I think what’s going on with the beginning of the Disney Pinocchio is that Gepetto has achieved some sort of transcendental intellectual feat. That’s the point of all the clocks. He is a wise man who has built a working model of his entire world. Then Jiminy Cricket shows up, the Town Drunk, and yells “QUIET!”

And that’s when the Blue Fairy appears, and Gepetto realizes what he really wants.

To have a son, yes. But also, to be a boy again. To experience it all again, in the perfect working world, with himself as his own child.

Of course, then it all goes wrong.

It’s a pretty good story, now that I think about it.