mariness

Of all the things I could be blogging about, this is hands down the least important, but it's bugging me and I need to get to sleep, so...

( Major spoiler for the most recent episode of Once Upon a Time, the Pinocchio episode. )

Without trying to, I happened to watch this in a theatre one quarter filled with a generally appreciative and polite audience of employees of Universal Studios and excited Twilight fans whose in and post film comments perhaps colored my snark here. (Spoiler: the Twilight fans all felt, without exception, that Twilight is a much, much better movie, a verdict that I shall not comment on further.)

Anyway. This, as the Twilight fans agreed, is a Film With Problems. Not visual problems – it looks great throughout and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we were all just as glad not to have this in 3D. But script problems. Acting problems. (Particularly with Kristen Stewart, where the kindest word I can use is "miscast.") Turning Ray Winstone – yes, that Ray Winstone – into a dwarf problems. Unexpected Bambi and stealing from Japanese anime problems. Accent problems. Christianity problems. (Seriously, film. What?) Snow White not being particularly likeable problems. Me spending the film cheering on the Evil Queen problems.*

As such, it needs snark. A lot of snark.

( So, let us not delay. As always, major spoilers below. )

A couple people suggested I pull out this paragraph from yesterday's long, long Bluebeard post:

I write fairy tales because they can be dangerous, because they can allow us to explore truths and deceptions we would often prefer to ignore. That even in a place of seeming safely, you can find yourself trapped in a crystal coffin. That you can lose your eyesight thanks to forces beyond your control. That you may leave bloodstains as you walk before you reach the end of your quest. That sometimes, love may be tangled with the secrets of the past; that opening doors can be dangerous, or can bring you freedom. The original tale of Bluebeard is all about this. I don't argue that you should believe in all parts of fairy tales. But I do believe you should listen. It's less dangerous that way.

So there you go.

I've been doing some research into Beauty and the Beast, which meant picking up Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve's long version, The Story of Beauty and the Beast (1740), which unlike the more familiar tale, does not end with the transformation of the beast into a human, but instead goes on and on and on, and then on and on and on, and then, just to not change, goes on and on for a bit more, as nearly every character explains, at length, just how they got there and how everything happened and why fairies sometimes need to turn into serpents and so on.

It's not all bad – Andrew Lang, for one, used details from Villeneuve's version to supplement Jean-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's better known version, largely because so many of those details both fill the tale with magic and root it in reality. For instance, Beauty has a little room with windows that can show her different parts of the world, allowing her to watch entertaining fairs, operas, and – in an unexpected touch – palace revolutions in Istanbul. Unexpected because this is about the only real-life political event she does view, in a story filled with political events—wars, marriages in powerful kingdoms, questionable laws and so on.

And other details: The way all of the wealthy, noble characters sip chocolate, not coffee or tea, for breakfast and sometimes at night. (Needless to say, I approve.) The way that the arrogant, "My son can't POSSIBLY marry a merchant's daughter! He's TOO NOBLE! But I'll foist her off on one of my nobles to show my gratitude!" queen, absolutely obsessed with rank, is also a warrior queen, successfully leading armies in the field. And that near obsession with rank – Beauty and her prince only get her happy ending because as it turns out (in this version) Beauty is not really a merchant's daughter, but the daughter of a fairy and a king, a stunt that can only be pulled off because the merchant's family decided to wet-nurse their real child, and didn't know that child well enough to recognize when she had been replaced. Absolutely no one blinks at this tale – or the really horrible moment when the fairy tells the merchant that Beauty isn't his daughter and therefore he has no right to treat her so – or caress her. (This is non-incestuous caressing, although some of the other caresses mentioned are slightly more questionable.) They don't blink because that part of the story sounds all too plausible.

Several other themes weave in and out of the work. This is very much the story of working women – every woman except Beauty and her evil not-really-her-sisters sisters works, despite their upper and noble class status, and even Beauty and the unsisters are forced to do some farm chores, before Beauty sits down at her harpsichord (this is unintentionally hilarious, and no, I have no idea why, after the family of 12 children has supposedly lost everything, they chose to lug various expensive musical instruments out to what is called "the saddest abode in the world" where everyone, gasp, has to do chores. It's very sad, but you'd think that if they could save the harpsichord they could save a scullery maid or two.)

But Villeneuve is not really interested in the difficulties of the peasant life. (She also appears to have no idea of what peasants actually do, but that's ok.) What she is interested in is the tug between work and motherhood. Her women are faced with horrific choices: do your job and abandon your child, or, stay with the child – and risk losing your life, freedom and job.

The human queen chooses her job – running her kingdom and leading armies. As a result, her son is transformed into the Beast. The fairy queen chooses her child. As a result, she is imprisoned, forced to change back and forth into a serpent (I'll skip over the reasons for this) and thus loses the child – becoming so depressed her sister is terrified that she will commit fairy suicide or go completely insane.

When Beauty and the Beast hear these stories (at, as I mentioned, GREAT LENGTH), they not surprisingly decide that they'd rather avoid both work and children and instead focus on just being happy in their enchanted castle. The fairies are not in favor of this, forcing them to come out and rule from time to time. They remain happy only by taking several vacations.

Far too often we hear the claim that the struggle between work and motherhood is some sort of new thing, a consequence of women entering the workforce. It isn't, as Villeneuve graphically shows. Even in 18th century fairy tales.

Some of you might remember that last year I published a little tale, Sister and Bones, in Demeter's Spicebox. It was one of my favorite stories from last year.

Today, Joshua Gage tells us just a little more about the teapot from my tale, and oh, what he has written is heartbreakingly lovely. Go and read, preferably with a cup of tea in hand. And once you're done, click over to The Salt of Aksum, where Mae Empson takes the sandals from Shveta Thakrar's Lavanya and Deepika to tell us just a little more about the power and magic of salt.

I can't wait to see where this project -- and the teapot -- go next.

Back in at the end of January, Demeter's Spicebox, a new project of the always marvelous Cabinet Des Fees, posted guidelines for their new project: stories based on Aarne-Thompson folktale type 711, perhaps better known as the tale of the Good and Ugly Twin. Oh, and the stories had to feature either a cracked teapot or a magical pair of shoes.

I was not that familiar with the tale, but when I reread the version not in Wikipedia , I could see why the editors had chosen it, even if the ending irked me: quite apart from all of the drinking (yay!), it is one of the rare fairy tales with an active, rambunctious heroine. And although I'm not into shoes, I am more than moderately fond of tea.

Something stirred, and Sister and Bones was written in under a day, and is now up at the inaugural issue of Demeter's Spicebox. Also up: Lavanya and Deepika, a lovely story by a writer I'd never heard of before, Shveta Thakrar, but who based just on this has a brilliant writing career in front of her; fortunately for all of us she is working on a novel. I'm very pleased to have been part of the beginning of this project, and very much looking forward to see what wonders Demeter's Spicebox will be bringing us next.

Every once in a great while, I write a poem that entirely satisfies me.

More about this poem later, but while you're there, do take a moment to check out the rest of the issue, which as always is breathtakingly beautiful, and includes work by cristalia, rose_lemberg, Neile Graham, Michelle Muenzler and others.

So, yay! Fantasy Magazine has printed my little story, Mademoiselle and the Chevalier, in which we learn the all important lesson that if I am going to have a story appear in a zine the day after World Fantasy Con, I should learn how to pronounce its title beforehand. Correctly.

Er. No, that is not precisely the lesson.

Anyway. It's a tale of gargoyles, roses and magic. It has no comments yet and it feels lonely. So, read. Enjoy. Comment if you will.

********

Con reports and why this Hyatt hotel hates people in wheelchairs following later; I badly overdid things this weekend and am going to flop over again.

Donkey-skin is one of Charles Perrault's more disturbing fairy tales, often left out of fairy tale collections, given its subject matter - and the fact that the tale echoes both Cinderella and parts of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, allowing editors to justify calling it redundant. (More likely, the incest theme led to its exclusion.) As a result, the tale has rarely been filmed. Shelley Duvall, for instance, left it out of her Faerie Tale Theatre series. A quick search on IMDb.com lists about 40 filmed versions of Cinderella and 19 versions of Snow White (both lists look incomplete) and only one listing for Donkey-Skin.

I last saw this film back in school in Italy, a very long ago, and returned to the States to find that no-one, but no-one, had heard of it, leading to conversations like this one:

"You know? The film with the princess and all of the blue dwarfs and the parrots?"

"The what?"

"Well, not all the parrots were blue. Also I think people were singing?"

I was beginning to doubt my own mind until a chance conversation at a Fort Lauderdale coffeehouse/used bookstore about blue dwarfs and parrots allowed me, at long last, to identify the film. Tracking it down proved more difficult, and I had decided that it was probably best if I just let it linger in my memory, where little blue dwarfs could dance in and out at will. Until, by complete chance, I found it again at our local library.

My memory was not exact. This pre-Avatar Peau d'ane has a lot more blue people than I remembered (I just remembered the dwarfs), and, well, I have to say that they give you a new appreciation for the blue people in Avatar. It's not entirely clear if the blue people are there to satisfy the vanities of the king or give the film a more fairy tale aspect, but it is clear that the makeup is very distracting, and I still can't figure out why all the dwarfs are blue. (And I just realized, in typing this, I have unconsciously shifted from my usual Tolkien-inspired spelling of dwarves or dwarrows to dwarfs which gives you an idea of just how not fantastic these blue dwarfs are.) The red people and horses who show up later are equally distracting. Also, the elephant. I had thankfully repressed the small detail that the parrots actually sing, in French.

But other elements of this are delightfully lovely and disturbing all at once. The overwrought, overly fanciful costumes that Elizabeth I would have found a little too much. (I am especially in love with the moon dress while especially in awe that the actress actually managed to walk in it.) The mists. The way the men all agree that the princess must marry her father, and the way the princess leaps on a boat to find a way out. The way the fairy godmother insists on getting dressed before helping the princess, and the completely inexplicable telephone she has in her dressing area smack dab in the middle of Roman ruins. (She also wears utterly fabulous dresses inspired by 1920s clothing.) The feather-lined coach with no coachman. Donkeyskin running through the castle where everything and everyone is frozen in place. The abundance of peacocks. The incredibly inappropriate woodland clothing that, in the manner of fairy tales, somehow manages to stay pristinely clean. Eyes and lips suddenly appearing in the middle of roses (I remembered this too, but for some reason mentally placed it with a different movie.) The mouse band. The dance with the masks. The scientists explaining that the fairies are all busy because it's the full moon. And, um, the helicopter. (Yes, there's a helicopter.)

On a deeper note, the way the princess is tempted to remain with her father. The way the women all desperately destroy, damage and break their fingers in an attempt to marry the prince. The anguish of the homeless, unemployed woman trying on the ring in her attempt to become a princess. The surprisingly disturbing undertone of the happy ending (not just because of the helicopter).

I should warn you: parts of this film move terribly slowly, as if through fairy honey, and I did find myself hitting the pause button (especially in the singing parts.) And I think we should all probably assume that the prince and Donkey-Skin are smoking pot in one particular scene. And quite a few of you will end up objecting to the helicopter. I'm not entirely sure whether or not I should recommend. I suppose it depends upon your tolerance for singing. And helicopters.

I've talked too much about the helicopter here, haven't I?

December's Ideomancer just went live, featuring the absolutely fabulous csecooney and on a considerably less exciting note, my little story "Rumpled Skin."

"Rumpled Skin" is the next part of a fairy tale series still in the slow - very slow - process of growing. (And its appearance today reminds me that I kinda need to get back to it, but enough about my writing issues.) Previously published bits include Glass Dancing, The Shoes, and Remembering Fur.