It is a truth universally acknowledged that watching a movie is no substitute for reading its source novel. Having survived high school and college without being asked to read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, I have no grounds to compare this adaptation to the novel itself. I’ll just be discussing it on its own terms. Even though it’s not in the genre of films about school that I’ve been writing about recently, there is still a strong connection in this short series to how school systems socialize their students.
A common complaint about schooling is that teachers ask questions and students answer them, which seems counterintuitive. Students need to learn, so they should be the ones asking the questions. In the absence of a school setting, what kinds of questions do children have about their world? For the characters in Jack Thorne’s Lord of the Flies, important questions to consider seem to be “What does your daddy do?” “Can my dad beat up your dad?” “You’re British, aren’t you?” and “What do the social ties bound at school mean for friendships and factions outside of the school day?” Only one of these questions is posed in the duration of the series, but the answers to all of them are contested verbally and physically by the children on the island.
For background purposes, it will be helpful to know that this story is set on a unsettled island in the tropics. The characters are a couple two three dozen school-aged boys. None seems to be over the age of 12, and all are from a public school whose plane has crashed, leaving no adult survivors.
Well, the classification of their school is never stated, and the meaning of public school in England is the opposite of what a U.S. resident might have in mind; across the pond, a public school is one open to anyone in the public who can afford its tuition. It’s not a school that is open to all members of the public in a given area. Over time, what England calls public school is more like what the U.S. calls private or prep school. But I digress.
A key factor in the socialization of these children is that a few of them are in their school’s choir. The choristers band together immediately upon survival of the crash. Their faction wields enormous power over the others due to its domineering and manipulative leader, Jack. Simon is part of the choir, but is much less respected than Jack because he faints occasionally and is not as ruthlessly interested in pursuing power. The principal quartet of boys is rounded out by Piggy (aka Nicky) and Ralph. Piggy is a chubby orphan who has asthma and wears glasses. Ralph is kind and easygoing and so has the quality of being silently respected as a leader by the entire group. With that kind of dramatis personae, you can see where things will be going from a mile away. Still, how we get there is the enjoyable part of participating in the unfolding of a narrative.
Maybe enjoyable is the wrong word here. This short series is such a downer. Just because you know where things will end up, it doesn’t take the impact out of seeing the ways they get there. The producers and cinematographers must have known the spiral into violence would be too much to take in scene after scene, so they make use of beautiful shots of the island in between the action. Some of the shots have a deep red tint to them that seems otherworldly. It could just be the hues cast by the sunset and sunrise (or even the many fires the boys light on the island) that give off these colors that seem to be blood-soaked. God, even when we are supposed to feel a reprieve from the tension and violence, we are still seeing red. The shots that are less affected by color filters are breathtaking. I could watch hours of the long overhead shots of the island or even the dolly-tracked, eye-level shots of the island’s trees.
The conflicts that erupt between those beautiful moments are where the boys attempt to address the questions they won’t learn the answers to in school. Or at least, not directly as part of the curriculum. Aside from their names, one of the first things we learn about the characters is what their dads do for a living. Piggy’s dad is dead, Jack’s does a secretive job he can’t even talk about, and Simon’s and Ralph’s fathers are in the armed services. The mystery of what Jack’s dad actually does (is he a spy?) helps him assume the mantle of leader of the pack. In the absence of finding some other kind of pecking order, the boys are comfortable with the implicit suggestion that what each of their dads does reflects on their own status in the group. Which dad is the toughest or most respected or most qualified is a proxy for their status as boys.
This message of top-down designation of status is reinforced in the final episode when naval officers rescue the boys. Ralph identifies himself as the group’s chief. The lead officer asks him how the boys are doing and how many of them remain. He’s shocked when Ralph tells him he’s not sure how many boys were originally on the island. “You’re British aren’t you?” is his cutting retort. The idea that the nationality of the boys would engender some kind of order or structure is an unquestioned assumption. It’s simply unacceptable to not have instilled a hierarchy. Through tears, Ralph tells the officer that they’d tried to create a social structure, but it fell apart quickly. There is only the smallest hint of sympathy in the naval staffer’s eyes upon learning this information.
For Jack and for Simon, whose dads are not present in their lives, even on school breaks, the absence of a loving parent seems to have manifested in different ways. Jack tries his best to “man up” as far as he’s concerned. Simon is less sure that might makes right but also can’t seem to find the courage to challenge Jack. We learn via flashback that Ralph’s dad has tried to share his own love of the hunt with him, but it went sideways. Piggy’s parents are deceased, so he’s raised by his aunt Jeanie and the many other adults that come into her candy shop.
What Thorne’s interpretation of Golding’s text may be saying is that young male adolescents’ responses to authoritarian or neglectful parenting will vary. We are meant to sympathize with Piggy, not just because of his derogatory nickname but because of his disabling conditions and his status as an orphan. He is also the most reasonable of the four main boys of the group. Jack’s attitude and actions are repulsive, as is his inability to appear weak in front of others. He forces Simon, Ralph, and Piggy to each “take back” truthful things they’ve said to challenge him in private. He and his crew of choristers survive their time on the island, but at the cost of losing their humanity. Jack may be able to imagine that his father will be impressed with his son’s killer instinct, but the lessons of Simon, Ralph, and Piggy will give him plenty of reason to doubt his received wisdom in the years ahead.
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