The Wild Things Are Inside Our Own Chests

The Wild Thing who wanted a King and the Boy pretending to be a Wolf, pretending to be a King

Family is hard.

—   KW

Where the Wild Things Are might catch some people off guard. What was believed to be a children’s book turned movie on the joys of imagination turns out to be more about divorce and loneliness than a ‘wild rumpus” of childhood fun. Of course these themes were hinted at in the book, yet it is in a bold move (or perhaps not so bold considering the trend) that Spike Jones elevates the themes of existential angst to the forefront in a way that, more than inviting us into an imaginary world to forget all our troubles, reminds us perhaps too clearly of our own childhoods and the weight of cosmic longing.

Somewhere early in the film as Max’s cried for attention amidst a world that is suddenly far too grown up for him, his mom’s would be boyfriend says what might be one of the most naive and insightful statement in the whole film. In the chaos, as Max bites his mom and then runs for the door, her boyfriend responds with something to the effect of; “he can’t treat you that.” And that is perhaps exactly the point. In a perfect imaginary world, where the sun isn’t going to die and Max’s father isn’t gone and his mom doesn’t have to hold a job, try to make a relationship work, and take care of a highly-imaginative son all at the same time the boyfriend is right; Max can’t treat his mom like that. But that is not the world Max lives in and though it does not make it right, this is the world that they find themselves, and, be it this world or any other, relationships are messy and all to often someone bites someone — if not flat out eats them.

In his escape, Max finds himself on the other side of the sea with the wild things. And they are indeed wild; running through the woods, throwing dirt clods, sleeping in piles, howling,  and building fortresses and fires, and unfortunately eating their kings and alienating their loved ones. Max becomes their King and he is expected to do what all kings are expected to do — fix things. But as Douglas eventually notes, Max is no king; he is just a boy, pretending to be a wolf, pretending to be a king. And that is what the story is about, pretending. Because the truth is that everyone is walking around pretending that the things that are wrong aren’t and that someone else can fix the problem.

Carol wants a king, but perhaps not because he knows what a king is, but rather because he doesn’t know what love is. He wants a king to make things right, because things being right should mean that KW likes him, or that he isn’t sad, or that they are started living life family. And Max can’t do those things. Max wants to be their king for the exact same reasons they want him to be their king — so that things can be right and so someone will like him, perhaps most of all himself. Carol discovers a king cannot fix his problems, and Max discovers that imagination cannot fix his loneliness, because no matter how big a fort they build, his mom does not have time to come and see it, and the wild things are not sleeping in one big pile. Max is just as powerless in his own imaginations as he is in the real world he is running away from.

In the end everyone wishes Max was a king. Wouldn’t it be great if his powers were able to set things right and fix everything that was broken in the world. The truth is though; the problem is not ‘out there’ as everyone might wish it to be. Max could not just fix the sadness because the sadness was in his soul, not just something separate from himself, out there in the world that got only came around every once in a while.

Max might have been the first king that they didn’t eat, yet that is more to their ability to finally see what they had been blinded too all along — that Max was no king (and neither were any of the other folks they had thought were their king) and more importantly, that it wasn’t a king that could fix what needed fixed. What was broken was their own hearts, their own selfishness. Carol was waiting for the perfect world to come where everything would be okay but he was unwilling to realize, until perhaps the end, that the perfect world was had not come and he had to stop being so angry waiting for it to come so he could learn to love the people around him, even if they didn’t always love him back.

In the end KW was right. Family is hard. As long as people are broken, relationships are broken too. What Carol, Max, and really all of us have to learn is that we can’t just run from hurt. Nobody gets healed but running, it is only in coming home, quietly walking through the door and creeping down the hallway afraid of what we will find that we have the opportunity to meet the ones we bit waiting there for us, with a hot plate of food and a piece of chocolate cake, just grateful we made it home safely.