Pete’s Dragon & Evil Archetypes
[image error]A while back, I posited that traditional archetypes should be fair game for religious authors to tinker with, subvert, and even transform. Like vampires. In my article, The Good Vampire, one commenter expressed the misgivings of the evangelical community in general when she wrote:
“My biggest nit with reclaiming vampires is that traditionally, they have stood with witches, black dwarves, orcs, dragons, etc. Vampires as sympathetic figures is a 21st century twist. Its presence in children’s lit (and it’s BIG) means setting common morality on its head–screws knight vs. dragon for knight and dragon BFF. This leaves huge marks on kids’ ever-evolving moral education. Subtly and by implication only, they’re taught that ‘bad’ and ‘good’ have permanent quotation marks.”
If you know anything about evangelical readers, this opinion should not surprise you. Certain tropes must remain symbols for evil. Vampires are obviously one of them.
As are dragons.
According to the writer above, if we suddenly go making dragons “good,” then we go about “setting common morality on its head,” which in turn “leaves huge marks on kids’ ever-evolving moral education.”
This is one reason why the early praise for Pete’s Dragon among Christian reviewers has been… surprising. Christianity Today calls the film “an uplifting tearjerker, [which is] deserving of your box-office dollars.” Focus on the Family’s Plugged In gives it 4 and 1/2 out of 5 stars. Apparently, they did not get the memo that creating “good dragons” turns “common morality on its head.” Either that, or the views expressed by the commenter above are indeed waning.
So does that mean evangelical readers are now ready for good vampires, good Klingon, good goblin, or good ghost?
Part of discerning good from evil is separating stereotypes from actual actions or intent. Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, which flipped a common stereotype on its noodle. You see, to the people whom Jesus spoke, “Samaritan” meant one thing — bad guy. So obviously, part of His point was to challenge stereotypes and strip them of their inherent evil-ness. It’s worth asking, as I have elsewhere, whether or not the truth of the Good Samaritan can be retained while swapping out the stereotype. In this sense, the Good Samaritan might as well be a vehicle for flipping all kinds of images and models. Including, in a sense, dragons. After all, if the “good” part of the Good Samaritan is in his actions, rather than his reputation, then the most important part of “moral education” is not in simply rattling off a list of evil archetypes, but in discerning actions and intent. In other words, bad guys don’t always wear black hats and good guys don’t always wear white hats. Teaching children (or anyone) to look for “black hats” rather than “black hearts” is to ignore the nature of good and evil.
Which is why we need discernment rather than archetypal placeholders.
