Fairy Tale Media Fix: Disney's Descendants 2.

Oh, goodie!  We have another one of these.

It’s been about two years since I gave my impressions on the first Descendants movie.  I remember that because I was recovering from heart valve surgery at the time I was doing it.  You can read my review of the first movie right HERE.

As a quick recap, Descendants is about four children of Disney villains who are chosen to leave the island prison that holds all the villains and their descendants and attend school with the children of Disney heroes and sidekicks at a school named Auradon Prep. 

Now, as a quick recap of the conditions that likely led to the creation of the Descendants concept: a couple years ago, Mattel (who used to make the Disney Princess doll line) decided to make a line of fashion dolls called Ever After High about the children of famous fairy tale characters going to a magical prep school.  On top of that, the line was also set to have a series of web cartoons, books and accessories.  Disney looked at it and said “Well . . . uh . . . we can do that too!  So, nyah!”  And Descendants was born.   (Okay, maybe that’s not exactly how it went but it’s how I imagine it went).

But if it was the case, then they’ve done what they set out to do.  There are Descendants books and  merchandise out there.  There was even a series of web cartoons called Descendants: Wicked World.  I watched a whole bunch of them (what can I say, I have a weakness for animation).  The characters of Jay and Carlos take a bit of a back seat to the other female characters in the movie.  The cartoon also introduces new characters like Ally (daughter of Alice), Freddie (daughter of Dr. Facilier), C.J. (daughter of Captain Hook) and Zevon (son of Yzma).

Got all that?  Well, it doesn’t matter if you do or not, because Descendants 2 uses none of it.

Nope.  None of it.  In fact, the actress who voices Freddie Facilier even plays a completely different character in Descendants 2.  They maybe used one song from the cartoon in the background of a scene and that’s it.  It’s kind of like how Ghostbusters 2 treated The Real Ghostbusters.

Descendants 2 starts a little while after the first Descendants.  Evie (daughter of the Evil Queen) has started up her own business making clothes for the other students, which is handy with a big cotillion coming up.  Jay (son of Jafar) is excelling as a student athlete, this time as captain of the fencing team.  Carlos (son of Cruella de Vil) is enjoying life as a converted dog lover with his terrier pal Dude.  Meanwhile, Mal (daughter of Maleficent) is doing her best to deal with the pressure of being the girlfriend of King Ben (son of Belle and the Beast) and is finding it weighs on her quite a bit.  So much so that she’s come to rely on using her mother’s evil spell book to meet all her responsibilities.  Meanwhile, the other characters are dealing with their own things.  Jay is dealing with the issue of Lonnie (daughter of Mulan) being barred from the fencing team because of her gender despite being very good.  Carlos is trying to work up courage to ask Jane (the Fairy Godmother’s daughter) to the cotillion (honestly, it’s kind of nice to see Carlos get even that little arc.  His whole story in the first one was “he gets a dog”).  Evie’s the only one who doesn’t get an immediate arc because hers is more tied to Mal’s.  You see, Mal soon finds herself overwhelmed by her new responsibilities and decides to return to the Isle of the Lost where she feels she fits in better.  Then, Evie, Ben, Jay and Carlos go to convince her to come back.  It’s then that we get Evie’s arc in that she’s seemingly going to lose her best friend because they’ve ended up in two very different places in that Evie thrives in Auradon while Mal feels crushed by the expectations placed on her.  She comes to a conclusion about that with the help of a new character named Dizzy (the daughter of Drizella, the wicked step-sister).  There is a more immediate threat though, seeing as Ben ends up getting kidnapped by Mal’s old rival Uma (daughter of Ursula, and played by China Anne McClain, former voice of Freddie Facilier) and her two henchman Harry (son of Captain Hook) and Gil (son of Gaston).

You know, I’ve often wondered if I was a little too nice to the first Descendants movie (I described it as “harmless” when maybe “stupid but harmless” would have been more apt).  I gave it a certain amount of leeway because it seemed to be so entirely sincere about what it was.  But I’m not going to lie, I kind of enjoyed Descendants 2.  I’m not going to say it was a good movie.  Heavens no!  But if you go into it knowing how high to set your expectations, you’ll be fine.  Sure, it still follows that “don’t sweat the details” approach to a back story (seriously, why is everything so modern and how did the Beast manage to unite all the Disney kingdoms across time and space?).  Sure, everyone in the movie is dressed like they walked off a toy shelf, especially the villain kids who seem to embrace brightly colored leather and studs like no one has since the 1980s.  But for the story they want to tell, they tell it well enough.  There are even a couple places where they surprised me a little bit.  They even skirted the edge of some heavier material with a couple of their lines (Mal asks Carlos “Don’t you miss when you could just scream at people and send them running?”  Carlos replies “That was my mom who did that and I was usually on the receiving end” suggesting it was something of an abusive relationship).  The soundtrack was catchy too.  I particularly liked a Michael Jackson riff they did titled “Chillin’ Like a Villain”.  They even improved on some stuff from the original.  I made a note in my review of the first Descendants that I had trouble with the actors playing the adult villains like Maleficent, Jafar and the Evil Queen.  Not only did the actors chew the scenery, but it’s just kind of sad to see formerly imposing villains having gone to seed.  In Descendants 2, the only thing we see or hear from any adult villains are one of Ursula’s tentacles and the voices of both Ursula and Lady Tremaine.  It’s true that there are things that I might have liked to see from these characters.  Like Evie actually meeting and developing a relationship with her step-sister (half-sister?) Snow White.  But, if you want to see complex family relationships on Disney Channel, it’s probably best to just watch Andi Mack.  Disney’s Descendants 2 is a stupid, juvenile but enthusiastic and sincere Disney Channel Original Movie.  In other words, it’s like every other Disney Channel Original Movie ever.  You can’t really ask more from it than that.

So there we go.  Not terrible.  Not great.  Just standard kids’ fare.  And now that Descendants has become big enough to have two TV movies, a toy line, a web cartoon, kids’ books and other merchandise, maybe Disney can finally get over this “Mattel envy” that they’ve had for so long.

I wonder what Disney Channel’s next big movie project is.  Let me just check Google really quick.

It says here that their next big thing is something called Zombies.  It’s apparently a musical about a cheerleader from a conformist small town who falls in love with a zombie football star who transfers in from someplace called Zombietown.

So, monster teens attending a modern high school and maybe dealing with the prejudices of normal people.  For some reason, that sounds strangely familiar.

OH, FOR GRIMM’S SAKE, DISNEY!

[Sigh]

Why I love Thursdays.

Every Thursday, my Twitter feed undergoes a transformation.

That’s because on Twitter, Thurdays are Folklore Thursdays.

#Folklorethursday is a hashtag created by British folklore scholars Dee Dee Chaney, Willow C. Winsham and Seline Stevenson.  It first hit Twitter on June 18, 2015.

Throughout the day, Chaney, Winsham and others moderate tweets from writers, folklorists, historians, scholars and bloggers like little ol’ me as they share links, pictures and tweets about folklore.  And I know what you must be thinking, all that scholarly material, it must be kind of dry and boring.  You couldn’t be more wrong.  Though it might be reasonably scholarly material, Folklore Thursday tends to overflow with the exotic and the bizarre.

Every Thursday, my Twitter feed flows over with strange home remedies that require the use of unusual herbs or animal parts, ways to ward off the evil eye or guard oneself from witches, strange customs and superstitions from far away countries and more cryptozoological beasts than you can shake a stick at.

But now, onto the most important questions about Folklore Thursday.

How can I receive Folklore Thursday tweets in my Twitter feed?

Simple enough.  Simply follow the @FolkloreThurs account on Twitter.

 Is there a way I can participate in Folklore Thursday?

Yes!  The first step is to find something folklore related online.  When I started participating in Folklore Thursday, I used my own “The Stuff of Legends” posts.  Then, write up your tweet, include your link and add the hashtag #folklorethursday and send it off.

 Any special tips for taking part in Folklore Thursday?

I have one tip for my fellow American participants: remember that the headquarters for Folklore Thursday is in the UK.  Because of time zones, Britain’s Thursday starts and ends several hours earlier than ours does.  So, Folklore Thursday will likely be underway by the time you start your day.  So, it might be necessary to get your tweet sorted the day before (picking the link, etc) so you can tweet it right when you get the first chance on Thursday.

 If I can’t get enough of Folklore Thursday, where can I get more?

They have a website where many of the more interesting links and articles from Folklore Thursday are showcased.  It’s at folklorethursday.com.

 Are there any folklore based life tips you’d like to give us?

Yes.  Always crush your eggshells when you use eggs in your cooking.  That way, witches can’t use them as little boats to cause trouble at sea.  This is just one of the many tips I’ve picked up from following Folklore Thursday.

So, I hope this post has made you aware of something cool and fun that’s worth checking out.  It can be a little strange, but I find it can be a good weekly pick-me-up with times the way they are now.

Also, I’m not kidding about that eggshell thing.  We can’t let those witches cause trouble at sea, now can we!

Four-Color Fairy Tales: Classics Illustrated Junior

The name Classics Illustrated is famous in comic book circles.  The series, known for adapting works of classic literature, is remembered by comic book fans not only for producing an impressive run of comics but also for being one of the first attempts at classing up the medium and the first introduction many people had to stories from great literature.

Many people forget though that Classics Illustrated had a spin-off series focused on myths and fairy tales entitled Classics Illustrated Junior.

Now, comics of this vintage are not always easy to get a hold of, but I saw a box of them at my friendly neighborhood comic shop.  I picked up four issues: Pinocchio, The Frog Prince, The Dancing Princesses and King Thrushbeard.

So, how do these comics stack up?  Well, the thing to remember here is that these comics are all from the 1950s and were aimed at very young kids.  I mean, Classics Illustrated was definitely aimed at kids, Classics Illustrated Junior must have been aimed at even younger ones.  But let’s break it down.

Pinocchio- This adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s book is pretty faithful except that everything is very condensed.  Certain events from the book are left out.  For example, the parts with Mr. Cherry at the beginning of the story are taken out.  There are also no run-ins with the Green Fisherman or Melampo the Mastiff.  The violence is also greatly toned down.  One of the most infamous scenes in the book is the one where the Fox and Cat hang Pinocchio from a tree by the neck.  This version avoids the execution style hanging and has the Fox and Cat truss Pinocchio up around the middle so his hands are tied and hangs him from there.  So, instead of looking like an executed man, the naughty puppet looks a bit more like some sort of awkwardly designed Christmas tree ornament.  In addition, the Cricket gets chased off rather than squished and the giant dogfish that swallows Pinoccchio is just a generic (though gigantic) fish.

The Frog Prince- Of the four comics I picked up, this is probably the only one where the story is stretched out rather than condensed.  The princess spends a lot more time offering the frog gold and jewels to retrieve her golden ball.  The princess also receives a dream sequence in this version that shows her transformed into a frog and abused by a little boy.  Now, you’re probably wondering about the ending.  Does she kiss the frog?  Does she chuck it at a wall like in the Grimms’ book?  Neither.  After she wakes up from her dream sequence, she feels bad about the frog having to sleep on the cold, hard floor.  So, she picks it up and puts it on a pillow.  When she wakes up the next morning there’s a prince lying there on her floor.  This version seems to draw on two different variants of the tale that I know of, which is an interesting thing to see in a vintage comic book like this one.

The Dancing Princesses- This is another story that is mainly changed in the sense that elements are condensed.  The soldier’s three nights to discover where the princesses are going is reduced to one.  So, everything is happening much faster.  There are also some elements that speak more to the era and the age group that this comic was made for.  Instead of being executed, the princes who fail at finding where the princesses are going are banished.  Also, all mentions of alcohol are changed.  Instead of being brought a cup of wine with a sleeping drug in it, the soldier is brought a cup of milk with a sleeping drug in it.  They also make a point to mention that it’s lemonade that everyone is drinking at the underground ball (making a secret magic, mysterious rendezvous seem more like a very unusual church social or high school dance).   One thing that really stands out though, is that they go to the trouble of naming all of the mysterious princes (Stanley, Albert, Conrad, Armand, William, Rudolph, Alex, Aladar, Michael, Oscar and Robert), while only two of the princesses (Flora and Hilda) are named.  I don’t want to say it’s a sexist move, but it certainly seems like one.  The comic  also makes another change that I’ve been known to make when telling the story.  The soldier (named Felix here) ends up with not the oldest sister but the youngest.  Probably because the youngest sister is the only one who seems particularly sympathetic.

King Thrushbeard- This one is more or less the same except the haughty princess is given some rhyming couplets to insult her rejected suitors with.  I kind of wish I could say this comic is better than the traditional story because this story doesn’t have the best reputation.  It’s sort of the “Taming of the Shrew” of fairy tales in the way it treats its main female character.  I’ve got a soft spot for it because I like tales that feature some degree of trickery and deception, but yeah I can totally see the issue here.  And an adaptation from the 1950s certainly isn’t going to fix that.

Each issue also includes an Aesop’s fable a page of animal facts and a couple of children’s poems and nursery rhymes.  The art is about what you’d expect from fairy tale adaptations from the ‘50s.  A lot of clean cut young men and women in fantasy garb.

This isn’t the first time I’ve covered fairy tale comics from this time period.  Remember my piece on Walt Kelly’s Fairy Tales?  So, we didn’t really encounter anything here we haven’t seen before.  I think maybe the biggest revelation is just how young they were trying to skew the demographic for fairy tales.  I mean, if Classics Illustrated was already meant for kids, who was Classics Illustrated Junior meant for?  Pre-schoolers?  It’s kind of a reminder in these days when everyone’s saying “Fairy tales aren’t really for kids” how much we bend the tales to make them fit the demographic we want them to fit.  We may even be bending them a bit even now to make them the terribly “adult” tales we want them to be.  It makes you think.

Fantasy Literature Rewind: The Reluctant Dragon.

In this age of Disney remakes, I find I usually wait until just before the new film version of the story has been released before writing up a Fantasy Literature Rewind column.  But, you know, I just don’t see Disney’s version of “The Reluctant Dragon” getting remade as a feature.  Especially since they already did a dragon movie.

“The Reluctant Dragon” is a short children’s story by Scottish author Kenneth Grahame.  The story was originally published in 1898 in a short story collection entitled Dream Days.  Grahame himself is probably best known for writing the children’s story The Wind in the Willows (another story that’s been Disney adapted but which I can’t picture being remade any time soon).  “The Reluctant Dragon” is one of Grahame’s more popular short stories.  It’s been adapted a number of times for television.  Rankin-Bass, famed for their many Christmas specials, even paired the dragon with another of Grahame’s popular characters for a cartoon titled The Reluctant Dragon and Mr. Toad Show.

The story starts out with a boy, simply called “the Boy” throughout the entire story who lives near the Downs in England.  Now, this boy spent much of his time reading fairy tales and natural history, such that they ran together and he started to consider the two to be one and the same.  This is why he isn’t all that surprised when his father comes home from herding his sheep talking about a terrible creature he saw in one of the caves nearby.  The Boy figures it’s a dragon and goes to have a chat with it.  Upon meeting the dragon he’s surprised to find that the dragon isn’t a desperate fire-breathing beast that likes fighting knights at all.  Instead, he’s a polite, somewhat lazy homebody who enjoys writing poetry.

The Boy and the Dragon become good friends.  However, it’s not really to last.  The locals have found out about the dragon and have decided that something has to be done about it.  This is partially because they think the dragon must be a monster and partially because they just want there to be a fight they can watch.  The townsfolk don’t really have anything they can do about it until St. George comes to town (yes, that St. George).  Upon warning the dragon that St. George is coming, the Boy gets roped into talking to George which in turn escalates into him setting up a meeting between St. George and the Dragon.  That meeting leads to a rather humorous staged fight in which the dragon is supposedly injured and is then reformed, allowing him to take a place in society.

I usually don’t give away the endings of stories, but I kind of felt I needed to in order to give a full picture here.  You can still read the story HERE.  This version actually starts with a sort of framing device that my print copy doesn’t have.

Now, as is probably evident, this story is a take on the popular legend of “St. George and the Dragon” (a legend I talked about in The Stuff of Legends).  Now, the thing to remember is that this legend is a huge deal in England.  This is probably because St. George is considered to be the patron saint of England.  Never mind the fact that the story of Saint George fighting the dragon supposedly happened in Libya.

It’s easy to just see “The Reluctant Dragon” as a spoof or satire of the popular “knight fights dragon” archetype.  However, I also can’t help but think maybe it was also Kenneth Grahame’s way of poking some fun at the English society of the time period using one of their most beloved stories.  While Grahame may have been Scottish it’s true, he did spend some time in England even going to university there.  Also, with England being the seat of power for the United Kingdom, it was and still is a country that casts a long shadow over the rest of the British Isles.  It’s really the contradictions within the story that bring up thoughts of Victorian England.  The dragon is gentle and poetic while the townsfolk are more bloodthirsty and desiring for violent conflict, at least as spectators.  Even the boy wanted to see a “proper fight”.  Just as Britain was a big, warlike colonial power at the time that identified with the legend of the heroic Saint George while also in some circles being preoccupied with subjects like social class, propriety and civility.  Maybe it’s a bit of a stretch.  But what really gets me and makes me think the story is a poke at English society is the way that the concept of the fight is proposed to the dragon.  Both Saint George and the Boy frame the idea of the battle as a matter of propriety.  For a dragon to not fight a knight after the challenge is issued is simply not done.  On top of that, the Dragon’s reasoning for agreeing to the staged fight is so that after he’s reformed he may enter society.  In other words, it would help his social standing.

I could be completely off.  I myself am not English and have not given a whole lot of time to the study of Victorian English society.  So, if any of my readers are more knowledgeable about the subject, please let me know.

But still, “The Reluctant Dragon” is a fun story and might give you something to think about.

Awards Season, #2

It's Awards Season for blogs again!  Remember when I got nominated for a blogging award before?  Anyway, this time it's The Mystery Blogger Award and I was nominated by Sue Bursztynski from The Great Raven.  Sue, I thank you.

Now, the rules are as follows:

Award Rules

1. Put the award logo on your blog.

2. List the rules.

3. Thank whoever nominated you and link to their blog.

4. Mention the creator of the award (Okoto Enigma) and provide a link as well.

5. Tell your readers 3 things about yourself.

6. Nominate roughly 10 – 20 people for this award.

7. Notify your nominees by commenting on their blogs.

8. Ask your nominees five questions.

9. Share a link to your best/favorite post that you’ve written.

 

So, I have to link to Okoto Enigma's blog, which is right HERE.  (Pardon me, I'm doing this a bit off-the-cuff).

Let's see, three things about myself:

1) I have a niece and a nephew who I love to pieces.  I'm not going to give out any names in the interest of internet anonymity.

2) I currently work for the State of New York.  On top of that, I come from a family where a number of other people either did or currently work for the State of New York.  It's a dynasty of civil servants.

3) I am a huge fan of classic monsters.  My favorite monster movie is The Wolf Man while my favorite gothic fiction novel is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

As for my favorite post that I've posted, I like the Fairy Tale Mixtape one for the little trend it started.

And . . . 

And . . . 

I don't think I'm going to be able to follow all these rules.  I can't think of any questions to ask anyone.  And I don't follow 10 blogs that I could nominate.  Most of the ones I would nominate are ones that you've already nominated.  If I did pick any, it would be Amy, Kristin, Gypsy, Csenge and my usual circle of online friends.

 

But thanks for the nomination, Sue.  It's appreciated.

A Tale Hunter's Field Guide

I’ve been meaning to post on this topic for a while.  I thought folks would like to know where I find the stories I post about or use for storytelling.  The truth is that it often does take some searching around, but an experienced tale hunter has his resources.  So, let’s get to it.

Book stores- I wanted to start with book stores because they’re where I first bought some of my earliest folk tale books.  There is one problem, though.  The brick and mortar book stores near me are almost a depleted resource.  When I first started buying books of folk tales, I could find all sorts of great books from different regions of the world.  It was especially easy to find books from the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library.  However, over time and with the closing of Borders, the choices have dwindled.  Now you’re most likely to just find the usual collected works of the Grimms or Andersen.  Sometimes you might be able to find some newer releases like the most recent translation of The Tale of Tales or The Turnip Princess.  It might be different in your neck of the woods.

Public Library- I will never say a bad word about the public library.  It is one of the best resources to have around.  And every tale hunter knows that the place you have to look is nonfiction call number 398.2.  With a lot of larger public libraries looking to develop balanced collections that serve their unique community, you can often find some interesting stuff.  There is one thing that must be remembered about getting your tales from books in the public library: you have a deadline.  No matter how many times you renew that book, it will eventually have to go back.  If you’re going to do something like develop a storytelling performance around a story or write a blog post about it, you’ll probably want to act fast.  Either that or make photocopies of it (the photocopier also conveniently located in the library).  If you’re the type who lets stories percolate at the back of their mind until inspiration strikes, you might want to use your first trip to the library as a starting point.  You can jot down the title and editor (folk tale books usually have editors or collectors rather than authors) and keep it in mind to get out of the library again or search for your own copy to own.  Where would you find your own copy?  Well, that brings us to . . .

The Internet- Yes, the World Wide Web has connected us all and made it a lot easier to connect to folk tales all over the world.  When buying books, there’s always Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites.  But there are also sites for used books like half.com.  But then, there are also online-only collections.  Some of the notable ones I’ve used are Sur La Lune Fairy Tales, D.L. Ashliman’s Folktexts, and Fairytalez.com.  Some can also be found in the Sacred-Texts Archive.  These are all great resources but keep in mind that you may want to have a printer handy.  That way you can take your story with you if you don’t have a portable device handy and write notes in the margins if you really want to.

Kindle Store- Speaking of the internet . . . I don’t know how many people out there reading this have e-book readers (which is a flawed name.  The device isn’t so much a book as a portable library).  But searching the kindle store has regularly turned up some good books of tales from new places.  One nice bonus, is that some books can be found in the kindle store for free because they’re public domain and they’ve been digitized onto the internet already.  Keep in mind that the quality and usability of these older books may vary.  Also, some of them are very much a product of their time.  I specifically recall reading a book of tales from Spain and Portugal that I had downloaded and being rather surprised how many racial slurs were in it.  Still, it’s a good way of finding folk tale books that may be long out of print.

Other Storytellers- Yes, there’s the obvious folk concept of hearing a story told by one teller and liking it so much that you just have to tell it (with permission, of course).  But that’s not necessarily what I’m talking about.  You see, there has been more than one occasion in which I’ve walked into a Story Circle meeting to see books just laid out on a nearby table.  What this means is that either another storyteller in the group is cleaning out their collection or they’re helping clean out the collection of a friend.  Either way, they just can’t bear to throw them out or donate them without seeing if someone else wants them first.  I’ve gotten some good books on these occasions.  It’s thanks to other storytellers that I have The Fairy Stories of Oscar Wilde, Fairy Tales of Frank Stockton and The Peacock Maiden (I’m especially glad to have that last one because folk tales from China are not easy to come by).  Now, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a storytelling meeting, though.  If you run in similar circles, there might be similar chances to pick up some new folk and fairy tale books.

Cultural Festivals- I’ll admit, I’m probably under using this resource, but one of my favorite little-known places to pick up folk tale books is the local Polish Fest which happens one weekend a year in my hometown.  While the Polish Fest is a good place to access a number of things, including polka dancing and plates of kielbasa and pierogies, my favorite part is the vendors.  The vendors sell all sorts of things related to the Polish and Polish-American experience ranging from clothes to artwork.  However, I’ve found one vendor that sells books of folk tales from across Eastern Europe.  It was from the Polish Fest that I’ve bought Roumanian Fairy Tales and Legends, Polish Fairy Tales, The Key of Gold (a book of Czech folk tales) and Fairy Tales of the Russians and Other Slavs.  They also regularly have a copy of Pantheon Press’s Russian Fairy Tales there but I’ve never had the need to buy it.  I’m not sure if I’d have the same luck at other cultural festivals, but someday I plan to find out.

So, that’s my guide to finding folk and fairy tale books.  If you know of any other places to find some I’d love to read it in the comments below.  My next post might be a little different from the norm.  It seems I’ve been nominated for some sort of blogging award.  Anyway, see you next time.