ARTICLES: Fairy Tale Class, Unsatisfying Princes, Dancing in Red Hot Shoes, a Fairy Tale Conference, and Fairy Tale Fiction Initiatives!

There has been a lot of juicy fairy tale analysis and scholarship while I was gone! Here are a few meaty tidbits to sink your teeth into.

by Casey Neal

USF offers it's First MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) in Fairy Tales
At last, you don't need a bagillion dollars to take a college course in fairy tales!  The course is called "Fairy Tales: Origins and Evolution of Princess Stories" will be taught by professor Kevin Yee. Unfortunately, it already began, and we all missed it, but hopefully it bodes well for things to come. You can follow some of the work on Once Upon a Blog. InkGypsy took the course and is providing summaries and thoughts on each of the weeks! Here is her summery of Week 1 - Cinderella (Part 1) which has some really beautiful and insightful reflections from her classmates. Part 2 examine's Disney's Cinderella and it's contribution to the genre. Look for more soon!

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The Ending of Cocteau's La Belle et La Bete, and Disney's Beauty and the Beast is Supposed to be Disappointing. 
Once Upon a Blog discovered that, apparently, Cocteau meant for the transformation of the Beast into the prince to be disappointing in his highly influential La Belle et La Bete. He stated in an essay, "My aim would be to make the Beast so human, so sympathetic, so superior to men, that his transformation into Prince Charming would come as a terrible blow to Beauty, condemning her to a humdrum marriage and a future that I summed up in that last sentence of all fairy tales: ‘And they had many children.’” This is emphasized by the fact that the same actor played the transformed beast and the unwanted suitor at the beginning of the film.

Glen Keane, supervising animator for Disney's Beauty and the Beast, who referred to Cocteau's film for inspiration, agreed. "I never referred to him as anything but Beast,’ he answered. ‘To me he’s always been Beast. I always just believed that Belle called him Beast from the moment that he transformed… so whatever his name was before is not important because he was called Beast after that.’ Keane also went on to add, ‘matter of fact, when he changed into the prince, I knew everybody was going to be disappointed by that, because they fall in love with the beast’"

Truth.

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by Ian Beck

The Historical Red Hot Shoes in which Snow White Made her Evil Stepmother Dance

Once Upon a Blog, yet again, great scholar that she is, has researched the history of Snow White's cruel ending, where the evil stepmother is forced to dance in red hot shoes. Check out the link to see the historical torture device that may have inspired her fate. (I always think of this fantastic monologue when I read about the red hot shoes.)

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American Folklore Society Conference Focuses on Fairy Tales

This year's American Folklore Society Conference is focusing on Fairy Tales! It is in Rhode Island from Oct 16-19th if you want to go. Really interesting topics. Click the link to find out more on SurLaLune.

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There are also two really exciting initiatives by my fellow fairy tale bloggers. First, Diamonds and Toads has launched Timeless Tales magazine! Each issue focuses on retelling of a specific fairy tale. She also includes a recording of the tale so you can listen to it. 

Something to Read for the Train has launched a similar, but more personal, initiative, A Grimm Project, where she is using each of the 242 Grimm tales as a prompt for her own creative writing! 

BOOK REVIEW: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

Scarlet

by Marissa Meyer

“A sickening howl stopped her, sucking the air out of her lungs. 

The night's chatter silenced, even the loitering city rats pausing to listen.

Scarlet had heard wild wolves before, prowling the countryside in search of easy prey on the farms.

But never had a wolf's howl send a chill down her spine like that.” 

This second book in the Lunar Chronicles follows a delivery girl named Scarlet whose grandmother has been missing for two weeks. The police have given up, but she tenaciously searches for clues. When she meets a young, handsome, ambiguously affiliated street fighter, Wolf, who might hold the key to her grandmother's disappearance, they embark on a journey that might save her grandmother, or doom Scarlet to the same fate. In the mean time, Cinder (protagonist of the last book), is breaking out of prison with the charming, but rather self absorbed Captain Thorne. And poor Prince Kai is left to deal with the evil Lunar Queen alone. 

To see what I thought of it, check out my other blog, Palimpsest! (HINT: I thought it was awesome.)

TV: CW is doing an Alice in Wonderland series

(I hope it is at least as good as Malice In Wonderland)

So this is happening....

Here is an excellent commentary by our favorite blog, Io9:

"The CW is adding yet another fairy tale series to their list of new shows. First, it was the Beauty and the Beast reboot, then a Sleepy Hollow series, and now an Alice in Wonderland show tragically named Wunderland.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that director McG (who has a long track record with successful television — movies, not so much) is partnering up with The Playboy Club's Chad Hodge to produce and write this Alice-inspired series.

"The drama will center on a young female detective in present-day Los Angeles who discovers another world that exists under the surface of this ultra-modern city."

Remember, "female detective" is television code for "a woman who punches people." The pilot will be an hour long. We're not sure what to think about this yet, as the best fairy TV series ever was The 10th Kingdom which has yet to be topped. If this pilot gets made, it will be the fourth fairy tale show on television (and the second fairy tale show on CW starring a lady cop)."

Aaaand double points for thinking The 10th Kingdom is the best fairy tale series of all time, because it is the truth! If you don't know 10th Kingdom, watch it now. You will be glad you did.

Anyways, color me not really excited about Wunderland. Beauty and the Beast, the other fairy tale show on the CW, has missed the whole Beast part. It looks so lackluster that I have stopped reading any news for it. It's gotten to the point that rather than being excited about the new fairy tales movies and tv shows coming out, I am begging them to prove to me that they can do a good one. However, I am doing an OUAT re-watch, which I will report on later, but it is all because, despite my better judgement, I am pretty excited about the goings on in Storybrook this year.

Article: "Passive and Dumb" Heroines?

The New York Post recently printed an article about how Snow White went from being "passive and dumb" in the older interpretations to a girl-power icon in the three recent incarnations of the fairest of them all (Full Article).

I always kind of cringe at the "passive and dumb" interpretation. It is always assumed that Snow White was duped three times by the same woman in disguise, selling a comb, a corset, and then an apple. Fool me once, am I right? No one ever thinks of mitigating factors, like perhaps she was left alone in the house all day, and not allowed to talk to anyone. The other times she is surrounded by men. Maybe she desperately needed someone to talk to. Speculation, yes. Or, she was SEVEN YEARS OLD, and we should cut her some slack. I think perhaps my favorite interpretation comes from the mini-series 10th Kingdom (which I will post separately on later). Snow White tells an incredibly faithful re-telling of her story to Virginia, the heroine, and adds a little bit of the "why" at the end in a way that tugs at my heart every time.

Embedding has been disabled, so here is the link: The 10th Kingdom: Virginia Meets Snow White.

Everyone always rails about the anti-feminist message of fairy tales: Snow White was docile, stupid and domestic, and then looked good dead. Sleeping Beauty was conned into pricking her finger and then was asleep for most of the story. Cinderella cried when she was abused, and had her fairy godmother do everything for her. Very rarely do we talk about the good qualities of these characters, or allow them to have normal human frailties.

Snow White was thrown out of her home at a young age, hunted, managed to convince the huntsman not to kill her, and had to survive in the forest until she found the dwarves. She had to live with the shadow of "going to be murdered" while cooking and cleaning, and being left alone all day.  (And btw, cooking and cleaning, not a bad thing. People always thing those are the sign of the evil patriarchy, but I quite enjoy doing them.) Snow White earned her keep. She learned the value of work, after living her life as a princess. Each time the evil queen came, Snow White grew more clever with how to handle strangers. At first, she doesn't suspect the woman with the ribbons. The woman with the comb, she refuses to let in to the house at first. Finally, she watches the woman with the apples eat a bite of the apple first before she takes a bit. Seems pretty shrewd for a 7 year old.

Sleeping Beauty was naturally curious. She explored the castle, and when confronted with an activity that she did not know, she asked to be taught. A great quality, in my opinion. She just suffered from her parents'mistakes.

Cinderella is the most remarkable of all. She was horribly abused by her stepmother and stepsisters, and yet managed to be true to her kind and good self. An amazing feat. When you are confronted by evil every day, it is hard not to turn evil and bitter to protect yourself. And crying is not a weakness. It is a natural human reaction in the face of despair. When given the opportunity to change her stars, she doesn't hesitate, and grasps it with both hands.

While I love the more active heroines, like the girls from East of the Sun, West of the Moon, Donkeyskin, or Wild Swans, I think we shouldn't discount the more traditional princesses from being positive role models just because they don't swing a sword, or go off adventuring.