Why is Disney's Tinker Bell a Pixie?9/20/2021 3 Comments Pixy Gathon in "A Peep at the Pixies" Ever since Walt Disney'sPeter Pancame out in 1953, Tinker Bell has been a trademark mascot of the company, and an instantly familiar icon. The little pixie even got her own line of books and movies. However, in the original play and book by J. M. Barrie, she is simply a fairy. Disney changed her to a pixie and her fairy dust to pixie dust, permanently alteringthe language that people used for Tinker Bell. Why was this choice made? The Development of Disney's Tinker Bell In the 1953 animated film, the word "fairy" is never used. On the other hand,"pixie" and "fairy" are used interchangeably in Disney's other works, such as the 2002 sequelReturn to Neverlandand theDisney Fairiesspinoffs (which take place in Pixie Hollow).In one program, Walt Disney himself shook a "pixie bell" to summon Tinker Bell, but then remarked that "a little sprinkling of Tinker Bell's fairy dust can make you fly." (The Making of Peter Pan) Either way, the terminology of "pixie" was evidently in place from almost the beginning.In early discarded storyboards, the movie started with a brunette Tinker Bell visiting Mermaid Lagoon seeking Peter Pan. A mermaid remarks, "My, but aren’t we the jealous little pixie-wixie!" (Johnson95) Another storyboard has a "pixie" laughing at Nana the dog. Pixies in Folklore Pixies continued to appear in literature, for instance in Coleridge's poem "Songs of the Pixies."However, their local folklore became popular thanks to the English folklorist Anna Eliza Bray, starting with herA Description of the Part of Devonshire Bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy(1836). Although she recorded the traditions, she also shaped them for Victorian readers, particularly in her children's bookA Peep at the Pixies(1854).Bray standardized the spelling as “pixie,” rather than pigsie or piskey or the many other variants floating around. Another collector wrote in 1853 that not only could the Dartmoor pixies appear as Due to the new spotlight during the Victorian era,pixies began developing alongside fairies. They were depicted with the same pointy ears and sometimes wings. For instance,Mr. O'Malley was a stout, winged, troublesome pixie in Crockett Johnson's comic strip Barnaby, beginning in 1941. As they became popular, pixies were more often sharply separated from fairies. Ruth Tongue wrote inSomerset Folk Lore(1965): "The Pixies are a more prosaic type of creatures than the fairies... They are red-headed, with pointed ears, short faces and turned-up noses, often cross-eyed" (p. 113). She also stated that the pixies went to war with the fairies and drove them out of Somerset (112). Because this is Tongue, I'm side-eyeing it hard. I do think it bears noting that Tongue's pixies have the same red hair and pointed ears as Disney's Peter Pan, although make of that what you will. Pixies inPeter Pan Fairy illustration from The Sleepy King (1898), inspiration for Bluebell in Fairyland However, readers and commenters sometimes used the term to describe Peter Pan.In 1923, abook reviewof Daniel O'Connor's The Peter Pan Picture Book stated that the illustrations were "full of a pixie liveliness specially adapted to the spirit of the tale." (The Bookman, Volume 65) A poem in a 1937 issue of One writer, describing Professor William Lyon Phelps, called him "over-enthusiastic about ephemeral bits of cleverness, about all the pixie descendants of Peter Pan." (Essay Annual,1940) However, perhaps most relevant was the American actress Maude Adams. Sometime around 1909-1911, a young Walt and his brother Roy watched the play 'Peter Pan', starring Adams. In the original UK productions, Peter Pan wore a reddish tunic. Adams was the first to wear the feathered cap and the leafy green tunic with a “Peter Pan collar." The Peter Pan collar would become popular in women’s fashion. Illustrator Mabel Lucie Attwell, in 1921, drew Peter with a similar ensemble - the pointed cap looked a little like Adams', a little like a helmet, a little like the pointed acorn caps often given to fairies in illustrations. And of course, Disney's Peter Pan design was directly influenced by Maude Adams' look. Adams’ feathered cap may have been a “pixie hat,” a name given to a wide variety of small pointed hats popular from around the 1930s through 1960s. They were mainly worn by women and girls. Although the hat may not have had that name when Adams first wore it, the term would have been familiar at least by the 1940s. And one writer wrote in 1938 that Adams had “a pixie quality to her personality that made her ‘Peter Pan’ believable and understandable.” It’s possible that the word “pixie,” applied to Adams’ Peter Pan, could have influenced how Disney described Tink. However, it's intriguing that the term "pixie" was first used for either Peter Pan the story or Peter Pan the character -notfor Tinker Bell. Disney may have liked the sound of "pixie." Or he may have liked that it implied a smallness and a mischievous, childlike nature, in contrast to the more mature and graceful Blue Fairy. Look at those early-1900s references to liveliness and laughing. There are also some pixie associations that seem very fitting for Tinker Bell: they do housework and she is a tinker, they lead people astray and she glows like a will-o'-the-wisp. But again, it's important to remember that all of this is because pixieis a dialect term, a synonym, for fairy.They were not originally a separate species, as Ruth Tongue would have it. All the same things that associate Tinker Bell with pixies also associate her with fairies in general.
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Text copyright © Writing in Margins, All Rights Reserved 3 Comments Liam 10/10/2021 06:14:17 pm I always heard that pixie legends were descended from mythologized descriptions of the Picts of Scotland. Is that false? Reply Writing in Margins 10/10/2021 07:49:38 pm That's one of the theories, but I'm skeptical. Although the Picts were mythologized in Scotland, there's not much evidence to connect them to pixies. The distance from Scotland to Cornwall with its very localized pixie tradition also makes this seem like a stretch. I recommend Gillian Edwards' book "Hobgoblin and Sweet Puck: Fairy Names and Natures." Reply thinkerbellHater8 3/27/2023 01:35:19 pm thank you for the inspo. Takin much credit. LOVING THIS!!! very insightful and prett y academic too. I'm obsesssssssssed with your take on tinky Reply | AboutResearching folktales and fairies, with a focus on common tale types. The Thumbling Project is a collection of different versions of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina from around the world. RSS Feed ArchivesJanuary 2024 CategoriesAll |
