Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: Beauty and the Beast

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“Love can make a man into a beast. Love can also make an ugly man beautiful.”
– The Prince laying down the story’s message, with emphasis on the former in this case…

CONTENT WARNING: This review features a brief mention of violence and sexual abuse, and discusses a portrayal of an abusive relationship. If you or someone you love is in an unsafe situation with a family member, spouse or partner, it is okay to reach out for help. Links to various hotlines and organizations that can assist you will be posted at the end of the review.

Perhaps the most iconic of the “animal bridegroom” folktales spanning across the globe is Beauty and the Beast. The motif of a beautiful woman being paired with a beastly man is indeed a tale as old as time; the oldest recorded story, The Epic of Gilgamesh, includes an anecdote about a savage wild man, Enkidu, falling in love with a virtuous priestess, Shamhat. Like Snow White, though, the origins of the Beauty and the Beast story we know today can be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, this time through the tale of Cupid and Psyche:

Psyche was the most kind and beauteous of three sisters, yet all who came to admire her only did so for her looks, not to pursue a wife. The attention Psyche received earned her the ire of Venus, the goddess of love. She commanded her son Cupid to make Psyche fall for a hideous creature as revenge. But on seeing Psyche for himself, he fell in love with her. Cupid vowed to protect her from his mother’s wrath. When Psyche’s father went to visit an oracle, he was told she was going to marry a horrible monster and had to be left alone on top of a mountain for it to claim her. Psyche accepted her fate, not expecting the West Wind to carry her to an enchanted palace in the clouds instead. Her lover came to her invisible each night to dote on her every whim, asking only that she never try to see his face. Psyche was happy for a while, but began to miss her family. Despite Cupid’s misgivings, he allowed her sisters to pay her a visit. The sisters were bitterly jealous of Psyche, however, and planted doubt in her heart about her mysterious husband. They convinced her to look upon him as he slept to find out who he really was. Psyche was thrilled to learn she was wife to a god, but some hot oil spilled from her lamp onto Cupid. Burned in more ways than one, Cupid abandoned Psyche, and she was forced to undertake some herculean labors in order to prove her faithfulness and win him back.

One can see how the tale would evolve into a parable about love, loyalty, and how beauty is only skin-deep. The story even took a step into reality with Petrus Gonsalvus, “the man of the woods” or “the hairy man”. Gonsalvus suffered from hypertrichosis, a condition involving hair growing all over his face. Because of his animal-like visage, people of the time barely considered him human. In 1547 he was brought to the court of King Henry II of France where he more or less filled the post of “royal freak show”. He was married to a beautiful woman, Margaret of Parma, and they had children who likewise inherited their father’s hypertrichosis. Some scholars claim it was Gonsalvus who inspired author Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve to write Beauty and the Beast. Her version of the story was published in 1740, then abridged and re-published by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont sixteen years later, with many more iterations by authors such as Andrew Lang following after.

It’s widely agreed that Villeneuve wrote her story as a way to prepare young ladies for arranged marriages. It’s easy to see the metaphor when you read it through that lens: Beauty is more or less traded to a suitor by her father in exchange for riches, she’s sent away from her family to live him, and emphasis is put on his kindness, wealth and higher standard of living as reasons to overlook his less pleasant qualities. Though the story can rise above it and the implied Stockholm Syndrome inherent when told well, only one version has successfully done so:

But since this episode came out almost a decade before Disney’s, it had to take inspiration from elsewhere…

Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: The Tale of the Frog Prince

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“Oh! A horrid toad!” “Oh! A nasty princess!” – Our princess and titular amphibian upon first meeting

Ah, our very first episode of Faerie Tale Theatre. Where to begin…the beginning, obviously.

The story of the Frog Prince is one of a long line of folktales sharing the concept of an animal bride or bridegroom. The plot of these stories usually goes likes this:

1. The protagonist is given an impossible task, must be married before a certain deadline, or just needs something done that they can’t be bothered to do themselves.
2. A talking animal appears to offer aid in exchange for marriage. The protagonist agrees, even if they’re not exactly onboard with the concept of bestiality.
3. Surprise! The animal was really a gorgeous human under a spell the whole time! The protagonist is rewarded for not letting appearances deceive them and they all live happily ever after.

You’ll find stories with this motif all over the world with the animal in question ranging from cats, dogs and mice to monkeys, wolves, bears, and of course, frogs. The oldest known recording of The Frog Prince comes from a Latin translation of a German tale dating back to the 13^th century, though some sources say a version from Scotland was what made its way to the Brothers Grimm’s ears. Some variations, such as “The Well at the World’s End” have the royal amphibian be part of a larger story. In fact, the Brothers Grimm retelling comes with the alternate title of “Iron Henry”, named after a servant that appears in the last few sentences who previously had his heart bound with iron bands so it wouldn’t break over the Prince’s fate (that in and of itself sounds like a great side story, why is this guy always left out of the adaptations?)

The Frog Prince holds an important place in the fairy tale pantheon, no doubt thanks to the iconic image of a beautiful woman kissing a frog in the hopes of finding a handsome prince – something which was a much later addition to the story. The original ending in the Brothers Grimm version does NOT in fact have the princess break the spell with a kiss, but by hurling the frog against the wall in a fit of anger! Later editions made by the Grimms changed it to what we know today; it’s not clear why, though considering the brothers’ penchant for patriarchal rewrites in their later years, it may be to give the moral that women will be rewarded if they are obedient and docile and do everything that’s demanded of them even if it crosses personal boundaries. If you don’t want to give this story a chance on that basis, I completely understand, but what if I were to tell you that in the right hands, The Tale of the Frog Prince is a will-they-won’t-they battle of the sexes with witty banter bordering on raunchy but still fun for the whole family?

March Review: Sleeping Beauty (1959)

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Whenever I discuss Sleeping Beauty with someone who doesn’t share my enthusiasm for Disney, they have an irksome tendency to get it muddled with Snow White; their excuse being “it has the same plot”. I’ll admit, there are some surface similarities that even the most casual viewer can pick up on: a fairytale where a princess is forced into unconsciousness and wakes up with some necking, the comic relief and villain being the most beloved characters, a little frolic in the forest with animals, the antagonist plunging off a cliff, you get the idea. In fact, Sleeping Beauty even reuses some discarded story beats from Snow White, mainly our couple dancing on a cloud and the villain capturing the prince to prevent him from waking his princess. Yet despite that, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are two wholly different movies shaped by the era and talents of the time.

I’ve discussed how Walt Disney was never one to stick to a repeated formula, no matter how successful it was. He must have noticed the parallels between his first movie and this one, but decided to make one crucial change for Sleeping Beauty that would forever differentiate the two: the look. We all know the traditional Disney house style: round, soft shapes, big eyes; charming as it was and still is, Walt was sick of it after several decades. Meanwhile, artists like Mary Blair and Eyvind Earle were producing gorgeous concept art that rarely made a perfect translation into the Disney house style.

Walt wanted to make a feature that took the pop artistry of their designs and made the animation work for it instead of the other way around – which brings us to another animation studio that was doing well at the time, United Pictures Animation, or UPA.

UPA didn’t have the kind of budget Disney normally had for their animated projects, but what they lacked in fluidity they made up for in style. Watch The Tell-Tale Heart, Gerald McBoing-Boing and Rooty-Toot-Toot to see what I mean. UPA were pioneers of limited animation, taking their scant resources and creating some striking visuals with bold geometric designs. Through this, they defined the look of 50’s animation. Though perhaps unintentional, Sleeping Beauty comes across as Disney’s response to UPA, or what would happen if UPA had the funds they deserved. The characters’ contours are angular but effortlessly graceful, defining their inherent dignity and royalty. And the colors, ohhh the colors…

Because of the immense amount of work required to animate in this difficult new style (and in the Cinemascope ratio, no less) as well as story troubles and Walt barely supervising the animation studio now that he had his hands full with live-action films, television, and a theme park, Sleeping Beauty had a turbulent production that lasted the entirety of the 1950s. For a time, Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame was set to direct. Director Wilfred Jackson suffered a heart attack partway through production and Eric Larson, one of the Nine Old Men, took the mantle from there before Walt Disney replaced him Clyde Geronimi. And even after that, Wolfgang Reitherman teamed up with Geronimi as co-director to get the film finished after no less than three delays. Also, Don Bluth got his foot in the door as an assistant animator for this feature, beginning his short-lived but impactful tenure at Disney. Did all this hamper the movie, or did they succeed in what they set out to accomplish?

Well, one of the reasons why this review took so long was because I had a hard time not repeating “MOVIE PRETTY” and “MALEFICENT AWESOME” over and over. Make what you will of that.

May Review: Spirited Away (2001)

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(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images and footage used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material.)

“What’s going on here?”
“Something you wouldn’t recognize, it’s called love.”

-Lin and Kamaji, shippers on deck

Just as any business, sport, or some other third thing has its hall of heroes and boundary-breakers, so too does animation. Walt Disney, John Lasseter, Glen Keane, Chuck Jones, and countless others have left their mark in the pantheon of this art form. One of the most prolific names in animation is a man who some call the “Walt Disney of Japan”, a man famous for his strong characters, gorgeous aesthetics, creative storytelling, and notorious indecisiveness on the subject of retirement.

I am of course talking about Hayao Miyazaki.

When most people think about Japanese animation, things like Astro-Boy, Pokemon, Akira, and certain things involving tentacles come to mind (never again, Deviantart..never again…). Miyazaki, however, is in a class of his own. Deftly weaving together tales ranging from fantasy to slice-of-life (or a mix of the two) while blending in likable heroes and villains, some kickass technology (particularly things involving flight), and subtle themes of environmentalism vs. industrialism, he takes animation to its fullest potential in both artistry and story. He worked his way up in the animation world through the 70’s and eventually founded Studio Ghibli, which is as much a cornerstone of Japan’s identity as Disney is to America. In fact, Miyazaki and several members of the studio paid a visit to Disney’s animation studio in the early 80’s where he met a young animator by the name of John Lasseter. Lasseter was frustrated with how Disney was treating their animated movies at the time (this was the dark period long after Walt Disney’s death but before the Renaissance of the 90’s) and he briefly bonded Miyazaki over their shared love of animation. Later, after Lasseter was fired for his “outrageous” experiments of combining traditional animation with CGI and went on to found Pixar with Steve Jobs, he visited the Ghibli Museum (yes, there is a museum and park dedicated to Studio Ghibli in Japan and going there is on mine and every animation-phile’s bucket list) and he got to meet Miyazaki again; learning more about his approach to storytelling and animation would inspire him when creating his first movie, a little thing called Toy Story, maybe you’ve heard of it.

Just as Miyazaki’s influence helped him reach a broader audience for his films and climb up in the animation world, Lasseter wanted to do the same for his friend. He was upset at how many of his movies were poorly dubbed and released in the US, so he used his clout to convince Disney to buy the distribution rights and let him oversee every aspect of their release, especially the English dubbing. Look on the back of any Studio Ghibli DVD and you’ll find a who’s who of the best of Hollywood lending their voices (Anne Hathaway, Laura Bacall, Christian Bale, Gillian Andersen, Mark Hamill, Liam Neeson, and Michael Keaton, to name a few) and they all do phenomenally with the material given. Spirited Away in particular has a lot of well-known voices, but not for the reasons you might think. As much as I love this movie, I swear John Lasseter was going through a list of Disney veterans who have experience playing similar parts when casting them for Spirited Away. Don’t believe me? Keep reading.

The main protagonist is a curious sweet-natured girl who’s loyal to her family but has a bit of a bratty streak…

Her friend is a moody teen who learns to open up to others he considers family…

She’s helped by an outspoken feisty assistant caught in a contract with the antagonist…

And a cranky old-man who keeps the place he calls home running even though he looks like something from out of this world…

Our villain is an overbearing mother whose soft spot for her son is clouded by her greed more often than not…

And then there’s also John Ratzenberger. Because Pixar.

Contrary to what you might think, I don’t find the familiar voices distracting at all because the actors do their jobs so well. I can even overlook the one or two moments where the words don’t match the mouth movements because they and the people translating the script are doing their hardest to make it work for an audience that speaks a completely different language (I will say, however, that watching a dubbed animated film is much easier on the eyes than a dubbed live-action one). I can understand if why anyone else would feel differently and claim the original Japanese dub is better, but if you want to watch it that way you can just change the settings without losing a thing (also, have fun reading subtitles for two hours!)

 

Our movie opens as a young girl named Chihiro (Daveiugh Chase) sullenly sits in the back of a car clutching a bouquet of flowers. She and her parents are moving to a new town, and like every kid in movies where the plot involves moving away, she’s not happy as it means leaving her old life behind. Her mom and dad try to reassure her that going to a new school and making new friends will be fun, but Chihiro won’t hear of it. She starts to panic when she notices her flowers, which are a goodbye present from her pals, are starting to die, and her mom tells her that they wouldn’t be if she didn’t cling to them so tightly (which is the first instance of a theme that you’ll see running throughout the film that I’ll address later).

Chihiro’s father, who’s driving, gets lost and decides to take a “shortcut” to reach their new house (oh boy, I’ve seen Beauty and the Beast enough times to know this won’t end well). On the way they pass little stone houses by the road, which Chihiro’s mom tells her are shrines built for spirits back when people used to believe they lived there. After a bumpy drive through the woods, they nearly crash into a small grinning statue in front of an old tall red building. Dad wants to go check it out in spite of Mom worrying about missing the movers and Chihiro whining about how scary it is. They leave her behind to investigate, and after a minute alone with the creepy statue, Chihiro runs in after them.

After a long walk through a dark tunnel, the family finds itself in a sort of terminal which opens up into a beautiful field and a dried-up river. Dad surmises that this whole place was probably part of an abandoned theme park that closed after Japan’s economy went down the tube after the 90’s (and yes, Japan does have those. Lots of those. Lots of creepy, creepy, post-apocalyptic Disney World knockoffs of those). The “park” isn’t as abandoned as they think, however, because they can smell food cooking nearby. They follow the scent to a nearby village that seems to consist of nothing but restaurants and find one with lots of delicious food out for the taking but no one around. Mom and Dad help themselves and when Chihiro suggests eating here isn’t such a good idea, they tell her to join them in eating the mysterious strange food left out in the open.

Quality parenting!

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