Gender Roles: Native American vs. Victorian Fairy Tales
A beautiful examination of gender roles by Tales of Faerie. She looks at the expectations of women in each culture and how their fairy tales reflect those roles.
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Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella Wows at CinemaCon.
Both Io9 (with hilarious commentary) and Once Upon a Blog reported on how well the new Cinderella footage was received at CinemaCon. Cate Blanchett blew everyone away as the evil stepmother, and Sophie McShera and Holliday Grainger (two amazing actresses whose work I adore) are the evil stepsisters. And there are CGI mice with vests. And Robb Stark as the prince. It seems to hit the Disney nostalgic story telling sweet spot. Once Upon a Blog has some nice details to add to the Io9 story, as well as amazing live action reference photos from the animated Cinderella.
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Maleficent Revelations
Once Upon a Blog revealed to us an amazing Japanese trailer for Maleficent that emphasized her sinister nature, not her misunderstood and wronged back story. I like it.
She also provided us with the transcript for an IMDB forum conversation with a Disney official assuaging fears and answering fans' questions about the movie, including "Will we see Maleficent as a dragon?" It has LOADS of spoilers, so beware. It also states that the writers drew inspiration from the ancient Welsh tale of Culhwch and Olwen and Spencer's The Faerie Queene.
Annnnd loads more clips of the film with additional information and never before seen footage and an interview with Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning. I am now really intrigued by her raven companion.
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(Fan made Poster)
I do not know how I feel about this. Once Upon a Blog reports that Anna, Elsa, and maybe Merida might be headed to Storybrooke. This feels like they are capitalizing on their popularity, rather than having any real reason for them there. These are also very clearly Disney invented characters, rather than something based on a fairy tale or old story. It is a big departure from the rules set out by the show. But then, OUAT has turned into a big fanfiction clusterfuck anyway, so why not throw in some characters to bring back viewers who have abandoned the show. (That is not to say that I hate OUAT. If I still did my episode reviews I would squee all over OutlawQueen. And Rumple is getting very interesting again.) Once Upon a Blog has some interesting ideas for if Merida joined the OUAT cast.
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Tales of Faerie Reviews Awesome Books
Tales of Faerie, a beacon if fairy tale scholarship, has reviewed a few prominent non-fiction books for us!
- The Witch Must Die: How Fairy Tales Shape Our Lives by Sheldon Cashdan: She disagrees with the author's claim that children see their own sins in the villains of the stories.
- Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale by Catherine Orenstein (one of my very favorite fairy tale analysis books). She follows up her review of this stellar book with an exploration of Little Red Riding Hood and Feminism
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Fairy Tales for Conflict Resolution
Tales of Faerie discovered this really amazing video about how drama is created in the work place through the fairy tale paradigm of Persecutor, Victim and Rescuer, and how we must break out of the scripted roles to get to the root of the problem. (She seems to have since taken down the post, but it was pretty cool!) [EDITED: Here it is! ]
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Fascinating interview by a fairy tale blogger with a fairy tale blogger all about philosophies of fairy tales why we do what we do.
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Bill Willingham, creator of Fables, is now doing a new comic series called Restoration about all the gods of the world being restored to power in the modern day. They create a massive pantheon; not good news for us mere mortals.
I felt the exact same way about adding Elsa, Anna, and Merida to Once Upon a Time...they're not even trying to reference anything other than Disney!
ReplyDeleteHmm, don't know why you had trouble getting to the Conflict Resolution post! Should be right here: http://talesoffaerie.blogspot.com/2014/04/using-fairy-tales-for-conflict.html
Kristin, thank you for the link! For some reason when it went to my RSS feed, every time I clicked on the link it couldn't find it, and it wasn't showing up when I scrolled through your blog. Thanks for providing it! I will add it to the post.
DeleteYou've been tagged for the "You Know You're a Fairy Tale Blogger When. . ." blog chain!
ReplyDeleteI'd rather they get quality movies from streaming channels instead of splurging on brand new ones, there are lots of great movies they don't have and a lot of terrible ones they do have.
ReplyDeleteI loved Maleficent! It was an absolutely stunning, beatiful movie.
ReplyDelete