Otherwise there never would have been such an amazingly powerful and incredibly accurate cinematic look into the dynamic world inside a child's mind.
