Showing posts with label #RRR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #RRR. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

The Transformation of FLOTUS: A Dark Fairy Tale for the Season

In April of 2017, writer Kate Imbach wrote a reflection on Melania Trump, the then-new FLOTUS, as considered through the lens of Melania's personal photos, titled Fairytale Prisoner by Choice: The Photographic Eye of Melania Trump. The article was prompted by the odd issue that the new first lady was so very absent, compared to most other FLOTUS'  of the past.
Imbach wrote:
Why won’t the first lady show up for her job? Why? I became obsessed with this question and eventually looked to Melania’s Twitter history for answers. I noticed that in the three-year period between June 3, 2012 and June 11, 2015 she tweeted 470 photos which she appeared to have taken herself. I examined these photographs as though they were a body of work. 
Everyone has an eye, whether or not we see ourselves as photographers. What we choose to photograph and how we frame subjects always reveals a little about how we perceive the world. For someone like Melania, media-trained, controlled and cloistered, her collection of Twitter photography provides an otherwise unavailable view into the reality of her existence. Nowhere else — certainly not in interviews or public appearances — is her guard so far down. 
What is that reality? She is Rapunzel with no prince and no hair, locked in a tower of her own volition, and delighted with the predictability and repetition of her own captivity.
Written during the time when Melania declined moving to the White House and opted to stay in Trump Tower, it's an interesting assessment, and although sympathy from readers varies, the consensus seems to be that loneliness is, indeed an ongoing factor in this woman's life. The photos from high up - an actual tower - with the same landscape and differing only in weather and time of day, do give the viewer pause.

Just as interesting is the interpretation of Melania's photos of the interior of Trump Tower:

 We can all picture the gilded monstrosity of the Trump home from publicity photos (chandeliers, sad boy astride a stuffed lion, golden pillars), but it is a different place through Melania’s eyes. She takes photographs inside her house at weird, skewed angles. It is a strange effect when the half-obscured objects, chairs and ceilings, are all so golden. It looks like what a terrified little girl held captive in a ogre’s fairytale castle might see when she dares to sneak a peek through her fingers. (source: Kate Imbach)


If you haven't seen this essay finding the parallels between Rapunzel and Melania, pre and post FLOTUS status, it's worth a read. While the writer is clearly critical of Melania's 'fitness' to be a first lady, its' nevertheless a very different look at Melania Trump as a person. You can find the whole article, with Melania's photos throughout, HERE.

FAST FORWARD TO DECEMBER 2017:

Melania is now at the White House and chose to take an active - and apparently personal - role in decorating her new(ish) home, for the season. It's safe to say the public reaction to photos has been, less than warm...

A tweet from Donald Haase:


My retweet & comment:

And back to the growing list of folklore and fairy tale references mentioned (note: I have screen-captured the tweets referred to and inserted them after my tweets so readers can easily see what's being referred to, but the links in the embedded tweets also send you to the original tweet for the sources):



   

   


Note how the feet appear in the photo - enlarged below (it's obviously a lighting issue but it's still an interesting connection):





This comment (screen-capped below) expanded the supernatural narrative. Meant to entertain, it's also an interesting place to go:

A reply to one of the earlier tweets, pointing out the use of folklore:

And the tweet that prompted me to put it all in one place:

As an interesting callback to the original article about Melania in her tower, I thought I'd finish with the final sentence by Imbach, which has more resonance than ever:
 She’s living inside a dark fairytale, and in fairytales the women trapped in towers never save anyone but themselves.

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Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Article: 'Fairy Tales for Resistance #RRR' by Gypsy Thornton

"We are all Red" (unofficial title) by Cuban artist ARES

Our Fairy Tale News Hound has a special article up on Enchanted Conversation today. It's all about the importance of fairy tales when it comes to resistance.

Here's the opening paragraph:

In fairy tales, wolves show their insides are the same as their outsides (despite their silver tongues), beanstalks prove to their climbers that greed is the true giant (though other big troubles may appear on the way) and flowers speak up to protest their plucking (even as they sink in their thorns). When impossible things happen, you begin to question reality. It's one of the reasons fairy tales are so very needed. Sometimes that Wonder, that impossibility, is the very thing that wakes us up and invites us to challenge the norm.
You can keep reading at Enchanted Conversation HERE.

We hope you will be inspired to keep use, telling and retelling fairy tales, and find solidarity with many others as you do. The hashtag/label, #RRR, that we're using on our Once Upon A Blog website, is searchable and by clicking it, you can find lots of inspiring reading, viewing and more. New posts are being tagged regularly and the recommendations are growing all the time.

While you're over at Enchanted Conversation, don't forget that:
  • You can sign up for the Fairy Tale Round Up Newsletter (which OUABlog and Timeless Tales contribute to). The first newsletter went out some time ago and the next will very shortly (within the week). You can find the sign-up in the side bar HERE or learn more about it before signing up HERE.

  • Enchanted Conversation is about to release their Donkeyskin issue, and Kate Wolford has just announced the writers for it HERE. The recent Diamonds and Toads issue was superb and we're really looking forward to this one too.
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Friday, May 19, 2017

'The Dark Crystal' Is Coming to Netflix. As A NEW Series

And it will have puppets and everything! We will admit, we are excited about this. We adore the film but it's pretty slow in places, and there's a lot of potential - and history - the film didn't explore that we'd love to see expanded on. In fact, this series will be a prequel, taking place in that world decades before it reached the crisis in which Gelflings Jen and Kira (and Fizzgig! And the Landstriders!), took #alltherisks and rescued everyone.

From the Henson Company Press Release:
HOLLYWOOD, CA (May 18, 2017) - A beloved classic from the 80s marks its return as Netflix, the world’s leading internet entertainment network, will bring The Jim Henson Company’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance  exclusively to members around the world. The 10-episode fantasy adventure series is a prequel to the groundbreaking 1982 fan favorite The Dark Crystal, and takes place many years before the events of the film. The series will be shot in the U.K., and will star an ensemble of fantastical, state-of-the-art creatures created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop™ and Brian Froud, the original feature’s conceptual designer. 
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance returns to the world of Thra with an all new adventure. When three Gelfling discover the horrifying secret behind the Skeksis’ power, they set out on an epic journey to ignite the fires of rebellion and save their world. 
Feature film director Louis Leterrier (Now You See Me, The Incredible Hulk) will executive produce the series and direct. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance will be a Netflix original series produced by The Jim Henson Company and executive produced by Letterier, Lisa Henson and Halle Stanford. Longtime Henson collaborator Rita Peruggi will serve as producer and Henson’s Blanca Lista will serve as a co-executive producer. Leading the writing are co-executive producers Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews (Life in a Year), and Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Lost, The 100). 
“The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance will combine the art of puppetry perfected by The Jim Henson Company, with Louis’ vision, powerful storytelling and a mix of cutting-edge digital imagery and visual effects,” said Cindy Holland, Vice President of Original Content at Netflix. “I can’t wait for families around the world to see how we bring these unique characters to life.” 
 
“Louis Leterrier is passionate about the world of The Dark Crystal and has an incredible creative vision for the series. He brings this passion to every facet of the production as he leads the talented team of artists and writers that are bringing this entire universe to life,” said Lisa Henson, CEO of The Jim Henson Company. "Netflix has a deep respect for my father's original work and the many people it inspired. They are the perfect partners to create this next epic chapter in The Dark Crystal story for new fans and the loyal fans who have waited so long for more adventures from this world."
Brand new 'state-of-the-art' creatures! *swoon* (Perhaps we're super excited because our newsroom is filled with all kinds of creatures - from fairy tale ones, and Henson creations to yo-kai, but these pop-culture touchstones are major tools for us when we teach art and fairy tales at schools and other kid-centric places, and have guaranteed kids love and remember what we're working with them on in following years - so YES PLEASE! Plus, yeah, they're usually pretty flippin' cute - see below for a selection of 'teaching tools'.)
Aside: anyone notice that 'Age of Resistance' subtitle in there? We have a feeling that is pretty purposeful, and we're looking forward to seeing how that develops. In fact, we're going to tag this with our #RRR hashtag, just because we have a feeling...

Here's the promotional teaser trailer, which doesn't really show anything new, but will get folks excited about the concept anyway - unless it doesn't. We're sure some folks aren't going to be thrilled about the idea. At least it won't be a retread of classic footage but more of an exploration of the world which fascinated so many of us as children.
And we're really excited to see all the folklore world-building that will come out of this! Folklore takes center stage in the film, with knowledge and exploration of those tales being the key to knowing what to do.

PS Anyone noticing we're kinda going back to the that 80's/early 90's era of musicals and fantasy films and series? Anyone also noticing we're rehashing similar issues to those of that time period, societally speaking? Yeah.
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Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Political Cartoons & Fairy Tales 2017: 'The Emperor's New Clothes'

:
via theweek.com
You thought we were going to begin with strategically covered naked politicians, weren't you? We loved this take on The Emperor's New Clothes, specifically because it's not the 'usual take' cartoonists aim for when marrying political satire, cartoons and this particular fairy tale.

Continuing the 'fairy tales in political commentary via cartoons' posts, (what a mouthful) we thought we'd round up some of The Emperor's New Clothes takes. Hm. They're really not very, er, flattering, are they? (And we don't just mean in the sensibility factor.) In fact, not only have we NOT included all the variations available, we've had a lot of trouble trying to pick something 'appropriate' for the header image. Yikes.

One image we won't be showing though is the art installation by activist art group, INDECLINE,  that began popping up in major US cities toward the end of last year.

From the announcement for the first event in August 2016, which, incidentally, says it wasn't actually about Trump:
The Emperor’s New Clothes: Art, Imagination, & Our Battle Against the Titanic
The “titanic” (a reference to Greek mythology) is a powerful force in American culture today. It’s the unlimited and excessive, the huge and crude, and it runs roughshod over the relatively small, uniquely beautiful beings, places, and things that many of us love. The titanic “out there” numbs our feeling and dwarfs our sensitivities. We experience our own titanism “inside” as stress and emptiness. 

The best weapon against titanism is our imagination. A recent installation by art activists opposing Donald Trump, that references the Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” inspired me to explore the story. 
Where is the “titanic” in your life and in our community, and can we use this story to kick-start a creative response to these questions? Come hear the story and consider how art and other inducements to the imagination can be used in our war against the titanic. 
Politico.com 
Hosted by local mythologist Catherine Svehla. All open-minded adults are welcome. 
Please note, although Trump is a handy target for talk of the titanic, this event is not about him….
So... with that introduction, plus the giant naked statue of the President-to-be at the time, we don't know how much else got discussed, or proposed at that meeting as being 'titanics' that needed to be included in the 'war'.

Take a look at the political cartoons below. Some are from before the 'crowning' and others were created after January 20th.
via The Star Tribune
ct - The Cap Times (Madison, Wisconsin)


Cagle.com (political cartoon central!)


Courier Journal

Cagle.com
Jerry Holbert via townhall.com
Our first 'fairy tales in political cartoons 2017' post, featuring The Boy Who Cried Wolf is HERE.
#RRR
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Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Art Film: A Post-Truth Pinocchio In Venice


That title. We can't decide if it's ironic or tautological, nevertheless, Pinocchio - known the world over for his lies and the biggest tell on the planet - is having a revival, of sorts.

While Pinocchio has been associated with (almost) every President in the US (in fact, someone could probably create a book of Pinocchio POTUS', there have been so many images made with the telling long nose), our current era is more concerned in associating Pinocchio with fake news, specifically, fake news originating from the office of the Presidency (whether POTUS himself or his staff and entourage). With all the 'alternative facts' and 'post-truths' still constantly barraging the news and media, Pinocchio is fast becoming the poster boy for US politics (no matter which 'side' you take) and he, President of Fake News Pinocchio is cropping up more and more in writing, cartoons and contemporary works of art and film.

One of the most recent appearances is in a festival film, titled "Spite Your Face: A Dark Venetian Fairytale", by artist and filmmaker Rachel Maclean, where alt-Pinocchio is essentially displayed in a de-consecrated church in Venice, for the 57th Venice Biennale, a unique contest, "like the Eurovision song contest for art. People represent their countries." 

Fittingly, the film was created in a large, portrait format -something unusual, even for art films, and the constant impression that you're looking at a portrait, reinforces the sense of Pinocchio's importance - to himself and to those watching.

We've assembled a partial synopsis by combining two sources (both cited after their extracts):
Spite Your Face, transforms the 19th century Italian tale of a wooden puppet who wants to be a real boy into a dark and disturbing satire of the era of celebrity, fake news and reality television... and Maclean plays all the characters herself, (aided by) costumes elaborate costumes and the help of prosthetic designer Kristyan Mallett, who has worked on the Harry Potter movie franchise.
The film tells the rags to riches story of an urchin called Pic. His life is transformed when he is catapulted into "The World Above", a consumer heaven where money equals power. (BBC News)
Pic (full name Pinocchio Gepetto) is a street kid in a grey, hopeless world. He makes a wish on an iPad in the Other World Offerings temple – a digital recreation of the Chiesa di Santa Caterina – and finds himself transported by the blessing of a fairy godmother / Virgin Mary figure to a golden heaven where (through the application of a perfume named Truth) he is able to become a gilded hero punting rubbish perfume (named Untruth) to the masses. 
Standing atop a golden plinth, Pic rants and raves to an adoring crowd. "Smell that? This place used to smell great. Now it stinks. The facts aren't known because the media don't report them." (TheSkinny - we recommend reading their whole article)
As the face of a perfume brand called Untruth, Pic becomes a rich and famous media personality, and a political demagogue, at the expense of his ethics and happiness. 
... "I was interested in how lies had played out in the Brexit campaign and the Trump campaign. Journalism exposed the lies but that didn't affect the outcome. I was interested in how democracy works. We are less rational than we like to think we are and driven by belief systems." (said Maclean - BBC News again) 
Venice is a city that still exudes luxury. Things glint and glitter, look expensive, of high status, and that adds to the setting of Pic, aka, alt-Pinocchio's journey. Perhaps the fact that it was written 'in situ' helped capture that.

The Herald (Scotland) got a preview of the film, and additional comments by Maclean are so very relevant, we had to include an excerpt to give readers a better idea of why this film has caught so many people's attention:
The Herald had a preview of the film - which also features song, satire, special effects and parody - and afterwards Ms Maclean said of the disturbing assault scene: "I've been disturbed and troubled by the recent rise and confidence in misogyny, the rise in anti-feminism, and reactionary attitudes to feminism, and that coupled with a feeling that we are immune, as a culture, to violence against women in images and the exploitation of women, images of women's bodies used to sell perfume or cars, and it is so ingrained we are not shocked by it anymore. I wanted the film to feel jarring, to make it uncomfortable and difficult to watch, and didn't want it so sit at that level of immunity." 
The film does not directly make reference to either Trump or Brexit, but the artist said: "I was processing a lot of the sense of how these lazy lies that were used through the Brexit campaign and the Trump campaign, and that didn't effect the result. 
"I got interested in how difficult it is to penetrate a narrative that has gained political currency, and how easy it is to use lies to substantiate ideas that already have currency. 
"The rags-to-riches tale is so much in our culture, you see it in things such as Britain's Got Talent...I was inspired by how compassion-less those [rags to riches] narratives are, and generate a lack of compassion for other people's suffering."
And so Pinocchio meets Cinderella - and neither look good because of it.

We became even more interested in how this film came to be, knowing it had its genesis well before Trump campaigned or before Brexit rose its head. We found that fairy tales were always a part of her exploration but things evolved quite differently when finishing writing it at the end of 2017.

From TheArtNewspaper:
...Maclean anticipated (the film) might be an extension of her earlier films and photographs exploring fantastical, fairy-tale and clichéd images of Scottish identity, The Lion and the Unicorn and I ♥ Scotland. Presciently, the latter, made in 2013, included a Donald Trump-like figure. Back then he was merely symbolic of corporate greed—a golf-club wielding, saltire-faced, frightwig-sporting ogre, enacted, like all the figures in her work, by Maclean herself.  
But in early December, Maclean visited Venice and her ideas shifted: Spite Your Face (2017), her film for the Biennale, has a wider political target. “Because I went to Venice for about a week or so to write a script for it, and it was shortly after Brexit and shortly after the American election, I was quite interested in this political landscape and the rise of nationalism and the ‘alt-right’ and something that was larger than specifically Scottish nationalism,” she says.  
...Does her Trump-like character reappear? “It’s more allusive,” she replies. “You can pick up on certain things or certain tropes in political characters, but I didn’t want there to be somebody who, for example, directly referenced Trump or directly referenced a recognisable political figure. I wanted the characters to feel a little bit more like an amalgam of different characters and different ideas.

And so they do. But they can't help but mirror the most obvious public examples either, and the images - both the public one of Trump and, in the film, Pic, are such strong ones, it takes a while to see the other characters woven in, characters like Cinderella, Jack and the Ugly Duckling and perhaps a Midas who has yet to learn his lesson.

The show will be on display in Venice from 13 May-26 November then will be shown at Talbot Rice Gallery at the University of Edinburgh from March 2018 and at Chapter, Cardiff from Oct 2018.

#RRR
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Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Highly Anticipated 'American Gods' Series Debuts April 30

We have been excited about Neil Gaiman's amazing novel, American Gods, coming to the small screen in serial form (how could a movie ever explore this world thoroughly enough), and the tailer certainly has a lot of people excited.

We would be counting down the days ourselves, if it weren't for the #bucketsofblood, because, wow. There are many - gratuitously many - buckets! So take that as a heads-up for watching the trailer, by the way. Nevertheless, there will be lots of mythic and folkloric content for those willing to dive in, albeit being wrapped up very contemporary clothes and language, along with heavy doses of 'weird' (that is, in fact, one of the marketing tools for the show: 'expect 'weird sh*t!').

Here's the show's premise:
American Gods, the show follows Shadow Moon, who is thrown into a war between the gods of the old world versus the new. 
When Shadow Moon is released from prison, he meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday and a storm begins to brew. Little does Shadow know, this storm will change the course of his entire life. Left adrift by the recent, tragic death of his wife, and suddenly hired as Mr. Wednesday’s bodyguard, Shadow finds himself in the center of a world that he struggles to understand. It’s a hidden world where magic is real, where the Old Gods fear both irrelevance and the growing power of the New Gods, like Technology and Media. Mr. Wednesday seeks to build a coalition of Old Gods to defend their existence in this new America, and reclaim some of the influence that they’ve lost. As Shadow travels across the country with Mr. Wednesday, he struggles to accept this new reality, and his place in it.
Here's the trailer (viewer discretion advised):


That should be no surprise to people familiar with the book and most people, including Gaiman himself, are super-excited. Along with perhaps turning down the 'red' on our screens a tad as we decide to put up with the #bucketsofblood for the inevitable good stuff, we will be watching closely for the public response to the series.

This featurette, including an appearance with Neil Gaiman, who Executive Produces the show, makes the series look very intriguing. If you're not up for the trailer, this is a good overview for you (no #bucketsofblood in this one):

One excellent thing to look forward to, is that Gaiman, who always intended to write more of the world than he did for his novel, is seriously looking at creating new stories specifically for the series as well, and he has a specific angle in mind - one we're keen to see explored.
           
From io9:
There’s plenty of material for more stories set in the world of American Gods. Both the book and the show contain a main, present-day story, but are also peppered with “Coming to America” shorts that explore how gods from other countries immigrated to the United States along with people. At the panel for the show at San Diego Comic-Con last year, Gaiman mentioned that he’d originally intended to do a vignette about Japanese internment during World War II in American Gods. 
“It wasn’t even that it got cut,” explained Gaiman about the story. “It just never got written because I was already at 200,000 words and I was being told by my publisher that the novel couldn’t be more than 150,000 words. So now I was already cutting and the internment story was one I was looking forward to.”The show might act as an impetus for Gaiman writing not only that story, but other ones he has in his mind. 
..The show’s tackling of (Essie Tregowan's) story—which expanded it to fill much of an episode,—has inspired Gaiman to write more stories in the American Gods universe and give them to the show to reinterpret for the small screen. “So Bryan is now going we could do more of these big ones,” continued Gaiman. “And I went, well I wanted to do the internment camp one and that would have been a big story. That would have been a 20-30 page short story. And possibly a little longer, it would have been a novelette in my head. And it would have been a kitsune story and I’m happy to write that story now and I’m happy for Bryan to adapt it.”
Gaiman has a lot to say on 'America's hypocritical relationship with immigrants and diversity' and as such, the series is not only highly anticipated, but suddenly become more relevant in this social climate, than it ever has since being published. The fact that it looks like Gaiman will get to focus on this theme is one of the big draws of the show for us, making it very likely to be put on our list of Recommended Resistance Reads and Viewings. #RRR
America has a very contradictory relationship with immigration. The stories we like to tell are about people coming here with nothing but ambition and becoming important or rich. But America is also obsessed with talking about whether or not immigrants have assimilated, and saying that some groups can’t, so they shouldn’t be allowed in. It’s a specific American truth that Gaiman captured in the book and that the show has run with. 
“You have come from an old country, now stop being that thing,” is how Gaiman summed it up. “I love the fact that Canada has the concept of the mosaic. You have come to Canada from your country, we are a mosaic made up of lots of different countries... The American idea seems much more...melting pot. Become one. We are all one, we are like this. No, we’re not! No one is.”
It’s not being American that Gaiman thinks let him write the book.  
... Gaiman’s outsider perspective mirrors how genre fiction has always managed to present volatile ideas in palatable ways. “That’s what it’s for,” said Gaiman. “It’s the distorting mirror, it’s showing you something at 45 degrees, it’s showing you something that you are familiar with from an angle you have never seen it from, to make you see it for the first time.” 
We couldn't agree with this more.

The network showing the series, Starz, is a 'prime paid' network so a lot of folks aren't going to have the opportunity to jump in at the beginning for the journey, but that won't stop an internet buzz from happening, and we expect the big pop culture websites to be all over the premiere and have lots of interesting things to say.

We love how the latest interview Gaiman has given discussing American Gods finishes:
Even with the distance of talking about gods and supernatural occurrences, people connect with the stories in American Gods in very personal ways. It resonates even more now, somehow. Gaiman knows why.

“Because we’re human and we tell stories and telling our stories and telling stories we were told in our childhood is one of the most important and beautiful things we can do. We have stories, now, that are older than any city. Some of them are older than the countries they are now told in. We can trace the age of stories sometimes by landmarks, by volcanoes, by things mentioned in them. And stories last. And stories matter. And sometimes, at my maddest, I like to think that stories are merely the vehicle that stories use to propagate themselves to make sure they continue.”
What a wonderful (and slightly intimidating) way of putting it! Fairy tales are unique as a 'genre' precisely because they behave specifically like living things in the way they spread and adapt, and are one of the biggest reasons they interest us. Myths aren't quite the same but they can behave similarly, and it makes sense that Gaiman's fairy tale influence in telling and retelling myths brings out this quality.
Can you tell we love this creature?
Summary: we're looking forward to seeing what happens with American Gods, both as a series and with regard to social impact. Here's the opening title sequence to give you a taste (no #bucketsofblood in this one, we promise).
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