Disney’s Pinocchio: A Modern Myth of Order and Chaos
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The following is from a draft of Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.
The skilled and lovable creator-father Geppetto creates Pinocchio, who begins life as a puppet, a marionette—someone who is controlled, entirely, by invisible agents, working behind the scenes. Thus, Pinocchio is represented as an enculturated agent, possessed by patterns of action and interpretation instilled in him by his culture—for better (in the case of his father and creator) and worse (in the case of the Coachmen and his ilk). Geppetto wishes for something more than mere conformity and obedience for his creation, however, and nurtures a secret wish that his wooden-headed and too-easily controlled son might develop some genuine autonomy.
This is, of course, the aim of every father of quality. Because Geppetto’s aim as agent of culture or order is true, it finds alignment with and calls forth the hidden, maternal forces of nature, in the form of the beautiful Blue Fairy, the positive element of the chaotic feminine (chaotic, as she interferes with what would otherwise be a purely cultural process). She frees Pinocchio from his strings, and enables him to choose between the various paths to maturity. This is no different than to say that the proper paternal care allows for the emergence, manifestation and triumph of the proper maternal care, and that culture and nature play together to produce a fully-fledged individual.
The Disney film reveals an interesting additional and very sophisticated metaphysics at this point. The modern scientific view of the individual regards him or her as the sum of only two forces: culture (society) or nature (biology). Those are the forces most easily viewed as deterministic, and the deterministic story rules, in the scientific world. But there is consciousness to contend with, the wild card in the pack, and nothing is easily comprehended in those more straightforward terms. There is culture. There is nature. But there is consciousness, and its elaboration—self-consciousness—and these may well play an important role in human destiny, despite the difficulty in reducing them to simply deterministic process.
It is for this reason that Pinocchio himself, in concert with the conscience Jiminy Cricket (the still, small voice, as he describes himself), whom the Blue Fairy provides, is somewhat self-determining, even at the very beginnings of his journey towards individuality. He is something in his own right, and something upon whom the existence and continuation of his father and mother also paradoxically depend. The father (Geppetto; culture, predictability, order) and the mother (the Blue Fairy; chaos, novelty, nature) give rise to the son; but the son also revivifies and is in some sense, therefore, the progenitor of this own father...
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Podcast Re-release: Joseph and the Coat of Many Colours (season 3, episode 15)
- "One of the things that these old stories are trying to express and figure out is, ‘how is it that you should act?’ which is the same as, ‘what constitutes the ideal?’ Those are the same question. The hint, here, with Joseph, is that you should wear a coat of many colours, which means that you should be able to go have a drink in the pub with the guys who are drywalling your house, and you should be able to have a sophisticated conversation with someone who’s more educated in an abstract way. Maybe you should be equally comfortable in both situations, right? One of the indications that there’s more to you is that you can be put more places and function properly. That would be a good thing to aim at." Listen to the current release.
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