So I was watching The Wizard of Oz last night to help me sleep and then again this morning to keep me awake, and I was reminded of something funny.

Apparently a t.v. guide type thing printed a synopsis of the movie that sounded something like this (paraphrasing but pretty close)

"A young woman commits a homicide and then teams up with three others to kill again."

Hmm. It's not...untrue. Of course, they leave out a few rather important details, but still not completely untrue. Obviously they were trying to bring in another demographic.

I was also reminded of another funny Wizard of Oz related memory. I don't remember where I was or who I had this conversation with but this did happen and this is how it went down:

We're watching the movie and all is well, and then as the boys are storming the castle, my companion says.

"You know, I never noticed it when I was little but this movie is like totally inconsistent."

And I said, "What do you mean?"

"Well, look at them. The Scarecrow isn't supposed to have any brains but he's obviously the smartest of the bunch and the Tin Man doesn't have a heart, but he's crying all the time. And the Lion's a coward but he still goes forward with the mission and all. It doesn't make any sense."

And then we're both quiet and we're both watching and then I say.

"Well...that's kind of the point."

"What?"

"That's kind of the point of the movie. What they all thought they needed, they already had."

And then my companion was still for a minute and then just started to laugh, which of course, made me laugh too.

Funny stuff. Still my favorite movie. Still want those shoes.

location: the yellow brick road music: Zing! Went the Strings of my Heart tags: procrastination

Well apparently they are making a big-screen, all-star remake of The Women, our fall drama my sophomore year of high school. And I do believe that they completely cut the character I played. I guess all around tolerance for goody-goody (I prefer madonna-like) ingenues married to money-grubbing assholes has dwindled since the 1930's. Peggy was kind of sap but I had fun playing her and I can't help but feel slighted that SHE WAS COMPLETELY CUT.

Ah well, them's the breaks.

location: pretending to play bridge on Park Ave. music: An Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini tags: mount nostalgia

I realized today that I would like to gut all of my stories.

Okay, not ALL of them. But the big ones--The Harp Theory, Five, The Ratcatcher, the one I'm working on now. I would like to crack them open again and take another look. Pull out new things. I think, starting today, I'm going to try and take a different approach to writing itself. I used to work on a story with the main goal being: get it done and out as soon as possible. I worked and worked and worked and then i would grow frustrated when months had passed and the story still wasn't "done". But I see now that getting a story "done" is not the point of writing a story. The point is to write a good story, no matter how long it takes.

George Saunders, a brilliant author and a great guy, gave a reading on campus yesterday and he talked about spending two or three years on a story. I heard this and was terrified and I couldn't imagine working on the same story for that long. How do you ever finish anything? I worked on The Harp Theory for just under one year, and by the end, I thought I was about to go crazy. But now I see how much sense it makes. You have to give the story room to grow. You have to get to know the characters. You have to play.

This isn't an excuse to use the process as a means of putting off finishing because you're afraid to finish. But I see now that writing is not the endless struggle towards FINISHING or GETTING PUBLISHED. It's about experimenting with this world you're creating. Figuring it out, getting it down no matter how long it takes. It's something that should be something savored and playful, not rushed just for the sake of being done. Finishing eventually (and hopefully getting published though that has still managed to ellude me) is the ultimate pay-off but getting there is part of the experience and I think writers forget that a lot. I know I do.

Speaking of which, I wrote something I liked the other day completely unexpectedly. I love when that happens. Our exercise for this week involved making five boxes on two sheets of notebook paper and thinking of chapter titles for each box. Then we had to write a chapter for each title but we could only use the space the box provided, no more.

It was exciting, especially since the story I ended up writing was completely REALISTIC. I told my classmates this yesterday in class and they had trouble believing me. But I assured them: completely realistic. It's about three generations of a family. The closest it comes to being fantastic is that each chapter includes a reference to A Wrinkle in Time. I don't know why. I got the book out of the library the other day and have been rereading my favorite parts. This isn't to say that I have two characters talking and then one of them just coughs "TESSERACT" into their hand appropos of nothing. They're incredibly under the radar. But they're there. And they make me happy. I guess I can't stand to make anything COMPLETELY realistic.

Speaking of appropos of nothing, I watched Jumanji today for the first time in years (courtesy of YouTube) and I realized what a dark, frightening, downright depressing movie it is. Parents are disposed of like paper plates! Everything that came out of the game seemed to come out in attack mode. Nothing was nice in that jungle. Even the monkeys were destructive pissants. And I love how when you're little, nothing seems particularly odd about a guy who hunts people. It's just another part of the story. It's only when you're grown up that you realize it's twisted (especially since Freud is mixed in there oh-so-subtly). Where does Freud belong more than the world of children's lit/movies? Also I can't believe I never noticed when I actually WAS a kid, but apparently only children could hear the drums. What's more I'm pretty sure only unhappy children could hear the drums (orphans and kids whose fathers are emotionally unavailable, people-hunters in disguise for example). So basically the philosophy of this game is: "hey kid, I know your life sucks so play this awesome game and unleash jungle terrors that will ALL try to kill you in various ways! Have fun!"

Fucking sadistic childhood movie. It, Pinocchio, and Dumbo should start a Facebook group. I do envy the idea and the writing though. It's my kind of fantasy.

And I got scared at all the same parts. It made me feel good and little-kiddish again.

Now...to bed! Or at least...to Cheerios!

location: "In the jungle you must wait until the dice read 5 or 8" mood: writerly music: The King and I tags: words

According to IMDB, the movie Clerks was inspired (at least in part) by Dante's Inferno. This is why the main character's name is Dante. Which I guess makes Randal Virgil. And Caitlin Bree=Beatrice.


Apart from that, I don't really see it but it's an amusing factoid. I wonder if Ann is aware of this.

tags: down the rabbit hole

Spring Break is over. I am back at school. I am lonely. And of course, I didn't do as much work as I should have. I didn't laze about--I finished two books for school--but that was not enough. It never is. I had such plans for productiveness but alas. Those plans they went a-crumbling.

And there is no point this week where I can say "ahh after Wednesday, it will be fine" or "after Thursday I can relax" because I will be BUSY until next Tuesday. Papers, papers, papers.

I am happy to be back though. I am happy to see my friends. And soon (very soon I hope) it will be warm enough to sit out on the lawn and read. Ahhh, warmth ye elusive but wondrous work of God. I can't wait.

location: not my basement music: the silence of the inner-sanctum tags: work

Just to follow up from my gener role examination, Peter and the Wolf won the Oscar for Best Animated Short. I was excited.

So I was reading the list of Oscar nominees the other day, and I saw that among the movies nominated for Best Animated Short there was a new version of Peter and the Wolf. Of course, that set the fairy tale siren that is irreversably attached to the back of my head ringing like Pavlov's Bell and soon I was scouring the Internet to see if I could find it. I know plenty of people will tell me that Peter and the Wolf isn't technically a fairy tale, it is "a piece of music that tells a definite story" (thank you, Fantasia) but I say boo to them. Peter and the Wolf has a kid as the good guy, a wolf as a bad guy and it takes place in a forest. Where I live, that there's a fairy tale.

Now before I go any farther, I'm going to warn you that I give away many important plot points of Peter and the Wolf and various versions of Little Red Riding Hood (for that IS where I'm going), so if you do not wish to have the ending spoiled stop reading. Also if you don't want to read the insane ramblings about gender that Sarah Lawrence has left festering in my mind, stop reading.

So I'm watching this wonderful short movie (courtesy of YouTube) and of course, being me, I can't look at a wolf for any extended period of time without being reminded of Little Red Riding Hood. And this really gets the juices flowing because pretty soon I'm thinking "Hmm, this story and that story both have wolves." And then before I can stop myself, I'm comparing and contrasting like a lit teacher is standing over me with a ruler. This was aided by the fact that this Peter (a very intense kid who had a way with animals and possibly a serious death wish) was clothed in a red jacket and at one point, seemingly appropos of nothing, his grandfather shoved a basket in his hands.

Can you see the neon lightbulbs veritably exploding over my head?

Little Red and Peter are both kids who have to deal with wolves. Red's wolf manipulates and coerces her into being late, eats her grandmother, and manages to fool her simply by dressing up in her grandmother's clothes before eating her too. Peter's wolf eats his pet duck. In retaliation, Peter stages an elaborate operation involving a bird and a noose to catch the wolf and prevent him from preying on any other unsuspecting animals. In essence, Peter risks his life to avenge a duck. Red can't even tell her grandmother's been eaten, let alone lift a hand to save her or herself. She all but sprinkles salt on the top of her head. I never-never, never, never, never, NEVER-thought before that Little Red as it is commonly known was insulting to girls. I don't even really now. It is what it is and I love it for what it is, but I think its interesting that the most famous story about a girl and a wolf has her as a victim while the most famous story about a boy and a wolf has him as a hero.

However, it is really unfair (I guess) to compare a story that's only been around for just under a century to something that grew and changed and lived in oral tradition for hundreds of years. Also complcating things is that i think most people agree that Peter's wolf is just a wolf while Red's wolf has been interpreted as everything from a sexual predator to the entire beastly male gender to Satan. But that just makes things more interesting. A wolf to a girl is a sexual being. What is he to a boy? Just a wolf?

More than anything else, it makes me wish that the older, more scandalous versions of Little Red were more well-known. Like the one where the wolf is a thinly veiled substitute for your average horn-dog and Red is a young woman ripe for the taking, who doesn't believe for a moment that the wolf is her grandmother and performs a sort of striptease for her "captor" before tricking him into letting her out of the house and making a clean break.

But then you also have revisionist theory. Roald Dahl had her pull out a gun and shoot him in the head. Angela Carter had her sleep with him. Go figure.

In conclusion: girls, boys, and wolves=Holy Cow! Look what Erin does when she's supposed to be reading! Things are different between them, but maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe there's a bigger picture-storytellingwise-that needs to be examined before making any judgements.

Seriously though, if you get a chance to see the new Peter and the Wolf, please do. It's amazing and it makes me remember just how cool stop-motion animation is.

location: Lycanthrops Anonymous music: Can't Take My Eyes Off of You tags: bump (in the night)

I was reading a story by George MacDonald called Cross Purposes for fairy tales class the other day. It is about two children kidnapped and taken away to Fairy Land (a stuck up rich girl and a heartbreakingly chivalrous working class boy) who band together to try and escape from their captors. It's a beautiful story and now a favorite but the boy in it, Richard sparked an interesting realization. In much of the literature/cinema of my childhood (speaking both emotionally and chronologically) there is a particular character who makes an appearance again and again and again.

The character of the young boy who assists the heroine in her adventures whatever they may be. Though she is usually the main character, he makes an appearance early on, they form a friendship (with strong hints of future romance) and carry on adventuring from there. He's usually a little bit older than she is or at least more worldly and experienced. He is also usually working-class while she is upper-class. Granted, to group all these boys under one umbrella is probably to do an injustice to all of them. They're all different characters in different stories but they have A LOT in common. I can easily see them getting together for drinks and swapping stories--though never getting too ungentlemanly in their storytelling because another trait these boys share is that they all adore their respective heroines.

In case, I'm making no sense, here's a list of my findings (no particular order)

Richard from Cross Purposes
Dickon from The Secret Garden
Peter from Heidi
Calvin O'Keefe from A Wrinkle in Time
Spillar from the Borrowers books
Curdie from The Princess and the Goblin
Simon from The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Pazu from Castle in the Sky
Bert from Mary Poppins (doesn't really count because they're adults but I always get the feeling when I watch that movie that they go waaaaay back)

I'm still debating about whether or not Peter Pan counts as he is a full-on magical being.

Written out, it seems like there should be more but of course, that's all I can remember now. Still, I find this pattern very interesting.

location: unfortunately nowhere near any of these young men mood: dreamy music: Hansel and Gretel tags: bump (in the night)

I haven't done one of these in awhile! Thanks Mainy!

Seven little facts about me:

1. I'm an amateur folklorist and an amateur librarian.

2. Whenever I drink, I will envitably start muttering the theatrical release dates of Disney animated movies in chronolgical order. I use this as a means of measuring how drunk I am.

3. I haven't done any acting since my senior year of high school and I miss it.

4. I have a thing for guys who wear glasses.

5. For practically my entire life, my hair was somewhere between my elbows and just past my shoulders. Last November, I cut it so that it stops halfway down my neck. It hasn't been this short since it was growing in the first time when I was one or two and the first night after I did it, I cried myself to sleep a la Jo March. Now I can't remember how I managed when it was long.

6. I'm considering learning German, if for no other reason than so I can be able to read the Grimms fairy tales in their original language.

7. I think there could be an astonishing array of life on Mars.

Naturally, I am not sure how to tag so I'm going to break a rule and just ask seven friends to do this if they so desire. Tanks!

music: Hansel und Gretel tags: tags

Something funny happened in Fairy Tales the other day.

We were talking about this English fairy tale, "Mr. Miacca" in which the titular character is a horrible ogre-like man who kidnaps and eats any kids who pass his house. One of my classmates said she had difficulty taking it seriously because she kept thinking of Mr. Miyagi. A bunch of us giggled.

Susan, my professor said, "I have no idea who that is. Somebody explain."

"From The Karate Kid" one of us replied.

Susan smiled, "You see, I was too old for that when it came out."

And just as I was thinking it, another of my classmates said, "Oh no, you're never too old for The Karate Kid."

Which, naturally, made all of us laugh.

I went to see my first opera last week! My lovely fairy tale professor took all of us to Hansel and Gretel at the Met! I was so excited. And when I say excited, I mean I found out we were going in September and I've been telling everybody about it ever since. I got all dressed up and went off to Lincoln Center.

The Met blew me away with the sheer beauty and size of it. We were sitting in the back of the orchestra and so I was under this little awning and couldn't see up to the ceiling. I sat down and read my program until it started, but at intermission I went to look in the pit and was amazed by just how big the place was. There were five balconies above us and the top of the stage stretched the whole way up. I shudder to think of how those actors need to project. Everything was red velvet and so pretty it looked magical. Plus, it was Hansel and Gretel so the place was filled with children dressed to the nines which was so cute.

Hansel and Gretel has always been a favorite of mine fairy tale-wise and the movie version of the opera (it wasn't performed as an opera but they used the same version of the story and the music makes up the score) is still much loved by me. The story of the opera is a little different from the Grimms. I've been calling it the whimpy version since i was seven. In the opera, they don't get abandoned in the woods; they get sent out to pick berries and get lost.

In spite of this, the director seemed intent on making the story as dark and potentially unfit for children as possible. The dad's a drunk, the mom's suicidal and popping pills, and the titular pair are as bratty as can be. Not bratty in an annoying way, but a believable kid way (e.g. when the witch first shows up and says "hey, don't mean to bother you, but that's my house you're eating" they all but told her to piss off). When she finally got them inside, instead of locking Hansel up in a cage, she tied him up on the table, made up a strange concoction in a blender and force fed him though a pump
a la fois gras. There was a loud groan from the audience (or maybe that was just echoing in my food-hating mind) but sure enough like the geek I am, I thought "Well I guess they cut the whole chicken bone thing." Plus in the end they baked the witch (who was played by a man in drag by the way) into a gingerbread cookie and all the kids ate her! I was a little repulsed at first but then remembered that at seven I would have thought it was hilarious...if I hadn't pissed myself and needed to be taken out of the theater by then.

One of my favorite little things about it though was the scene between the emotionally disturbed parents after the mysteriously biological mother has sent them out to pick berries. The father comes home to their decrepit 1950's hellhole of an apartment (for yes Hansel and Gretel lived in an apartment) with a bundle of food, essentially saving his family from starvation, but then looks around and asks where the kids are. And the mother says as cool as can be (in song of course) "I sent them out to the haunted wood". The father jumps back horrified and the mother gives him this "What? Is that a problem?" look launching him into his "A WITCH LIVES IN THE HAUNTED WOOD YOU COW! THAT'S WHY IT'S HAUNTED" song. I laughed out loud. I know it was something with the translation. It should have been Ilsenstein (according to the libretto) and it was the North Wood in my movie version but that was a healthy dose of unintentional humor.

Also the sets were built to make them look small. I kept forgetting I was watching two grown women play a little boy and girl. Every set was a kitchen. Even the forest was a large dining room with wall-paper decorated to look like greenery. There were moving trees and eventually (in the dream) a fish waiter. It took a little getting used to--I kept asking myself why there was a dining room in the middle of this forest--but eventually I accepted it. It was supposed to be a HAUNTED wood after all. And I do love a good dose of German expressionism every now and then.

Something that also caught my attention: we read that the librettist had been horrified by the Grimms version and that's why she toned it down. There's this whole scene after they realize they're lost and are really scared that the Sandman comes and calms down and puts them to sleep, and they say their prayers and they have this beautiful dream about angels protecting them (it was chefs in this performance but starving kids WOULD see angels as chefs I guess). This whole part nearly made me cry, the music was so beautiful, but later on I thought--well where the hell are all the benevolent spirits when the kids really need them, like when they're in the claws of an evil child-eating witch. Sure being alone in the woods at night when you're little and lost is scary, but I get the impression that being held captive by a witch who is very vocal about her plans to fatten, cook, and EAT you would be a little more upsetting and make you a little more in need of heavenly assistance. But then there would be no story. Looking back, having listened to the music a lot now (I raided the Music Library ASAP) I wish the dream had been done more traditionally, with actual angels. It just reads so beautifully in the libretto with a ray of light coming out of the darkness and these 14 angels taking their places on all sides, protecting them and this fantastic, heartbreaking music. One of the things I love about Hansel and Gretel is that on some level it is about the sheer faith these kids have that even in the face of pure evil they're going to be okay. Their own parents abandon them but God never will. It's such a simple and beautiful idea and it is reflected perfectly in the music, and though the way they did it in this production with 14 chefs and a dinner party instead of 14 angels was really cool and beautiful in its own right (the chefs were supposed to be angels of sorts), I wonder if it didn't miss the point a little.

Though I did appreciate the sadistic chuckles that rippled through the theater when the kids reached the Gingerbread House and Hansel (in attempt to calm Gretel's uncertainty) sang "The angels surely have guided us here."

One last thing before I go get lost in my book of English fairy tales. There was an art exibit in the Met featuring all this gorgeous Hansel and Gretel artwork. It was sponsored by the New Yorker just for this event. All the art was beautiful, either hysterically funny or genuinely frightening but one of my favorites was absolutely brilliant. Near the door you see this little boy and girl shaped out of post-its on the wall and then more post-its trailing behind them, and you think "Oh yeah I get it, That's Hansel, that's Gretel, and that's the trail of breadcrumbs behind them". But you follow the post'its and you see they keep going all around the room and when you finally get to end, what do you see.....but Pac-Man.

Pac-Man.

No matter how many fairy tales I try my hand at retelling, I will always be blown away by how utterly on the nose that was. I'm still laughing about it.

location: Ilsenstein woods mood: full music: various tunes from said opera tags: words

I just realized that Night of the Hunter and the Series of Unfortunate Events books have quite a bit in common. Orphans escaping a horrible villain who wants their parents' fortune. Slight difference in tone, perhaps but think about it.

tags: curious curiosities

Well Tim Burton is making an Alice in Wonderland movie. Animated I believe. Linda Woolverton (who wrote the screenplay for Beauty and the Beast) is working on story. Will the wonders never cease.

If only I could turn my brain off while I write.

It would be nice.

I don't use the word colossal nearly enough.

Sunday night was colossal. My John's final performance in Spring Awakening.

Thursday will be colossal. No more work for a month.

New Year's Eve will be colossal...whatever the outcome. I'm expecting to hear back about a story.

It's a good word. It should be used more.

location: lost amid my take home final music: I Thought of You...OSP tags: conference matters

I have a take home final due for my lecture on Wednesday (but my goal is to have it done by Monday) and the final draft of the Big Cahuna (is it Cahuna or Kahuna because if it's the latter I have been spelling it wrong forever). Susan liked my rough draft but it has its holes of course. I realized while I was writing just how severely the Disney movie has impacted how I feel about Beauty and the Beast.

The fairy tale (the French version anyway) isn't really romantic at all. She doesn't love the Beast. She loves him as a friend and feels a sense of duty towards him. And yet I still think of this as a love story about inner beauty and such. At my last conference when I turned in the damn thing, Susan told me she thinks it is a parable about battered women and the excuses they make for their abusers. And I defended it and gave my reasons but all the while I fell back and thought "Yeah. I get it. I don't believe it or agree with it, but I get that interpretation and it makes sense that somebody would think it."

And suddenly I felt very depressed and naive.

For me, it will never not be a love story. It will never be anything besides Something There and the ballroom scene and the Beast's eyes and those last five minutes and the mushy gushy way it has made me feel my entire life. But has it impaired my ability to analyze the story properly? And if so what is it particularly about Beauty and the Beast? After all, I could (sort of) accept the rape in early versions of Sleeping Beauty. Gotta love the existential questions raised by conference work.

I am so ready for break.

P.S. And while we're on the subject of not-exactly-love stories, I don't think everything's up to snuff in this song (the infamous Clementine). Personally, I think he may have killed her. "Dreadful sorry, Clementine?"

location: a state of confusion music: "Oh My Darling, Clementine" tags: conference matters, disney rant

62 pages. Writing until dawn. Getting to write about L&H's courtship.

Where have I been? I MISSED this!!!!!!!!!!!

MOE is great. I love MOE. But I missed my story.

I really want to the next movie the Christian Union watches to be The Exorcist. Just to see what would happen. Tehe.

I watched it for the first time today. I liked it a lot. It wasn't the scariest movie I've ever seen--though that one scene was God awful--but it was pretty darn creepy and with or without a scare factor it was a really good movie. Dealt with all my favorite themes and got me in the mood to write and now I have a real hankering to go to Mass.

But then, I haven't gone to bed yet. And that is the true test of whether something scares, as anybody who knew me during the heyday of the List can attest.

If the small Catholic faction of the Christian Union ever had a showing all to itself I would want them to show The Exorcist and the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a double feature. I'm getting giggly just contemplating.

Of course, I've been pulling for them to show Night of the Hunter since last year. But my cries have fallen on deaf ears.

Ah well.

location: mercifully far from Georgetown music: Alexander's Ragtime Band tags: bump (in the night)

The more I watch the early episodes of Gilmore girls (1st season mainly, a little bit of the second) the more Lorelai and Luke remind me of Snow White and Bigby from Fables. I need a good binge of both. Gilmore girls always goes down best after a harrowing paper and I'm seriously behind on my Fables.


And back to the Cyclops.

How can you tell the difference between a personal attack on your person, your dignity, and your sense of self and PMS getting the better of you?

That is the question that haunts me. That and why when I thought I was free at last, safe in the world of Greeks and Trojans and Latins, I am faced yet again with that most horrible of languages: Middle English. Oh why must there always be Middle English? My version of Hell has expanded. Possums, algebra, computer class, Video Killed the Radio Star playing on loop, and books written in nothing but Middle English.

But in the midst of it all there is....The Subtle Princess. Now one of my favorite fairy tales and one of the funniest stories I have ever read. I started giggly wildly in the library while reading it. And the heroine is awesome, the prince isn't a jerk, and no babies are killed. I want everybody who thinks fairy tales are sexist to read it, because the heroine is so badass it is not to be believed. That's what makes me really angry about people who make those umbrella statements like 'fairy tales are sexist' From my experience, most of the those people have never read any fairy tales besides Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty the so-called "dumb bunny trinity". Meanwhile there are so many stories with such strong, admirable, downright cunning female characters. Gerda of The Snow Queen who travels across the world to save her best friend's life, Eliza of The Six Swans who sacrifices herself to save her brothers, Finette of The Subtle Princess who engages in all manners of badassery to keep herself safe from a cad, Vasilisa of Vasilisa the Fair who braves umpteen dangers to bring light to her family, the littlest sister of the Seven Raves who travels across the world to meet and save the brothers she lost, the bride of The Robber Bridegroom who discovers what a horrible person her husband is and sets out to stop him, Gretel of Hansel and Gretel who pushes the witch into the oven at the 11th hour and even the original (though I use that word very timidly now) Little Red who tricks the wolf into letting her go--but not until after she's done a striptease for him.

And even Disney movies get the shaft. Yeah, most of the princesses don't meet our 21st century ideal, but there are still very cool female characters. All the female villains for example. And apart from villains, there's Belle (thank God for Belle), Mulan (went to frickin' war), Esmerelda, Jane, Jasmine, Nala, Megara, Pocahontes, Ariel before the third act, the three fairies in Sleeping Beauty (I'm the first to admit Phil would have been toast without them) Miss Bianca, Perdita, Lady, Peg, the Blue Fairy, Mrs. Jumbo, Bambi's mother, Princess Eilonwy, Alice, Wendy, Tinkerbell, that mysterious little girl in the Jungle Book (was there ever a more beguiling pre-pubescent sex symbol in a Disney movie?), Winifred Hathi, Lady Cluck, Cinderella's fairy godmother, Cinderella HERSELF. I hate that Cinderella is considered a wimp. She's really anything but. Yeah, Snow White's an airhead and Aurora sleeps through most of her own movie but Cinderella is cool. She's hardworking, she's kind, she has faith and believes in herself. What is not to admire about that. I've heard "her only ambition was to marry a prince". No, her only ambition was to be happy. She wanted to go to the ball because she wanted a night to herself, to have fun and get away for a change. She just happened to get the prince as well. I've heard "well why didn't she just leave?" That was HER family home. In the Grimms version her mother is buried in the backyard. She shouldn't have had to leave and so she didn't.

And that's just the animated movies. I'm not even going into live action.

I just find it frustrating that a girl in a movie nowadays can't simply be a good person to be considered strong, she must also run a gauntlet of requirements. She must: exert independence, turn a jerk into a nice guy while all the time vowing not to need a man (no Ella Enchanted movie bitterness here at all), be witty to the point of bitchiness, banter with some male character to the point of making my ears bleed, and/or become a pirate or some other thing that will allow her to at one point or another participate in a sword fight. These requirements themselves don't bother me. Danielle of Ever After fits almost all of them and she is still one of my favorite movie characters of all time. But because Cinderella has been told so many times and the changes fit so well into the backbone of the story at hand they were believable and so they worked. And that movie came out almost ten years ago. But all too often now they cross the line, taking characters like Wendy of Peter Pan and Guinevere of King Arthur and turning them into "empowered" 21st century females who have nothing to do with the characters they started as. If Wendy wants to be a pirate rather than a mother, then the whole idea that she is meant to grow up and so stands in direct contrast with Peter (because she chooses to take on that grown-up role even in Neverland) is lost. As for Guinevere, she was so busy being a warrior princess that any remnant of her original character was lost. Remember that whole love triangle thing that the Arthurian legend is kind of well known for? It was virtually gone except for--of course--some psuedo-sexual banter. The result: in an attempt to break down the old cages, we're just building new ones for ourselves.

And so does this mean that this is what I, as a young woman of the 21st century, must be in order to feel "strong" or "empowered" because as unhappy as it makes me, unless I take fencing again next quarter, I won't be sword fighting anytime soon. But the qualities of a so-called weak heroine: kindness, faith, imagination, self-assurance, strength in the face of adversity, true friendship, devotion to family, intelligence that doesn't need to be screamed at us to get it across, a maternal disposition, the capacity to love, a positive outlook on life...this doesn't make a strong woman? Not strong enough, apparently.

location: nowhere near a sword fight mood: EMPOWERED SO THERE!!!!! music: a veritable potpourri tags: disney rants, words