Maurice Sendak, Spike Jonze and Where the Wild Things Are

Back in the good old days, when times were simpler, a man named Maurice Sendak wrote a story titled "Where The Wild Things Are." It was 1962. Wait. 1962? Things were simple? Vietnam? Student protests? Hippies? Drugs? Sex? Rock N Roll? What am I thinking? The 60's were turbulent times. Newspapers were full of dark content, and no one seemed happy. Change was coming fast and hard. People were frightened. Some were outraged. Yet Mr. Sendak tells a simple story for children. And the awards poured in. Through his stories, Mr. Sendak helped children face emotions like anger. He wrote in a rare style for children's fiction in the 60's, 70's and 80's that allowed them to express their emotions, but do so in a positive way with successful outcomes.

The main character, a little boy named Max, is acting wild. He chased his dog and yelled at his mother. Max, dressed in wolf pajamas, gets sent to his room with no supper as punishment. But he does not go to sleep. Max imagines a land of forest and vines until the whole room becomes another world. A boat appears and travels, "in and out of weeks and almost over a year to an island where the wild things are." Max, rather than being frightened looks the wild things in their big yellow eyes, and becomes the King. He dances and hangs from the trees with the monsters. They howl at the moon. They have an adventure. When Max has had enough he orders them to stop, and they all go to sleep. Soon Max is no longer angry. He misses his family. He wants to go home. He gets back on his boat and travels the way he came. He finds supper in his room, and it's still hot.

Sendak, like most creators, was influenced by current events and affected deeply by them. He faced his own fears in his storytelling. His experience in theater and film allowed him the opportunity to take his story to multiple mediums. He asked Spike Jonze to direct the movie version of "Where The Wild Things Are." It will be released in October 2009. Whether Hollywood stays close to the book remains to be seen. Rumor has it that the studio was so unhappy with the movie they almost re-shot the whole $75 million dollar project. But decided in the end to give Jonze more time and money to create a story that was acceptable to both of them. The IMDB site admits that they only stayed close to the book in the beginning.

"Where The Wild Things Are" was actually the first part of a trilogy. The second story "In The Night Kitchen" dealt with the Holocaust. The cartoon came out in 1970 embedded with propaganda more reminiscent of the 40's. The third story "Outside Over There," a beautiful picture book that was published in 1981, also dealt with a dark theme - a baby kidnapped by gnomes. Sendak admits to Roger Sutton in an interview in 2003 that the books were a trilogy, "Everything is in those three books. Over the longevity of a man's life and work you get a sense of where his mind is, where his heart is, where his humor is, where his dread is."

The parallels between life and fiction in Sendak's stories are intriguing. In the 1960's and early 1970's students ordered to stop protesting were sent to classrooms. They sat in protest. Students looked soldiers in the eye and put flowers in their guns. They faced them much like Max faced the wild things. Protestors gathered together at The National Monument, at Kent state, and Woodstock, ordering the President to stop the Vietnam War. The young people had enough of war. Unlike Max, not all the veterans returning home found the same kindness as a hot meal. In the end Sendak presents a picture of what could be, not what actually happened.

He writes following intuition rather than a concerted effort to make a statement. He is showing us how our history affects us. The cost of anger, war and disrespect as seen through the eyes of children. And offers a solution much the same way a child does. As Elizabeth Kennedy writes in her review of the book, "It's quite common for children to get angry and fantasize about what they would do if they ruled the world and then calm down and consider the consequences."

The movie trailer shows a little over 3 minutes of Max and his monsters having grand adventures in lush forests, underground caves and mountaintops. Juxtaposed in between are pictures of a little boy in school staring out the window, watching his parents and having a snowball fight. No parallels between Vietnam and Max were visible. Mr. Sendak's ability to hide historic parallels in his stories by showing us similar controversies is epic. Maybe the answer for today's anxiety is a movie like this one. A simple story told with fantastic parallels to life through the eyes of a child. The big question is not whether we will like the movie. The question is whether Mr. Sendak and Mr. Jonze succeed in creating a movie as memorable as the book.

Resources:

"In The Night Kitchen", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VXf8UQRKwI

Sendak, Maurice; "Where The Wild Things Are" Harper Collins, 1963

"Maurice Sendak," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Sendak

Sutton, Roger, "An Interview with Maurice Sendak," The Horn Book, http://www.hbook.com/magazine/articles/2003/nov03_sendak_sutton.asp

Where the Wild Things Are, Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386117/

"Where The Wild Things Are," Warner Bros. official website, http://wherethewildthingsare.warnerbros.com/

"Where The Wild Things Are" Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_The_Wild_Things_Are