It's a Hat, It's a Hat: The Little Prince

    Most of us hate being treated like a child. It makes us feel as though others see us as stupid and not capable of understanding things. The Little Prince, or, Le Petite Prince by Antione De Saint-Exupery, is a popular French story of a child that seems to have more sense than many grown ups. Many adaptions have been made, but the one we're looking at is the 1974 musical version of The Little Prince.

     Once upon a time, a certain pilot grew up with a negative opinion of grown-ups. When he was a boy, he wanted to be an artist. His first drawing was a picture of a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant. All the adults he showed the drawing to didn't realize what that's what is was. They all assumed it was a hat of some sort. All the grownups were the same, uniformly they'd exclaim: It's a hat, it's a hat, it's a hat. With that being the case, he gave up on his desire to draw and decided to fly instead. But while he's testing a plane one day, he crashes and becomes stranded in the Sahara Dessert. While trying to fix it, a little boy dressed as prince appears seemingly out of nowhere. This Little Prince is pretty strange to the pilot. For when he shows the Little Prince his drawing, the Little Prince knows exactly what it is: A boa constrictor that has swallowed an elephant! Will both the Little Prince and the pilot be able to return home where they belong?

       When asked where he's from, the Little Prince tells the pilot that he came to earth from a very small planet. In order to gain knowledge and understanding about life, he decides to life his own planet and visit others. He comes to meet different people, such as a king, a businessman who thinks he owns the stars, and a man who claims to be a historian. The similarity with them is that the Little Prince tries to understand these people only to be told, "You wouldn't understand, you're a child." The point of this is the fact is that we often don't understand people that aren't like ourselves and we sometimes find it difficult to explain ourselves to others, which makes us frustrated and say, "You wouldn't understand." It's especially easy to get frustrated with a child. From what we see in the film and from our own knowledge, children have many questions and aren't usually afraid to ask them due to their young age. From the opinions I've seen from other people, this concept points to the idea that in a sense that we all have our own little planet made from the main theme of our lives. That theme could be anything, from religion to a certain career to your own obsession with ABC's Once Upon A Time. 

     In the film, the Little Prince presumably encounters (judging by the things he says such as, "and while you're wandering through the Heavenly blue, if you should see the Lord come strolling in view, go up and say you bring him best wishes from his fallen old chum, a snake in the grass.")  Satan himself in the form of a snake.  When they first meet, Satan asks the Little Prince why he came to this, "sorry, sleazy, swamp," and says other negative things about our world. The Little Prince thinks he has no way to get back to his planet, so Satan offers to bite him, his form of a snake having venom. Because this film's atmosphere frowns upon grown ups, this segment of the film points out a good thing about adults: They are not as gullible as children. When the Little Prince tells the Pilot about this encounter, the pilot strongly tells the Little Prince not to let himself be poisoned, and that "that snake has poisoned you against the earth. He's been prejudiced against us since the world began." 

      As a whole, The Little Prince is a story made of the pros and cons of the both the child, and the adult world. It reminds us to be careful of evil (Satan) and also to not to let ourselves get too serious, even we are already all grown up. 

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