Wish You Were Part of a Fairy Tale Couple? You May Want to Think Again...

by Annie Leibovitz

Today is Valentine's Day and that means many things to many people. Not growing up in the US, Valentine's was not a day for kids. It was really to give a little push to couples who could use it - whether in declaring their unspoken feelings to new beaus or their long time partners. Of course, once Hallmark got a hold of the 'holiday', the pressure was on and now just having dinner with someone of February 14th is loaded with meaning. It's become a day full of unreal expectations and not many people are secure enough in themselves and their relationships to enjoy the day without feeling any pressures. Of course, the idea of 'a fairy tale romance' comes up a lot around today's date but if you really stop and think about it, fairy tale love isn't always what you might think.

Artist unknown

I have an article on "True Love and Fairy Tales" coming up in the next week at Supernatural Fairy Tales (so look out for that one) but for today I wanted to share something I found while researching: a priceless old blog post of Sarah Beth Durst's from 2008 on "Fairy Tale Couples".

If you're not aware of Sarah, you should be. She's written three fairy tale based books so far with her latest being "Ice", a retelling of "East Of the Sun, West of the Moon" (you can read my post on "Ice" HERE). In addition to telling a good story she's wonderfully funny on her blog and often takes a good hard look at fairy tales with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek.

The Prince sees Snow White by Margaret Tarrant

Here's an excerpt from "Fairy Tale Couples" in which she looks at the cons of fairy tale couples or:

WHY I DON'T WANT A FAIRY-TALE RELATIONSHIP (or Reasons to Buy the Card with Love Birds on it Instead)
Snow White and Prince
HER: Leaves her loyal friends after just one kiss.
HIM: Falls in love with a dead girl. Ick.

After a few other dubious fairy tale couple examples she goes on to the pros or:

WHY I'M GIVING MY HUSBAND THE CARD ANYWAY (or Why I Still Think Fairy-Tale Love is Romantic)
Snow White and Prince
As a wedding present, he lets her murder the evil witch. Now that's true love.

Development art by Gustav A. Tenggren for Disney's Snow White

It's not a long post but it's very funny and very smart. You'll find yourself laughing and both being thankful for what you have (or don't have - ick!) and finish reading with your fairy tale romance dreams still somehow intact. Go read the whole thing HERE (then go support her by buying her books, so she'll be able to write more great stuff - we need writers like Sarah!).

Thank you Sarah, and Happy Valentine's day everyone.

Little Girl & Boy Lost (Leibovitz Stages Hansel & Gretel Pt II)

Here are the rest of the photos released from the Annie Leibovitz fairy tale shoot for the 2009 December issue of Vogue. We saw the two photos featuring Lady Gaga in a previous post HERE.

The rest of the photos are shown in order below, along with the story as portrayed and described by Vogue's Creative Director Grace Coddington. Please note the story and photos aren't shown exactly as they will be in the magazine. To view the full piece, you'll need the December issue which mentions a fashion tribute to The Arts - which this shoot is likely part of considering the inspiration and involvement of The Metropolitan opera. The issue has Cate Blanchett on the cover whose shots for this issue were also taken by Leibovitz.

I'm Famished Brother and sister are home alone with not a morsel to eat.

Far From Home They venture out to hunt for wild strawberries in the woods, where Gretel's lily-white frock shines against the dark foliage of the Tree-men. Before long, though, they're hopelessly lost. (Tree-men costumes courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera.)

Golden Slumber The Sandman (played here by Sasha Cooke, who has appeared in the Met's production) sprinkles magic dust onto the frightened children, who fall into a deep sleep and dream about a banquet served by a fish maître d'. (Sandman and fish maître d' costumes courtesy of the Met.)

Wicked The two discover a house in the forest, only to find it occupied by an old witch (portrayed here by Lady Gaga). Gretel looks sweet enough to eat in a poufy confection. But it's Hansel the evil one wants to fatten up and feast on.

Feed the Flames Before the witch can cook Hansel and Gretel—whoosh—they push her into the oven and shut the door.

The Witch Is Dead! The children (here, the Junior Choristers of Grace Church in New York City) baked into gingerbread by the hag come back to life.

You can read all about the shoot (and about more of Lady Gaga's outrageous dressing) HERE and see the slideshow with the complete fashion information HERE.

Leibovitz Stages Hansel & Gretel for December 2009 Vogue 2009

There are only a couple of pictures so far because the big news item is not that there's a new fairy tale shoot by Leibovitz (though many people are excited about that), nor is it that Leibovitz is still working and producing quality pieces (though that's newsworthy considering her financial troubles this year).

The 'hot' news item - as far as the tabloids are concerned - is that Leibovitz shot the notorious Lady Gaga (with her camera of course). The other models are Lily Cole and Andrew Garfield.The images released show Lady Gaga playing the role of the wicked witch (if she were dressed by Marc Jacobs that is). The notoriety continued just with Lady Gaga's entrance.

From StyleFrizz:

The tiny column that you can see at the right of the burning picture says so much about Lady Gaga’s desperation that could be written down in a Gaga-why dictionary: she’s so eager to please, so ambitious to get somewhere, so willing to do anything and everything to look different, she showed up for the shooting wearing absolutely nothing except a rubber rain coat and very, very high heels... (Edit FTNH: clicking on that last link will take you to one of the craziest pairs of high heels I've ever seen.)

You can read the rest of the short article, including more fashion label details, HERE.

I'm hoping we'll see the rest of the images soon - and that the order will make some sense with the story. Coming out of the oven first would put a different take on the witch getting pushed in later...

Apparently the shoot was inspired by the Engelbert Humperdink's "Hansel und Gretel" as staged by Richard Jones for The Metropolitan Opera, even down to replicating one of their sets. The Metropolitan Opera's production opens December 14th, 2009. Click on the banner below for more details on the production.

Fairy Tales Bollywood Style

Poster for "Cinderella - A Bollywood Ballet"

Since we're looking at Bollywood today, as little bonus for you I found an interview from 2008 with choreographer, Prashanthi Chitre, about her Bollywood version of Cinderella.

From the summary:

The musical numbers you see in Indian film, or Bollywood film, are telling a story. They do that with a mishmash of traditional Hindi, Latin American, and MTV dancing. But for many Westerners, that kind of storytelling is still tough to understand. Local choreographer Prashanthi Chitre grew up in India, and she loved Bollywood style dancing. Her lifelong dream has been to translate the joy and excitement she found in that dancing for everyone, especially non–Indians. But it wasn't until she saw her first Western ballet here in Seattle that she realized how she could do it. She tells Jeannie Yandel the story.

Indian beauty Deepika Padukone as Cinderella
(inspired by Annie Leibovitz's photo of Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella. Found HERE)

You can listen to the audio HERE - the interview starts 14 minutes into the recorded radio program. She talks a lot about why Cinderella works well for Indian audiences, interpreting the Indian joy of fantasy for Western audiences and - of course - dancing.

You can read more about the production of "Cinderella - A Bollywood Ballet" HERE.

Annie Leibovitz's Beauty and the Beast

NOTE: This post is especially for Heidi Anne Heiner who's busy discussing fairy tales at Dragon*Con today. I believe Beauty and the Beast is her favorite of the many tales she knows... :)

Fashion and sought-after portrait photographer, Annie Leibovitz, has tackled more than a few fairy tale subjects in her time. Today we look at how she portrayed Beauty and the Beast (with Drew Barrymore as Beauty) for Vogue in 2005.

Although there are images available on the web without the text I thought the commentary and retelling of the story was interesting so have included the image versions as printed in the magazine.

Click on the images for a closer view.

You can see a slideshow without the text HERE.

A thank you to Arlene deWinter for alerting me to these via her Gothic Faery Tales site. Arlene has some lovely things to explore there, including her original - and dark - retellings of fairy tales. You can find her HERE.

Leibovitz's Alice in Vogue

I previously iconic fashion photographer, Annie Leibovtiz's take on Disney versions of fairy tale characters (which you can find HERE). Prior to that, in 2003, she'd already tackled another fairy tale subject: Alice in Wonderland, for Vogue magazine.


While Alice in Wonderland isn't considered a true fairy tale there's no doubt it has fairy tale-like aspects and Leibovitz obviously had a lot of fun with those when she directed the spread, as you can see by the sampling I've included here.
Model Natalia Vodianova plays Alice with a wardrobe to be envied for, including such labels as Helmut Lang, Marc Jacobs, Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier, Christian Lacroix, Dior, Versace and more.More images from the Alice shoot can be found HERE.

Fairy Tale Photography - 2 Extremes

From re-invention of Disney classics by the amazing Annie Leibovitz to the grimmer side of Grimm by Belgium based artist Bruno Vilela, there's a whole lot of fairy tale photography going on.

Fashion photographer, Liebovitz, did three series (and a single additional) of photos showing celebrities as Disney characters for Disney's ad campaign for the themeparks for 2008.




You can see more Disney-classics-by-Liebovitz here (please note there are three sets of photos plus an additional single high-rez photo of The Little Mermaid in their archives).









Bruno Vilela, on the other hand, chose to portray the darker side of the tales. He focuses on Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood (both looking very zombie-like). Click here to see the whole gallery - just click on each photo to go to the next one.


The rather morbid photos of Vilela's dead fairy tale heroines can be found here under 'Bibbdi Bobbdi Boo'.

Somehow, as beautiful as the Liebovitz photos are, they still give me a touch of 'the creepy', though in a different way from Vilela's.