Hi everyone, first of all I just want to thank you all for tuning into the Faerie Tale Theatre reviews and for the overwhelmingly positive view count and response to my Ultimate Episode Ranking. During this break I’ve been thinking about where to take the blog next. Some of you have no doubt been hoping I return to film reviews (I admit I do have quite the backlog), while others have been asking about me covering another fairy tale anthology, one which I’ve referenced multiple times during my Faerie Tale Theatre reviews that I hardly see anyone discuss: HBO’s acclaimed animated series Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. With virtually the entire series remastered and available for viewing on Max (as well as other sources that don’t keep dropping coins into Zaslav’s overstuffed pockets), the prospect has intrigued me.
So I’m putting it up to a poll:
Be sure to drop a comment with your ideas as well. With any luck I’d like to get back in the swing of things by summer. Thanks, Happy Holy Week, Passover and Ramadan for those who celebrate them, and I’ll see you all soon.
So, we’ve come to the end of this years-long Faerie Tale Theatre retrospective, my friends. It’s been quite a ride. Unlike most big Hollywood collaborations, Faerie Tale Theatre wasn’t a vanity project or a corporate mandate driven by synergistic greed, but a labor of love from start to finish. There’s been highs and lows, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t any passion put into every minute of it. If the acting isn’t magnetizing and subtle, then it’s entertainingly over-the-top. And the idea of basing the production design off famous illustrators and works of art is a masterstroke, branding every episode with a unique identity. Many of the entries provide an entertaining fairy tale alternative to Disney; others you can derive pleasure from the camp value, nostalgia, or the recognizable names involved.
Will time be as kind to Faerie Tale Theatre as it has been to many products of the 1980s? Who can say? I’ve already touched on how the age is beginning to show in some aspects (namely the special effects and some enforced heteronormativity). But a good work, while not free from criticism, can still stand strong regardless. New generations have already begun to discover this series, whether it’s through their parents, a casual find on the internet, or through youtubers reacting to episodes and reviewing them, some of which Ifound quite entertaining.
Two qualities that routinely define my favorite pieces of media – be it film, plays, television, etc. – is whether the work in question has grown and changed as I’ve continued to mature, and if I can find something new with every viewing. I’m delighted to say that Faerie Tale Theatre boasted both these qualities in spades during my revisit, and I can proudly declare without irony or fear of ridicule that it is now one of my favorite shows of all time. It reminds viewers that fairy tales aren’t just for children and shouldn’t be classified as such, but can still give older viewers the same feelings of wonder, terror, and cheer that they had experiencing these stories in their childhood.
Reviewing these episodes have been a thrill, and ranking them hasn’t been easy. Some of the assigned places will come as no surprise to you, some will inspire rage, but each one includes a summation of my feelings and a link to the whole review for you to peruse. Feel free to share in the comments what your favorite episode is, and how much of this list I got completely wrong.
I meant to include this in my previous post, but I finally made a Letterboxd account to keep better track of what I watch and share my thoughts in the moment. So if you’re waiting for more of my movie-related content in between posts, feel free to check in now and then. Think of it as a preview of what I usually do to mark the blog’s anniversary.
Hey all, I want to apologize for going quiet for two months. The moment we went on break from work and school, I just crashed. When I wasn’t relaxing, all my energy went to last-minute holiday prep and getting things in order for the coming semester (passed this first one with flying colors and no small amount of hard work, I’m happy to say). It’s been a hell of a year, I won’t lie, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Since I didn’t get to post anything in December, I might as well come out and say I planned to review Pee-Wee’s Christmas in honor of Paul Reubens. But screw it – if Channel KRT can upload their episode covering it in January, then I can too. Christmas ain’t over til we say it’s over, dammit!
“Ugh, why’d I even bother making a calendar if nobody bothers to follow it?”
So expect the review to come out before the month is done, and I apologize in advance if it’s on the short side. From there, I’m rearranging the order of concluding Faerie Tale Theatre posts. You lucky ducks will be getting the ultimate ranking first, with my final thoughts on the series following after. I had a lot of fun with these Faerie Tale Theatre reviews, and seeing how popular many of them were, I’m guessing you did too. If there are any other series you’d like me to look into and possibly review, feel free to share them. At any rate, once that’s all said and done it’s finally back to movie reviews, starting with the films I promised heaven knows how many years ago.
Hope your new year is off to a good start, and I’ll see you soon.
Happy December everyone! I apologize for no posts this November. Once I recovered from Covid, I had to catch up on a lot of schoolwork. I’ve got two weeks left in the semester, which means there’s time for only one Christmas review this year (which I’ve already picked as a tribute to its star). As for the remaining Faerie Tale Theatre posts, they will be pushed back to the new year, starting again in January.
Hi everyone, I’m sorry to say that this month’s Faerie Tale Theatre post will be delayed, though for a very good reason. I got COVID for the second time, and if you’ve had it at least once by now, then you’ll know that it’s no picnic. It’s put a quite the damper on putting together the fantasy wish list I promised as well as the short review I intended to write for Halloween. But in the meantime, I thought you might enjoy a couple of podcasts I appeared on in the period before I got down with the sickness. One is an interview with Frank Ireland (who some of you may know as ChiefBrodyRules on Youtube), mostly detailing about the random stuff I’ve made on youtube in the past and things I hope to create in the future. The other is from VHS Era, a “Let’s Watch” of sorts where my associate Kevin Patrick looks at commercials from VHS tapes to see if they’re as nostalgic as the main feature they’re paired with. In this case, we reacted to the commercials that originally preceded Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. And both of these podcasts have me on camera, so if you wanted to know what non-cartoon me actually looks like, now’s your chance. I apologize again for the delay, and hope to see you soon!
For years, Grimm Party was considered a lost episode of Faerie Tale Theatre. I didn’t know much about it going into these reviews, either. When I found out it was packaged with the complete series I was more than a little excited, and knew I had to include it in these reviews. What could it be? A behind-the-scenes look at how the show was made? An in-depth documentary detailing the grim and often amorphous history of the fairytales adapted? A mindbendingly surreal crossover episode with all the fairytales that makes the Mad Hatter’s tea party look like dinner with Ben Stein?
It turns out to be none of things.
It’s a clip show.
Just another crummy clip show occasionally interspersed with some of the actors talking about their roles in a way that feels more coerced than candid.
Granted, it does boast several generations of the most beloved entertainers of all time in one room and there are a few interesting things to talk about. So let’s get this Grimm Party started, shall we?
“The man of my dreams is a prince among men.” – Princess Jeanetta’s wish for a prince
And so Faerie Tale Theatre concludes as it began, with a story from the Brothers Grimm. The Twelve Dancing Princesses isn’t remembered as fondly as fables like The Frog PrinceorHansel and Gretel, but by all accounts it should be. It’s got intrigue, royal balls, magical subterfuge, an underdog hero, interclass romance, and princesses subverting their father’s control through a mix of spells and cleverness; qualities that lend themselves to a potentially infinite amount of reimaginings. Unfortunately Cinderella’s had the fairytale ball/dancing princess market cornered for centuries, and popular culture isn’t ready to let twelve newbies have the floor.
This is yet another fairytale with alternate versions spanning the globe, mainly in Europe, Russia, Africa and Asia. My personal favorite is a gender-flipped retelling from Scotland called Kate Crackernuts: not only does the titular princess save the prince this time around, but she defies the evil stepsister trope by rescuing her adopted sibling from their abusive mother (Disney adaptation WHEN??). There are also some differing German versions from Hesse and Paderborn competing with the one Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm recorded, which were later folded into their take on the story.
Knowing this, don’t be fooled by the whimsical title. There’s still plenty of darkness beneath the glamor. For example, in the original the princes who failed to solve the riddle of the princess’ whereabouts were executed, which makes the princesses stringing them along seem like actively malicious characters (Women portrayed negatively in a Grimms’ fairy tale? The devil you say!) Victorian editors wisely saw fit to remove the death penalty and sympathize the princesses in their retellings. Andrew Lang’s version temporarily imprisoned the failed suitors in the enchanted dominion they tried to sneak into. Other renditions have the princesses under a spell where they’re compelled to dance each night with evil giants or demons in disguise until the hero liberates them. The most common alteration, however, is trimming the number of dancing royals to as little as three or one in order to keep things simple.
“Love is a disease only humans catch. Somehow you’ve caught it, and when you’ve caught it, you can never be rid of it.” – The Sea Witch’s definition of love, directed towards the lovestruck titular character
There’s a turning point in a child’s life where one discovers that the stories they knew weren’t always sunshine and happily endings. Nine times out of ten, the tale that causes that shocking realization is The Little Mermaid. If you’re only familiar with the animated Disney classic, as is the case for most within my generation, then the revelation of how it originally goes is a bitter pill to swallow. That moment came for me when I received a storybook containing folktales about the sea. I turned to The Little Mermaid first since it was the only one I was familiar with and…
Yep, there’s a lot to unpack here.
Mermaids have a long, rich history in folklore around the globe. The short Western version is take the bird-like Sirens of Greek mythology, throw in some manatee sightings by horny sailors during the Golden Age of Sail and BOOM, you got your alluring half-human half-fish women. The beauty and mystery surrounding these creatures have inspired countless works of art and literature, chief among them being the fairytale by this walking case of internalized gay panic.
Ah Hans Christian Andersen, the forerunner of all angsty self-insert incels. Granted, when you’re an awkward lonely kid with bisexual leanings growing up in a time where anything remotely gay was considered sinful, you’re bound to develop a few issues. Hans was deeply in love with several women way out of his league throughout his lifetime, but it’s been well-documented through correspondence with male friends that he had feelings for men as well; feelings that he barely acted upon because they weren’t reciprocated (and also the toxic “homosexual = hellbound” mindset). That desire to be with someone living in a remotely different world, to walk alongside them even if every step is pure silent anguish, even if they’ve already given their heart to someone else of the opposite gender, makes Hans’ Little Mermaid all but an open confession of his forbidden love.
It’s no surprise that such an evocative, passionate fairy tale would become one of Disney’s biggest hits. But here’s where opinions on it split. Many fairy tale critics and die-hard Andersen fans lambasted Disney’s Little Mermaid for erasing the grimmer aspects and giving it a happy ending where the mermaid gets her legs and the guy. This in turn gave way to armchair critics and fake feminists (or “faux-minists” as I call ’em) shitting on the movie for supposedly teaching girls to throw away their lives for a man. But consider this: if the original story has queer undertones, wouldn’t the superior ending be the one where the lead achieves her goals despite the odds? Hell, I know several trans people who cited Disney’s Little Mermaid as their guiding light during their transitional journey. After all, the movie is about a woman who is fascinated by a world she is barred from because of her body, is repeatedly told by controlling bigoted parents that her feelings are wrong, undergoes a physical transformation to be a part of that world, and ultimately finds comfort, acceptance and true love in her new appearance. Plus it was written by openly gay Disney maestro Howard Ashman, god rest his soul. If this film ain’t a positive LGBT+ allegory, then I don’t know what is.
And how does Andersen’s Little Mermaid go? Well, the mermaid’s princely pursuit is but part of her goal. In the story, mermaids are blessed with an incredible lifespan but not immortality because they lack an immortal soul. The only way to obtain one is by earning a human’s love. Then their soul rubs on you like a cat shedding hair on your pants, never to come off. So in order to win the prince’s love and shoehorn a heap of that Christian moralizing Andersen loved, the mermaid has her tongue cut out in exchange for legs. The prince, however, treats her like a pet, and then tosses her aside when a more socially acceptable companion comes along for him to marry. She then sacrifices her one chance to save herself and jumps from the prince’s wedding ship where her body dissolves to nothing on impact. But it’s okay, because some angels make her an air spirit and say she’ll eventually get into heaven, give or take three hundred years.
…So, to all the folklorists and Disney-hating faux-minists who are reading this, you’re telling me that this miserable tragedy that Andersen wrote in a fit of metaphorical self-flagellation is the best possible outcome? That the true “happy ending” for the coded-gay character is for them to mutilate themselves then DIE, painfully, alone, brokenhearted and forgotten, forced to wait centuries in limbo before they find peace?
And that’s not the half of it. Andersen saw fit to tack on one of those Victorian-era morals made to bully children into model behavior. The text explicitly states that the mermaid gets time off her purgatory if a child is good, but if they cry, then each tear adds more to her sentence. P.L. Travers summed it up so succinctly that I’m just going to quote her:
A year taken off when a child behaves; a tear shed and a day added whenever a child is naughty? Andersen, this is blackmail. And the children know it, and say nothing. There’s magnanimity for you.
She may have been wrong about how Disney handled Mary Poppins, but we stan a queen who calls out manipulative twaddle when she sees it.
All this is a roundabout way of saying that this Faerie Tale Theatre episode was among the last faithful adaptations of Hans’ Little Mermaid before Disney radically altered it, so grab your Prozac, readers. We’re going deep under the sea of depression.
And since last year’s method of doing some quickie reviews went over like gangbusters, I’m doing it again! Every movie is spoiler-free selected at random from a list of films I watched last year, one from each month. Here we go!
Up On The Shelf 