#It’s taking from the original fairy tale the Disney version and the Barbie movie

[therealsirsticker]

I just realized I never posted all this art for my little mermaid sonic storybook thing… well here it is now lol

[ariel-seagull-wings]

TOP 12 PORTRAYALS OF RAPUNZEL

@princesssarisa​ @sunlit-music​ @superkingofpriderock​ @mademoiselle-princesse​ @amalthea9​ @theancientvaleofsoulmaking​ @astrangechoiceoffavourites​ @notyouraveragejulie​ @tilthenextbluemoon​ @giuliettaluce​

Rapunzel, Rapunzel: lay down your hair so i can climb the golden stair! 

These are the words to call the lady named after a vegetable, so one can climb her hair and visit the tower where she is kept prisoner. At the same time that she is known for her exotic name and very long hair, personality wise Rapunzel tends to get very underestimated. Some adaptations gaved her a pretty passive role, and pop culture parodies would usually paint her as “just a girl who cries for the Prince to save her”, downplaying the inteligence and resilience to adapt into harsh situations that she showed in the original Brothers Grimm’s tale. So today, i will share my twelve favorite portrayals of the long haired heroine, that showed respect to her, gaved her carisma and made justice to her strenghts.

12º The version from ‘The Story of Rapunzel’ (1951)

At the start of his career as a stop motion animator, Ray Harryhausen made, with the collaboration of his relatives, a series of shorts based on fairy tales. Those shorts were ‘The Mother Goose Stories’, ‘The Tortoise and The Hare’, ‘The Story of Rapunzel’, ‘The Story of Hansel and Gretel’, ‘The Story of Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘The Story of King Midas’ (when this tale started to be taken out of greek mythology and be perceived as a medieval fairy tale in the public conscience), where the characters were silent and the voice was given to a narrator. This encarnation of Rapunzel is more on the naive and passive spectrum, but i like her design and the fact she is animated in stop motion, plus the short is historically significant for being one of the early atempts to adapt her tale , and that’s why she has a place on this ranking.

11º The version from Simsala Grimm (1999)

In this german-french, two plushies, Yoyo and Doc Croc, receive life from a magic book to have adventures inside the Brother’s Grimm tales. They go to the tale of Rapunzel and help her and Prince Egmond get together. This encarnation of Rapunzel is kept as both prisoner and apprentice of Frau Gothel, who wants to turn the young woman into a mean spirited sorceress like her. But Rapunzel can only make spells that create pretty and merry things, like squirrels and birds. It’s a nice touch of humour, and that grants her the Eleventh Place at this ranking.

10º Mackenzie Mauzy in Disney’s Into the Woods (2014)

This movie as a whole is a weak adaptation of the now classic Broadway stage musical. But it had some enjoyable elements, one of them being Mackenzie Mauzy’s performance as Rapunzel. Mauzy has a short time on screen, but in that short time she brings beauty, grace, melancholy and anger to the role, and this makes it stand out enough to be the Tenth Place in this ranking.

09º Linda Purl in Timeless Tales from Hallmark (1990-91)

Timeless Tales from Hallmark was a direct to video series that had a live action hosted by Olivia Newton John and animated segments showing the fairy tale of the day, animated by the Hannah-Barbera studio. Purl’s Rapunzel is the romantic dreamer archetype, who sings her wish to be free. She has two encounters with the Prince before getting caught by the Witch Scarlotta, having her hair cutted and exiled to the distant woods. She reunites with the Prince, who has been turned into a blue bird (i see what you did there, screenwriters), and breaks the spell over him with her tears. She should smell more onions to cry and bottle those tears, that can be very usefull.

08º Tisha Campbell in Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child (1995)

In the bayous of Louisiana, Rapunzel is taken from her parents by Zenobia the Hoodoo Diva (played by Whoopi Goldberg, by the way), who seeks to make her a protege and shows her such neat tricks as voodoo dolls and shrinking her head down. Rapunzel is reluctant to do this when she sees Zenobia is hurting innocent creatures. Rapunzel soon attracts a handsome Creole prince, who must rescue Rapunzel and reunite her with her parents, but Zenobia seeks to thwart the interloper. One of the first african-american portrayals, this kind yet rebellious encarnation is a refreshing take on the character, and that is why she takes the Eight Place here.

07º Mandy Moore in Disney’s Tangled (2010)

After her mother dranked a tea made of a magical flower, Rapunzel was born with a magical hair that is able to heal any desease and rejuvenate anyone who touches it. Because of that, she was kidnapped and emprisoned in a Tower by Gothel, who raises Rapunzel to be insecure and afrayed of the outside world. But her curiosity is more powerfull, and with the guidance of a thief named Flinn Rider, the young lady escapes the Tower and goes on a journey to discover both what is scary and what is beautifull on the outside world with her own eyes, along the way captivating people with her merry and spontaneous personality, wich gives her the Seventh Place on this list.

06º Pamela Winslow Kashani in American Playhouse: Into the Woods (1991)

The lady who originated the role in the Broadway stage musical. Like Mackenzie Mauzy, Pamela Winslow Kashani brings the beauty, the grance, the melancholy and the anger to the role, but with an extra touch of energetic humour, taking advantage of the fact that she is in a stage show and getting intense as possible. That humour in the First Act  is what makes her PTSD and tragic death in the Second Act all the more heartbreaking. Plus, she probably has the most beautifull singing voice ever gaved to a Rapunzel encarnation, and sometimes that is enough to earn a place in my rankings.

05º Mitsuko Horie/Lara Cody in Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics (1988-89)

This encarnation has a tragic backstory, having been forgotten by her parents after they received a memory spell from the Witch and they had three more kids after her. She is raised in the Tower as the Witch’s granddaughter, and develops a great talent to play the harp. Is the sound of that harp that attracts the atention of the Prince, who comes to the tower and conquers Rapunzel’s love. Sadly, when they are making plans on how to take her away from the Tower, the Witch sees the Prince climbing down, so she cuts Rapunzel’s hair and beats her till unconsciousness before exiling the poor young woman in the desert, where she learns to survive while raising the son that she conceived with the Prince, who searches for Rapunzel despite being blinded by thorns.

04º Luisa Wietzorek in Sechs Auf Einen Streich (2009)

This adaptation gives some interesting touches to Rapunzel’s story and character: until age 12, she lived a nomadic life, travelling in Gothel’s donkey pulled cart. But one day Gothel spots Rapunzel talking with a young boy, and decides to lock her in the Tower, where there is a magic golden haircomb that makes Rapunzel’s hair grow to be used as a ladder by her adoptive mother. Years pass, and the destiny brings the Prince, who was the young boy of the pass, to the Tower where the now grown up Rapunzel lives, and she has to face a dilema: continuing to live in the Tower, that brings the feel of comfort and safety, or taking risks and running away to freedom with the Prince she fell in love with.

03º Kelly Sheridan in Barbie as Rapunzel (2002)

This was my first animated adaptation of the fairy tale, and still is my favorite. In this movie, while giving some painting lessons to her little sister, Barbie tells a version of the Rapunzel story to encourage her creativity: kidnapped as a baby by the Witch Gothel, Rapunzel was raised as a house maid, receiving constant verbal mistreatments. But, thanks to her friendship with a rabbit named Hobie and a dragon cub (who still needs to learn how to fly) called Penelope, and her love of painting, the young long haired lady never lets her spirit be broken, always dreaming of someday go to live free in a castle by the sea. One night, she is surprised to find a haircomb that turns into a magic paint brush, wich can make a portal where she can escape and explore the ouside world, and in her first journey, she meets and falls in love with the dashing Prince Stefan, while asking him to not his name to her, because she is afrayed of being forced to tell it to Gothel. And she doesn’t stay long, because she fears that Gothel will get revenge on Hugo, Penelope’s father, for her escape. Talk about having a great sense of altruism, who wouldn’t want to have this lady as their best friend?!

02º Sylvia Wolff  in Rapunzel oder Der Zauber der Tränen (1988)

This german TV Movie combines the tale of Rapunzel with another, more obscure tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, called Maid Maleen. In this version, Rapunzel growed up very acustomed to the comfort and rich life provided by the Old Witch, using a magic reel to roll her hair in and make it grow to be used as a latter. Even tough she is in love with Prince Mathias, she is afrayed of going to the outside world. Later, not being enough that the Old Witch discovers her secret, cuts of her hair and blinds Prince Mathias, the King, after learning the existence of a maiden in the tower who becamed the love of his son, orders his troops to search the tower and seal its window, because he wants Mathias to marry another neighbour princess he arranged for him! Fortunally one of the soldiers takes enough pity to let a loose brick so Rapunzel can breath. She tries to use the point reel to scratch the clay that glues the bricks, and after cutting herself in the reel and crying over it, the reel regains magic, floating, opening the bricks, helping her to escape  to the outside world and search for her beloved Mathias...

And my Number One favorite portrayal of Rapunzel is:

01º Shelley Duvall in Faerie Tale Theatre (1983)

There were some small changes made in some detailles of the story (radishes replacing rampion to be more familiar with international, non german audiences,  insinuation that the Peasants Wife’s craving of the vegetal was a spell purposefully cast by the Witch, Rapunzel being traped in the Tower at adulthood instead of age twelve and a talking parrot/macaw that tells the Witch of the Prince’s visits), but as a whole, this is probably the most faithfull adaptation of the Brothers Grimm tale, and is all the more benefited for it, specially Rapunzel’s character, portrayed by the shows herself, Shelley Duvall. Duvall presented a very sincere passion for the source material, and in her performance, she showed a deep understanding of Rapunzel’s character and why she resonates with so many people: her rebeliousness, her curiosity, her romanticism, her inteligence, her quiet strenght, her resilience and her sense of hope, all of those qualities that the Grimm’s described in their heroine, are all there! When i watch this episode of Faerie Tale Theatre, i don’t see an actress playing a role, i see an icon of my childhood coming to life!

And that is why Shelley Duvall in Faerie Tale Theatre is whom i consider my definitive Rapunzel.

[thebirdandhersong]

Fairy tale retellings! because I couldn’t help myself (under the cut because I got carried away and remembered my fairy tale retelling phase from middle school........ oh boy)

Cinderella 

Cinderella (2015 Disney live action): beautiful beautiful BEAUTIFUL (the music! the script!! the Hope! the costumes! the dress! the gentleness at its heart! the overall design and the colours!) (I still believe it’s the best live action re-adaptation they’ve come up with so far) (then again they DID have one of the Rogue One writers and Kenneth Branagh--both of whom understand story AND fairy tales--on the team, and possibly the best combination of actors and costume designers)

Cinderella (Disney animated movie): like a dream. Can’t remember it that well because I haven’t watched it in over ten years, but I remember that I loved it

Cinderella, the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical featuring Laura Osnes and Santino Fontana: Laura’s Cinderella is so lively and hopeful and bright and affectionate and I Love Her!!! The script is also surprisingly funny, and the little changes they made (like the fairy godmother being an old beggar woman in the village, the subplot with her stepsister, the scene at the ball where she suggests that they should all be kind to one another, the fact that the prince is called His Royal Highness Christopher Rupert Windemere Vladimir Karl Alexander Francois Reginald Lancelot Herman (HERMAN!) Gregory James....... iconic) added rather than detracted from the themes they chose to emphasize

A Cinderella Story: possibly one of my favourite films. I loved the fact that they knew each other before the ‘ball’. Loved the way the fairy tale was ‘translated’ into the 2000s. The friendship was strong with this one. I had the best time watching this movie. (Dress-wise, Hilary Duff’s dress is my least favourite, but that’s a minor quibble, and is also due to the fact that it has Lily and Laura’s gorgeous fluffy ballgowns to contend with, and that’s not fair competition)

Persuasion, by Jane Austen: does it count?? The way I see it, Persuasion is like Cinderella gone wrong (we discussed this in class, and my prof called Lady Russell a fairy godmother who means well but fails her protege before the story even begins. We talked about Anne’s ‘Cinderella’/makeover moment taking place over a longer period of time, about the ‘evil’ stepsisters, etc. etc. I’m not entirely sure I agree with every single comparison he made, but he made some Very interesting points).... at least the first time :)

Cinder, by Marissa Meyer. Oh, the images!!!!! Marissa Meyer is WONDERFUL at them. You wouldn’t think they’d translate well into a futuristic sci-fi (almost steampunk) world, but she did it SO brilliantly (the slipper! the ‘dress’! the whole family situation!)

Rapunzel

Tangled (Disney animated movie): an absolute joy. Rapunzel is an Ariel-like character who has hopes and dreams of her own, and I love how warm and vivacious and endearingly transparent she is. The dance scene is so, so lovely. (I stand by my opinion that very few little went right with Disney’s fairy tale retellings after Tangled.)

Cress, by Marissa Meyer: once again. Images. I can’t believe she managed to pull Rapunzel-in-space off so well. (Plus she’s a hacker, and such a sweetheart!!)

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast (Disney animated movie): Amazing. Gorgeous. Brilliant. The buildings and the music and Belle (Belle, my darling!!) and the darker, more Gothic feel to the art and the design...... Yes

Beauty, by Robin McKinley: knocked it right out of the ball park, right through the atmosphere, right into outer space... The language is so lush and atmospheric, and even though I knew roughly what was going to happen, I loved every moment of it. She puts a special emphasis on family and on human connection and I Loved that so much.

Rose Daughter, by Robin McKinley: also gorgeous!!!!! Beauty is still my favourite of the two, but this one was also a gem. (Again: the emphasis on family and sisterhood!!!)

Beauty and the Beast (the Broadway musical): Susan Egan’s voice is SO lovely. And Home deserved more than just an instrumental reference in the 2017 version.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Princess of the Midnight Ball, by Jessica Day George: the Best. The sisters are easier to distinguish, the changes/things she added (the war, the queen’s past, etc.) make the story even more interesting, and Galen is fantastic (courteous, kind, brave, AND likes to knit?? NICE)

The Barbie movie: I loved it when I was a little girl (it is also Muffin-approved!)

The Princess and the Pea

@fictionadventurer​‘s Wodehousian one :) which is an absolute delight. Every once in a while I remember it and then can’t stop smiling

The Goose Girl

The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale: the Best. And by the Best, I mean the absolute Best. Her writing is so beautiful and her characters are so real and distinctive. The worldbuilding is fascinating. It’s so simple and so beautiful, and is near-perfect as a retelling and as a novel. The rest of the Bayern series is also wonderful!!

The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid (Disney movie): can’t remember it very well, except for the chef who wanted to cook Sebastian and also Ariel’s very cool sisters.... the music and Ariel’s character are lovely :)

The Little Android, by Marissa Meyer: genius. The first time I read it, I cried furiously. What does it mean to be human?? Marissa Meyer loves to talk about this in her other books (through malfunctioning robots, androids, werewolves, etc.). And the conclusion she comes to is always the same (and always done so beautifully): it’s about love and sacrifice (and tbh even though she’s talking about this through robots and werewolves, she’s got a point!!! When you act with love and self-sacrifice, you reflect the character of the Maker and His love and self-sacrifice, which is what makes us in that moment the most human--or at least human in the sense that that’s what we were made to be and to do towards our neighbours and enemies)

Ponyo (Studio Ghibli movie): this counts, doesn’t it?? A film that is an absolute joy through and through. It doesn’t completely stick to the original fairy tale but it also talks about compassion, kindness, and love as a choice

The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Frog (Disney animated movie): can’t remember it very well, but Anika Noni Rose has a fantastic voice, and I loved Tiana’s practicality, optimism, and kindness

The Prince of the Pond, by Donna Jo Napoli: can’t remember it either (read it in third grade) but basically it’s about how the prince turns into a frog and starts a family with another frog (the story is told from her perspective). I do remember that the ending made me so sad, though

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty (Disney movie): can’t remember it at all either, except for: 1) Once Upon a Dream (a brilliant song) and 2) forget pink or blue. I liked her grey dress the most

Spindle’s End, by Robin McKinley: the story was told in such an interesting way (the animals! the way she wrote about love and protecting the people you love and self-sacrifice in familial and platonic relationships!) with Robin McKinley’s beautiful style

East of the Sun, West of the Moon

East, by Edith Pattou: I was obsessed with this book in elementary school. Obsessed. I kept rereading it over and over again because I just loved it so much. It’s been a few years since I’ve read it, but I can remember certain scenes (Rose entering the ballroom for the first time, the white bear’s hulking figure in the doorway, the architecture of the hall where she washes the shirt, her fingers running over the wax, the reunion scene) so vividly as if it had been a movie instead of a book, or if I’d actually been there, experiencing what Rose was experiencing

Orpheus and Eurydice (which kind of counts)

Hadestown (the Broadway musical, the original cast, AND Anais Mitchell’s original concept album): I’ve talked about it so much I probably shouldn’t even start slkfjsdl;kfjlk; I just wanted an excuse to mention it again

Tam Lin

Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones: I loved it when I first read it but I was so confused and so fascinated by it.

The Snow Queen

Frozen (Disney animated movie): no (insert heart emoji)

And contemporary(?) books that are considered modern classics, if not modern fairy tales (depends on how you look at it, really):

Peter Pan

Peter Pan (Disney animated movie): a childhood favourite!!!

Peter and the Starcatchers, by Dave Barry: the whole series is so much fun (and they’re among some of the funniest books I’ve read). This one serves as a sort of prequel to Peter Pan, but it’s safer to say that Dave Barry reimagined the whole story.

Peter and the Starcatcher (Broadway play adaptation of the book, which is a reimagining of the original Peter Pan..... yeah): the source material is incredibly funny, so naturally the play adaptation makes you laugh until your sides feel ready to split (I mean!! You have Christian Borle as Black Stache, Adam Chanler Berat as Peter, Celia Keenan-Bolger as Molly..... they’re all brilliant) The script, the way the cast makes use of the set and props, the perfect comic delivery....... love it

Finding Neverland, a musical adaptation of the movie (the A.R.T. production with Jeremy Jordan as James Barrie): the music is so good, and the way they write about the value of looking at the world through the eyes of a child?? of seeing the beauty in everything?? of hope and imagination and wonder?? If it weren’t for the way it handles adultery (even emotionally cheating!) and divorce :( but Laura Michelle Kelly is absolutely enchanting, and the script is also incredibly funny and heartwarming

Tiger Lily, by Jodi Lynn Anderson: a twisted fairy tale... it was quite disturbing at times, but it was also beautiful and heartbreaking. It’s a darker take on the story, which I tend not to like (at all), but the way it explored Tiger Lily and Peter was quite interestng

The Wizard of Oz

WIcked, the Stephen Schwartz musical--I haven’t read the book: as far as retellings-about-the-villain-of-the-original-story goes this one is my favourite. It is another twisted fairy tale, though, and there’s a constant undercurrent of doom and dread, even in the motifs Stephen Schwartz uses... the ending is not completely happy, but the music is FANTASTIC (Mr. Schwartz also did The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Prince of Egypt!!)

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland (Disney movie): another childhood favourite... I also haven’t seen this one in over ten years, but I can still remember specific scenes very clearly in my head

Alice by Heart: a musical about a girl called Alice Spencer whose coping mechanism (quite literally) is Alice in Wonderland. She knows it by heart (again. Literally) and she dives into the world as a form of escapism (LITERALLY. There’s even a song at the end where the characters acknowledge how unhealthy this is). There’s a lot about growing up, losing a loved one, learning to let go... about self-deception and grief and the control one has over one’s life (unfortunately it IS subtly antagonistic towards Christianity at times)..... i do wish that writers didn’t have to treat sexual maturity as the most prominent/interesting part of coming-of-age stories, though. The characters, the set and lighting and costume design (BRILLIANT, by the way!!!!)... all wonderful. But the strangely sexual references can be a bit uncomfortable. (Really!! You can tell a coming-of-age story WITHOUT that stuff, you know!!!!!)

That Disney Movie directed by Tim Burton: wouldn’t recommend. Alice doesn’t need to be a warrior. (At ALL.)

Would also like to mention: Princess Tutu :)

[takaraphoenix]

Hey! What are your favorite fantasy/fairytale books, shows and movies?

Well, that is a very broad question. So... let’s structure this and tackle it.

Phoe’s Favorite Fantasy Books!

I don’t read much, so that’s a very short list. Seeing as you’re on my blog, I assume you know I read and loved Percy Jackson and the Olympians so that. However, there are fantasy series that I love way more than that.

For one the Wicked Years by Gregory Maguire, my favorite author who I adore and worship. Takes the Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz and goes “but what if she was actually a restistance fighter trying to overthrow a corrupt government under their dictator, the Wizard?”. It’s amazing, I love it. Hardest recommend for the first two books. Been not too big on the third and fourth though, but that’s what happens when these things aren’t born out of being intended as a series but rather just... sequels... happening.

Golden classic that seems silly to even mention but I love these books - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I. Love. Them. I love Alice, I love the world, I love the fantasy. One of only three books that I personally allow to classify as modern fairy tales (Peter Pan and Wizard of Oz being the other two. I just... I do think that there is a difference between “fairy tale” and just general “fantasy book(s)”, but these three I do think deserve a place in the canon of fairy tale classics). Also, fun fact: my above mentioned favorite author wrote a third installment for this series for the original book’s anniversary, it’s called After Alice. (I own a signed copy. I squealed very loudly when I opened it.)

My favorite fantasy book series though is the Bartimaeus series by Jonathan Stroud. I adore these books. Yes, if taken as a singular book, the first installment of the Wicked Years, which works as a standalone too due to the series’ nature of having sequels instead of being an intended series, takes the crown, however as a whole, coherent series, including all books in the series, no fantasy franchise beats Bartimaeus for me. It is sarcastic, snarky, fun, filled with heart, totally lacking unnecessary forced romance, has a fascinating world, the writing is a great read. I love this series to bits and pieces.

Now, since you specifically said fantasy/fairytale, I’d be a fool not to mention William Joyce’s Guardians of Childhood, the book-series that Rise of the Guardians is... let’s say a sequel to? While not necessarily fairy tales in the traditional sense, having the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, Sandman and Santa as its main characters, it does go very much into fairy tale elements. It’s a really fun read, I personally think that Joyce has a delightful and enjoyable style.

So, that’d be the five book series that I’d recommend for fantasy.

Unless you meant actual literal fairy tale books - then I will have to disappoint you, unless you’re German. Because being German, my fairy tale collection is... well... German. I got this one. Mainly, I admit, for the illustrations - Tony Wolf worked on the majority of them and I love his illustrations, he was the author and illustrator of my favorite children’s book series when I was a kid. Which, talking about fantasy, fairy tales and books, I will absolutely also recommend here. Their English name is The Woodland Folk and it is very adorable and also very scaring for small children because fairies die in it. I was very traumatized as a kid but I still loved it a lot.

Phoe’s Favorite Fantasy Movies!

Now, movies are... it depends on what movies you want; live-action or animated. I do feel that those are vastly different categories that set vastly different expectations. And then there’s the overlapping between fantasy and supernatural in many such movies.

Let’s start with live-action, which is going to be a very short list because I am really not huge when it comes to movies - I barely watch any movies and if, then they are animated in 80% of the cases.

Lord of the Rings. Yes, I know, book-people would have filed that in the category above, but look... I am not a huge reader. And the movies have pretty blonde Orlando Bloom. But I do truly love these movies, I try to rewatch them regularly but consider I less see them as a trilogy and more as one 12 hour movie, it’s always quite the time-commitment.

And, with this one I am never quite sure whether to count it as a movie series or as a mini TV series, but the way they were released on TV, they were a movie series - so The 10th Kingdom, which is basically Once Upon a Time before that came out and without the Disney. It’s about the grandson of Snow White ending up in modern day New York and getting the help of a waitress and her dad to take down his evil stepmother, who is trying to take over the 9 fairy tale kingdoms. I love this series so very, very much.

Also The Librarian, which is a fun fantasy relic hunting movie series. But more on that when we get to TV shows, because the trilogy has a tie-in series.

I do realize that actually the majority of movies in my fantasy/supernatural section are... in fact... more supernatural than fantasy. So, pathetically enough, that is... kind of it.

Now, animated movies is harder because I quite literally have a list with 360 animated movies I saw and liked to various degrees of which the majority would qualify as fantasy due to the nature of most Western animated movies. So I’ll try to “best of” as narrow as possible (seeing as I once successfully managed to narrow my favorite animated movies down to 65...). So, a shorter version of that.

Now, when it comes to fairy tales and animated movies, Disney goes without saying so I’m not even going to say it because it’s very obvious, we all know the movies, seeing the tales. I love most of them, especially their princess movies, with one huge exception. So let’s only name-drop Sleeping Beauty because I adore it, and assume you’ve already seen all other Disney animated fantasy and fairy tale movies and move on from that.

I am also morally obligated to say “Barbie movies” here, because they did a ton of fairy tale adaptations too and the majority of them are fantasy - but to keep it brief, here is a link to my ultimate Barbie movie ranking for more individual recommendations from the Barbie canon and let me also only name-drop my favorite - Diamond Castle.

Don Bluth’s Thumbelina, as well as his Anastasia are two absolute must-sees when we’re talking fantasy (and fairy tale in Tumbles’ case).

DreamWorks wise I love and adore Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, The Road to El Dorado and Rise of the Guardians.

Now we’re getting into what I like to think of as “deep dive” territory because they’re not mainstream, they’re not big names. But I still love them.

Naturally have to say Swan Princess (1994) - the first three movies anyway, I ignore those 3D animated chep looking sequels. But the OG trilogy is a very perfect trilogy, I adore it so very much.

Another total classic would be The Last Unicorn (1998).

FernGully (1992) is a beautiful tale about fairies and one of my absolute favorite movies of all time.

A newer entry here would be Epic (2013), which is also about fairies and was written by William Joyce!

And, even if it may sound silly. The original Care Bears movies. The three from the 80s. I love them a lot, I think they’re great fantasy fun, who doesn’t love a Care Bear they are adorable, seriously.

Phoe’s Favorite Fantasy Shows!

And we move on to our last segment of this ask. I like a lot of TV shows, so I will try to keep this to my actual favorites.

My absolute favorite is Relic Hunter, it is and always will be my favorite TV show. Even if it’s cheesy at times and only has three seasons. I love it a lot. It’s... very much as it says on the tin; hot archeologist and her nerdy assistant search for magical relics.

If you like that genre, you have to also watch The Librarians - the tie-in sequel series to the movies. More librarians! More magic! More artifacts! More fun. I really love this and I mourn that they cancelled it.

Naturally Once Upon a Time - fairy tales and fantasy and I just love this TV show. Skip the last season though.

And all-time classic for me is the original Charmed - three witch-sisters discovering magic together. This was... the first ever show I actually... really consumed, with everything around it. I was totally obsessed with this, I love it. Which is why I won’t touch the reboot at all, because there’s “I loved this thing. Now there’s a new version of it! Fun!” but there is also “I loved this thing, as it is, there is no need to make a new one, why are you touching this?” - and this one was so very near and dear to my heart growing up that it is definitely the second category for me.

Definitely gotta mention BBC’s Merlin, even if it’s very, very, very flawed. It’s still fun, the characters are lovable. It has a scary fandom... in that it’s still alive and thriving, even so many years after the show’s end.

Also Grimm, though more supernatural than fantasy, it is a fairy tale show. In a way. It’s dumb but fun, because the Grimms were actually not just scholars, they were monster hunters and now modern day descendants of them are still out there hunting the same Big Bad Wolves (who aren’t all bad). I don’t know, I love it, despite the occasional cringe.

Now, lastly on the fantasy - Galavant. A musical comedy about a knight. Very fairy tale-y. Very hilarious and lovable. Sadly cancelled after two seasons.

There are many, many more fantasy shows I watch(ed), but those would be my favorites. Though I do have to tag on that elements such as vampires and werewolves are something I categorize as supernatural so they wouldn’t find mention here in fantasy (Grimm aside, due to the fairy tale theme).

I... hope I could provide a good recommendation or two!

[aquaburst3]

One of the complaints I hear about the Disney Nutcracker movie is “Why couldn’t have Disney just straight up adapted the original plot?” Well...

For one, a straight up adaption of the ballet version of the story and the book would make for an awful movie without massive changes. 

The ballet is just...

Clara gets a Nutcracker doll from her Godfather/uncle. Her brother breaks it while she mends it, showing her kind heart. 

The Mouse King invades and the Nutcracker comes to life, killing him. 

He turns into a human prince and whisks her away to his realm, marrying her. 

The rest is a super long dance party with people from across the land dancing for their amusement. 

There are more plot points in the book like an origin for the Mouse King, Clara’s parents not believing her story and the human Nutcracker whisking her away to get married. (Did I mention that Clara is supposed to be 7 in this? The antis would have a field day with this story...)  At the same time, it has the same exact plot bets. 

That’s where the issue lies. While having a story with little plot and being mostly a dance party is fine for a ballet, it doesn’t make for entertaining live action cinema. Sure. Movies like Fantasia had many segments that were just pretty imagery, but even that movie was in segments and not just a drawn out dance party. If a movie was mostly a dance party, it would bore most people to sleep. 

That’s why future versions of the story completely overhauled the plot in order to make it work for a movie format. The Nutcracker Prince sticks more the original tale, but embellished elements and streamlines the whole thing. The Barbie movie focuses on Clara and the Nutcracker taking down the Mouse King, making the dance party an after thought.  And I have no idea what the hell Nutcracker 3D was trying to do. 

On top of this, Clara is also a super passive character in both versions. Things happen to her, but she does nothing to solve the conflict or help in any way other then mending the Nutcracker’s arm. This is common for fairytale protagonists and children’s book characters at the time, so I’m not knocking either of these stories for this. Modern audiences don’t really have patience for a character like that, wanting protagonists to be more active and relatable. 

That’s why I think Disney came up with the plot that they did. By making the story about Clara dealing with the lose of her mother and going into a world her mother had some sort of hand in, it makes it her story instead of the Nutcracker’s and makes her an active character. The plot is also more streamlined and focused in general like the other versions before. 

With that said, this criticism has some merit to it. Because I think the movie would be better off if it kept more elements of the OG story and made the Mouse King the main villain.  Like maybe Clara’s mother created the world, but the Mouse King did a coup and took over the other realms. And if you want to add the Nutcracker in the story, you have it where he’s a prince of one of the realms, who was cursed to become a Nutcracker for whatever reason. (I think “Phillip” on the IMDB page for the movie might be the Nutcracker, but I’m not sure.) Disney has the technology to bring the Mouse King to life, so it’s a huge missed opportunity for me. 

From what I heard, Disney’s doing another “Plot Twist” villain and The Sugar Plum Fairy is the true villain. That seems dumb to me as well. I really wished that Disney stopped doing that with every villain as of late, because it became super tired ages ago.

Idk, that’s my two cents. Either way, I can’t wait to add the epic versions of the original ballet songs to my phone come Christmas time. (Even though I really don’t want to think about that now, since I’m a Scrooge and hate Christmas for personal reasons) 

[galacticnewsnetwork]

What Happens When Fandom Doesn't Grow Up?

Adults are insisting childhood brands from 'Star Wars' to Marvel continue to cater to them, but does preserving the past limit the future?

There’s a proverb that says, “you can’t take it with you,” popularized by playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart in their 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning production of the same name. The expression was in reference to our inability to take our material possessions with us to the afterlife, though opinion differs on whether this advice is a suggestion to spend freely, or to not worry about collecting pricey material possessions at all — the conclusion being that our possessions only have worth in the present, or that they may not have as much value in the grand scheme of life as we think.

Though the idiom is seen through the perspective of mortality, it works just as well when viewed through the lens of life’s transitional periods, particularly childhood to adulthood. The notion that we can’t take it with us is arguably a sibling to 1 Corinthians 13:11, which states: When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways.” Perhaps these expressions once carried weight, but in our current age of pop culture, a living and breathing monument to nostalgia, it has become harder and harder for adults to leave the things they loved as children behind.

From superheroes, Star Wars, fairy tales, and cartoons, the things many of us loved as children remain something we love today – protectively, passionately, and even problematically. This fierce nostalgia is arguably even more common with Millennials whose instantaneous embrace of the internet has allowed very few childhood staples to slip through the cracks in memory. Even if we’re not buying lightsabers, Hulk hands, or Barbie Dream Houses anymore, these characters and concepts are possessions that reside with many of us and sometimes define a key aspect of our identities. Previous generations, less driven by early age consumerist culture, don’t quite have the same involvement as late game Gen Xers and Millennials. In other words, no one is asking for a Lincoln Logs movie. Our inability, or maybe our unwillingness, to put childish things behind us and accept their temporary value isn’t an inherently negative facet of generational culture. But it is interesting how this modern nostalgia presents itself.

Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion PicturesAvengers: Infinity War Still

If you take a brief perusal of the Twitter reactions to the teaser for the live-action Kim Possible TV movie that Disney Channel released last Aug. 10, you’ll find plenty of opinions from people upset with the casting, claims it could never live up to the cartoon, or fans hyped with the addendum that "this is for us, not the kids." These passionate, often volatile responses about a once popular kids cartoon are overwhelming from adults. Similar sentiments came after Nickelodeon announced a CGI animated version of the Rugrats and released an image of the updated Chucky. More alarming were male commenters on Twitter photos for the new She-Ra cartoon, noise that basically resulted in a claim that the cartoon character should be “hotter,” and closer to the depiction of the character in the 1985 Filmation cartoon.

There’s an intense desire that these new iterations and reboots not be for the kids of today, but for those in their 20s and 30s. A quick search online will deliver any cartoon character from the '90s you could think of as adult contemporary versions. Some artists, like Brandon Avant, whose work went viral last year, have brought a real craft to these reimaginings of the characters from Doug, Goof Troop, and Arthur, as adults in their 20s, tattooed and stylish. There’s certainly fun to be had in alternative depictions of fictional characters, but there’s also a sense that many fans of these '90s shows would prefer these versions brought back to life on TV and movie screens, as opposed to anything geared towards children.

This feeling of ownership stems from an idea that kids today don’t care about certain characters anymore, at least not in the same way that those of us who grew up in the late '80s and '90s did, or do. Perhaps there is something to that. How many of the properties popularized in the '80s or '90s would still be popular without the adult fandom that keeps it alive through memes and Buzzfeed posts? Of course there are properties like Star Wars, Marvel, and Disney animated movies that are eternal. But there are also properties like Gargoyles, Animaniacs, and So Weird that would draw a blank for many kids today. Even once popular shows and platforms like Looney Tunes and The Muppets have fallen out of favor among children in terms of the position they used to hold with previous generations. While the rumored Space Jam 2 starring Lebron James may bring some children back on board with Warner Bros’ classic library of toons, there’s also the fact that that project currently seems to be more anticipated by those who grew up with the original 1996 film. Perhaps the only way to keep some of these characters and concepts alive is to cater to the now adult audiences. But what happens when these characters grow up?

Properties like Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney’s reimaginings of animated classics have managed to bridge the generational gap, appealing to children, adults, and elderly audiences. While Disney collectively has managed to find a way to appeal to almost everyone, there are a few recent examples that call into question the desire to really see our childhood heroes grow up. Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi created controversy last December, a controversy that has unfortunately bled into 2018 in regards to its depiction of Luke Skywalker, who has become bitter and disconnected from the force. Luke Skywalker grew up, got old, got tired, and got fandom in their feelings over the fact that the Jedi wasn’t leading the charge across space, green lightsaber in hand. While The Last Jedi is a commentary on the failure of the previous generation, setting the stage for new characters Rey, Finn, Rose, and Poe to start their own revolution on their own terms and “let the past die,” many Star Wars viewers weren’t interested in seeing the next generation take charge and instead clung to defunct canon. While many want these characters to grow up with them, they want them to grow up on their own terms, and if not to remake the plot points of their childhoods, then at least to recreate the feeling they got from those original films.

Laurie Sparham/DisneyChristopher Robin

A similar situation of childhood properties expected to grow up under strict terms followed the release of Marc Forster’s Christopher Robin. While Winnie the Pooh remains a beloved children’s property, kept alive by various television shows and animated movies, Christopher Robin tells a story where the titular boy has become a man and left his childhood friends, Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore behind in the Hundred Acre Wood. Christopher Robinisn’t only the first iteration of the property to be rated PG, it’s also deeply melancholy, and grounded in the working class struggle of post-World War II London. Favoring dark grays and weather-worn cinematography, along with allusions to the directorial touches of Terrence Malick, Christopher Robin often feels explicitly geared towards adults. Yes, there are moments of warmth, brightness, and the humor that made A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard’s stories so beloved in the first place, but unless you have a kid who’s eagerly sitting down to watch Days of Heaven, there’s a lot in Forster’s presentation geared towards adults. The reaction to this take has been somewhat mixed, with a number of critics lamenting the film’s more serious insights and a lack of fun. But what’s interesting is that Christopher Robin speaks directly to the phenomenon we’ve been discussing. Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor) realizes that being an adult doesn’t necessarily mean leaving childhood things behind, but incorporating them into adulthood. While this revelation doesn’t take Christopher Robin into Ted (2012) territory, there are interesting parallels to these stories of men who are incomplete without the literal representations of their childhood in tow.

The Happytime Murders

Perhaps this is all a rather roundabout way to approach the issue of Muppets offering unsolicited sex and hard drugs in Happytime Murders, but nonetheless, the sentiment remains true. We don’t really want to put away childish things, we want them to grow up with us. Brian Henson’s R-rated crime-comedy film starring Melissa McCarthy, earned its share of pre-release controversy, with the Sesame Workshop suing production company STX for the use of the tagline “No Sesame. All Street.” Sesame Street remains popular among young audiences, but the Disney owned Muppets have largely fallen out of favor with the last movie The Muppets Most Wantedmaking a poor box office showing ($80.4 million on a $50 million budget), and sitcom The Muppets being canceled in 2016 after one season. With Disney seemingly having no plans for the characters anytime soon, perhaps Brian Henson’s best bet to keep his father’s art-form alive, if not the characters themselves, was to appeal to a desire to see Muppet-esque characters in adult situations, something that worked well for the popular Broadway musical Avenue Q.  

Not every modern resurrection of once sensational properties has opted to appeal to adults. R.L. Stine’s book series Goosebumps, which led to a popular television series in the '90s, was adapted as a film in 2015. A sequel, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween is set for release on Oct. 12 this year. The first film is kids’ movies through and through, and trailer for the sequel indicates that this new installment will go even further in that direction, given its younger cast. This doesn’t mean the films don’t register with adults, but rather they aren’t appealing to our nostalgia, going as far to drastically redesign some of the characters popularized by Fox Kids/YTV show and refrain from utilizing the classic theme song. The Goosebumps films haven’t grown up with us, but rather see kids of Gen Z as their primary audience.

Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time (2018) is another film that struck a chord with younger audiences more so than adults who read the book series growing up, or those who remember the 2003 ABC television film. It’s a film that aims to be an intelligent kids’ movie, a big-budget PG experience that we rarely see in live-action theatrical releases anymore. Films like Goosebumps and A Wrinkle in Time ask us to meet kids on their level, rather than asking them to rise to an adolescent or adult level to enjoy the things we refuse to loosen our grips on. With films based on Are You Afraid of the Dark and Barbie set to receive new interpretations, and a Sandlot(1993) prequel in development, it will be interesting to see which audience demographic they appeal to and how much nostalgia they’ll give into. We’re living in the height of pop culture adaptations, and if we’ve proven anything, it’s that we’ll take these childish ways with us as far as we can.

Source: Hollywood Reporter by Richard Newby

[neni-has-ascended]

The early Disney Princesses are more than You give Them Credit for

(Neni’s Advent Calendar, Day 16)

Older Disney Princesses get a bad rep. There’s absolutely nothing to dispute in that statement. As well-regarded and respected their movies are for their technical achievements and beautiful animation alone, whenever you hear people talk about the actual characters appearing in these movies, especially the protagonists, you will rarely find people lose a nice word about them. Accusations of Snow White, Cinderella and Aurora being anti-feminist characters, teaching little children, regardless of gender, harmful lessons and values, are easy to make and thus a dime a dozen. They’ve been parodied, ridiculed and done off as an archetypal relic of the past century’s culture, by everyone and their mothers, including Disney themselves.

Maybe that’s just the reason Disney have been trying so hard to “modernize” these characters, by rewriting their stories and personalities to the point of being non-recognizable in their recent slew of remakes. 2014′s “Maleficent” and the 2015 version of “Cinderella” come to mind. But do we really need remakes like that? Don’t get me wrong, the original films were clearly products of their time, but the way Disney advertises these reimaginings as “updated” and “feminist” makes it rather clear that the only reason they exist is to please the crowd who’s convinced the original versions of these characters are “harmful” or “badly written” by modern standards. And that’s just not a sentiment I can get behind at all. 

Let me make one thing clear before I continue: I did not grow up with the original three “Disney Princess” movies, and for most of my life, I only knew them from clips that would play in-between Disney Afternoon shows or hear-say. Well, I may have seen Cinderella once, when I was 7, but that was it. I just had no interest in watching those movies. As a child I found older Disney movies to be - as Cinderella would probably put it - “frightfully dull and boring”, and stuck to watching The Little Mermaid and Mulan on VHS.  

However, as my knowledge of aforementioned quote should probably tell you, by now I have actually watched and enjoyed all three of these movies. Quite recently, actually. A combination of a Christmassy need to watch old animated movies, as well as having an on-going Kingdom Hearts BbS fanfiction in the works that will eventually require me to write in-character versions of the three original princesses makes it possible. 

Now, due to how popular culture has indoctrinated me over the years to believe that classic Disney Princesses are flat, uninteresting characters, who only exist to get themselves into a pickle and be saved from it by equally flat, uninteresting princes, making the whole endeavor only worth the watch for the beauty of its animation, I didn’t expect much when I absentmindedly put on the original version of Cinderella on Netflix one night before going to bed. In the end, I was blown away. Cinderella... was nothing like what I was led to believe she would be. I’d been promised a barbie doll who spends her life doing nothing but enduring being bossed around by cartoonishly evil villains with a dumb smile and dreaming of being mother to a nuclear family until Prince Charming comes and sweeps her away with no effort at all. Instead, what I found was a snarky, spirited girl, who is quite aware of the abuse she’s being put through and holds a healthy amount of loathing and spite for her abusers (Stockholm syndrome clearly hasn’t gotten ahold of this one, it didn’t), yet endures it because she’s waiting for a good opportunity to free herself from this lousy situation without ending up homeless and starving on the streets. The term “prince” is only mentioned once by her, in passing, until long after she’s actually met the guy, and meeting him was never her goal when she tried to get to that ball. She just wanted to defy Lady Tremaine for once in her life by going out and partying, because she felt like it. No other reason. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

What I’m trying to get across here is: My first encounter with the actual movie Cinderella made me wonder, how much of what we take for granted about these old “Princess Movies” due to how they’re represented in popular culture is actually accurate, and how much of it is just flanderization and simplification, making an aggregation of smaller flaws in otherwise great movies appear much bigger and more damning than they actually are? Maybe these movies are a whole lot less regressive than we often give them credit for. I’m not necessarily saying they’re “progressive”, heaven’s no, but in some ways, I found the 1950 version of Cinderella’s character to be a lot more independent and strong than her 2015 version, which is claimed to be the “feminist” one, and the less said about what “Maleficent” does to... pretty much every single female character from the original movie, the better. 

So, here I am. I already had strong opinions on the three original princess movies after watching them this month, and watching “Maleficent” was the final straw. In honor of this season’s tendency to replay the corniest of fairy-tale movies ad-nauseum and my own love for corny fairy-tales, I’m gonna take a quick look at the three original Disney Princesses within the context of their movies and see how well they - in my honest opinion - still hold up by today’s standards. Where applicable, I’ll talk a little about the remakes as well. Well then, let’s go!

Snow White (1937)

This is the least defendable movie of the bunch, but for the probably most respectable reasons. 

I mean, let’s face it, this was Walt Disney’s - and actually, anyone’s, period - first go at a feature length animated movie, and despite how stunningly beautiful a film it still is, BOY, it shows. The whole film, from start to length, feels a lot like an overly long Silly Symphonies short with a monstrous budget, which is basically what it was. These people didn’t know how to make an animated feature film yet, so they used the next best experience they had as a model, and while it worked in their favor, its natural consequence is that Snow White’s character basically just feels like an extension of the female animation eye candy from their previous shorts, such as “The goddess of spring”. The fact that she’s constantly referred to as “beautiful” in a way that makes her sound sexually eligible, despite being 14 years old and acting like it is more than just questionable as well, to say the least. However, if there’s one good thing I can say about Snow White, it’s that she’s not quite as passive as she’s made out to be.

Now, her initial reaction to almost being assassinated, then asked to run and live in the forest is shock and trauma, as to be expected of a 14 years old girl who was just almost assassinated, then cast into the woods. People make fun of the “OMG THE TREEEES” scene, but fact is, if you were 14 and this shit happened to you, wouldn’t YOU act paranoid for the next couple of hours after? It’s “self-preservation instinct”. Nothing about how she broke down in that scene was wimpy or unrealistic. In fact, the way how she picked herself right back up after the initial scare had passed and cheered herself up without the help of another human being (animals to pet are another story) is quite impressive. As soon as Snow White has her bearings back in order, she gets up and, quite intelligently, decides to go and look for lodging. That’s right, she doesn’t just sit there and wait for someone to come and save her. She stands up and goes “Well, I guess stepmom’s lost it. Welp, time to go and get my own place.”

And what does she do once she finds a cottage that could possibly offer lodging to her, but sees that there’s nobody home? She immediately starts to plan on how to receive permission to stay, basically doing the math on how to pay the rent. She takes the initiative. Nobody invited her in, she decided for herself “I’m gonna make myself so useful around here, they’ll have no choice but to give me a room!” Again, impressive for such a very play-minded 14 years old. She clearly knows how to take care of herself. Now, when it comes to “stranger danger”, she clearly still has a couple of things to learn, but without a functioning set of parents to tell her to not accept candy from strange old people in a van, really, who can blame her?

Then there’s the issue of the prince. He’s clearly quite a bit older than her and the implied marriage between the two of them... Let’s just say I REALLY hope they waited at least three, four years with that. Then again, these were the middle ages, so... oh well. 

However, in general, the relationship between the two isn’t handled too badly. Sure, the prince is pretty much a prop, an item for Snow White to acquire at the end of her struggle to survive (a theme we’ll see repeated in Cinderella), but despite us only seeing one scene of her singing together with him in the start of the movie, the way she talks about him for the rest of the movie (and the way the narration goes) strongly implies the two of them met more often than that. For all we know, they’d been meeting up in the courtyard like that for a couple of weeks already by the time Snow White has to run off. Basically, it can be assumed, those two already knew each other well enough and even considered each other properly boyfriend and girlfriend by the time the Prince appears in the end to kiss her awake, which makes the fact that he kisses her awake in first place a lot less creepy, especially compared to the original fairy tale. This isn’t a stranger coming in to claim a pretty price; It’s a concerned boyfriend learning that his M.I.A. girlfriend might possibly have been murdered by her crazy mother and hurrying to her dying bed to see her one more time. Again, this doesn’t change anything about the obvious creepy age gap between the two of them, but if I’d seen this movie as a kid, I wouldn’t have taken “Awww, being kissed by a stranger and then taken away to be married by him is soooo romantic!” from it. I would have taken “Awww, it’s nice to know that there was a loved one out there who cared enough about her to come and save her even when it seemed too late.” from it. 

If Disney decides to remake this movie, I guess I’d wish for them to do three, and ONLY three things to change the story: 

A) Age up Snow White by at least two years, 

B) Put more emphasis on her already present resourcefulness and craftiness, and

B) Add more scenes in the beginning to make it 100% clear that she and the prince have been an item for a long time, eliminating the creepiness of a possible stranger kissing her entirely. 

I don’t think there’s really much else you can do, without ditching the source material. I mean, let’s be honest, you’re kinda confined in what you can do when working with Grim’s Fairy Tales, but for that this movie isn’t doing too badly.

Alternately, a movie about the Evil Queen could be done and would make a LOT more sense than a movie about “Maleficent”. More on that in the last section. 

Cinderella (1950)

This movie is the one I think is most unfairly judged as “anti-feminist”, because pretty much every single piece I read claiming that Cinderella is a passive, docile character waiting to be saved by a prince... Let’s just say I doubt these people have ever actually watched the movie in first place. That, or they’re mixing it up with the other two.

Snow White was waiting for her boyfriend prince to come and help her out.

Aurora laid asleep, waiting for her prince to come and help her out.

Cinderella? Cinderella isn’t waiting for anyone. Cinderella is constantly looking for her chance. 

As I’ve said before, if you actually watch the movie, you’ll quickly realize that “finding a prince” and getting married is never a concern of Cinderella’s. All she dreams of is leading a happy life. What kind of life that is isn’t specified, but it probably involves a whole lot less Lady Tremaine, Anastasia and Drisella, and a whole lot more me-time for Cinderella. Cinderella is far from docile and complacent in her situation. From the first scene we hear her speak, she’s snarling at the clock-tower dragging her out of bed when she’d rather avoid avoid it, snarking at Tremaine and her daughters behind their backs non-stop and defying their orders by keeping the mice they clearly want dead as her friends and pets. The very first thing she talks about is having a dream and wanting it to come true, and the movie let’s little doubt that said dream is all about escaping her abusers at the first realistic chance she gets. But she doesn’t just dream; she’s realistic. She has foresight. When Lady Tremaine insists she can’t go to the ball, she sets out to defy her stepmother  by playing the “Your orders are not above the king’s” card. She handles her chores in record time, only to prove to Tremaine that she can’t stop her from going, and when ultimately she lacks the time to finish her dress, Cinderella is rewarded for a previous act of defiance - saving the household mice and treating them kindly - by having them finish her dress for her. Basically: Everything Cinderella gets, she earned. She isn’t just sitting down, waiting around to be saved. She works hard and stays good to her friends, even in her shitty situation, and her friends stand by her in return, aiding her in her attempts to defy her abusers. The Fairy Godmother, too, isn’t just a random stroke of luck. She even says so herself: The aid she receives from the fairy is a reward for Cinderella’s unfaltering belief in a better future, which she held onto despite all of the abuse. It’s an empowering message, about how by not lowering yourself to the level of those who wrong you and staying true to your own ideals, you can ultimately succeed with the aid of those whose trust you earned. Cinderella gets to go to the ball not because she’s pretty and cute and we’re supposed to root for her, but because she deserved it. Ultimately, Hard work pays off.

Oh, but let’s not forget what the ball was really about: Cinderella wants to go out and party. That’s all there is to it. No prince involved. In fact, when she actually does get to go, and some guy asks her to dance with her, she doesn’t even realize that guy is the prince until way, waaaay later. To her, she’s just out at a dance after one hard day of work, having the time of her life, when suddenly a hot guy walks up to her and asks to hang out. They hang out, talk and, whoa, the hot guy is super nice, too! Totally her type! Talk about one awesome party! Now, I’m asexual myself, so I don’t know what it’s like to immediately crush on someone the first moment you see them, but I’d imagine that for many people, an experience like that at a party is quite relatable. The point of the scene isn’t that Prince Charming is saving Cinderella, the point is that she’s out, having fun, like she’s dreamed of doing for so long. All those years of hanging in there are finally paying off. She’s successfully defied Lady Tremaine and managed to have an awesome night. The fact that she developed a huge crush on the guy she danced with is more or less just a side effect.

Talking of the prince, again, if anyone is a flat character, it’s him. Again, he’s a prop, someone who exists as an ultimate reward for Cinderella’s hard work - and, most importantly, not the other way around! Cinderella isn’t the prize to be conquered here. The prince is. He is her reward for defying Lady Tremaine and managing to escape her abuse. In the climax of the movie, against all odds, it’s not the prince who saves Cinderella: Cinderella saves herself. She stands by the door, tries to pry it open with all her mind, and, finally, hatches a plan to free herself from the room she is locked in with the help of one of the friends she’s earned herself with her kindness. That’s all her. If she hadn’t acted that moment, thought about it and figured out what to do to save herself, she’d never have been able to leave the room in time. But she did. She saved herself, and the  help she received, she received from the people who’s trust she’s earned with honest effort.  My single complaint with the movie is that she ends up marrying the prince after their first, maybe second date, but, again, that comes with the source material. Let’s just give the guy the benefit of the doubt and hope the marriage doesn’t fall apart. Cindy definitely earned it.

When I was 1950′s Cinderella, I don’t see a helpless girl who is swept off her feet by a knight in shining armor. I see a resourceful, intelligent young woman, who waits for the perfect moment to escape her abusers, earns it, and then takes it, not allowing anything or anyone to stop her. I see nothing anti-feminist in this. Both, Cinderella and her abusers are female. The prince is a prop. She never interacts with any other male humans. The male mice help her because she’s saved them and kept them alive first. There are no male power-fantasies at play here, and even if Cinderella is a very traditionally feminine character, what’s so bad about that? I am a woman who loves BOTH traditional and non-traditional femininity. Cinderella has her well-deserved place in this world. This is a movie that I’d show to children without a second thought, right next to things like Steven Universe. Any kind of femininity that doesn’t rely on non-agency should be celebrated, me-thinks. 

That’s why I absolutely don’t understand why Disney felt the need to remake this movie. 

I’m... conflicted on the 2015 remake... Actually, I took notes while watching it today. Lemme share them with you as they are, alright?

The start is good, thanks for expanding on this.

CGI mice are cute, thanks for not cutting the mice

Slow progression into abuse which makes sense with the original movie and could easily be in-continuity with it, good

An actual motivation for Lady Tremaine which makes sense, yes, very good

the first act was awesome.

where is Cinderella's snark?

Seriously, why isn’t she snarking? That was the best thing about her.

Oh gosh, they made Drisella and Anastasia even MORE cartoonishly evil

Too much talking, 

too much prince, 

WHY CAST HELENA BONHAM CARTER AS THE FAIRY???

what are you smoking

The slapstick wasn’t needed. At all.

why is the grand duke evil, 

She's NOT more proactive

Too much prince angst. king didn’t need to die

Seriously, Why make the Grand Duke evil? SHE DOESN'T EVEN TRY TO FIGHT GOSH IN THE ORIGINAL SHE CAME UP WITH THE PLAN THAT SAVED HER HERSELF

SINGING???? REALLY???

In the original version, she saves herself with the help of the mice. Here, SHE'S SAVED BY THE FRIGGIN' PRINCE GOSH. FEMINISM??

All she is more angry at Lady Tremaine??

"I forgive you. Guards, banish the bitch."

Have courage, kindness and VINDICATION

THE FIRST ACT MADE SO MUCH SENSE AND WAS SO GOOD THO. THANKS FOR THE CGI MICE GOOD

...Ahem. 

So yeah, as you can read out of this, I would have much preferred this movie if it had just been a prequel short to the original film, as which it would have made a lot of sense and would have been beautiful. The moment Cinderella met the prince in the woods, everything kind of fell apart, since from that moment on, going to the ball became about the prince, totally undermining what made her decision to go there such a great show of self-agency in the original. Also, the chances to the climax were bullshit. She ended up having on part in her own rescue, nope, this time it really was the prince who saved her. I did not appreciate that at all. With that change they broke what didn’t need to be fixed. Was it so hard to just write the dog back in and have the climax go more similar to the original? *sigh*

Pro-tip Disney: When you try to make your properties my feminist, try to not go about that by breaking the feminism already present in them. Thank you very much.

But, oh well, at least this remake still had artistic merit to it and didn’t break the original completely. That’s more than I can say for the reimagining of...

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Aurora is not this movie’s saving grace. Nope, not by a long shot. 

The fairies are. All of them. Especially Maleficent.

Let’s get right into it, this is the only of the three movies where it isn’t the prince who’s the prop, but the Princess. Aurora isn’t an interesting character at all, she’s basically a female version of the prince from Cinderella. She exists as a prize for not just the prince, but the entire Kingdom to celebrate the defeat of Maleficent, and while that may sound troubling, there’s a reason why this movie definitely does not simply have a bias against its female character, and that reason is every single female character not named Aurora. 

Yeah yeah. I can’t defend Aurora herself. Call this cheating. But really, neither Aurora, nor Phillip even get the majority of the screen time in the movie. They’re not the real protagonists here. Nope, the movie is REALLY about is the struggle of three brave fairies, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, to put an end to the tyranny of the mighty, vindictive fairy Maleficent. Phillip’s story of reuniting with Aurora is a side-note compared to that.

The fairies are the reason this movie, THIS MOVIE, of all things, passes the Bechdel test. Let that sink in. Flora, Fauna and Merryweather make the movie. For the sake of defeating Maleficent’s curse, they have to give up their upper-class, immortal lives with the ability to magick up anything they want out of thin air, and learn to live as mortals instead, something they still are shown having trouble with sixteen years after the fact. It’s an interesting take on the traditional fairy godmother, and one I’m surprised hasn’t received more attention. It certainly helps that all three of them have such strong personalities and often clash. Especially the running gag of Flora and Merryweather  both wanting to dress Aurora in their signature colors kept bringing a smile to my face. Flora is level-headed and strict, Merryweather is a worrier who is blunt and doesn’t always think her actions through, Fauna is sweet and reliable, but also a little slow when it comes to some things. I really enjoyed every scene with those three on screen, especially Merryweather’s reactions to her friends’ antics were gold. I often found myself laughing out loud, something many modern movies don’t manage to make me do. I’m sure, if I’d seen this movie as a kid, I would have come away forgetting about Aurora pretty quickly, but the fairies would have won my heart. Especially Merryweather. God, she’s amazing. I want her to be my friend and talk trash about politics with her. Though, she’d probably find my love for the color pink disturbing... 

These three fairies are the true heroes of the movie, and their story isn’t about finding love and getting married. That’s never even remotely an issue. No, their story is about defeating one of their own, a fairy much stronger than them, first by outsmarting her, then by using the things she scoffs at against her. They’re pretty traditional heroes in that way, and I like it.Now, Phillip is a pretty cool hero too, but let’s face it. He’s basically the prince from Snow White again, except with more personality and more of a part in actually saving the girl. I’ll be honest, I probably liked this movie best out of the three, but it was definitely not because of Aurora and Phillip. It was all thanks to the fairies. 

You know who that also includes? That’s right, Maleficent!

Oh my god, Maleficent. She’s just... Just such a perfect villain. Everything about her just oozes power. She’s like a force of nature. Someone who’s enjoys and relishes her own spitefulness and vindictiveness to the utmost. You love to hate her, but you love her for how much you hate her. She’s animated beautifully, and evokes fear every time she’s on screen. Truly the Mistress of all evil. Of course, she’s not exactly a relatable character, but she really doesn’t need to be. Not every person in the world is relatable. Some are just insane, and Maleficent is that kind of person. Unlike the Evil Queen, her motivation isn’t even a traditionally “feminine” one. She’s not just vain or a woman scorned, heck, it’s not even the traditional male motivation of world-domination. Nope, she’s just a really, really vindictive person with a lot of power who enjoys causing suffering.Basically, she’s Vladimir Putin as a fairy, except somehow even scarrier. That’s just amazing. It’s enjoyable to see her scheme and act like a lunatic, and it’s just as enjoyable to watch her get taken down in the end. Fauna, Flora and Merryweather may make the movie, but Maleficent puts the cherry on its top. She completes the package. A delightfully magical package.

The fairies were the best part about the original movie. So why did Disney decide TO MAKE A TERRIBLE MOVIE ABOUT THEM THAT RUINS EVERYTHING THAT MADE THEM AWESOME?

Why.

WHy wOuld yoU do THAT!?

Not only did they manage to waste a perfectly good life action representation of Maleficent (the few scenes in which she’s actually allowed to BE the actual Maleficent, rather than the diet version the rest of the movie ran with, Angelina Jolie really nails the role. It makes the rest of the movie even more painful.), they also took pretty much every single character from the original and turned them into unlikable assholes, INCLUDING the fairies. 

Oh, Merryweather, what have they done to you, my dear. Please, forgive those foolish mortals, for they know not what they’re doing...

The first and immediate problem is that the entire movie is built on a fallacy: The idea that Maleficent was never given a motivation and thus needed one. That is, of course, bullshit. She already had a perfectly good motivation. Being a vindictive person. Believe it or not, there ARE people like that in the world. Denying that reality doesn’t make your movie any “darker”, it makes it more childish. Oh, but of course, the movie doesn’t deny that reality, it just makes OTHER characters evil and vindictive instead! How silly of me! Yeah, let’s rewrite the strong, powerful female villain who does what she does for no other reason than that she can into a poor, hurt puppy, who’s entire world-view was shaped by a man and an implied fantasy-rape, and also make her an all-loving mother-figure at it, the OLDEST female archetype in the book, then call that “progressive”! Ahahahahahahahaha. Meanwhile, they demonized the entirety of Aurora’s Kingdom by going with the old “Hoomans R evul” trope, which has been tired and overused since back in the 90s, then they rewrote some of the most interesting and fun female characters in early Disney film to become a trio of bumbling buffoons, incapable of tying their own shoes instead. OH AND THEY MADE MERRYWEATHER DUMB. THAT DESERVES SHOUTING. YOU CAN’T MAKE MY MERRYWEATHER DUMB, YOU MONSTERS.

The plot they came up with didn’t even make sense within itself. If Maleficent had a personal beef with Stephan because he was her ex, then why did she curse Aurora, and not him? Why do the three fairies listen to the king of they’re part of a different Kingdom? Why are the mores called a “Kingdom” if they’re outright stated to be a direct democracy? Why does Aurora become queen of the mores in the end when the mores are a direct democracy? Why did you go for the same friggin’ plot-twist as Frozen, when Maleficent is most definitely NOT the same character as Elsa? Why didn’t she go get her wings back much earlier if it was as easy as just sticking them on again? Why do the three fairies already consider Maleficent evil before the christening incident, if that was LITERALLY the first truly vindictive thing she’s done? WHY would you cut off the fairies’ gifts at the second one like the original movie, but then have Maleficent HERSELF weaken the curse, rendering the final fairy’s gift unnecessary?? Why were the three fairies still in the movie at all if you basically turned Maleficent into a composite character of herself AND THEM in the first place?? Why would you disgrace your own classic movie by having Aurora herself claim that the original movie is bullshit and THIS, lo and behold, is the true, canon story now? F**k this movie with all the forces of hell!

The worst thing about this whole fiasko is that a movie like that CAN work. It can work, with pretty much any female villain OTHER than Maleficent. This could have worked with the Evil Queen from Snow White. This could have worked with Lady Tremaine. Heck, this story would have worked A LOT with Mother Gothel from Tangled/Rapunzel. In fact, the whole thing was written like it was meant for Mother Gothel! For your information, in the original fairy tale, Gothel was a fairy who stole Rapunzel out of revenge for her parents stealing from her garden. She’s never described as ‘evil’ in the source material, she’s just a villain by virtue of her method of punishing the thieves. A plot-line like the one in “Maleficent” would have made a LOT more sense for Gothel, heck, even if you went with the Disney-version of Gothel a movie like this would still have made more sense for her than for Maleficent. So, why the hell did they do this movie with the one female villain with which it does NOT work?

Not everything can be turned into “Wicked”, Disney. Not everything is meant to be “Wicked”. You’ve had your go at “Wicked” with Frozen. Now, LET IT GO. 

This movie is terrible. It’s not progressive, not feminist, and least of all a respectful take on its source material. It’s everything that’s wrong with Hollywood remake culture.The original movie wasn’t a cornerstone of feminist media, but its female characters were sure a heck of a load better than the characters in this glorified fanfic. 

Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is: Disney. Stop hating your own Princess Movies. Some healthy self-awareness and a will to improve is good, but what you’ve been doing has been downright delusional. Your protrayal of female characters was never as incredibly terribad as you seem to believe it was. Take some pride in what you’ve done and strife to do even better in the future, without defiling your old work for the sake of being “progressshiiivvvvvv” (without actually being progressive.) If people want Disney Princess movies that feature the princesses (and queens) doing non-traditionally feminine things, there’s Tangled, Frozen and The Princess and the Frog, and the list is ever-expanding. We don’t need to go back and try to erase and rewrite the history that lead Disney to where it is now. That history is part of why they got to where they are now.

Don’t demonize the past. Look at it with the same critical eye you look at the present with, and then learn from it. Honor it and be thankful for what it can teach you. 

  (See the other entries into my Advent Calendar Series HERE. )

[beardcore-blog]

A Princess Diary

"What’s Wrong With Cinderella?"

I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with ”Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her ”princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, ”I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, ”Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.

”Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. ”Do you have a princess drill, too?”

She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.

”Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. ”It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”

My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. ”Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. ”What’s wrong with princesses?”

Diana may be dead and Masako disgraced, but here in America, we are in the midst of a royal moment. To call princesses a ”trend” among girls is like calling Harry Potter a book. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. ”Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.

Meanwhile in 2001, Mattel brought out its own ”world of girl” line of princess Barbie dolls, DVDs, toys, clothing, home décor and myriad other products. At a time when Barbie sales were declining domestically, they became instant best sellers. Shortly before that, Mary Drolet, a Chicago-area mother and former Claire’s and Montgomery Ward executive, opened Club Libby Lu, now a chain of mall stores based largely in the suburbs in which girls ages 4 to 12 can shop for ”Princess Phones” covered in faux fur and attend ”Princess-Makeover Birthday Parties.” Saks bought Club Libby Lu in 2003 for $12 million and has since expanded it to 87 outlets; by 2005, with only scant local advertising, revenues hovered around the $46 million mark, a 53 percent jump from the previous year. Pink, it seems, is the new gold.

Even Dora the Explorer, the intrepid, dirty-kneed adventurer, has ascended to the throne: in 2004, after a two-part episode in which she turns into a ”true princess,” the Nickelodeon and Viacom consumer-products division released a satin-gowned ”Magic Hair Fairytale Dora,” with hair that grows or shortens when her crown is touched. Among other phrases the bilingual doll utters: ”Vámonos! Let’s go to fairy-tale land!” and ”Will you brush my hair?”

As a feminist mother — not to mention a nostalgic product of the Grranimals era — I have been taken by surprise by the princess craze and the girlie-girl culture that has risen around it. What happened to William wanting a doll and not dressing your cat in an apron? Whither Marlo Thomas? I watch my fellow mothers, women who once swore they’d never be dependent on a man, smile indulgently at daughters who warble ”So This Is Love” or insist on being called Snow White. I wonder if they’d concede so readily to sons who begged for combat fatigues and mock AK-47s.

More to the point, when my own girl makes her daily beeline for the dress-up corner of her preschool classroom — something I’m convinced she does largely to torture me — I worry about what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her. I’ve spent much of my career writing about experiences that undermine girls’ well-being, warning parents that a preoccupation with body and beauty (encouraged by films, TV, magazines and, yes, toys) is perilous to their daughters’ mental and physical health. Am I now supposed to shrug and forget all that? If trafficking in stereotypes doesn’t matter at 3, when does it matter? At 6? Eight? Thirteen?

On the other hand, maybe I’m still surfing a washed-out second wave of feminism in a third-wave world. Maybe princesses are in fact a sign of progress, an indication that girls can embrace their predilection for pink without compromising strength or ambition; that, at long last, they can ”have it all.” Or maybe it is even less complex than that: to mangle Freud, maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess. And, as my daughter wants to know, what’s wrong with that?

The rise of the Disney princesses reads like a fairy tale itself, with Andy Mooney, a former Nike executive, playing the part of prince, riding into the company on a metaphoric white horse in January 2000 to save a consumer-products division whose sales were dropping by as much as 30 percent a year. Both overstretched and underfocused, the division had triggered price wars by granting multiple licenses for core products (say, Winnie-the-Pooh undies) while ignoring the potential of new media. What’s more, Disney films like ”A Bug’s Life” in 1998 had yielded few merchandising opportunities — what child wants to snuggle up with an ant?

It was about a month after Mooney’s arrival that the magic struck. That’s when he flew to Phoenix to check out his first ”Disney on Ice” show. ”Standing in line in the arena, I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses,” he told me last summer in his palatial office, then located in Burbank, and speaking in a rolling Scottish burr. ”They weren’t even Disney products. They were generic princess products they’d appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, ‘O.K., let’s establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they’re doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.’ ”

Mooney picked a mix of old and new heroines to wear the Pantone pink No. 241 corona: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas. It was the first time Disney marketed characters separately from a film’s release, let alone lumped together those from different stories. To ensure the sanctity of what Mooney called their individual ”mythologies,” the princesses never make eye contact when they’re grouped: each stares off in a slightly different direction as if unaware of the others’ presence.

It is also worth noting that not all of the ladies are of royal extraction. Part of the genius of ”Princess” is that its meaning is so broadly constructed that it actually has no meaning. Even Tinker Bell was originally a Princess, though her reign didn’t last. ”We’d always debate over whether she was really a part of the Princess mythology,” Mooney recalled. ”She really wasn’t.” Likewise, Mulan and Pocahontas, arguably the most resourceful of the bunch, are rarely depicted on Princess merchandise, though for a different reason. Their rustic garb has less bling potential than that of old-school heroines like Sleeping Beauty. (When Mulan does appear, she is typically in the kimonolike hanfu, which makes her miserable in the movie, rather than her liberated warrior’s gear.)

The first Princess items, released with no marketing plan, no focus groups, no advertising, sold as if blessed by a fairy godmother. To this day, Disney conducts little market research on the Princess line, relying instead on the power of its legacy among mothers as well as the instant-read sales barometer of the theme parks and Disney Stores. ”We simply gave girls what they wanted,” Mooney said of the line’s success, ”although I don’t think any of us grasped how much they wanted this. I wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl’s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy. The counsel we gave to licensees was: What type of bedding would a princess want to sleep in? What kind of alarm clock would a princess want to wake up to? What type of television would a princess like to see? It’s a rare case where you find a girl who has every aspect of her room bedecked in Princess, but if she ends up with three or four of these items, well, then you have a very healthy business.”

Every reporter Mooney talks to asks some version of my next question: Aren’t the Princesses, who are interested only in clothes, jewelry and cadging the handsome prince, somewhat retrograde role models?

”Look,” he said, ”I have friends whose son went through the Power Rangers phase who castigated themselves over what they must’ve done wrong. Then they talked to other parents whose kids had gone through it. The boy passes through. The girl passes through. I see girls expanding their imagination through visualizing themselves as princesses, and then they pass through that phase and end up becoming lawyers, doctors, mothers or princesses, whatever the case may be.”

Mooney has a point: There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception. What’s more, the 23 percent decline in girls’ participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine. And in a survey released last October by Girls Inc., school-age girls overwhelmingly reported a paralyzing pressure to be ”perfect”: not only to get straight A’s and be the student-body president, editor of the newspaper and captain of the swim team but also to be ”kind and caring,” ”please everyone, be very thin and dress right.” Give those girls a pumpkin and a glass slipper and they’d be in business.

At the grocery store one day, my daughter noticed a little girl sporting a Cinderella backpack. ”There’s that princess you don’t like, Mama!” she shouted.

”Um, yeah,” I said, trying not to meet the other mother’s hostile gaze.

”Don’t you like her blue dress, Mama?”

I had to admit, I did.

She thought about this. ”Then don’t you like her face?”

”Her face is all right,” I said, noncommittally, though I’m not thrilled to have my Japanese-Jewish child in thrall to those Aryan features. (And what the heck are those blue things covering her ears?) ”It’s just, honey, Cinderella doesn’t really do anything.”

Over the next 45 minutes, we ran through that conversation, verbatim, approximately 37 million times, as my daughter pointed out Disney Princess Band-Aids, Disney Princess paper cups, Disney Princess lip balm, Disney Princess pens, Disney Princess crayons and Disney Princess notebooks — all cleverly displayed at the eye level of a 3-year-old trapped in a shopping cart — as well as a bouquet of Disney Princess balloons bobbing over the checkout line. The repetition was excessive, even for a preschooler. What was it about my answers that confounded her? What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women, another example of corporate mind control and power-to-the-people! my 3-year-old was thinking, Mommy doesn’t want me to be a girl?

According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable. They believe that they have a choice: they can grow up to be either a mommy or a daddy. Some psychologists say that until permanency sets in kids embrace whatever stereotypes our culture presents, whether it’s piling on the most spangles or attacking one another with light sabers. What better way to assure that they’ll always remain themselves? If that’s the case, score one for Mooney. By not buying the Princess Pull-Ups, I may be inadvertently communicating that being female (to the extent that my daughter is able to understand it) is a bad thing.

Anyway, you have to give girls some credit. It’s true that, according to Mattel, one of the most popular games young girls play is ”bride,” but Disney found that a groom or prince is incidental to that fantasy, a regrettable necessity at best. Although they keep him around for the climactic kiss, he is otherwise relegated to the bottom of the toy box, which is why you don’t see him prominently displayed in stores.

What’s more, just because they wear the tulle doesn’t mean they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Plenty of girls stray from the script, say, by playing basketball in their finery, or casting themselves as the powerful evil stepsister bossing around the sniveling Cinderella. I recall a headline-grabbing 2005 British study that revealed that girls enjoy torturing, decapitating and microwaving their Barbies nearly as much as they like to dress them up for dates. There is spice along with that sugar after all, though why this was news is beyond me: anyone who ever played with the doll knows there’s nothing more satisfying than hacking off all her hair and holding her underwater in the bathtub. Princesses can even be a boon to exasperated parents: in our house, for instance, royalty never whines and uses the potty every single time.

”Playing princess is not the issue,” argues Lyn Mikel Brown, an author, with Sharon Lamb, of ”Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes.” ”The issue is 25,000 Princess products,” says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. ”When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.”

It’s hard to imagine that girls’ options could truly be shrinking when they dominate the honor roll and outnumber boys in college. Then again, have you taken a stroll through a children’s store lately? A year ago, when we shopped for ”big girl” bedding at Pottery Barn Kids, we found the ”girls” side awash in flowers, hearts and hula dancers; not a soccer player or sailboat in sight. Across the no-fly zone, the ”boys” territory was all about sports, trains, planes and automobiles. Meanwhile, Baby GAP’s boys’ onesies were emblazoned with ”Big Man on Campus” and the girls’ with ”Social Butterfly”; guess whose matching shoes were decorated on the soles with hearts and whose sported a ”No. 1” logo? And at Toys ”R” Us, aisles of pink baby dolls, kitchens, shopping carts and princesses unfurl a safe distance from the ”Star Wars” figures, GeoTrax and tool chests. The relentless resegregation of childhood appears to have sneaked up without any further discussion about sex roles, about what it now means to be a boy or to be a girl. Or maybe it has happened in lieu of such discussion because it’s easier this way.

Easier, that is, unless you want to buy your daughter something that isn’t pink. Girls’ obsession with that color may seem like something they’re born with, like the ability to breathe or talk on the phone for hours on end. But according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, it ain’t so. When colors were first introduced to the nursery in the early part of the 20th century, pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty. Why or when that switched is not clear, but as late as the 1930s a significant percentage of adults in one national survey held to that split. Perhaps that’s why so many early Disney heroines — Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Wendy, Alice-in-Wonderland — are swathed in varying shades of azure. (Purple, incidentally, may be the next color to swap teams: once the realm of kings and N.F.L. players, it is fast becoming the bolder girl’s version of pink.)

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a key strategy of children’s marketing (recall the emergence of ” ‘tween”), that pink became seemingly innate to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few years. That was also the time that the first of the generation raised during the unisex phase of feminism — ah, hither Marlo! — became parents. ”The kids who grew up in the 1970s wanted sharp definitions for their own kids,” Paoletti told me. ”I can understand that, because the unisex thing denied everything — you couldn’t be this, you couldn’t be that, you had to be a neutral nothing.”

The infatuation with the girlie girl certainly could, at least in part, be a reaction against the so-called second wave of the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s (the first wave was the fight for suffrage), which fought for reproductive rights and economic, social and legal equality. If nothing else, pink and Princess have resuscitated the fantasy of romance that that era of feminism threatened, the privileges that traditional femininity conferred on women despite its costs — doors magically opened, dinner checks picked up, Manolo Blahniks. Frippery. Fun. Why should we give up the perks of our sex until we’re sure of what we’ll get in exchange? Why should we give them up at all? Or maybe it’s deeper than that: the freedoms feminism bestowed came with an undercurrent of fear among women themselves — flowing through ”Ally McBeal,” ”Bridget Jones’s Diary,” ”Sex and the City” — of losing male love, of never marrying, of not having children, of being deprived of something that felt essentially and exclusively female.

I mulled that over while flipping through ”The Paper Bag Princess,” a 1980 picture book hailed as an antidote to Disney. The heroine outwits a dragon who has kidnapped her prince, but not before the beast’s fiery breath frizzles her hair and destroys her dress, forcing her to don a paper bag. The ungrateful prince rejects her, telling her to come back when she is ”dressed like a real princess.” She dumps him and skips off into the sunset, happily ever after, alone.

There you have it, ”Thelma and Louise” all over again. Step out of line, and you end up solo or, worse, sailing crazily over a cliff to your doom. Alternatives like those might send you skittering right back to the castle. And I get that: the fact is, though I want my daughter to do and be whatever she wants as an adult, I still hope she’ll find her Prince Charming and have babies, just as I have. I don’t want her to be a fish without a bicycle; I want her to be a fish with another fish. Preferably, one who loves and respects her and also does the dishes and half the child care.

There had to be a middle ground between compliant and defiant, between petticoats and paper bags. I remembered a video on YouTube, an ad for a Nintendo game called Super Princess Peach. It showed a pack of girls in tiaras, gowns and elbow-length white gloves sliding down a zip line on parasols, navigating an obstacle course of tires in their stilettos, slithering on their bellies under barbed wire, then using their telekinetic powers to make a climbing wall burst into flames. ”If you can stand up to really mean people,” an announcer intoned, ”maybe you have what it takes to be a princess.”

Now here were some girls who had grit as well as grace. I loved Princess Peach even as I recognized that there was no way she could run in those heels, that her peachiness did nothing to upset the apple cart of expectation: she may have been athletic, smart and strong, but she was also adorable. Maybe she’s what those once-unisex, postfeminist parents are shooting for: the melding of old and new standards. And perhaps that’s a good thing, the ideal solution. But what to make, then, of the young women in the Girls Inc. survey? It doesn’t seem to be ”having it all” that’s getting to them; it’s the pressure to be it all. In telling our girls they can be anything, we have inadvertently demanded that they be everything. To everyone. All the time. No wonder the report was titled ”The Supergirl Dilemma.”

The princess as superhero is not irrelevant. Some scholars I spoke with say that given its post-9/11 timing, princess mania is a response to a newly dangerous world. ”Historically, princess worship has emerged during periods of uncertainty and profound social change,” observes Miriam Forman-Brunell, a historian at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Francis Hodgson Burnett’s original”Little Princess” was published at a time of rapid urbanization, immigration and poverty; Shirley Temple’s film version was a hit during the Great Depression. ”The original folk tales themselves,” Forman-Brunell says, ”spring from medieval and early modern European culture that faced all kinds of economic and demographic and social upheaval — famine, war, disease, terror of wolves. Girls play savior during times of economic crisis and instability.” That’s a heavy burden for little shoulders. Perhaps that’s why the magic wand has become an essential part of the princess get-up. In the original stories — even the Disney versions of them — it’s not the girl herself who’s magic; it’s the fairy godmother. Now if Forman-Brunell is right, we adults have become the cursed creatures whom girls have the thaumaturgic power to transform.

In the 1990s, third-wave feminists rebelled against their dour big sisters, ”reclaiming” sexual objectification as a woman’s right — provided, of course, that it was on her own terms, that she was the one choosing to strip or wear a shirt that said ”Porn Star” or make out with her best friend at a frat-house bash. They embraced words like ”bitch” and ”slut” as terms of affection and empowerment. That is, when used by the right people, with the right dash of playful irony. But how can you assure that? As Madonna gave way to Britney, whatever self-determination that message contained was watered down and commodified until all that was left was a gaggle of 6-year-old girls in belly-baring T-shirts (which I’m guessing they don’t wear as cultural critique). It is no wonder that parents, faced with thongs for 8-year-olds and Bratz dolls’ ”passion for fashion,” fill their daughters’ closets with pink sateen; the innocence of Princess feels like a reprieve.

”But what does that mean?” asks Sharon Lamb, a psychology professor at Saint Michael’s College. ”There are other ways to express ‘innocence’ — girls could play ladybug or caterpillar. What you’re really talking about is sexual purity. And there’s a trap at the end of that rainbow, because the natural progression from pale, innocent pink is not to other colors. It’s to hot, sexy pink — exactly the kind of sexualization parents are trying to avoid.”

Lamb suggested that to see for myself how ”Someday My Prince Will Come” morphs into ”Oops! I Did It Again,” I visit Club Libby Lu, the mall shop dedicated to the ”Very Important Princess.”

Walking into one of the newest links in the store’s chain, in Natick, Mass., last summer, I had to tip my tiara to the founder, Mary Drolet: Libby Lu’s design was flawless. Unlike Disney, Drolet depended on focus groups to choose the logo (a crown-topped heart) and the colors (pink, pink, purple and more pink). The displays were scaled to the size of a 10-year-old, though most of the shoppers I saw were several years younger than that. The decals on the walls and dressing rooms — ”I Love Your Hair,” ”Hip Chick,” ”Spoiled” — were written in ”girlfriend language.” The young sales clerks at this ”special secret club for superfabulous girls” are called ”club counselors” and come off like your coolest baby sitter, the one who used to let you brush her hair. The malls themselves are chosen based on a company formula called the G.P.I., or ”Girl Power Index,” which predicts potential sales revenues. Talk about newspeak: ”Girl Power” has gone from a riot grrrrl anthem to ”I Am Woman, Watch Me Shop.”

Inside, the store was divided into several glittery ”shopping zones” called ”experiences”: Libby’s Laboratory, now called Sparkle Spa, where girls concoct their own cosmetics and bath products; Libby’s Room; Ear Piercing; Pooch Parlor (where divas in training can pamper stuffed poodles, pugs and Chihuahuas); and the Style Studio, offering ”Libby Du” makeover choices, including ‘Tween Idol, Rock Star, Pop Star and, of course, Priceless Princess. Each look includes hairstyle, makeup, nail polish and sparkly tattoos.

As I browsed, I noticed a mother standing in the center of the store holding a price list for makeover birthday parties — $22.50 to $35 per child. Her name was Anne McAuliffe; her daughters — Stephanie, 4, and 7-year-old twins Rory and Sarah — were dashing giddily up and down the aisles.

”They’ve been begging to come to this store for three weeks,” McAuliffe said. ”I’d never heard of it. So I said they could, but they’d have to spend their own money if they bought anything.” She looked around. ”Some of this stuff is innocuous,” she observed, then leaned toward me, eyes wide and stage-whispered: ”But … a lot of it is horrible. It makes them look like little prostitutes. It’s crazy. They’re babies!”

As we debated the line between frivolous fun and JonBenét, McAuliffe’s daughter Rory came dashing up, pigtails haphazard, glasses askew. ”They have the best pocketbooks here,” she said breathlessly, brandishing a clutch with the words ”Girlie Girl” stamped on it. ”Please, can I have one? It has sequins!”

”You see that?” McAuliffe asked, gesturing at the bag. ”What am I supposed to say?”

On my way out of the mall, I popped into the ” ‘tween” mecca Hot Topic, where a display of Tinker Bell items caught my eye. Tinker Bell, whose image racks up an annual $400 million in retail sales with no particular effort on Disney’s part, is poised to wreak vengeance on the Princess line that once expelled her. Last winter, the first chapter book designed to introduce girls to Tink and her Pixie Hollow pals spent 18 weeks on The New York Times children’s best-seller list. In a direct-to-DVD now under production, she will speak for the first time, voiced by the actress Brittany Murphy. Next year, Disney Fairies will be rolled out in earnest. Aimed at 6- to 9-year-old girls, the line will catch them just as they outgrow Princess. Their colors will be lavender, green, turquoise — anything but the Princess’s soon-to-be-babyish pink.

To appeal to that older child, Disney executives said, the Fairies will have more ”attitude” and ”sass” than the Princesses. What, I wondered, did that entail? I’d seen some of the Tinker Bell merchandise that Disney sells at its theme parks: T-shirts reading, ”Spoiled to Perfection,” ”Mood Subject to Change Without Notice” and ”Tinker Bell: Prettier Than a Princess.” At Hot Topic, that edge was even sharper: magnets, clocks, light-switch plates and panties featured ”Dark Tink,” described as ”the bad girl side of Miss Bell that Walt never saw.”

Girl power, indeed.

A few days later, I picked my daughter up from preschool. She came tearing over in a full-skirted frock with a gold bodice, a beaded crown perched sideways on her head. ”Look, Mommy, I’m Ariel!” she crowed. referring to Disney’s Little Mermaid. Then she stopped and furrowed her brow. ”Mommy, do you like Ariel?”

I considered her for a moment. Maybe Princess is the first salvo in what will become a lifelong struggle over her body image, a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results. Or maybe it isn’t. I’ll never really know. In the end, it’s not the Princesses that really bother me anyway. They’re just a trigger for the bigger question of how, over the years, I can help my daughter with the contradictions she will inevitably face as a girl, the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female. Maybe the best I can hope for is that her generation will get a little further with the solutions than we did.

For now, I kneeled down on the floor and gave my daughter a hug.

She smiled happily. ”But, Mommy?” she added. ”When I grow up, I’m still going to be a fireman.”

– by Peggy Orenstein, for the New York Times Magazine (December 2006)

Posted by lukewho on 2007-01-01 19:50:52

Tagged: , fremont , christmas , 2006 , jacinto , princess , disney

The post A Princess Diary appeared first on Good Info.

[heatherwattsfmpyear2]

Modernisation of problems

Based on a mix of history books and fictional stories, we can safely say problems that we experience have changed through the centuries. Where once it was witch trials, poisoning your enemies and kidnapping, now it’s obesity, income and instability. Fairytales have curses placed on kidnapped royals avoiding eating poisoned apples and sleeping for a hundred years until they get technically assaulted by a prince and wake up to marry him, have an evil family and wish to stop being half fish, fall in love with a thief or a man who was turned into a viscous creature or a frog, and still marry them at the end. And considering most of the girls featured in these stories are minors, how would all this translate in todays society?

Well, despite the fact none of them are minors anymore, Shrek is a parody upon classic fairytale and Disney princesses, and puts them into a modernised version of a medical land. Putting modern problems and twists into a past setting. Shrek the Third features the most of the princesses in which they team up to fight Charming’s plan to take over the kingdom. While it’s very clear the traditional princesses wouldn’t take on martial arts against magical trees and Captain Hook, they don’t face overly many issues, but they also never had each other in the in tales. The most Modern part is the hit-legs-looks-and-sounds-like-a-man gag with Dorris distracting the guards.

I think a movie that represents more the issues of the past of the girls in fairytales is the Bratz Kids Fairytales movie, in which the younger version of the Bratz are essentially slagging off the fairytales while rehearsing for small plays where they would act out the fairytales, that the heroine were weak and “lame”. As a result, they are sent into their fairytales by a frog prince, the who cannot take back his princely side until the girls believe in the fairytales again, all caused by the ‘keeper’ overhearing their complaints. So the frog zaps them into the fairytale world

Cloe, as Rapunzel, must escape the witch in her tower. Thinking it’s as easy as climb out of the tower and run, she is caught and nearly thrown into a stew. Her friends had to come to her rescue. Second, Jade, as Snow White, runs from the huntsman instead of the traditional begging for mercy, ending up having to clean the dwarves home for safety while avoiding the evil queen and the dwarves rehearse for their rock band. While the girls got taken back in time, the salty humour and other characters keep to a quite modern attitude. Sasha tries to escape the wolf, not once being fooled by the wolf, and ends up having to run from him where the traditional would have been saved by a woodchopper. The Bratz manage to trip him into the well, where the evil queen and witch end up. Finally, Yasmin as Cinderella must sneak out to the ball, but by acting as if she doesn’t care for it, it causes the step mother and step sisters to stay home to watch her. She manages to run away by convincing them to go to the ball, and with the help of Goldilocks who was turned into a stump by the witch, manage to find her fairy godmother who preps her for the ball and turns Both Goldilocks and Rumpelstiltskin back into humans. On their way to the castle though, the witch, queen and wolf make their way out of the well for a final battle. The frog zaps them back home once they complete the fairytales by midnight.

The Bratz learn how much easier they have it compared to the heroine of the fairytales, and put their faith and value back into the stories. They also learn not to judge people before they’ve walked in their shoes.

A final example of the modernisation of these is between Barbie Princess and The Pauper, and Barbie Princess and The Popstar. Firstly, the remake ruined it, I’m sorry but it was a beautiful re-write of the Prince and the Pauper with an intelligent princess pursuing science, and a pauper trying to pursue singing. In the original, Annaliese was to be married to a king in a nearby kingdom as her kingdom was broke, and Erika was trying to repay her debt to a dress shop owner for lending money to her parents. The queens advisor kidnapped the princess so she would marry him so he could be king, but to foil his plan, the princesses tutor asked for Erika’s help and to pretend to be the princess. It resulted in Annaliese and the tutor being locked away in a flooding mine and Erika in prison, and the advisor marrying the queen. With Annaliese’s studies, she managed to get her tutor and her afloat to the surface in a barrel by increasing the water flow, and the King getting Erika out of Jail to stop the wedding. It was a sweet story of friendship and fighting for the better.

However, the new one had a Princess and a singer who were each jealous of the others life, and with the help of a magic microphone and magic hairbrush, they swapped appearances and spent a day in each others life. The princess realised her stage fright made a popstar’s life difficult, and the singer found writing a speech about a kingdom she knows nothing about made a princess’ life difficult. So as a result, the princess’ dog helped the singer sneak out of doing the speech to help the princess with her show. While the movie had a don’t judge until you know their life moral to it, it was simply an insult to the original movie just to make money, but showed the difference between problems in past centuries versus modern problems, despite the problems being child friendly in these versions for their audience.

[ariel-seagull-wings]

FICTIONAL CHARACTER ASK: RAPUNZEL

TAGGED BY: @giuliettaluce​

@princesssarisa​ @amalthea9​ @sunlit-music​ @mademoiselle-princesse​ @superkingofpriderock​ @lioness--hart​ @parxsisburnixg​ @astrangechoiceoffavourites​ @lieutenant-hel-odinsdottir​

Favorite thing about them: Even tough since childhood she lived gaslighted as a prisoner of a person who confused abuse with love, Rapunzel still growed up to be an inteligent, strong willed, resourcefull and resilient woman, who despite her insecurities, never stoped longing and fighting for her right to be free and to be happy with her true love.

Least favorite thing about them:

The 1857 edition rewrite that putted in her mouth the line:

“Tell me, Dame Gothel, how it happens that you are so much heavier for me to draw up than the young king's son - he is with me in a moment”.

The fact that this rewrite is more well known than the 1812 edition version, where the Witch discorvers the Prince’s visits by noticing Rapunzel’s bodily changes happening due to pregnancy, is probably what leads to the misconception that “Fairy Tale Rapunzel is a stupid passive character”.

Three things i have in common with them:

I can be insecure of the outside world, like she was at the beggining of the story.

I am a very sensitive and prone to tears person.

I enjoy the singing of the birds.

Three things i don’t have in common with them:

I usually use my hair short.

I don’t know how to weave.

I don’t have her beautifull singing voice.

Favorite line:

When she presents the plan to run away with the Prince:

"I will willingly go away with you, but I do not know how to get down. Bring with you a skein of silk every time that you come, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when that is ready I will descend, and you will take me on your horse."

This confrontational dialogue exchange she has with the Witch in Into the Woods, after she starts developing PTSD:

“What's the matter”?

“Oh, nothing! You just locked me in a tower without company for fourteen years, then you blinded my Prince and banished me to a desert where I had little to eat, and again no company, and then bore twins! Because of the way you treated me, I'll never, never be happy”!

brOTP: In her main tale, the birds. Outside of her main tale: The Queen from Rumpelstilskin, The Princess from The Frog Prince, Queen Florina, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty of the Beast, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, Jack of the Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel, Hop o my Thumb and Puss in Boots.

OTP: The Prince.

nOTP: The Witch. Also, in Shrek 3 her pairing with Prince Charming is a match made in Hell.

Random Headcanon: The anime series Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics gaved her the talent to play the harp, and i tought this was a nice touch to her character. Also, in my imagination, Rapunzel can imitate the singing of every bird that she listens, and she knows the healing power of the herbs, so she becomes a renowned healer queen.

Unpopular Opinion: I feel that the misconception that “Fairy Tale Rapunzel is a stupid, passive and weak character who just waits for good things to happen to her and her romance with the Prince is rushed and undeveloped, and telling her story nowadays is retrogressive” comes from most retellings made for pre schooler and elementary schooler audiences (wich usually are the versions that most people remember) that not only used the infamous line from the 1857 edition i just complained about and cut away her babies altogether, but even cut the element of Rapunzel coming with the escaping plan! When one comes to read the older italian variants (Petrosinella, Prunella, The Canary Prince) and the original Brothers Grimm tale, we learn that the Prince visits her several evenings, wich means they had a good time to develop the romance. Also in the original Brothers Grimm tale, Rapunzel is the one who comes with the plan to weave a silk ladder to escape with the Prince, meaning she is very strong willed, proactive and inteligent, and at the end, after surviving giving birth and raising two babies in a wasteland, wich also shows great strenght, when the Prince is reunited with her, she is the one who saves him by healing his blindness with her tears!

We also must considerate that this is a medieval renaissance tale collected to paper in the 19th century that portrays positively a relationship out of love between a prince and a peasant girl, while during those times arranged marriages restricted between members of one’s own class were the norm. In fact, Rapunzel’s relationship with the Prince is a rebellious, forbidden, vibrant and egalitarian love, not very diferent from Romeo and Juliet, another famous young couple separated by a tall window.

And, finally, there is the fact that the main heroine has premarital sex and a pregnancy and, instead of receiving a tragic sad ending like it would be expected from 19th century authors like the Grimms, she receives a happy ending! This is specially relevant when we remember that even to this day in our society women who have children out of wedlock are stigmatized.

The fairy tale is not perfect, after all the main villain is still an old single woman (Dame Gothel, the Witch). But there are some elements of it that are surprinsigly progressive, both for the medieval renaissance and 19th century standards and for the modern day standards.

Song i associate with them:

The main theme from Barbie as Rapunzel

The medieval song Scarborough Fair

Green Finch and Linnet Bird by Stephen Sondheim

Favorite picture of them:

Warwick Goble’s illustration for the italian variant Petrosinella:

This illustration by Emma Florence Harrison

This illustration by Arthur Rackham

This illustration by Daniela Drescher

This illustration by Paul Hey

This illustration by Anastassija Archipowa

This illustrations by Alix Berenzy

This illustrations by Paul O Zelinski

This painting by Deann Cumner

This illustration by Trina Schart Hyman

Barbie as Rapunzel

Shelley Duvall (with Jeff Bridges as her Prince) in Fairy Tale Theater

Pamela Winslow Kashani in Into the Woods

Mackenzie Mauzy in Disney’s Into the Woods 2014 (one of the few good things of that movie adaptation)

Luisa Wietzorek in the the German TV Movie Series Grimm’s Finest Fairy Tales