LACMA & Disney Team Up To Tell 'Beauty and the Beast' Tale on Snapchat

It seems an unlikely pairing, but if you've seen any of LACMA's Snapchat posts (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), you'll know they are the kings of bringing fine art into pop consciousness by way of pithy commentary, a healthy sense of humor and internet memes. (In other words, LACMA's bringing art history to the streets.) LACMA were an early adopter of the Snapchat app and their social media team are constantly seeking imaginative ways to bring art into people's lives by such methods as encouraging people to "catch all their Pokemon" (using Pokemon Go), while retaining their museum's world wide respected fine art status.

For Disney to team up with these unlikely-yet-brilliant social media savvy folk is just smart and we must admit, now that we've seen a preview of what's about to be shared, we're seriously thinking about downloading Snapchat for the OUABlog newsroom.

The four-part series will kick off on LACMA’s (@lacma) Snapchat account tomorrow, October 19th, and conclude on Oh My Disney’s (@OhMyDisney) account on Thursday. 

If this is a taste of what's to come, we are happy to trust LACMA on this one and get on board. Take a look at the tale preview!

But the fun doesn’t stop there — beginning this month, LACMA, the largest art museum in the western United States, will launch the digital collaboration on the Oh My Disney Snapchat account. Drawing from over 130,000 works in LACMA’s encyclopedic collection, which spans thousands of years and from all around the globe, the teams will use references from pop culture, filters, memes, and whimsical hand-drawn Snapchat overlays to retell some of Disney’s most iconic stories in a lighthearted and contemporary tone. The collaboration will continue on a bi-monthly basis. 

“LACMA’s intentionally humorous Snapchat account not only has made important artworks from our collection vastly more accessible to new audiences, but it has also allowed us to explore these artworks from new points of view,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “Partnering with Disney—one of the most influential and dynamic storytellers of our time—is a perfect marriage of two Los Angeles institutions that love to engage the public with images.” (source)

And from Disney:

“Our Snapchat campaign with LACMA opens up new ways for our audiences to experience art and their favorite Disneystories,” Dan Reynolds, VP of Content and Audience Development, Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media, said in a statement. “The LACMA Snapchat account already captures that contemporary and culturally savvy voice and tone that our OhMyDisney Snapchat audience loves, and this collaboration is a natural way to add a little magic to art and storytelling to reach a new generation of art and Disney fans alike.”  (source)

And just because it's fun, here are some more of LACMA's Snapchat hits. 

Can you guess the reference?

 

            

 There's a more complete version of "LACMA drops Bohemian Rhapsody" HERE.

Five Second Fables: The Twitterverse on God Creating Animals

Barlow's Aesop

Twitter has been telling tales - fables, to be more precise - and apart from the funny factor, it turns out they tell us a lot about us, our stories and how we see the world.

Barlow's Aesop

Crowd sourced information gathering and storytelling is a fairly new phenomenon, made possible by the age of social media. Twitter in particular, encourages people to distill meaning down to 140 (or less) characters, which is excellent practice for writers and storytellers, and for spreading the word very, very quickly. It's even become a wide-spread tool for distilling themes (ie. "elevator pitches" which are useful in a wide variety of fields) but there are other applications storytellers and folklorists can use them for as well. Memes, with their unique form of social commentary (yes, cat memes, DO say something about society), spread ideas, create context and bridge facts with fiction, often blurring the lines between the two to create a new "thinking space" for issues.

A few years ago fairy tale scholar Donald Haase* proposed a "communal catalogue" of #TwitterTypes, which were to be new summaries of traditional tales in 140 characters or less, to be used as a modern projection of the tale types classifications. Why Twitter? In Haase's words (from his personal Facebook page):

Because the discipline of 140 characters composed on a computer or smartphone forces creative choices about a tale’s “essence,” and those choices reveal, to the Tweeter, the alternatives — the “Tweets-not-taken.”

(Note: we did actually collect as many of these #twittertypes as we could find at the time and are considering adding a page for them to be stored here, perhaps added to if folk are inspired.)

While the project started well, and proved fascinating, it didn't last long and was not very extensive, which was unfortunate, as the potential for study using this tool and tack is wonderful and very reflective of how people today think. It also reflects the methods and thinking process for how we often tell stories in this social media and visual era. The experiment, though not proving successful as a modern alternative to the Aa-Th classification system as planned, did, however, make the point of showing that tales can be told, distilled, summarized, from various cultural and personal viewpoints via this social media medium.

God creating the animals ‘The Taymouth Hours’, England 14th century.

The "creation fables" shown below, though created purely for humorous intent, tell their own silly stories, not unlike many ancestral creation tales in which gods and goddesses were seen to be just as fallible and emotional as man, deciding and acting according to their personal agendas.

Described mostly via a brief dialogue exchange with God and an angel "sidekick" (or creation-technician), there isn't a lot of narrative detail, but each imply a situation and a result, and collectively - as they were written by multiple Twitter-users in a collective "brainstorm" - they provide a snapshot of modern humor and fable. They also wonderfully illustrate storytelling via memes (or memetics).

We're sure there are folklorists out there who could easily expand this into a fascinating lecture on storytelling and sociology but for today: the lecture is over. ;)

We've decided to call these, "Five Second Fables".

The Lion reads to the Animals (Aesop's Fables), 1869, Ernest Griset

Warning: While the content included in this post is generally considered humorous, we are aware that some people may feel offended as it uses casual references to God, and describes God (and angels) using colloquial humor and some bad language. As a result, we are putting these "tweet-fables", under the jump. Please consider yourself warned and read at your own risk. We do hope though, that it will add some smiles to your Sunday.

✑  ✑  ✑  ✑  ✑  ♛ (click the "Read more" link below this line) ♛  ✑  ✑  ✑  ✑  ✑

"Once Upon A Time"'s Dark Swan Season Teaser

Before I get into a discussion which, I promise, is not spoilery, nor is it "down" on OUAT, take a look at the promo.

I like the echo of the twisted thorns that surrounded both Snow White and the Evil Queen in the promos for the first season. Those twisted black branches always felt like an incarnation of the curse to me. Now Emma is in the middle of twisted black, er, ribbons? Slime? Dark matter?? Whatever, the concept echoes the first season, and from the extended Snow White monologue promo for season 5, (which you can see HERE) which implores Emma to remember who she is, right from an actual "Once upon a time..." narrated beginning, complete with harking back to season one imagery and more, it may even be solidifying the mythology and original themes somewhat. That would be a good thing.

Though a Light Swan/Dark Swan concept isn't new to fairy tale folk (or ballet folk.. or people who watched critically acclaimed films of the past few years.. ahem) it may seem a very different idea for many and I've decided to stop griping about the regurgitation of ideas and just let them be discovered by a whole new generation of society/folk.

I have to admit, sometimes things that feel, to me, to be "done to death", really are new ideas to younger people. This generation didn't/isn't grow/ing up with every little girl being sent to ballet and knowing Swan Lake, just like they're not a generation that got beautifully illustrated fairy tale collections as a standard part of their standard childhood library. From a story perspective, it's incredibly sad, but it also provides an opportunity to revisit tales and to do it in a different, more contemporarily reflective way, than they might have, had the tales been passed on in "full form". (It also means, for storytellers and anyone working with tales, that when you see pop culture and general society sucking up this stuff so greedily, that there's an awesome opportunity for using your creativity and craft to bing stories back.)

Aside: I have a theory that this 'tale vacuum' that a large section of generation X grew up in, helped provide the  opportunity to successfully publish Schoenworth's collection, contributed to the intense popularity of Willingham's Fables, and, currently, supports the Disney live-action retread of classic films. It likely also contributes to keeping OUAT alive, despite it's many shortcomings. People are thirsty for traditional tales and when presented with them - especially if they believe them to be "new" or at least "fresh twists" (eg Tale of Tales film or Schoenworth's collection - tales from both of which have really been around for hundreds of years, just in relative obscurity to Grimms and Andersen's)- will lap them up and ask for "more!")

Above: Up on the left, the only time I have seen this poster is in a search so I suspect an excellent fan made job (and if it is it truly is excellent!). I particularly like the swan neck being the hook. Further down on the right is a fan made image calling back the idea of the thorns and the curse surrounding Emma, as well as the Dark One being able to be 'summoned' by whomever holds the dagger.

But back to OUAT's coming Dark Swan: One thing OUAT does well, is provide ample fodder in the way of visuals, one-liner summaries and fairy tale concepts that fans then take and make their own in the form of memes, fan art, cosplays, fan fiction and so much more (see image above for an example). The visuals (via screencaps and more) are easy to work with because they're fairly typical in their presentation so, while lack of originality in framing and filming might seem annoying at times, it gives fans tons of opportunities to run with their personal ideas and make new forms of expression (especially with all the awesome free graphics and filter programs available on the web for free these days. Anyone with a solid idea and some creativity can produce some really gorgeous and interesting images to share, express feelings or to tell the story - or stories - their way, as they see them.)

Though it's been a while since I added to it properly to cover the series, I have a board on Pinterest of interesting fan art inspired by Once Upon A Time HERE and it's worth a look. Why? Because this is people retelling the stories - and fairy tales! -, in their own way, with their own creativity, putting their own spin on the tropes and spreading those stories through popular culture, with the undeniable thumbprint of the present embedded as well.

This coming season promises MANY fan made stories circulating the internet via images, memes and heart-felt sentiments. I'm actually looking forward to seeing what the fans focus on, and what tales - and forms - become popular as a result.

Thoughts On Word Trails & No Longer Seeing the Forests for the Trees

I saw a wonderful scene this week. Bear with me as I share it and hopefully I'll explain what I believe it has to do with fairy tales:

The scene was from the show The Americans*. While I'd be hard pressed to relate this show to fairy tales generally, it makes interesting observations about the human condition, love, despair and choices. The following scene is of the main male character, Philip, with his KGB handler, playing scrabble. Philip, at this point in his journey, is questioning the wisdom of orders given to him and his wife, feeling that it is compromising him as a basic human being - as a father and husband:

[Scene: Philip and his Handler playing scrabble.] 

H: Stuck between a geode and a hard place. (shuffles tiles) "Amatory" -(counts points)  24 yes, - 24 -loving , devoted,adoring. 

Philip: Where do you come up with this stuff? 

H: I love words. They leave a trail. For example, amatory is from the Latin word for 'love'. While wedlock - the condition of being married - is Norse, Norwegian: wed, lock. Which means perpetual battle. 

Philip: Your point being? 

H: Love and marriage in many ways are antithetical: one is a bolt of lightning, an epiphany, and the other is planting, tilling, tending. It's hard work. 

Philip: (glares at H) I'm trying to concentrate here. 

H: Oh sorry. 

Philip: (puts down scrabble letters)  

H: (reads) "sphinx" - excellent. 59 - bravo.**

Such a great exchange.

He's right. Words leave a trail.

At Myth & Moor yesterday (Terri Windling's wonderfully mythic and inspirational blog) Terri talked about the sense that our stories are disappearing, like many of the world's forests. She was quoting the book Tales Of Faerie and I have started discussing (From the Forest by Sara Maitland) and began by referencing a passage that caught my attention too - about the frustration parents have with the lack of response when they ask their children what happened in their day, ie. "Nothing." My reaction when reading this was so strong I went and grabbed a pencil, underlined it and bookmarked it to read to my husband later.

It finishes by explaining: "... but the 'nothing' is a cover for "I don't know how to tell a good story about it, how to impose a story shape on the events.' "

by Banksy (one of my favorites!)

Using words to tell stories is hard now. We're not only out of the habit, most people don't grow up with this; it's not as common a developmental skill as it used to be. For many, there just isn't time. At least, not to tell stories in that form. For others the gap between everyday expression and "word "smithing is just overwhelming and intimidating. Since oral stories (and general yarns and tale telling) have fallen out of everyday use, being able to tell tales is no longer a common-man thing to do. Whether or not it is true, to many it feels like telling stories are the territory of "true writers" only, so people just... don't. (Using myself as an example, Myth & Moor is full of beautiful, inspirational and thought provoking writing - I highly recommend it - and the comments on Terri's posts range from articulate to poetic - so much so, I often feel unable to comment, certain that I have nothing to add, even though I've always been made welcome there. And this is from someone who does write every day, adores words and has a rudimentary understanding of Latin and other base languages.) As a result, the people who understand those trails of history and stories within the words seem to be fewer and fewer every day. When it comes to tales, people not only get tongue-tied, the stories they stumbling-ly tell, lack vitality, the tales become muddied and, in some ways, they start to die.

The Grimms were motivated to write down fairy tales because they felt their language and tales were disappearing rapidly in the cultural clime. And they were right. Their work in stopping this from happening altogether is often underestimated but we owe them much.

Today we have the same sense, that stories and tales are disappearing, along with our language. Forget correct grammar, people don't even use full sentences anymore. (See? Just like that.) We resort to catch phrases, memes and emojis to communicate and express sentiments. We summarize in infographics. It's alarming in many ways but the lack of words doesn't mean language and stories are disappearing. It means they're changing shape.

In an age of the internet, in which we need to navigate the constant press of information overload, we've turned the bulk of the words off altogether and begun processing everything the fastest way possible - visually. And it works. After all, visuals are processed 60 000 times faster in the brain than text. We now live in a visual culture and there's no escaping it.

What tends to happen as a result though, is that WE DO LOSE STORIES through the gaps. And tales, and those word shapes with their trails. So what do we do?

"Knock Knock" by Hilary Leung

This is something I've been looking at seriously for a good couple of years now - the impact of visual communication and visual consumerism on storytelling. In many ways, this new form of language has opened up new forms of stories to people who weren't interested in telling tales before (for whatever reason). People who always responded with "Nothing" now fill their Tumblr accounts and Pinterest boards with fan-made images and quotes, blending ideas and sentiments, suggesting avenues of thought and inspiring conversation.

by Raquel Aparicio

"The hyper-visualisation age is now upon us, where any visual media object can act as a portal to other media." (source)

A truly interesting thing (and hidden treasure) is this: the best forms of these new "stories" (however fractured and incomplete they are) lead to words. And more words. The image shorthand is being used like a filtering system in an age of information overload. And the best, most useful "filter caught" images, usually use words too.

Sometimes trying to find what you want is like opening a Matroyshka doll - layers within layers within layers... and sometimes it seems more like hunting Koschei's soul which was hidden inside of a needle, inside of an egg, inside of a duck, inside of a hare, inside of an iron chest,buried under an oak tree, on a island, in the middle of the ocean... but ultimately, the words - and the tales - they're in there.

(There are hundreds of articles explaining to business people and marketers just how important the use of images with the right phrase is.) But it can't be just any words. They specifically use 'the right ones', the succinct ones, the ones that, in conjunction with the image, tell a spare story with a lot of resonance; very much like fairy tales always have.

People are drawn to the life in words (and trees), to the history in them but it's hard to know, when there is so much in front of us demanding our attention, what we should pay attention to. (Why should we care about this tree here when there are so many more?) 

Images help filter. Not too surprisingly, when you figure out it's not really 'words' people don't like, it's the tidal wave of text that feels impossible to process, people can start to sort out just what it is they want to pay attention to - and they go word hunting. Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and many other publications still do exceptionally well publishing multiple page essays. Novels are devoured in print and ebook form alike - perhaps more than ever. People want to read. They want words, and stories and forests and tales. They just want to choose their path so they don't feel so lost.

But how do we get people to the start of these paths and tales so they choose to walk them, themselves and, in doing so, keep them alive?

More specifically, what is a writer to do? How do we preserve our beloved fairy tales from becoming distant memories, footnotes in essays or forgotten tales in out of print books? 

The answer is simple. We have to find new ways to tell them. 

That also feels exceptionally difficult to figure out how to do. 

(The reason this post has taken as long to get up as it has is due to my search for appropriate visuals to include - and I'll be the first to admit, this whole post would have been better received had I been able to present it in a much more visual manner. I wish I had the skills to pull together reaction gifs and create "visual poems" to capture the essence of what I'm trying to communicate but I didn't grow up that way and don't have those skills... yet.)

Interestingly, dealing with this exact issue in their own times is, I believe, exactly why the Grimms, Andersen, Perrault and Wilde are still known today. (I have a post on this coming on this shortly - how these fairy tale writers made their tales truly live.)

We know, in principle, that fairy tales are very much a living thing. It's ironic that writing them down to preserve them serves to help them stagnate, almost as if they "solidify" in their written form. Often, it requires these coma-like story forms to get a jolt, usually from another media source, to wake up these 'sleeping beauties' and have people notice and love them again. And perhaps some savvy use of available tools in this "visual era" can help.

I know. It sounds exhausting and I'm right there with you. Can't we just sit in our corners and write our words and have them there ready for when people want them? I wish we could. But if we want to be part of making sure tales stay alive we need to be active as they're being redefined and retold. We need to be part of the 'telling'. The best historians don't just dig into the dusty past and tell us what happened, they explain why things happened the way they did and show us the direct connection to ourselves, how we can learn from history to learn about the world as it is now and to make a better future. Otherwise why bother with history at all?

Eventually, when the noise of the world is sorted and people know what they want to focus on, words become even more precious than before. It's then that they ask for more words, more tales. 

People will continue to come back to words. The trick is to keep the trail visible.

____________________________________________________________________

For those looking to learn more about this 'visual era', here's a short list (really!) to get you started, The ones with the orange stars are super quick, informative skims. The purple stars are recommended reads over the rest if you're short on time:

The Guardian: The New (Visual) Culture: how to produce quality in a world of quantity
*WallBlog: Turning advertising into a service: brands must embrace the hyper-visual landscape
*Social Media Examiner: 4 Businesses Leveraging Storytelling With Images
* Business 2 Community: Why Image Trumps Everything in Today's Visual Age
FastCompany: The Rise of Visual Social Media
Marketing Magazine: Brands Should Take the Visual Web Seriously, says Facebook's EMEA Boss
* Cyber Alert: Visual Storytelling Campaigns That Inspire, Motivate and Generate Action
MindFire Communications: It's A Visual World. Show Your Story
* LinkedIn: Market Researchers: Do you Speak Visual?
* MDG Advertising: It's All About the Images (Infographic)
* Wishpond Advanced Lead Generation Marketing Blog: 10 Reasons Visual Content Will Dominate 2014
SteamFeed: Why Visual Content Will Rule Digital Marketing in 2014
NeonTommy: Visual Poetry Collection 'Kern' Meshes Literature And Art

* It's one of the few shows I think is brilliantly done in every aspect and which I do my best to keep up with, even if I can only see 10 minutes of a show at a time. It's very brutal at times but I love the juxtaposition of a couple working on their relationship and raising an American family against the background of being KGB spies in America.

**  I thought the riddle response was a great touch too.