Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' New Poster & Update

Released yesterday by Emma Watson via her Twitter feed and Facebook page, the new poster for Disney's live action version of the fairy tale looks more than a little familiar. Comparison to original classic poster appears to be intentional, and why not? It's a nice homage, and people love - and are protective of - the original they adore and really want more of - not changed. Seems like a smart move on Disney's part.

Here's a visual side-by-side for you:

There has been news appearing here and there, prior to Tuesday's monumental election event, and now seems like a good time to take a break from all that, to focus on something positive for a few minutes, to summarize it.

Here's are the latest released details on the upcoming - and significant - differences in the live action version of Beauty and the Beast, in contrast to the animated classic:

Belle's new backstory:

“In the animated movie, it’s her father who is the inventor, and we actually co-opted that for Belle,” said Emma Watson. “I was like, ‘Well, there was never very much information or detail at the beginning of the story as to why Belle didn’t fit in, other than she liked books. Also what is she doing with her time?’ So, we created a backstory for her, which was that she had invented a kind of washing machine, so that, instead of doing laundry, she could sit and use that time to read instead. So, yeah, we made Belle an inventor.”

And yes, she stills reads - actually, she invents so she can read, so reading and learning and imagining are still very much a part of Belle's persona. *all the Belle fans sigh in relief* Emma Watson also insisted that Belle be given proper foot attire: sturdy boots.

"My Belle is very practical," Watson says, during a shooting break. "In the movie she wears these little ballet shoes, and I knew that they had to go. If you're going to ride a horse, and tend your garden and fix machinery, then you need to be in proper boots." (Entertainment Weekly Magazine)

And if your'e wondering about Belle's ball shoes, they're 18th Century heeled shoes - hand painted with gold flowers - "but they are something that Belle can run in and that she can go off and save her father in."

Her father, Maurice, gets a bit of a different spin too:

In addition, Maurice’s character is more three-dimensional and instead of being an inventor of oddities, he makes music boxes. “Kevin Kline as Maurice, is making all these music boxes that have to tell the story of Belle not traveling,” according to the the film’s set decorator, Katie Spencer. (source x)

The three new songs added the film, add to the story and plot too, and we finally understand why Audra McDonald was cast as Garderobe (it's a good reason). Here's the summary via Entertainment Weekly's magazine:

When Disney releases its live-action remake of Beauty and The Beast on March 17 of next year, viewers will hear three new ballads written by composer Alan Menken — who penned the tunes for the original 1991 animated version with the late Howard Ashman — and lyricist Tim Rice. These include a song performed by Emma Watson’s Belle with her character’s father Maurice (Kevin Kline), and another called “For Evermore,” sung by Dan Stevens’ Beast.  

“It ends up being a song called ‘Our Song Lives On,’ and it’s done in a number of forms,” says Menken of the former track. “The first time it’s sung, it’s Belle’s father singing as he’s completing a music box, and basically it’s [about], ‘How does a moment live forever? How do you hang on to precious moments?’ Then, it’s reprised by Belle, and then it’s the song that’s actually over the end credits at the end of the movie. Disney hasn’t announced it yet, but there’s going to be some wonderful singer on the end credits song.”  

“‘For Evermore’ is this moment where the Beast now loves Belle, and he realizes that she misses her father, and he acknowledges she’s no longer a prisoner, and when she sees her father’s in trouble, he says, ‘Go to him, go.’ And he voluntarily lets her go,” Menken continues. “He’s basically singing about how he now knows what love is, as he watches her leave, and he’s climbing up the turret of the castle as she recedes into the distance, just watching her go further and further away.” 

“‘Days in the Sun’ is a moment when all of the objects in the castle —and Belle — are going to sleep. Basically, everybody in the castle is having memories of what it used to be when they had their days in the sun. It’s sort of a combination of a lullaby and a remembrance of happier days for everybody.” 

The new Beauty and the Beast will also feature a showcase for Broadway legend Audra McDonald, who plays the part of Madame De Garderobe. “It’s a moment within the prologue, just before the spell befalls the castle,” Menken says. “We’re actually at an event at the Prince’s castle, where the Prince is about to be turned into the Beast, and he’s in his very selfish and self-indulgent phase of his life, and we see that, and we have the magnificent Audra McDonald singing this number.”  (Adapted from: Entertainment Weekly)

Fan created poster, combining the EW released pic with the first teaser poster

So what do you think? Are you happy about the changes? Do you feel they update the story in the right direction for a stronger Disney female role model?

Despite fans generally being in ecstasies of happiness, there are superficial criticisms (the dress, the color, the lack of variety in her non-ballgown wardrobe, the Beast's horns) but also some more serious ones, suggesting the changes to Belle's backstory are only tokens in the direction of true feminism. While we don't see any reason why a feminist can't enjoy pretty things, including ball gowns and lovely dances, there is a point to be made about how this relationship develops, as well as Belle's character not having to obviously challenge the status quo of the time period (which, although nebulous, is clearly not today). Hopefully, seeing Belle grappling with common ideas about a woman's place by doing such activities as inventing conveniences for herself makes the difference more clear, but, as suggested by one blogger, altering her historically accurate costume - had she been made to wear one - to suit her independent needs, would have perhaps made that even more obvious. We would suggest it's a little early to throw down the gauntlet in accusation of pseudo-feminism, but you can be certain many will be watching for just that.

To date, however, all signs point to the listed 'updates' above as being positive for us here in the fairy tale newsroom, but we're still very curious to see how the prisoner-to-lover transition is handled, as well as the reaction to falling in love and transformation. It's rare to hear those who truly love the original fairy tale (and Cocteau's film) be happy with the Beast's transformation back to a man. They still want their Beast. We can't imagine that would be acceptable in a family film, but it's still a relevant issue that needs addressing. We hope it will be.

Decemberists' 'The Crane Wife' 10th Anniversary Special Re-release

Can you believe it's been ten years since The Decemberists released their album, based on Japanese fairy tale The Crane Wife? There's a whole new special re-issue box-set for enthusiasts being released on December 9th, 2016, and for Decemberist fans, sounds like it's more than worth adding to your collection.

For those wondering what The Crane Wife album, and upcoming box set, has to do with the fairy tale, here's a couple of excerpts from a long interview with Pitchfork, explaining the influence of the story, the importance of stories and narrative and how it was the central thread for this definitive album, which many critics hail as being The Decemberists best work:

Pitchfork: Can you amplify the symbolism of the crane wife? Not the album, but the actual story. 

CM: It's a story about a peasant living in, I assume, rural Japan, it being a Japanese folk tale. He finds a wounded crane on the road as he's walking one night. It has an arrow in its wing, and he pulls out the arrow and revives the crane. A couple of days later this mysterious woman shows up at his door and he brings her in. Eventually, they fall in love and are married. Although they're poor-- she's a seamstress, a weaver-- she suggests that she can make this cloth that he could sell and make money. But the one condition is that when she's weaving he can't look into the room at her weaving. This goes on for awhile, until eventually the peasant's curiosity gets the best of him and he looks in. It turns out that the woman is a crane, and she's pulling feathers from her wings and putting them into the cloth, which is what makes it so beautiful and soft. Apparently, having looked in at her breaks the spell and she turns permanently back into a crane and flies away. 

Pitchfork: Wow. That's almost identical to the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, isn't it? Where he's leading her out of Hades and he's not allowed to look back, and finally his doubt and curiosity get the best of him, and he looks, and she fades away forever. It's the same narrative arc unfurling in a different culture. 

CM: Yeah, and having read the crane wife story, it's tough to pull a lesson out of it. It has something to do with greed, or curiosity, but why his looking in at her breaks the spell is a little ambiguous. The thing that I could tie it to was the Greek myth. It's interesting how they can be divided by centuries and continents, and these stories still manage to say these same things. It just shows you the universality of certain stories. 

Pitchfork: You seem as interested in the basic forms of storytelling, the way narrative elements play out toward an inevitable denouement, as you are the stories and characters themselves. Do you think the two constructs-- stories and how they're told-- can even be bifurcated that way, or are they inextricable?
CM: As important as it is, in novels or short stories, to have well-developed characters, it's just as important to abide by a strong narrative arc, where you have development and crisis and conflict and resolution. I think it's just another universality, that people like to have their stories given to them that way. So yes, the way the story is told is really important, because I think the story then dictates the lives of the characters. 

Pitchfork: Are you interested in classical tale cycles as well, the tales-within-tales thing? I'm thinking of things like Boccaccio's Decameron and the 1001 Arabian Nights. It seems to have a lot of utility for records like The Crane Wife, being filled with trapdoors that plunge you deeper and deeper into the story.
CM: Yeah, I read that stuff in school; I don't know if I've gone back to it. But I think it's a nice literary concept. 

Pitchfork: The Crane Wife also features a reappearance of what seems to be one of your favorite themes-- the doomed, star-crossed lovers divided by class and fate, who wind up horribly. What is it you find so resonant about this very Shakespearean concept? 

CM: I don't know, it's just a universal idea that's lasted over time. It's an archetypal storyline, so it means a lot; it carries a lot of baggage. You can draw a line through it to a hundred other stories. I've always been attracted to that sort of tragedy. 

Pitchfork: It seems that this is really where your interest lies-- these archetypes that are timeless and cut across cultures, occurring in different formats with the same narrative arc. 

CM: And hopefully that's what makes it something people can relate to. Because it's programmed into our heads to relate to these stories in certain ways.

Music folk will be interested in the whole article, which you can find HERE.

Here are the special 10th anniversary box-set details:

The Decemberists will reissue their fourth album, and major label debut, The Crane Wife, as a five-disc vinyl set packed with B-sides and demos, and featuring essays from Hamilton mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda and Rolling Stone's David Fricke....The set will collect the original 2006 album on two LPs, while the other three discs will feature B-sides, bonus tracks, unreleased outtakes, alternative versions and frontman Colin Meloy's solo acoustic demos. Among 
those demos is a version of the three-part "The Crane Wife" together as a single song in its original sequence.An accompanying 20-page booklet will feature Miranda's essay alongside new liner notes from Fricke. The collection will also include a Blu-ray featuring the Decemberists' 2006 concert at Washington D.C.'s 9:30 Club, which was filmed for NPR's second-ever webcast and had previously not been given an official release. 

The Crane Wife 10th anniversary box set is available to pre-order now via the Decemberists' website. The band is also offering a special version pressed on marbled red vinyl, limited to 500 copies. 

You can read the extensive track list for the five albums HERE.

There's also a short trailer showcasing the new package and some of the artwork. Enjoy:

Theater: "Neck of the Woods" Tells the Wolf's Story Like You've Not Heard Before

I will admit, I was skeptical too when I first read this claim: haven't we seen Red Riding Hood and every incarnation of the Wolf and wolves, done to death? But Neck of the Woods promises something a little different, and certainly, the approach is quite unusual.

Here's the description:

MIF (Manchester International Festival) has invited Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon (Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno) and celebrated pianistHélène Grimaud to create Neck of the Woods, a portrait of the wolf brought to life in a startling collision of visual art, music and theatre. 

On the stage of HOME’s intimate new theatre, legendary actor Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter,Broadchurch) will recite and perform the story of the wolf as never before. 

Grimaud will curate and perform a series of works for piano, while Gordon will create the visual world. They have collaborated with Rampling and New York-based novelist and playwright Veronica Gonzalez Peña, weaving together stories, music, motifs, phrases and fragments to build this lyrical and beguiling work. 

In a new partnership to support their ongoing creative development, the Sacred Sounds Women’s Choir, first formed for MIF13, will perform as part of the soundscape to the production.

The Guardian has a lengthy and in-depth write-up on the show and the creators, (wonderfully titled "What Large Teeth You Have!") something which those who are interested in exploring the darker themes of fairy tales and LRRH in particular will find very interesting. (Note: this article does get a little dark with it's language and descriptions but also talks about the wolf as portrayed in literature and myth - why so negatively and the nature of man in contrast. It's a very interesting, recommended read.) Here are some excerpts:

Helene Grimaud working in wolf preservation

“For me, the most important thing is to be as close to the dark as possible, and then, when the lights come up, it should be the same as when you’re a child, when you have a nightmare and then you wake up and you feel safe and then you’re frightened to go back to sleep.” In his gravelly, laconic Glaswegian voice, the Turner-prizewinning artist Douglas Gordon is painting me a picture of a new play about the Big Bad Wolf that he is directing, designing and performing in at this year’s Manchester international festival. 

Entitled Neck of the Woods, it is a retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story, and brings together an impressive group of talents: Gordon, the concert pianist and wolf conservationist Hélène Grimaud, Charlotte Rampling and the acclaimed Mexican-born writer and film-maker Veronica Gonzalez Peña. 

...For the story, Gordon asked Gonzalez Peña for something “very loosely based onLittle Red Riding Hood”. Her script will draw on the many different takes on the wolf myth in literature, bringing them together in a collage of narrative, sound, lighting and singing. 

The wolf has not had a good press in literature. For Aesop, writing 600 years before the birth of Christ, it is a creature without virtue. It is insatiable. It is deceitful and selfish. It eats children.

Gustav Dore 

...in western culture the rapacious reputation has conquered all others. And so the wolf, and its humanoid incarnation the werewolf, has stalked its miscreant way through legend and literature, from the tales of Perrault, the brothers Grimm, De La Fontaine and Hans Christian Andersen, through Dracula, Tolkien, CS Lewis and Prokofiev. When film came along it took up the baton and countless werewolf ripper movies have been inspired by Guy Endore’s 1933 cult novel The Werewolf of Paris. 

For all this negativity, the last century has seen a change in attitude to the wolf. Kipling casts the wolves in a benign role in The Jungle Book, as the saviours of Mowgli. JK Rowlingoffers a sympathetic portrait of a man fighting his inner werewolf in the character of Remus Lupin in her Harry Potter novels, while Stephenie Meyer’s tribe of shape-changing werewolves are warriors against the forces of evil in her Twilight novels. And of course there is the short story by Angela Carter, “The Company of Wolves”, which subverts traditional sexual attitudes to Little Red Riding Hood and ends with the girl stripping off to take her pleasure with the beast.

"Neck of the Woods" 

It is against this backdrop that Gonzalez Peña, in conversation with Gordon, has woven her script, bringing in references to Freud and the little-known but influential early 20th-century American writer Sherwood Anderson. I ask her whether, with a mind to Grimaud’s conservation activities, the play will try to right the malign image of the wolf. No, she says, it’s not going to be a polemical piece. Grimaud acknowledges that a didactic approach would not work artistically: “In the beginning, I suppose a part of me thought, ‘Great, we’re doing a piece about the ecology and the behaviour of wolves. We are rectifying the story and telling the facts,’ and, of course, it couldn’t be that.” 

For Gordon, it’s not about real wolves at all. “It is more to do with the metaphor of the wolf. There is the history of the she-wolf, but mostly wolves represent a bad man. One of the things I wanted to explore with this project in Manchester was that there is badness, there are bad reputations and they’re not without any foundations. I think men are worse than wolves, for sure.”

And a note from the actress Charlotte Rampling, who narrates the play, as the "third wolf", via the Manchester Evening News:

Charlotte Rampling, Douglas Gordon & beloved arctic wolf (preserved)

..Rampling would be the first to admit that she was once a child scared of the big bad wolf. 

“When you re-read those stories when you’re older - the Hans Christian Andersen ones, the Brothers Grimm - they really are terrifying, they teach you really wild things,” she laughs.“You might say, ‘Oh gosh, children can’t hear this!’, but children do need to get a handle on primitive violence and the difference between right and wrong, who’s going to get eaten and how we’re going to adjust to rather terrifying situations.“Those stories have been read to children for so long there must be something essential in them that we believe children do need. And nursery rhymes - they’re pretty cruel too.” 

Cast by Turner Prize winning artist, writer and director Douglas Gordon and co-writer and pianist Hélène Grimaud in Manchester International Festival production Neck Of The Woods, Charlotte will be tackling the topic of the wolf in fiction - in particular, picking apart the reputation of this majestic woodland beast. 

...Charlotte is a multi-part interpreter of the story: as narrator and actor, she switches between the role of parent reading to their child and the protagonist of the story.

I want to include this final note from Rampling's interview as it speaks to storytelling today, something which is (unfortunately) often run over by film, TV and 'moving image' entertainment. I think what she says speaks to an re-emerging interest in live storytelling once again, albeit in a different form of multi-media. It's something I think we, as people who watch fairy tales continue to live in being told and going from one incarnation in popular thinking to another, as they're told, retold, spread, discovered and re-discovered, should take note of:

Charlotte Rampling

Having the innovative creative environment of MIF to transform into this multifaceted character is what encouraged Charlotte to take the role. “It is enabling these forms of creation to happen,” she says about the festival. 

“If everything is filmic language, we don’t give people a chance to express where they really are in the world. With experimental language, it means you can really research areas that you won’t at all be able to do in the theatrical system.”

"Neck of the Woods" plays in Manchester at HOME, as part of the Manchester International Festival, from July 10th-July 18th 2015.

A Wilde Weekend! (A Multi-Arts Weekend Event Celebrating the Life & Works of Oscar Wilde)

I was completely blown away when I followed the breadcrumbs to this four day event, titled A Wilde Weekend. And it sounds... completely amazing.

First of all - it's a four day, multi-disciplinary Arts event (!), celebrating the life and works of Oscar Wilde, in various locations around beautiful Irish countryside and landmarks.

What does that mean?

It means there is a four day program filled with:
- plays - full and partial
- readings & dialogues
- film presentations
- live music
- magical mystery garden tour
- a tour of an amazing period house, complete with scenes of Wilde plays in various rooms
- artwork
- photographs
- period costumes wherever you go with actors helping set the atmosphere
- period social events (like dinner parties under the stars as Wilde himself loved, hosted and attended)
- talks and discussions by experts and scholars
- community costumed picnics
- and more!

And - I have to include notice of two things:

One -  they're GILDING A STATUE, just like The Happy Prince, and will be leaving it to the elements to flake off over time..!

Two - they're having a DINNER IN THE DARK, to simulate the silver mine dinner Wilde had in Colorado (the US). This will be a dining experience complete with blindfolds and pitch darkness to try your dinner, dessert and drink in...

I'm just astonished. It's EXACTLY the sort of immersive, Arts-based event I think people should experience - with excellence and professionalism on every level available to the public, from locations and presenters, to involving every sense (taste, smell, touch, sound, sight, and all the other ones too).

Even the whole PDF for this program is gorgeous (click on any of the side-by-side images shown above to see and read it full size). It's also huge - pages and pages - and I can't figure out how to embed the whole thing so I'm including some pages that may catch your eye. You can find the full, beautiful PDF HERE (just the program is creatively inspiring!).

The date is the Bank Holiday weekend (May 1st to 4th) and takes place in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh (Ireland) and you can pay to attend various events or for the whole weekend.

Here are all the links you need:
OFFICIAL SITE is HERE
Twitter is HERE
Facebook is HERE
PDF of the program and various events descriptions is HERE

And if anybody gets to go to any of this please tell us! I want to hear all about it. (And then I want someone to do a similar event close to where I am please!)

Todrick Hall's Fairy Tale R&B Mash-up is All That and More (aka 90's Disney Nostalgia)

Here's a video that went viral this week - reminding everyone of the fairy tale "golden age" of Disney of the 90's - but with an R&B feel and hooks from other pop songs thrown in there to mix it up a little. The costumes are cute tribute updates too. Clearly Todrick Hall had a lot of fun with this.

This is much better done than I expected and the Aladdin tribute it finishes with is fantastic. Just try and keep your feet still. (And boy can Shoshana Bean sing!) Take a look:

Todrick Hall has become (very) famous for his edgy takes on Disney songs, tales and characters - most of them being fairy tales. His 'revisionist' takes (there's that word again!) are incredibly popular and create a lot of conversation about fairy tales and how they're told today. (So much so, I think it's about time I gave him his own tag!) His Cell Block Tango mixing Chicago's amazing murderesses sequence with Disney villains was inspired. I'll link you in case you missed it. HERE.

Philip Glass' Rescore of Cocteau's "La Belle et la Bête" Performed Live to the Film in Santa Barbara This Wednesday

One of the most celebrated and unique works in Philip Glass’ recent career, his live interpretation of Jean Cocteau’s masterpieceLa Belle et la Bête is also his most deeply personal and romantic. For this production, Glass removed the film’s soundtrack and replaced it with his own musical score played live by the Philip Glass Ensemble. The dialogue is also performed live by the vocalists who are synchronized with the actors in the film. This mythical, lush and sweeping love story is a tale for the ages.

Oh wow. I would LOVE to see/hear this! Although Beauty and the Beast isn't my absolute favorite fairy tale of all time, and I pick and choose my opera viewing rather carefully, I'd go to this performance in a heartbeat. Cocteau's film is one of my absolute favorites ever (I have, I think four? five? slightly different presentations of it... and I can't get rid of a single one) and seeing/hearing the different score and vocal track, inspired by the film and made for the film, to match mood, action and dialogue and meant to be heard ONLY as you see the film (ie it's not supposed to be a separate work) and to hear it being played and sung LIVE? Well, that's just.. goose bump worthy.

From The Independent:

“No one had ever done this before: take a talking film, turn off the soundtrack, and create a new one from start to finish,” said Michael Riesman, who has been part of the project since its inception in 1995. He will conduct the Philip Glass Ensemble in a live performance of the score — accompanied by the film, of course — this Wednesday at the Granada Theatre. 

The film is the 1946 classic La belle et la bête, directed by Jean Cocteau — a genius whose work Glass found continually inspiring. As Riesman noted in a recent interview, the composer turned one Cocteau screenplay into a more conventional opera and another into a ballet/opera. For this one, he decided to overlay new music onto the ethereal imagery. 

“It was quite a complicated process,” Riesman recalled. “[After we received the first draft of the score] we found there were lots of problems. The bed of music was okay, but the vocal parts weren’t close enough [to the actors’ dialogue] to be convincing. I thought we needed to at least do as good a job as a badly dubbed film. The right person’s mouth had to be moving!
“Sometimes we shifted the vocal line; in other cases, we threw it back to Philip, who would totally rewrite the section. This went on for weeks. We were already in rehearsals, so it was pretty scary. Fresh pages were coming in daily.” 

However hurried, the results were magnificent. In the New York Times, Allan Kozinn praised the way Glass’s music reflected the film’s “visual and atmospheric touches.” 

Here's a brief video explaining this new production (fresh cast, I believe), premiering this coming Wednesday at The Granada Theater:

Although Philip Glass will not be appearing with The Philip Glass Ensemble for this event in Santa Barbara at The Granada Theater, (at the University of Santa Barbara) Michael Riesman, who has led over one hundred live performances of the score to the film since 1995, will be conducting.

For more information and tickets, please see HERE.

2014 Oscars Pay Tribute to 'The Wizard of Oz'

We knew it would happen but we weren't sure what was the big secret plan was for the tribute moment. Thankfully, it turned out to be elegant and heartfelt.

Simply and sentimentally introduced by Whoopi Goldberg (who lifted her skirts to show her ruby high heeled slipper and striped stockings), a beautifully edited montage of scenes from MGM's Wizard of Oz played on a large screen behind Pink, who gave possibly the best performance of the evening, singing Over the Rainbow. The star studded audience, complete with the reunion of Judy Garland's three children, thought so too, quickly giving Pink a standing ovation after her last notes. Alecia Moore (aka Pink) gave the song her own phrasing and a more sombre, slightly sad, retrospective emphasis to the interpretation, which the audience clearly felt too. If you missed it and have any feeling for The Wizard of Oz - book, film or both -  you'll want to take time to watch this. It's nothing fancy, just beautiful:

Afterward we were treated to host Ellen DeGeneres in her Glinda the Good Witch get-up which was a light and lovely bubble of 'pink love' to button up the moment with. All, in all, it was unexpectedly grounded while still sentimental. We applaud it.

Multimedia Lecture: "Masters Reloaded: From 'Schneewittchen' to 'Sonne' The Brothers Grimm and Rammstein"

Some of you may remember the heavy metal song and video by German group Rammstein, telling a very different, provocative and dark retelling of Snow White from 2001. The song was titled 'Sonne' (meaning 'sun' in German).

I don't remember, however, any folklorist ever lecturing on it at length, other than to point out that the video existed. Well now we have a chance to hear a scholarly opinion on it, as well as other unusual places fairy tale motifs and plot lines have appeared in modern and pop culture, arts and music.

The event is summarized on Facebook HERE, and I found an article detailing a little of the impetus for this lecture as well.

From the Carroll County Times:

McDaniel College professor of German Mohamed Esa has made a career of examining the symbolism of German folklore and fairy tales and said he sometimes sees those symbols, such as gold and poisoned apples, popping up in unlikely places. Even places as unlikely as the music of German heavy metal band Rammstein. 

“I am not a fan, not a heavy metal guy, but some of the stuff that Rammstein does is very interesting,” Esa said. “They are very smart guys … some of their songs are based on famous poems by [German writer] Goethe or fairy tales by the brothers Grimm.” 

Esa will give a multi-media lecture on Rammstein’s use of fairy tale imagery at Hoover Library on the McDaniel College campus from 7 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 17. 

Entitled “The Masters Reloaded: The Brothers Grimm and Rammstein,” the free talk will explore how symbols and themes from various versions of the Snow White fairy tale have been remastered and reinterpreted by Rammstein in the music video for their song, “Sonne.” Esa will present his talk and then show the music video. 

“Snow White is really twisted in the video. She is not the sweet innocent girl that goes into the forest and who is kept safe by the seven dwarves,” Esa said. “She is mature, she is sexually active and she is addicted to gold cocaine. The miners, the five members of the band, they bring her the gold and she sniffs it like cocaine. The heroine is addicted to heroin, the divine drug. At the end, she literally gives herself a golden shot of death.” 

According to Esa, Rammstein’s use of a gold-snorting Snow White is particularly interesting given a lesser-known version of the original tale that dates to around 1845. 

“In that version, after Snow White is poisoned, the dwarves try to revive her using a tincture of gold in her nose,” he said. “Is it a coincidence that in the video Snow White is addicted to gold cocaine? For me when I read this, I said, ‘Whoa, there must be something there.’” 

Esa said he first became aware of Rammstein in the late ’90s, around the time they had some crossover commercial success on American radio.

You can read the rest of the article HERE.

For those who haven't seen it and would like to, I've embedded the video below. (If you can't handle heavy metal music I suggest just turning the sound down.):

If you'd like to attend the lecture, here are the details:

What: The Masters Reloaded: The Brothers Grimm and Rammstein
When: 7 p.m.-8:30 p.m., Feb. 17
Where: The Wahrhaftig Room of the Hoover Library at McDaniel College, 2 College Hill, Westminster
Cost: Free!