Article: Snow White's Strange Cinematic History

All these adaptations may be a little surprising to someone who hasn't actively tracked down Snow White films but the timing for a summary couldn't be better with Mirror Mirror in theaters and Snow White and the Huntsman releasing just around the corner.

Please note: this is not a definitive list of all the Snow White films but it does include the important ones that impacted the public in some way.

Some excerpts from The Atlantic article Snow White's Strange Cinematic History:

If an enterprising Hollywood executive asked a magic mirror which fairy tale made the fairest box office-gross of all, the answer would undoubtedly be "Snow White." Even for the fairy-tale film genre, the character's history is unusually rich and varied: IMDB currently lists 91 films and TV shows featuring a character named "Snow White," which is dozens more than other comparable fairy-tale heroines, including Belle of Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty of Sleeping Beauty. 

... Snow White, like The Three Musketeers and Sherlock Holmes, has existed in cinema for almost as long as cinema has existed. The oldest film adaptation of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale hit theaters in 1902. Though the Snow White story was retold by film directors three more times over the next 15 years, the most significant adaptation came in 1916. The Margeurite Clark-starring film was well received, but its true cinematic legacy came with the impact it had on a 15-year-old newsboy named Walt Disney. 

It was more than 20 years before Disney would release his own cinematic version of Snow White, but it was 20 years worth waiting. Discussing Snow White's cinematic history without mentioning Disney's legendary 1937 animated adaptation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, would be like discussing the ocean without mentioning water. The very existence of the film was groundbreaking. As Disney's first feature-length animated film, it's the progenitor of a genre that kept Disney afloat, both critically and commercially, for decades. Upon its release, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was immediately deemed a masterpiece...   

... (and) fairy-tale filmmakers have spent the past 75 years trying to escape the Disney version's long shadow. 

The results have often been ugly. There's a subtle racism at play in the Grimms's original story, which holds that "skin white as snow" is the highest form of beauty, but a parodic 1943 Merrie Melodies short, Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is so hideously, unforgivably racist that it's hard to know where to begin.

“Snow White, AKA White Snow” HBO 1995*

Coal Black**

The Atlantic gives good summary of why this version is, in fact so hideous but what I find so interesting is that after all Snow White and its variants have stood for over centuries, this manifestation made its way into history and forever casts a very dark shadow on the tale in a way even the goriest adaptations don't.

Though the Snow White story has never had as offensive an adaptation as Coal Black, there are plenty that are just as offbeat. Snow White has met the Three Stooges and Nintendo's Mario. She's been reimagined as a Native American princess and a freshman in college. She's made appearances in the kiddiest of kid fare (including a Hallmark-produced TV movie in 2001) while also appearing in films as adult-oriented as Showtime's 1997 Snow White: A Tale of Terror, which features implied rape, miscarriage, and suicide.

You can read the whole article which has much more detail HERE. It includes an image and brief description of 24 different film adaptations.

Snow White: A Tale of Terror is actually one of my favorite film versions of the tale, in spite of the horror. It has a strong thriller vibe, blended with a gothic approach but when you add in the use of black magic - along with a queen losing herself to insanity, being possessed by something very dark - you will naturally end up with some gore. It feels more true to some the variants I've read and has a blend of history and very gritty fantasy.


I recently saw 7 Swerge (or 7 Dwarves: Men Alone in the Wood) for the first time (thank you Netflix instant play!). It's bawdy, a little slapstick, very tongue-in-cheek and has a lot of fun weaving in other tales and generally taking the mickey out of itself while doing a nice job overall. While the visuals are almost childlike much of the time the humor is adult. Not my usual fare at all but it was entertaining and I was surprised I hadn't heard more about it.

There's no mention in the article or image list (or Wikipedia!) of Willa: An American Snow White, but that adaptation should be included on a list of Snow White films too. I particularly liked the interweaving of other classics, notably Romeo & Juliet and various shades of The Wizard of Oz (and, of course, the theater setting makes a wonderful sense). You can find out more information about that film HERE.

If you want to read more about Snow White film adaptations, there's another article HERE.


*Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child – “Snow White, AKA White Snow” (Episode of HBO series, 1995)
**Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (Merrie Melodies cartoon, 1943)

Article Catch-Up: More on Modern Snow Whites, Fairy Tales on TV, Arabian Nights and Pullman's Grimm Retellings

As always, I have a list of posts I haven't managed to get to and since a few of these were going to comment on articles I thought I'd list them with links and teaser excerpts so you don't miss them:

Q&A With ‘Once Upon a Time’ Showrunners Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (Spoilers)

How has Once Upon a Time evolved? Has it gone the way you always envisioned or become something you didn’t originally think it would?Edward Kitsis: Our dream was to tell certain stories like, why Grumpy became grumpy. Why does the Evil Queen hate Snow White? Tonight it’s why the Mad Hatter is mad. What’s great is through those shows you get to know everyone...
Other things revealed in the recent Wondercon panel:• With no word on renewal, both remain hopeful but do have an idea of how the story will end. They’ve given themselves the flexibility and freedom to manage that ending given their cloudy future, but don’t want to commit to something specific in the event that they change their minds as the series evolves. 

They do mention some spoilery things including fairy tale characters we'll be seeing before the end of season 1 - so skip it if you want to be surprised. The whole article is HERE.

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Snow White becomes a girl-power icon

Linked to from fairy tale blog The Dark Forest, this article gives a little history of Snow White tale variations, especially quoting Ruth Bottigheimer. All current film versions of Snow White are discussed (ABC's Once Upon A Time, Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman) and the differences in character are compared to the tale variations (and to Disney's version too).

“Snow White and the Huntsman” director Rupert Sanders takes the princess-as-rescuer theme further, making Stewart’s Snow White into a literal warrior. But he insists he’s not trying to fashion her into a kind of superhero.“She wears a suit of armor, but she’s not suddenly Bruce Lee’s adopted sister,” he told IFC.com. “She is wearing armor for protection and she has to kill a queen. It’s very instinctual, it’s defensive. She knows she has to kill someone, and that sword lies very uneasy in her hand.”

The article finishes by discussing the tale itself, as opposed to the current pop culture versions:

“The classic Snow White story has lots of appeal,” says Haase. “It includes some very vivid characters and motifs — like the magic mirror, the poison apple and the dwarfs — and it deals with some intense emotions and drama, like the mother-daughter relationship, jealousy, murder and rebirth.”Plus, says Silverstein, “Snow White is the perfect fairy tale. You’ve got the good girl, the pure Snow White, and the bad girl, the Evil Queen. Which is pretty much the box that all women get put into.”

The whole three page article is HERE and Dark Forest's excellent post questioning aspects of it is HERE. Note: The article mentions Disney has axed the live action version of Snow White, by which I presume they mean Order of Seven. I have yet to find confirmation of this, especially since recent activity (reported around Feb 10) on the project would suggest a ramping up, not an abandonment.

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Are you Team Snow White or Team Evil Queen?

Discussing the compelling evil of the Wicked Queen in Snow White:

That kind of evil is not easily forgotten. The queen in Disney's 1937 animated "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" has become an icon of wickedness.
On American Film Institute's list of the top 50 villains and 50 heroes, the queen of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" ranks as the No. 10 villain (Dr. Hannibal Lecter/"The Silence of the Lambs" is No. 1). 

Professor Zipes is quoted and the complexity of the queen's character is discussed and is contrasted with the newer, more heroic, warrior woman, versions of Snow White coming to us in film this year, bringing us back around to the question: In a real showdown between the two, who would really win? Snow White or the Evil Queen and why?

The queen is more complex, Zipes notes. "We really don't know too much about her - where she gets her powers. She's mysterious."The aging beauty also knows deep down that she will be replaced by a younger woman. "That is still today for a lot of women a great concern," said Zipes, University of Minnesotaprofessor emeritus.

Not to be missed, a side bar lists some interesting Wicked Queen facts:

Mirror doesn't lie
In "Annie Hall" (1977), Alvy (Woody Allen) says that when he saw Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," he was attracted to the Evil Queen. Here are seven more queens Alvy may find entrancing:
Arpazia: The evil queen gets a back story in Tanith Lee's novel "White as Snow" (Tor Books, $16.99).
Queen of Fables: A Justice League villain decides Wonder Woman resembles Snow White in the DC Comics series.
Evil Queen: The queen (Diana Rigg) plots to kill Snow White in the 1987 musical.
Queen Elspeth: Miranda Richardson plays the insecure queen in "Snow White: The Fairest of Them All" (2001).
Claudia Hoffman: Sigourney Weaver plays the stepmother in "Snow White: A Tale of Terror" (1997).
Evil Queen: Olivia Wilde poses as the queen in photographer Annie Liebovitz's image for the Disney Dream Portrait Series. Alec Baldwin is the face of the mirror.
The Queen: She tells a different version of her encounter with Snow White in Neil Gaiman's short story "Snow, Glass, Apples."

You can read this whole article HERE.

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Under the spell

Now that NBC's Grimm has debuted in the UK there are quite a few articles introducing the series and talking about the premise. This article has a couple of extra tidbits:

“Fairy tales in general are just kind of great ideas to do for a show because one of the things that is very common among fairy tales is, I feel, there’s a very innate psychological need for a safe haven that’s like inherent in all humans. So, in a lot of fairy tales, you have this protagonist who’s fighting to return home or something. I think that’s a great format for each episode as you have this sort of quest of sorts.“In our world, a fairy tale often has a lesson attached to it – whether it’s a warning or as a tale of hope. At the very last layer of that message is a problem, usually revolving around a family.

...Tulloch started poring over these tales and legends after getting the part in the show, although she is the most normal person in it. Answering a question about which of the stories is her favourite, she pickedCinderella. and it’s a story she hopes that will be explored in an episode of the series.She explained: “That story is rather gruesome; the sisters end up having their eyes pecked out by crows. So, I think that one would be really cool. The Frog Prince would be kind of cool to do, I think.“One of the most interesting things I came across when I was doing research was ­ – and now I’m like completely outing myself as a little bit of a nerd – but I was reading PhD paper that I found online that deducted that (The Grimm Brothers) weren’t writers, but were sort of cultural researchers and kind of forefathers of forensic psychology, which I thought was really an interesting way to look at it instead of being profilers.“And that’s kind of what Nick has, this innate ability to profile people.”

If you remember the "sexy-dead" promos for Grimm before the series started in the US (that's another post I never finished!), you'll remember there was in fact a Cinderella like character and one that alluded to a frog prince gone horribly wrong (as per the image shown above) so she may get her wish. You can read the whole article HERE.

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Marina Warner’s Stranger Magic Reconsiders the Arabian Nights

Discussing the latest book by fairy tale scholar Marina Warner, this article has me intrigued. I really hope I get to read this book, and soon.

The format (book-about-a-book) fits especially well for trying to pick the locks of Arabian Nights, itself a collection of boxes within boxes of twice- or thrice-told tales.Warner helpfully intersperses 15 paraphrased versions of the jump-the-shark stories Shahrazad interrupted each dawn so that her plot-driven husband would keep her alive to finish the next night, his moment of satisfaction infinitely receding: “The City of Brass,” “The Prince of the Black Islands.” She astonishes with the granularity of her accounts of the impact of these stories on their original European readers: inspired by the Arabian literature craze, as well as by the Persian poets Hafiz and Rumi, Goethe took to wearing a caftan and turban, known as “turning Turk” in the 18th century, while writing his West-Eastern Divan. Much of the narrative machinery of the original tales, such as Solomon’s flying carpet on which entire armies could be transported, both predicted and were then perfected in silent movies, especially the Hollywood “Easterns,” often prequels and sequels to Arabian Nights, beginning with Douglas Fairbanks’s lavish The Thief of Bagdad (1924), as well as musical theater and Walt Disney animation.

...(Warner) hangs her (our?) hopes on the circular ways that our heroine, not a warrior like Achilles, but a wily storyteller, speaks both truth and imagination to power: “to give the princes and sultans of this world pause. This was—and is—Shahrazad’s way.”

You can read the whole review HERE.

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And finally a few articles discussing Philip Pullman's soon-to-be-released (in September) retellings of 50 of Grimm's tales in honor of the 200th anniversary of Household Tales:

From The Independent: The Blagger's Guide To ... Grimms' fairy tales - Scaring children everywhere for 200 years

Pullman has long counted himself as a fan of the stories, and has been working on his own versions for some time. Last year, he told the fansite bridgetothestars.net: "This isn't a book for children only. I'm telling the best of the tales in my own voice, and I'm finding it a great purifier of narrative thinking, rather as a pianist relishes playing Bach's preludes and fugues as a sort of palate-cleansing discipline."
Pullman's collection will include many of the best-known fairy tales – "Rapunzel", "Snow White", "Cinderella" and "Little Red Riding Hood" – as well as other, lesser-known works. His favourite, he says, is "The Juniper Tree" – a sordid tale of an evil stepmother who murders her stepson and makes him into blood puddings. He has also included "The Three Snake Leaves", "Hans My Hedgehog" and "Godfather Death".

From The Guardian: Grimm outlook: Philip Pullman's fairytales to arrive in September

(Pullma) is retelling them in "clear as water" new versions, complete with commentary on each story's history and background.

From Huffington Post UK: Philip Pullman's Fairytales To Launch in September

The Grimms' tales aren't known for their child-friendly nature - in which evil sisters lose their toes, evil stepmothers dance to death in red-hot iron shoes and evil, well, anything, come to a sticky end - but we're not expecting Pullman to sweeten any pills either. After all, scalping, poison and soul-severing all featured heavily in His Dark Materials. No doubt come September we'll be reading it with the lights on.

 And while we're on the subject here's a note from Pullman from his website:

Books with pictures and fairy tales

I love looking at good illustrations. The best of them are not only a pleasure for the eye, but a real addition to the text. I've had the privilege of working with some wonderful illustrators, and I hope to write many more texts for illustration in the future. Actually, I've got a not-very-secret ambition: I want to write and illustrate a picture book all by myself. But I'll have to do a lot of practice, and even then I won't ever come near the skill of a Peter Bailey or an Ian Beck or a John Lawrence – to name some of my favourite illustrators.However, the next best thing is to enjoy their pictures alongside my words. And that'll have to do, for now.

There's been no mention of illustrations in this new collection of retold Grimm's tales from Pullman but considering books like Clockwork, Or All Wound Up (one of my favorites!) I would hope we're in for some new illustrative treats as well.

"The Hunger Games" and Myth and Fairy Tale

Maria Tatar put up a link on her blog yesterday to an LA Times article discussing the too dark/not-dark-enough movie The Hunger Games.

Having just read the books this past month I finally have some sense of why they are so popular, though any talk of "teams" or fan-squee-ing has me scratching my head since they're just not those sorts of books. It's taken me a long while to get on board (since having wasted time and money on previously highly popular YA books) but I can gladly say these are well written and well worth the investment. I wouldn't be surprised if they became required reading for high school at some point.

Note: If you managed to avoid all sense of the books as I did before reading, for the purposes of this post you should know (don't worry - this is premise - no spoilers) that it's set in a near post-war (aka post apocalyptic) future in which people are divided into districts and controlled by a wealthy Capitol. In order to keep the districts under control each year the districts are forced to send two children, aged between 12 and 18, to "The Hunger Games", to fight each other to the death - while everyone watches (viewing is mandatory)  via an exploitive media and "entertainment-fest". The heroine, Katniss Everdeen, steps up to take the place of her younger sister during the reaping/choosing.

 I have since been very concerned that any movie will not do justice to the book, the characters, the story or the issues in the series and sadly foresee many people not even bothering to pick up the books after dismissing the sensationalized (by the media and of the issues) movie. Despite that the story is riveting and there is plenty of fodder that should make for an amazing film, I think the subject matter (think Lord of the Flies + 1984 + Gladiators and more), juggled with trying to keep it accessible to an under-18 audience, is a task beyond most filmmakers today. (You may have heard about the removal of 7 seconds of blood spatter to allow the film a PG rating. The result is that the direness of Katniss' situation is severely diluted from an audience perspective - exactly what the books aim NOT to do, though Ms. Collins manages to keep the peril very present without concentration on the gore, thanks to excellent writing.) From the reviews, it's suffering from just that problem, even having the author on board as writer ad consultant for the script. It's a weird feeling: wishing the film would do very well and simultaneously wishing it would pass quickly by so the books would retain their popularity and intrigue, causing more people to read them. If you at all interested in seeing the movie, please pick up the book first and give it a read before you do. It's a very quick read and you won't be sorry.

That said, I was very interested to read how the author, Suzanne Collins, was inspired by the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur in particular. As a  result, it's not to much of a stretch to find parallels in fairy tales either.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the article:

Collins has said she found inspiration for her story, which is set in the future, in the ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, in which the Cypriots demand Athens send seven boys and girls each year as food for the half-man, half-bull, until Theseus slays the beast. In "The Hunger Games," Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old tomboy handy with a bow and arrow, is a Theseus-type character, a young savior fighting on behalf of all the other children. 

...The brutality of "The Hunger Games," which results in the deaths of more than 20 youths, follows in the gory footsteps of many of the Grimms' fairy tales, which were first published in 1812. In "Hansel and Gretel," a pair of abandoned siblings escape from a cannibalistic witch by stuffing her into the oven; in "The Juniper Tree," a woman slams the lid of a trunk on her stepson and decapitates him; and in the axiomatically titled "How Some Children Play at Slaughtering," a little boy stands in for a pig in a child's game of butchering.

I highly recommend reading all Ms. Tatar's comments (she is quote in the article) on why we are so compelled by this subject and why Katniss is such an appealing heroine for both adults and children. You can read the whole article HERE.

While at first glance The Hunger Games doesn't appear to have much in common with fairy tales at all it isn't hard to think of connections once you start. I'm reminded of stories about Koschei the Deathless, to the Little Match Girl to Deals with the Devil to tales in which girls, all striving to appear perfect as suitors to a prince fail in their conformity and lose their heads. (It's the girl who breaks most of the rules that gets chosen in the end, though why she would want to marry someone who would have cut off her head a few minutes before is disturbing. I'm guessing, like the Miller's Daughter, you will do things you never would have considered to save not just your life but the lives of those you love.) I wish I could remember which tale this last one was! I think it had an Asian origin, although there are a few Russian ones that have similar tropes as well, not to mention Scheherezade's predicament, though she wasn't having to kill other women at the same time.

The story of the Hunger Games is told mainly through the heroine, Katniss' eyes so the stakes are very immediate and real for the reader. Fairy tales are often set in a nebulous time and are somewhat removed from us via the matter-of-fact story telling so that one tends to adjust to the story, implications and messages in it as one is emotionally and mentally ready. Not so The Hunger Games. Although the story of death, slaughter, risk and sacrifice isn't a new idea, as fairy tales from many cultures attest to, having the setting and characters be so specific in their voice and set in a time we can see as a possibility in our own futures, brings home the chill of how little mankind has changed since our gruesome, gory and bloody (recent) past. But will it be the wake-up call, the Prometheus, if you will, that society needs? Sadly, our own media machines and the tendency to rev up fandom as a response to extreme ideas results in diluting the very issues that caught out attention in the first place (we already have parodies of the books widely available and Hunger Games cookbooks and badges for "teams". Even the Twitter feed of Lions Gate Films announcing the cast is almost an exact echo of the how the children chosen for slaughter are "introduced" to the public... *shudder*). The very fact that we have a movie - and marketing - like this may just be a dark mirror of its source (though many won't even realize it).

It's a reminder (to me) that we should be familiar with our fairy tales and holding their lessons close. History has a tendency to repeat itself and we can't say we haven't been warned.

At the time of this writing The Hunger Games books are available at a discounted price almost everywhere (pharmacies, Targets, Kmarts and Walmarts etc), with the first book in paperback being available for around the $6 mark (except in bookstores like Barnes & Noble, though Amazon's price is currently low too). Online you can get the first book, which the movie is based on, HERE.

Fan Made "Snow White and the Huntsman Poster"

This is a gorgeous fan-made poster for the upcoming film, Snow White and the Huntsman by Dwayne Labuschagne (aka chronophasia on deviantArt).

Mr. Labuschagne says, about the work:

 I've always been a fan of minimalist posters with interesting designs, so I got this idea to create a unique poster for Snow White and the Huntsman using only silhouettes to represent key imagery from the film. The silhouettes consist of stock images that I have tweaked in some way and expanded upon using other silhouettes. Those that I created myself are the silhouettes for the evil queen, the mysterious forest creature and the apple.

Universal Studios are currently looking for fan-made art for the movie and this poster was one of the works submitted (I'm not sure if the artist submitted it himself or it was submitted for him).

If you are interested in submitting your own piece, you can do that HERE.

You can see more of Mr. Labuschagne's work HERE.

Guest Post at SurLaLune for Fairy Tale Music Month: Evanescence

I have a guest post over at SurLaLune today, discussing the Evanescence music video for "Call Me When You're Sober" (using Red Riding Hood imagery) and the fairy tale connections and use by fans of the hit song "Bring Me To Life".

You can find the post, Music Videos: "Call Me When You're Sober" & "Bring Me To Life" by Evanescence HERE.

Camille Rose Garcia's Dark and Disneyesque Snow White

Although I had seen Camille Rose Garcia's illustrations around in the past year or so she never really caught my attention until Amy Leigh Morgan blogged about her Snow White art and related book and show over at The Fairy Tale Factory back in February. She has, however, been around for a little while (since 2007) and has made a big impact in a short period of time. Her previous book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was a New York Times Bestseller.

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UPDATE: I took myself to the local bookstore for a rainy-day book browse yesterday and was delighted to find Garcia's Snow White there on the Myth & Folklore shelf. Although I had already written this post a while back and had browsed the illustrations and information about the book at length I had no idea the edition was so gorgeous. Hardcover, beautifully printed and full - chock-full! - of amazing illustrations that blew me away... and this isn't the types of style I'm usually drawn to either. I had to rush home and put it on my Amazon gotta-get Wish List and update my draft before letting it publish so I could let you know: this is worth a look-see (if you can get your hands on a copy) and well worth the price. Now back to your regularly scheduled post... ;)
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Here's the artistic description of the newly released book (the cover is shown at the head of the post), rather than a synopsis, since you're all familiar with Grimm's Little Snow White.

A breathtaking, wildly original spin on the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Harper Design’s Snow White is boldly and beautifully reimagined by acclaimed artist Camille Rose Garcia, the illustrator of the New York Times bestseller Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Delivering a fresh take on a vintage fairy tale, Garcia's dark and Disneyesque art, with its vivid colors and luscious, dripping  blacks, will weave a spell around fans of illustrated books from Daniel Egnéus’s Little Red Riding Hood to Femke Hiemstra’s Rock Candy.

This new gift edition presents the unabridged version of the Grimms’ tale, with an original interpretation by renowned artist Camille Rose Garcia that artfully combines wit and dark romance. 

Ms. Garcia's (gorgeous illustrated, laid out and printed!) book is available through Amazon HERE.

 I also recently came across this article about Ms. Garcia and her reworking of the newly released Snow White book thought I'd share. Orange County (Los Angeles) is rightly proud of this underground artist's success and the Los Angeles Times posted an interview with her just this week.

From the LA Times:

Garcia, when deciding on her tone and text, looked back to the Brothers Grimm’s 1812 version of the story but, having grown up near and in Disneyland, she also couldn’t resist the tug of the classic 1937 animated feature film. “I did look to Disney’s animated ‘Snow White’ as the watercolor backgrounds were especially beautiful,” Garcia said. “I wanted to reference Walt Disney’s style but bring in the creepy Germanic folk-tale element.”

The latter explains why, in this version, the Evil Queen devours  Snow White’s lung and liver in one passage — or, more precisely, she believes the organs that she’s snacking on belong to Snow White. Garcia’s dark-tinged retelling of the classic is in the spotlight with an exhibit at the Michael Kohn Gallery in Beverly Hills that runs through April 14. On Thursday, Garcia will be at the gallery for a 6-8 p.m. signing event and in the weeks to come she’ll be on a book tour with stops already announced for San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore.

You can read the whole article which details more of her artistic influences HERE.

For those interested in her Betty Boop meets Tammy Faye Baker style and who no doubt see other classic "old world" cartoon influences in her work and would like to know more, here's a video of Ms. Garcia working on some of the paintings for the book. When you see her skill in working with lines it's easy to see how she became an underground art darling who transitioned wonderfully to the respected art world. Her paintings have been shown internationally, she's been published in a variety of well known magazines and she now has works in several mainstream galleries:

There is a new book coming out in August on s. Garcia's art titled Mirror, Black Mirror. The official blurb gives us quite a bit of insight into why this artist paints as she does:

Camille Rose Garcia & her new book

Mirror, Black Mirror, chronicles the prolific and life changing time period of 2007-2011, when Garcia fled the sprawling mecca of Los Angeles, her lifelong home, and moved to a cabin in the woods of Northern California. Living so close to the natural world has given the artist even more insight into the major themes of her work, disenchantment with modern civilization, and the problems of becoming too removed from the natural world. 

Camille Rose Garcia was born in 1970 in Los Angeles, California, The child of a mexican activist filmmaker father and a muralist/painter mother, she apprenticed at age 14 working on murals with her mother while growing up in the generic suburbs of Orange County, visiting Disneyland and going to punk shows with the other disenchanted youth of that era. Garcia's layered, broken narrative paintings of wasteland fairy tales are influenced by William Burroughs' cut-up writings and surrealist film, as well as vintage Disney and Fleischer cartoons, acting as critical commentaries on the failures of capitalist utopias, blending nostalgic pop culture references with a satirical slant on modern society... She recently moved to the Pacific Northwest after 38 years in Los Angeles.

See the whole blurb HERE, which details lots more about her success and where her work has been published and can be seen.

You can see more of her Snow White illustrations HERE and her book is available HERE and HERE.

Ballet Preljocaj & Jean Paul Gaultier's "Blanche Neige" Comes to the US

Ballet Preljocaj's Blanche Neige (modified poster)

I started a draft of this story early in the week but was unable to finish it and I'm now glad I didn't. I originally focused on the world famous fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier and his unique take on Snow White for Ballet Preljocaj's Blanche Neige, which is finally touring the US. Despite that it was Gaultier's collaboration that initially caught my eye (that's the Gaultier of the infamous cone-shaped bra for Madonna's Blonde Ambition tour in 1990), the more I read about the work, the more I wanted to share other aspects of this new-to-us Snow White as well (the ballet actually debuted in France in 2008 and has since won awards). From a study of strong females and the evil queen, through to comments from the choreographer on the story of Snow White's relevance today, there's a few treats ahead in the excerpts.

Note: Ballet Preljocaj's Blanche Neige is a contemporary dance work, not a traditional tutu ballet.

I'll begin with this wonderful article by Pamela Trokanski of The Davis Enterprise who's actually familiar with Grimm's Little Snow White and fairy tales in general so, amongst the images of Gaultier's amazing costumes, I'll give you excerpts from here and a few other places.

From The Davis Enterprise on the ballet itself:

I grew up reading fairy tales — the real ones — before political correctness and cultural “sanitization” took place. They were stories of love and terror, of cruelty and revenge, of retribution and atonement. Good ultimately conquered evil, although there was often a price to pay, by both victim and perpetrator. 

Choreographer Angelin Preljocaj understands this in his bones. And he certainly speaks the language of fairy tale, fluently and faultlessly. His “Blanche Neige” (“Snow White”) is a stunning, visually opulent, work that captures the Grimm fairy tale version exquisitely.

On the story and characters of the ballet:

The entrance of the pregnant mother, danced by Nuriya Nagimova, her slow progression as she toils across the stage, desperate in childbirth, says a great deal about the power of well wedded movement to sound. The appearance of seven miners (not noted in the program) out of caves, high above the stage, rappelling down a rock wall, dancing vertically and horizontally above the stage, was unexpected and joyous, toying with our expectations that dance happens on a flat surface and is bound by gravity. 

Also captivating: the reappearance of the dead mother, materializing from above, hovering over and lifting her dead daughter momentarily, before leaving. 

There are small, but crucial choreographic touches that convey the story. The passage of time, between the King finding the baby, and Snow White’s growing up, is neatly conveyed by a simple, yet effective, use of set. The King moves behind a column of material, the baby sheltered in his arms, only to reappear with the young girl, beautifully portrayed by 9-year-old Camilla Pedrosa of Davis. (McKenna Lincoln, 10, of Woodland, danced the role Sunday.) Dancing with his young daughter, he circles yet another column, this time reappearing with Snow White as a young woman, danced by Virginie Caussin. 

The cats, minions of The Queen, were perfectly matched and moved sinuously across the stage, menacing and mischievous. Dancers Natacha Grimaud and Lorena O’Neil were perfectly suited for these roles. Athletic and elegant, they were able to convey both the bonelessness of languid felines and their willingness to play with prey. 

The Prince, danced by Sergio Diaz, made a marvelous partner for Snow White. While their opening interactions at the ballroom were everything they needed to be, it was the duet of the prince and the dead/unconscious Snow White that was incomparable. A pas de deux with one partner required to act limp and unresponsive calls for strength, timing, trust and true connection.

(Edit FTNH: Sounds like choreographer Kenneth MacMillan's tomb pas de deux of Romeo & Juliet - which is also amazing and heart wrenching.)

Did anything not work for me? An opening scene at court went a little long. Also, the program notes, by Preljocaj, state his belief that the wicked stepmother is, to him, the central character. I didn’t see that at all. But all in all, these are very small things, nothing compared to the torment of the wicked stepmother, forced to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance to her death.

On the costume designs (source):

“Snow White has this beautiful flowing costume, but it’s almost nonexistent on the side,” said Renae Williams Niles, director of programming at the Music Center. “So you see far more of Snow White than you ever thought you would.” 

...(Jean Paul Gaultier's) costumes make it to the Music Center thanks to Angelin Preljocaj. The artistic director of the French ballet company and choreographer of the work said there’s a purpose to the revealing elements. The outfit shows both the character’s childhood purity and how she is in the process of becoming a woman.“The costume is half [a] costume of a woman and half [a] costume of a child,” he said in heavily accented French. 

In terms of costume design, it’s hard to get more contemporary than Gaultier. The fashion icon, who worked for Pierre Cardin before launching his own label, brings his unique style to all of the outfits while maintaining perfect harmony with the rest of the production, according to Niles.

(from  shopfair:) The costumes were designed by Jean Paul Gaultier and really suited the modern interpretation of the classic fairytale choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj to music by Gustav Mahler. The designs ranged from subtle JPG touches like straps and suspenders to full-blown JPG with the stepmother's bondage queen outfit (which was wonderful) and the best use of fringe I have seen this year (pictured on the right). "This is not the first time that Gaultier designs clothes for dancers. He has collaborated with Régine Chopinot, the choreographer, for 11 years in the past(1983-1994), during which he had sewed costumes for –more or less- 18 ballets choreographed by Chopinot." 

And excerpts from a completely different sort of review fro a 2009 performance, focusing on the evil queen, by Claudio from iHeartBerlin,de:

Being a fairy tale expert and a psychologist I was always indulged by the strong female characters appearing in Grimm’s fairy tales. I appreciated their impact in the stories as an evil and intense element of the plot. One of my favorites has always been the evil queen of Snow White who is obsessed with her vanity to the point where she loses everything.

...If I had to describe the style and the feeling the piece was giving me I would say that it is a great mixture between a stylish gothic music video and a really classical nice Midsummer Night’s Dream production. What perhaps sounds like an odd combination results in an emotionally touching balancing act between both styles. 

...Most intriguing was obviously the charming Beatrice Knop who proved herself as an enormously powerful solo dancer. Especially in her mirror scenes I totally believed that she was doing real magic instead of dancing. Also the scene where she kills Snow White with the apple really had a disturbing intensity. I literally saw the poison entering the body through the movements of the witch. (Read the whole review HERE.)

And finally, some very interesting comments on his Blanche Neige from the choreographer, Angelin Preljocaj (who, by the way, is referencing Bettelheim):

Preljocaj said the fairy tale remains relevant today, in the age of plastic surgery and other ways that women can remain young-looking.

"It's a very modern story, in the sense that today with scientific and medical progress, women can stay young and beautiful for a long time," said the choreographer. 

"That creates a potential conflict between generations. Daughters, faced with mothers who want to remain lovers, desirable and active socially, can develop a kind of Snow White complex."

"Generations are coming together. You often see 50- or 60-year-old women in the street with their daughter, dressed the same, swapping clothes and handbags. They can even be love rivals."

As with the upcoming big screen versions, Preljocaj's production does not follow the Disney version of the fairytale, rather putting more focus on the cruel stepmother. 

"It's the same as with 'Swan Lake', with the black swan and the white swan: Snow White is the positive character, beautiful and pure, while the stepmother is the opposite, also beautiful, but dark and hate-filled," he said.

"Snow White' is "really a thriller," he said. "The story of 'Sleeping Beauty' can be told in two lines. 'Snow White' is full of twists... leading to lots of ways of interpreting it choreographically." (source)

Here's a video of excerpts from the ballet. though the first courtier scene is a little long, the rest of the video is very dynamic and shows off choreography, costumes and the Snow White story beautifully:

For it's US debut gala at the Mondavi, Magrit Mondavi, Don Roth and Jeremy Ganter got together round table style to discuss Blanche Neige of KVIE's Studio Sacramento. It's about 20 minutes long but for anyone who likes theater and ballet production as well as Snow White, it's worth watching:

Watch Mondavi Center on PBS. See more from KVIE.

I've only seen ballet school versions of Snow White so to see a full-length professional work, complete with world famous set and costume designer collaboration would be amazing.

"Snow White" will be staged in Los Angeles from March 23-25, before heading to the East Coast at the end of March, through to April 21. The US cities where the work is to be performed include Washington, DC, Minneapolis, Minnesota and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (source)