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.
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.
“I only know that I fell asleep last night, and when I woke up, everything has changed.” – Rip’s rude awakening shortly after his actual awakening
So here’s a question for you all: what counts as a fairy tale? A fairy tale (or “wonder tale” as the highfalutin folklorists call ‘em), is, by standard definition, a short story that’s part of the folklore genre where fantastical things happen that are 100% fictional. Snow White, for example, is a fairy tale. It takes place in an unspecified time and place long ago and far away, and is full of dwarfs, witches, magic, all that good stuff. Pinocchio, despite its inclusion in Faerie Tale Theatre and in the standard children’s fantasy pantheon, is NOT a fairy tale. It’s a novel comprised of episodic writings originally published in a magazine.
Likewise, today’s subject isn’t a fairy tale, but a short story set in late eighteenth century America that draws on some legends and fantasy tropes. My guess is as good as yours as to why Shelley Duvall thought to feature Rip Van Winkle in in this series if that’s the case. Maybe its fantasy elements made it easy to mistake for a fairy tale. Maybe they were running out of stories to adapt. Or maybe, and this is wholly speculation on my part, this episode was meant to be a back door pilot for Shelley Duvall’s Tall Tales & Legends (basically Faerie Tale Theatre but with American folktales such as Pecos Bill).
Rip Van Winkle came about thanks to a conversation between writer Washington Irving and his brother-in-law Henry Van Wart. While he was trying to come up with ideas, the two reminisced about the past. They got so wrapped up in nostalgia that Irving felt as those he was back home in the Hudson Highlands. Inspired, he overcame his writer’s block and penned the first draft in a single night. Irving described the experience, appropriately enough, as “feeling like a man awakened from a long sleep”. Rip Van Winkle was included in Irving’s 1819 anthology The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent and was a huge success. Over two-hundred years later and “Rip Van Winkle” is still a shorthand term for one who sleeps well past their time into a strange new era.
There are a handful of fairy tales worldwide that bear similarities to Rip Van Winkle, from Germany’s Peter Klaus to Japan’s Urashima Tarō,but what surprised me while doing research was that this story has some deep biblical roots. There are several tales in Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition involving prophets who miss out on persecution and the destruction of their homelands thanks to God turning them into extremely late sleepers. The dramatic theme of a man lost in time has also branched out into the realm of sci-fi thanks to H.G. Wells, Ursula K. LeGuin, Robert Heinlein, Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, and Rob Grant and Doug Naylor (yes, Futurama and Red Dwarf count as Rip Van Winkle stories. This is a hill I will sleep for twenty years on).
But since I can tell some of you are already starting to fall asleep too –
No, this has nothing to do with Shadow The Hedgehog. I’m here to share some updates about the blog going forward.
Regarding the Faerie Tale Theatre reviews there are only three episodes left to cover. That might not seem like a lot, but I’ve got enough to keep this fairy tale train a-chuggin’ until the end of the year. Following the last episode, I’ll be reviewing the long-lost cast reunion episode, PLUS sharing my thoughts on how a modern-day reboot could be handled, PLUS what stories I’d have loved to see adapted with a little fan casting, and finally capping it off with my absolute definitive episode ranking.
The question is, what comes after? I wanted this to finally be the year I knock out all those movie reviews I promised two years prior, as well as take up a loyal reader’s suggestion of doing an October Halloween Shelf akin to what I do every December for Christmas. My plan was to get most of the writing done over the summer since my job follows the school schedule and I’m free from now til September. But the one thing I should have learned about life by now is that it never follows a plan…
Three weeks prior…
Funny how the color green is an excellent motivator for artists. But in all seriousness, I can’t wait to try my hand at teaching a subject I am very familiar with to students who likewise made art their passion. So when I haven’t been trying to get the remaining FTT reviews done, I’ve been preparing for this class and one other thing. That money will definitely be coming in handy once September rolls around because…
Yes, I’m going to grad school to earn my Masters in Library Science. And yes, I’ll be the first to admit that joke I made in my Coraline review about American education has come back to bite me in the ass. The good news is I was accepted on the highest level of scholarships that my chosen university offers. It’s not enough to completely cover tuition, but it’s a boon I won’t take for granted.
All this is a roundabout way of saying that September to December is going to be a bit of an experimental era. If I can get these remaining posts done while balancing work and studies, then I should have no trouble finishing those long-awaited movie reviews in the new year (she said, sealing her doom).
And as a brief reminder, here are the films that so many of you have been patiently waiting on:
The Adventures of Tintin
Aladdin
The Incredibles
Jurassic Park
The Little Mermaid
The Ten Commandments
Toy Story
The Triplets of Belleville
Twice Upon A Time
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
I’m unbelievably excited to start this next chapter in my life, and I hope you’re all there with me. Thanks for your patience and support, and I’ll see you July 6th for the next Faerie Tale Theatre review!
“But Dad, I’m also a girl, and girls just want to…they want to…well, see, that’s the problem. I don’t know what it is girls want.” – Princess Henrietta, whose serious sequestered lifestyle shows her nescience of Cyndi Lauper
There are more than a few fairytales featuring princesses in need of a good laugh, yet more often not, they’re footnotes that come at the end of the story. The mirthless princess introduced late in “The Golden Goose” cracks up on seeing the world’s first conga line outside her window. One book from my childhood (whose name I sadly can’t recall) centers around a foolish young man named Jack improperly carrying goods to market, culminating in him giving a donkey a piggyback ride, which is what makes “the sad and silent” Princess Melissa laugh for the very first time. Giambattista Basile’s fairy tale collection “Pentamerone” has the framing device of a princess looking for diversion, but that quickly gives way to a story of curses, fetch quests, and some unfortunate period-typical racism. And of course, there’s the Russian fairytale that shares a similar title to today’s episode, “The Princess Who Never Smiled” or “The Unsmiling Tsarevna”. In this story, the protagonist falls in the mud and a mouse, dung beetle, and catfish he helped earlier try to rescue him, which is what ends the princess’ dour streak.
In all of these instances, the princesses are given as prizes to the men who made her laugh. It’s a morally dubious arrangement by today’s standards, but in my experience, a good sense of humor and the ability to make you laugh is a highly desired quality in a partner.
That said, none of these stories ever explore the princess’ side of things. What is it that stole her laughter in the first place? How does she feel about being offered up to the first person to get a guffaw out of her? This episode of Faerie Tale Theatre gives us a deeper character exploration than usual, which makes it a rarity among its peers. In fact, apart from bearing an almost identical name to the aforementioned Russian tale, this episode really stands out by being the only one in the series that’s wholly original. The inciting incident, characters, and resolution are entirely new to the fairy tale scene but still feel like they’re from a traditional story, albeit with some added modern colloquialisms that feel like a precursor to Shrek at times. The outcome in particular bears a touch of modern wit while still adhering to standard folkloric tropes. You may have noticed that I described the protagonists in the other stories as “foolish”. That was intentional; these heroes embody the fool archetype I previously discussed in The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About The Shivers. And much like the classic fool, the one who comes to the rescue here does so through the simplest of acts…
NOTE: Throughout the month of May I’m raising money for the American Cancer Society, Please read to the very end of the post to see how you can help.
“Are there any of you who wish to live happily ever after?” – A tantalizing offer from the Genie of the Lamp
Aladdin: genies, magic lamps, flying carpets, vast deserts, beautiful princesses, wicked viziers, it’s just your basic Arabian fairytale from The One Thousand and One Nights, right?
Though the stories within The One Thousand and One Nights (aka The Arabian Nights) were collected by Asian, Arabic, and African authors over several centuries, Aladdin was shoehorned in by Antoine Galland as part of his French translation of the anthology. It was based on a folktale that Galland claimed he heard from the Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab in 1709. This “original” iteration takes place in China though it retains the Arabian elements we’ve come to expect, including there being a sultan instead of an emperor. There’s also an unusual epilogue where the evil sorcerer’s brother disguises himself as a medicine woman as part of an elaborate ruse to get revenge on Aladdin. Considering the bizarre, forced turns many of the Disney direct-to-video sequels took in order to justify their existence, I’m surprised none of the Aladdin sequels decided to take a page from there and give us “JAFAR’S CRAZY BROTHER!!”
With the advent of cinema and rise of filmmaking technology, Aladdin and Aladdin-type stories became a recurring staple of adventure-fantasy flicks set in the Middle East (as viewed through the West’s warped exoticism-heavy lens, of course). The earliest surviving animated film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, boasts elements of Aladdin, as does Richard Williams’ unfinished masterpiece The Thief and the Cobbler; the latter, in addition to The Thief of Baghdad and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, would go on to inspire the best-known (and overall best) version of the story in modern culture, the 1992 animated Disney classic. Today’s Faerie Tale Theatre episode is one of the last adaptations of Aladdin before Disney swallowed everything that came before and after it. So how does it hold up?