The Stuff of Legend!: King Arthur.

Legends are a unique piece of folklore.  A legend, by definition, is a folk story that draws on historic people or events in some way.  We often find them mixed in with our fairy tales, but they’re really not the same thing.  Even if it’s an old legend that has lost much of its sense of history, I still find that legends have a greater sense of place and time than fairy tales do.  It is because of this and various other reasons that I thought that legends are more than deserving enough for their own feature on my blog.  So, welcome to The Stuff of Legends!  This is a limited series for this blog, much like The Swan Lake Project was, only over a longer period of time.  I have chosen twelve legends or legendary figures.  I’m going to research the historical roots of these tales and the forms they take.  I can’t promise there will be a new installment every month, seeing as these take a while to research.  However, I will try to get these posted at a fairly good pace.  Anyway, I thought I’d start off strong and post about the most popular legend in all the Western world: King Arthur!

Now, most of my information comes from a book titled King Arthur: Hero and Legend by Richard Barber.  I don’t know if it’s the most recent source on this subject, but it does do a good job of explaining the evolution of the legend with a very readable prose style.  So, check your local library for it if you feel so inclined.

Now the first references to Arthur come in Welsh records of their battles with the Saxons.  The Saxons were a confederation of Germanic tribes whose homeland was on the North German Plain.  The Saxons had been attempting to invade the British Isles since some time in the late third century.  When Roman soldiers and Roman rule withdrew from Britain, the English and Welsh chieftains were left to handle the Saxon problem on their own.  This seems to be where Arthur comes in, not as a king but as a commander in battle.  The Welsh text Historia Brittonum said this “Then in those days Arthur fought against them with the kings of the Britons, but he was a commander in those battles.”  The text then gives a list of about twelve battles that Arthur took part in.  Other than a brief mention in Annales Cambriae (which translates as the Annals of Wales) and a few verses from scattered Welsh poems, there isn’t much else to draw from.  Even some of the more reliable historical chroniclers of the early Middle Ages didn’t mention him.  Of course, there’s also the fact that there were so few sources to draw from.  The sense of history among the Britons practically disappeared for a time following the withdrawl of Roman forces.  However, if he did exist, it’s plainly clear that he must have been some sort of battle commander in charge of Celtic forces, specifically those from what is now Wales.  The Welsh actually have their own set of legends surrounding Arthur and I’ll provide a link to them right HERE.

The legend, however, would go on. 

The development of the Arthur legend and his role as king would start in Welsh poetry around the ninth to eleventh centuries.  Arthur appears in The Spoils of Annwfn as the leader of a war band and in the Black Book of Carmarthen, there is practically a roll-call of heroes who are supposedly his followers.  It was in the story of Culhwch and Olwen that we start to see the Knights of the Round Table as they would eventually be, including mention of the character Cei (known in future works as Sir Kay).  However, it is much later with Geoffrey of Monmouth that the legend started to take a modern shape.  Geoffrey’s book The History of the Kings of Britain would focus extensively on Arthur.  Here, Arthur is transformed into a conquering king in the mold of Charlemagne.  He also adds such well known characters like Guinevere, Merlin and Mordred to the legend.  Now, while this book was accepted as a genuine history for a long time, it’s far more likely that he was trying to write some sort of national epic for the Briton people. 

There is so much more to the development of this legend, but I fear I can’t transcribe a 200 page book in the space of a blog post.  Perhaps I’ll just give the Cliffs Notes version from here. 

Based on Geoffery of Monmouth’s work, various writers write works on Arthur.  It is in these works that we start to see concepts like the actual Round Table start to appear.

The stories of Arthur would be carried across the sea to France where they would become the subject of various French romances.  While the earlier Celtic sources provided such characters as Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, Bedivere, Gawain, Ywain, Kay and Mordred, the French writers would add their own characters such as Lancelot, Galahad, Bors, Gareth and Perceval.  It was under the French writers that elements of chivalry and courtly love started to becomes incorporated.  It’s a French writer named Chretien de Troyes who first writes of Lancelot’s courtly love for Guinevere in a book entitled Le Chevalier de la Charrette (the Knight of the Cart).  He also is the first writer to involve the Holy Grail in his romance Le Conte du Graal (The History of the Grail).  Interestingly, though these days we associate this tale largely with Sir Galahad, it’s Sir Perceval who is the central figure in early Grail stories.  Perceval himself is depicted as something of a foolish, naïve figure that attains some degree of spiritual enlightenment through his quest.  The French writers are also the ones who first brought the ancient story of Tristan and Iseult into the Arthurian legends. 

Among the French writers, it was Robert de Boron who linked all the myriad works together in a very long, sweeping work known as the Vulgate Cycle.  It was the Vulgate Cycle that first incorporated the love between Lancelot and Guinevere as a crucial part of Camelot’s downfall.

The stories of Arthur and his court would be popular in many parts of Europe.  However, back in the British Isles, the English would take their own approach to the stories.  Arthur and his knights start to take on the character of folk tale heroes, appearing in largely unconnected stories and poems and dealing with various elements of the magic and the supernatural.  The English also found a most unlikely hero in the form of Sir Gawain.  Gawain was often listed as being among Arthur’s earliest followers.  However, the French writers often depicted him in a somewhat negative light.  He was considered to have great skill in battle but was often shown to be discourteous, brutish and offensively sexual.  Under English pens, he was the very figure of knighthood.  Stories like the tale of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and “Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell” are the legacy of the English poets.

Now, while the Vulgate Cycle first ties the stories together, the length of the work made it almost unwieldy.  It was in England in the mid-fifteenth century that Sir Thomas Malory created his Le Morte D’Arthur which welded the stories together in a more readable form.  Malory is himself a rather enigmatic figure.  There are four people with the name Thomas Malory living in that time period, and all but one of them are possible authors of this work.  Now, Le Morte D’Arthur is not without it’s flaws.  For one thing, Malory seems unusually favorable to the character of Sir Lancelot.  However, it is still from this work that all future works on King Arthur are in some way derived.

Now, it would probably be folly to try and list all the ways in which the Legend of King Arthur has appeared in popular culture.  However, a few high lights and low lights are not beyond reason.  In terms of literature, a personal favorite is The Once and Future King by T.H. White.  White expands on Arthur’s youth in the section entitled The Sword in the Stone, which would later inspire a Disney movie of the same name.  He also includes such interesting additions as an ugly and single-minded version of Lancelot and a Merlin who can prophecy because he can remember the future, seeing as he lives backwards in time.  In the world of satire, there is A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain.  In this version, Camelot’s downfall is brought on by the meddlings of a time traveler who tries to modernize Arthur’s court.  There are also films such as John Boorman’s Excalibur which derives a great deal from Malory and Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 King Arthur which attempted a more historical tone and managed variable levels of success.  In terms of comedy, there’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  The BBC provided its own version of the Arthurian legends by way of teen drama with the show Merlin.  One notable video game title is Knights of the Round by Capcom.  And since I can’t seem to write a post on pop culture without mentioning the strange cartoons I watched in my youth, I’d be remiss not to mention King Arthur and the Knights of Justice.  The plot basically goes that King Arthur and his knights are trapped in a magic cave by Morgana and unable to defend Camelot.  So, Merlin recruits a football team called the Knights complete with a quarterback named Arthur King from the future to stand in for Arthur and his knights to defend Camelot from a made-for-TV villain named Lord Viper.  No, I’m not kidding you, that is the actual plot.  The end result is like a strange Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court meets He-Man kind of dynamic.  Oh well, at least the theme song was awesome.  The popularity of this legend as a source for popular culture cannot be denied.  Just recently, the season finale of TNT’s The Librarians drew extensively on the legend of King Arthur.

After reading all this, it seems apparent to me that much of the legend’s popularity comes from its malleability.  What started as a vague account of a Welsh military leader was reshaped in various ways to be everything from fairy tale to religious allegory to adventure story to tragedy and beyond.  As the legend became solidified in recent centuries following Malory’s book, the tale of Camelot became one of the heights that the human will can reach to.  Camelot was meant to be sort of a paradise of the West.  However, the tale is a warning that nothing gold lasts forever.  Even Camelot falls and it’s the human failings of key figures that bring it low.  It’s Guinevere’s infidelity with Lancelot and Arthur’s illegitimate son Mordred that lead to Camelot’s fall.  Anyway, despite who the real Arthur may have been and what form of the legend you take, King Arthur and his knights certainly are The Stuff of Legends!

Fairy Tale Media Fix: Fairy Musketeer Akazukin.

Well, I suppose we can consider this post to be something of a sister post to the one from last week.  Last week, I talked about a slightly older Japanese property based around fairy tales that was aimed at boys.  This time, I’m going to spotlight a slightly older Japanese fairy tale property for girls.  First, some background information on the genre I’ll be talking about.  It’s become something of a known fact that many young girls like entertainment that features girls with magical powers.  Here in the US we’re a little slow to realize this, but I think most people figured it out when every girl between the ages of 3 and 12 went absolutely crazy over Elsa from Disney’s Frozen.  However, in Japan, they’ve known this for a long time.  In fact, there’s even a whole genre of manga and anime based around the idea called (quite fittingly) the “magical girl genre”.  Magical girl shows and comics usually focus on a young girl or group of girls who have magical powers that they use to fight monsters and protect the world and such.  Some of them have transformations and love story subplots.  Some do not.  In essence, they’re kind of like superhero stories with a frillier, girlier edge.  Some examples of the genre include Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, Cardcaptor Sakura and Princess Tutu.  Now, does it come as any surprise that someone would take this genre and adapt fairy tales to it?  Of course not!  This is where Fairy Musketeer Akazukin comes in.

Just to note, I am mixing both English and Japanese titles here, because that’s what the version of this anime I first saw did.  Completely in Japanese, it would be Otogi Jushi Akazukin.  Completely in English, it would be Fairy Musketeer Red Riding Hood.  Also, I could not find any decent pictures that were free to use.  However, to see all the pictures I cannot post, just click HERE.

The story focuses on a 14-year old boy named Souta as its viewpoint character.  Souta is a bit of a kind, gentle dreamer who lives with his father.  His mother disappeared long ago under mysterious circumstances.  Before she disappeared though, she told Souta a fairy tale about a man who conquered the forces of both science and magic.  As he became more powerful, he grew lazy and conceited.  This caused God to get angry and split the man’s power and the whole world in two.  Souta, along with the help of his childhood friend Ringo, has been searching for a copy of that story for as long as he can remember.  One day, while searching for the story, Souta gets attacked by a monstrous spider.  He’s then saved by a girl in a red helmet and her talking wolf friend.  These are Akazukin (Red Riding Hood) and Val.  Souta quickly learns that she comes from the world of magic Phandavale and that he is the key to the world of science called Erde.  The key to Erde is needed by the evil witch Cendrillon (Cinderella) to reunite the worlds of science and magic.  From there, the adventure begins.  Other principle characters appear.  Akazukin’s fellow “Fairy Musketeers” include Shirayukihime (Snow White) and Ibarahime (Briar Rose).  They also find an ally in the Phandavale leaf knight Hameln (The Pied Piper of Hamelin).  On Cendrillon’s side though, are Hansel, his sister Gretel, Randagio (kind of a cross between Puss in Boots and the cat from The Bremen Town Musicians) and a mysterious sorceress named Trude (based on the obscure Grimm tale “Frau Trude”).

Overall, the series is cute, fun, harmless and . . . strangely addictive.  After I started watching it, I found I had to watch it all to the end.  The series also picks up a lot when the group actually travels to Phandavale towards the second half of the series.  Like I said regarding MAR, this show also embraces its share of anime tropes.  There are the requisite weird monsters and girls calling magic out of the air with some sort of magical device (in this case, the “sweet phone”).  However, it does keep the transformation scenes to a minimum, just due to the nature of the plot.  In this one the magical girls don’t have to transform into something magical because they’re already from a world of magic.  I also have to give them props for basing their villain on Cinderella.  I’ve seen so many respun fairy tales that have made characters like Jack, Peter Pan or Prince Charming into villains.  It’s nice to see someone spice it up (note: is it just me or does it seem more common to villainize the male characters than the female characters?).  Also, I give them major respect for drawing on the ultra-obscure “Frau Trude”.  That’s one I had to look up.

So, final analysis is that Fairy Musketeer Akazukin is nothing spectacular.  Altogether, it’s just a harmless but fun kids’ anime.  If you want to watch the series, you can find it at the online anime streaming site Crunchyroll.  Just click HERE.

Four Color Fairy Tales: MAR.

In this great, big beautiful blogosphere of ours, it’s not always easy to get a second chance.  This can especially be the case when it comes to reviewing things.  Books, DVDs and comics can all go out of print and be very hard to find again.  This was the case for me with a manga series entitled MAR (Note, the original manga actually has an umlaut over the A, which means it’s pronounced like “mare”).  MAR is a shonen manga that was written and drawn by manga artist Nobuyuki Anzai.  The letters in MAR are actually an abbreviation of the words “Marchen Awakens Romance” as well as just a reference to the word “marchen” (and I’m sure we all know that marchen is German for fairy tale).  When this series was first published in the US, I picked up the first issue because I knew it was fairy tale related.  I read the first volume, thought it was nothing remarkable and then moved on to a different series.  However, years later, having now started a fairy tale blog, I got the sudden urge to give it another chance.  Just my luck, it was out of print and none of the local libraries had it.  However, one day I happen upon a fantasy book and game store that I had passed by a million times and never been into (Flights of Fantasy in Albany, New York) and decided to check it out.  What do I find there, but a number of volumes of MAR just waiting for me to review them.  So, I can finally get that second chance.

The story of MAR focuses on a 14-year old boy named Ginta Toramizu.  Ginta seems to have all sorts of first world problems (which I’m sure seem like a big deal to a 14-year old from Tokyo).  He’s nearsighted, bad at sports, a poor student and he’s short (honestly, the only real problem I see there is that he’s a poor student).  However, Ginta’s a dreamer.  He’s had the same dream 102 times.  In this dream, he’s the hero of a fantasy land with all sorts of qualities he lacks in the real world.  Then, one day a strange figure appears at his school.  He opens a gate to the other world and charges in headfirst.  In this world, he’s fast and strong and can see without his glasses.  The first person he meets other than some talking rocks is a witch named Dorothy (as you can see, this manga takes a liberal approach to what it terms a fairy tale, like much of pop culture).  He gets involved with Dorothy’s attempt to gain a powerful weapon called an ARM (again, there’s that umlaut, so I guess it’s pronounced air-m).  The weapon turns out to be a living, talking iron ball type thing that looks like a kendama.

Anyway, the kedama ARM is named Babbo and sees himself as quite a gentleman.  Also, it seems Ginta is the only person who’s actually strong enough to wield Babbo.  From there, we have the start of Ginta and Babbo’s adventures.  There are other fairy tale-ish things that pop up.  He gains a companion in a farm boy named Jack.  He defeats some Big, Bad Werewolves.  He rescues Princess Snow.  He finds out there are some enemies called the Chess Pieces (I’m guessing that one’s a Through the Looking Glass reference).  However, the truth is that much of the fairy tale stuff is pretty much just window dressing.  I feel like they could have omitted or changed a lot of that stuff and it wouldn’t have affected the story much.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad as far as shonen battle manga goes.  It actually gets much better after the first volume.  However, the familiar tropes, themes and stock characters of the fairy tale are much less prevalent than the familiar tropes, themes and stock characters of shonen action manga.  There’s the villainous organization (Chess Pieces), the overly enthusiastic hero (Ginta), the sweet girl (Princess Snow), the comical side character (Jack), the big end goal (find the ARMs), the dark secret (Babbo may have once belonged to the villain) as well as a mentor character, training scenes, lots of fighting and fury as well as the general desire by the protagonists to “get stronger”.  None of this is really bad.  It just makes it a lot more like a general shonen manga in a fairy tale skin.  If that interests you, than give MAR a try providing you can find it.

Folk Tale Secret Stash: Kate Crackernuts

There are few things I like more than discovering and recommending folk and fairy tales that break the rules.  Or, at least, break what people think are the rules.  You see, many people have this set of expectations for how fairy tales are supposed to go based on what they see in the media.  Such fairy tale “rules” are as follows: 1) All princesses and princes are good, 2) Princesses get rescued by princes, 3) Step-families are always trouble and 4) True love’s kiss dispels all sorts of enchantments, among others.  You know the sort of thing.  Would it surprise you that folklorists and fairy tale fans have all sorts of different guidelines and earmarks by which to recognize a fairy tale?  Well, I’ll get to those another time.  First I want to showcase a tale that breaks three of those supposed rules.

The story is entitled “Kate Crackernuts”.  The earliest version of this story was collected on one of the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland.  It then made it’s way into one of Andrew Lang’s colored Fairy Books and was later included in Joseph Jacobs’s English Fairy Tales (Jacobs wasn’t overly picky about how “English” his English fairy tales were).

The story starts with a blended royal family.  There’s a queen with a daughter named Kate and a king with a daughter named Anne.  Now, as these things usually go, the queen starts to worry that Anne is prettier than her own daughter Kate.  So, she enlists the help of a henwife who knows magic.  The henwife tells the queen to send Anne to her, but she must be fasting for her magic to work (who knew magic had the same requirements as getting blood drawn?).  So, the queen sends Anne out to the henwife under the pretense of getting some eggs.  The first time, it doesn’t work because she takes a crust of bread with her and eats it as she goes. The second time, it also doesn’t work because she comes on some commoners picking peas and takes a handful and eats them along the way.  The third time, the queen goes with her to make sure she doesn’t eat anything.  When she gets there, she lifts the lid off the henwife’s pot and walks away with a sheep’s head instead of her own.  Actually, there’s some rather interesting phrasing of it in Jacobs’s book.  He wrote: “off falls her own pretty head, and on jumps a sheep’s head”.  Now tell me that visual won’t stick with you for the rest of the day!

Now, here comes the interesting part.  If Kate were the stepsister of someone like Cinderella, she would have been overjoyed that her pretty stepsister now had a sheep’s head.  She’d probably even come up with a nickname for her like Ewe-Face or Woolhead.  Instead, Kate took a fine linen cloth and wrapped it around Anne’s head to hide her features and decided it was time for the both of them to get the hell out of there.  And that, my friends, is how the “wicked stepsister rule” gets broken.

The two travel on until they find their way to a castle.  It turns out that it’s a king’s castle.  What’s more, it turns out that one of the king’s sons is sick and no one can figure out what’s wrong with him.  Also, anyone who sits up with the sick prince disappears.  Now, Kate’s a brave girl and after she and her “sick sister” get settled in as the king’s guests, volunteers to stay up with the sick prince.  Now, Kate’s sitting up and all is well until the stroke of midnight.  At that point, the prince rose, dressed himself and left.  He went to the stable where he saddled his horse, called to his hound and rode off.  Naturally, Kate followed him.  She even jumped up on the horse behind him.  Now, as they rode, Kate started to pluck nuts from the trees around them (which leads to the title of the story).  They rode until they got to a green hill, where the prince said “Open, open, green hill, and let the young prince in with his horse and his hound”.  Kate would add in “and his lady him behind”.  Then, the green hill opened up and they passed inside. 

And that’s where I’ll leave you.

Yes, I know I usually stop my plot synopses at a later point for Folk Tale Secret Stash, but this just feels like the perfect stopping point.  You can read the rest of the story HERE.  I will tell you that the rest of it includes some eavesdropping on fairies, more good step-sistering and a princess working to un-enchant a prince.  That last bit actually serves to break both fake rule #2 and fake rule #4 of the ones I listed above.

I would like to talk for a minute or two about why this particular tale that breaks so many of Hollywood’s rules may not have been noticed by Hollywood.  Granted, it’s not the only one, but it serves as a good test case.  This is especially notable as we see Hollywood and certain animation companies (:cough: Disney :cough: ) seemingly work overtime to break the rules they created.  Heck, between Frozen and Big Hero Six, Disney seems particularly interested in sibling relationships.  So, why not a story about a positive step-sister relationship?  Well, Hollywood’s requirements often go beyond a simple list of “fairy tale rules” like the ones I listed above.  For one thing, there’s the issue of structure.  Hollywood movies usually use a three act structure.  Despite how European fairy tales often use cycles of three, they don’t necessarily use that structure over the course of the whole story.  In fact, this story like many others could almost be two stories from a TV or movie perspective.  The bit with Anne and the sheep’s head would be one and the part after Kate and Anne get to the king’s palace could be another.  Also, most Hollywood versions of fairy tales are generally thought to need a clear antagonist.  Fairy tales often don’t need a clear antagonist as much as they need a bad situation that must be overcome.  In this story, the closest thing to an antagonist would be Kate’s mother who got Anne sheep-headed.  Expanding her part into the second half of the story would be difficult.  I imagine adapting this story would take a fair bit of rewriting (like they did to get Frozen out of "The Snow Queen").  Folk tales like this one often came from a tradition of storytelling that had a whole different set of rules that existed before the rules of mass market storytelling were even written.  They broke the rules before there were even rules to break.

Still, it’s a pretty great story to read or tell aloud.

Any thoughts or ideas regarding “Kate Crackernuts” or Hollywood “fairy tale rules”, post in the comments below.

Fairy Tale Media Fix: Into the Woods.

The holiday season is drawing to a close, but not without some interesting gifts.  On Christmas Day this year, the folks at Mouse-Ears Incorporated (aka Disney) gave us a movie adaptation of the fairy tale inspired musical Into the Woods.  This can be seen as a rather strange gift from Disney, seeing as they’re famous for their fairy tale adaptations being light, whimsical and sentimental as well as having indisputable happy endings.  Into the Woods doesn’t really do that kind of thing.  At least, it doesn’t do that for long.  Now, I’ve seen a taped production of the stage musical before.  I’ve also read all the stories utilized in the movie.  However, I also know some people will be going in cold.  So, I’m going to try and address this from all relevant angles.

First, some background on Into the Woods.  Into the Woods started as a musical with music by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine (note: “book” is the word used by theater people for the script in a musical).  It debuted at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater in 1986 and went to Broadway in 1987.  From that point, it went on to win numerous awards, including a number of Tony Awards.  The musical has been produced many, many times.  This latest cinematic adaptation is directed by Rob Marshall with a script by original book-writer James Lapine and with Stephen Sondheim working closely with them in regards to story and music.

The movie follows the story of a childless baker and his wife as they try to collect various items to concoct a potion for a witch that will lift a curse that keeps them from starting a family.  Like many fairy tale heroes, the baker isn’t given an actual name, so I will from here forward refer to him as the Baker with a capital “B”.  Along the way, their story intersects with those of “Little Red Riding Hood”, “Jack and the Beanstalk”, “Rapunzel” and “Cinderella” (notably, the Grimm version).  These characters all meet in the Woods as they try to pursue their various quests and attempt to make their wishes come true.  This all leads to a “Happily Ever After” . . . that lasts for just a few minutes.  You see, as the second half of the movie starts, all the loose ends from the various stories come together to create a new threat that presents all the various characters with morally ambiguous choices.  Suddenly, nothing seems so simple and every move they made seems to have unintended consequences.

The story, as it’s handled on screen is well done.  There are a lot of subplots.  Subplots can be difficult to juggle.  However, as this movie deals with the theme of unintended consequences, it makes sense that the characters would weave through each others’ lives having an impact in ways they don’t even know about.

The music is Sondheim.  I’m not really a music critic.  However, I’m sure anyone who knows about music will probably know if they will like it from that statement.

Composer Stephen Sondheim

The cast is good.  I’m no music critic, but it seems like all of them can sing.  This is a good sign.  Meryl Streep is fantastic as the witch.  James Corden plays the Baker as a rather lovable if somewhat befuddled everyman with father issues.  He plays very well off Emily Blunt, who plays his wife and plays the part well.  Anna Kendrick plays a suitably indecisive Cinderella, as the part demands.  The most concern among theatergoers was the casting of Daniel Huttlestone and Lilla Crawford as Jack and Little Red Riding Hood respectively.  These parts are usually given to adults on the stage whereas the Huttlestone was only 15 and Crawford was 12 at the time of the filming.  Personally, I think they both did very well with material that might have been a little beyond their level.  Then there’s Johnny Depp as the Wolf.  Well, he was interesting for the few minutes he was actually on screen.  Personally, the ones I thought stole the show were Chris Pine as Cinderella’s Prince and Billy Magnussen as Rapunzel’s Prince.  However, I’m going to get back to them when I talk about the tone of the production next. 

Now, about the tone.  For many people, the original musical Into the Woods was what brought “dark fairy tales” into the pop culture light.  However, the story is also not just dark.  The story is striped with dark and light.  It deals with heavy themes but also adds touches of wit and parody.  Many jokes are made about Jack being dimwitted or Little Red eating all the time.  Even dark elements from the original fairy tales are played for laughs.  I dare anyone to find a funnier take on the infamous “foot mutilation scene” from Grimm’s “Cinderella”.  Then there are the princes who I mentioned earlier.  Sondheim and Lapine practically invented the modern method of making fun of the “Prince Charming” type.  The princes are over-the-top dashing, daring, romantic figures.  However, they also seem to practically ooze arrogance and prove to be less than capable of following up romance with loyal love.  You can see bits and pieces of this take in everything from Fables and the Sisters Grimm books to Disney’s Enchanted and even to some extent in the Ever After High webtoons, depending on the targeted age of the audience.  In the movie, this particularly comes out as the two croon the song “Agony” atop a waterfall while seemingly trying too hard to top each other at being the sexiest man there.  Yet, while the movie can make you laugh with “Agony”, it can also do its best to draw out some tears with “No One isAlone”.  Then, the whole thing manages to end on a bittersweet note, as befits a movie with a variable tone. 

For those who are theater buffs, I will warn you that changes have been made.  Certain songs have been restaged to make them work better on film.  Rapunzel’s fate has also been changed.  Sadly, this means that the reprise for “Agony”, one of the funniest parts of the stage production is not in the movie (will I post a link to the reprise?  Of course I will!)  Also, the part of the Mysterious Man has kind of been cut while not being cut.  You’ll understand when you see it.  I have heard some say that it doesn’t quite have the same charm as the stage version.  However, with the use of the narrator as a physical character and the older actors playing Jack and Red, the stage musical could feel kind of like a children’s fairy tale play that took an odd left turn.  Like a Christmas pantomime gone horribly awry.  The movie, instead, feels like a movie.  As a fairy tale geek, I’m just excited to see another new fairy tale inspired film out there.  Also, it gives some exposure to the Grimm version of “Cinderella”, which could use some exposure beyond the gruesome bits.  I will warn you that the stage version is kind of the forerunner of all the re-spun fairy tale productions out there.  So, if you watch this and feel you’ve seen all this already, then you probably have.

I recommend seeing Into the Woods.  It’s a good, well-made movie adaptation of the stage musical.  It weaves the stories together well and deals with some really strong themes (I haven’t really touched on those much here, but I can’t give everything away).  If you have thoughts on the musical, the movie or just this review, feel free to post in the comments below.  However, since I have all of you still here . . .

In Other Disney News . . .

Disney released the first teaser trailer recently for its Disney Channel movie Descendants, which follows a group of the teenage offspring of Disney movie villains as they go to school with the children of Disney heroes.  You may recall that InkGypsy posted about this way back when on her blog.  Anyway, what can we take from this other than the fact that Disney wants some of that sweet, sweet Ever After High money?  Not much, seeing as it’s just a teaser.  I will just say that from what I’ve read that there will be little doubt that this will be a cheesy production at least from a grown-up viewpoint.  But hey, maybe it’ll be a fun kind of cheesy.

 

Fantasy Literature Rewind: Nutcracker and the King of Mice.

As you all may know, we are all very sophisticated here at Fairy Tale Fandom [sips hot cocoa with pinky out].  After all, you remember our epic three-part ballet special “The Swan Lake Project”.  However, you may be asking yourself “What about the stories of other ballets?  Especially the most iconic ballet of this time of year: The Nutcracker.” 

Well, I will admit that it’s a classic.  In fact, I actually went and watched a production of this a week or two ago.  However, here’s the thing about it: unlike Swan Lake, the story for The Nutcracker was not born for the ballet.  It’s actually based on a children’s story by German fantasy writer E.T.A Hoffmann.

Caricature of E.T.A. Hoffmann

Ah yes, E.T.A. Hoffmann.  Another of those influential writers that most regular joes and janes of the world have never heard of.  Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was born on January 24, 1776 in Konisberg, Prussia.  The product of a broken home, he was raised by his uncle.  Educated in law, he became an officer for the Prussian bureaucracy in the Polish provinces until the aforementioned bureaucracy was dissolved following Prussia’s defeat by Napoleon.  After this, Hoffmann took to pursuing a creative life, becoming a composer, critic and writer.  As a writer, most of Hoffmann’s stories focus on sinister or supernatural figures that pass into the lives of ordinary people.  The end result is usually the revelation of the dark or tragic sides of ordinary people.  One thing that actually concerned him was the idea of automata and what would happen if an automaton was actually mistaken for a real person.  He actually wrote a couple of stories on this subject and one of his darker automata stories entitled “The Sand-Man” would one day end up being the inspiration for the rather light and frothy ballet Coppelia.  I point these things out so that you know that “Nutcracker and the King of Mice” with its light tone and young audience is actually kind of a rarity among Hoffmann’s works.

So, shall we take a look at this ballet’s source material?  Of course we will!

The story opens on Christmas as little Fritz and Marie Stahlbaum await the coming of their Godpapa Drosselmeier and the chance to open the gifts left for them by the Christ Child.

Okay, here we have two things to talk about.  First of all, the tradition of the ChristChild bringing gifts.  Now, one of the things that I really like about this story is that it references German Christmas traditions that people in other countries might not know about.  Now, I talked about the roots of Santa Claus in the last post I wrote.  However, one thing I did not mention is that not everyone uses the Santa Claus tradition.  In many European countries, the tradition goes that the baby Jesus would come in the form of a little angel and give gifts to good boys and girls.  In some countries, he’s also accompanied by another figure who would carry the gifts and who was tasked with punishing the naughty children.  This may seem strange to Americans who only know the Santa tradition.  However, we have absorbed a bit of it as well.  The name Christ Kindle (or “Christ Child”) has transformed into another name for Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, here in the US.  The other thing worth talking about is the difference between the girl’s name in the story and in the ballet.  I’ll get to that later on, though.

Anyway, the children open their presents and Drosselmeier the clockmaker arrives with his gift for the children.  It’s a big, wind-up castle with little figures that move in and out of the doors.  Marie thinks it’s wonderful but Fritz is unimpressed seeing as it can only do what the machinery lets it do.  Shortly after the castle is put away so that Fritz doesn’t break it, Marie spots something else nearby.  It’s the ugly little figure of a man dressed like one of Fritz’s toy cavalrymen.  Marie’s father explains that it is a nutcracker and meant to be shared by herself, Fritz and Marie’s older sister (who barely shows up in the story).  Seeing this, Fritz goes to try out the nutcracker by putting the biggest, hardest nut in its mouth.  He succeeds in breaking off three of the nutcracker’s teeth.  Marie is very upset and wraps a ribbon around Nutcracker’s jaw and putting him to bed in her doll’s bed.

Now we start getting to part of the story that has been made famous by the ballet.  Marie hangs back to put Nutcracker to bed.  The clock starts to strike and she looks at it to see that instead of an owl sitting at the top, it looks more like her Godpapa Drosselmeier.  Now, this is when the mice start to invade.  This is followed by the nutcracker leading an army of toys, including dolls, figurines and Fritz’s toy soldiers against the army of invading mice.  One of Marie’s dolls, named Miss Clara, shows a great deal of concern for the nutcracker’s safety.

Here’s where we get to that interesting point I mentioned earlier.  In this original story, the little girl is named Marie and she has a doll named Clara.  In the ballet, the little girl is named Clara and there is no doll.  It seems like such a strange, random choice to make with an adaptation.  I can understand wanting to give a nod to Miss Clara considering how she seems so concerned for poor Nutcracker, but it’s ultimately a small part and one that shouldn’t usurp part of Marie’s.  This sort of thing has been done in other cases, though.  I’m reminded of Universal’s 1931 film version of Frankenstein in which Victor Frankenstein is renamed Henry Frankenstein and his best friend Henry Clerval is renamed Victor Moritz.

Anyway, the battle rages on until Marie decides to take a hand, throwing her slipper at one of the Mouse King’s seven heads.  She then passes out and wakes up to find that her parents had found her next to the toy cabinet having cut herself on a broken pane of glass.  As she convalesces, Mr. Drosselmeier returns and tells her the story of how Nutcracker came to be the way he is.  The basic gist is that he was Drosselmeier’s nephew who was called on to save the life of the Princess Pirlipat after she was cursed to look quite nutcracker-like by Dame Mouserink the queen of the mice.  Though he saves Pirlipat, he ends up cursed himself until he can defeat her son.  This is a part of the story where the prose version outpaces the ballet.  There is no back story for the nutcracker in the ballet because it would practically require them to stage another ballet in the middle of the first ballet.

Anyway, after Marie gets better, the Mouse King returns.  He goes to Marie and tells her that if she doesn’t offer up her sweets and toys, he’ll go and chew up Nutcracker.  Marie obliges until his demands get to be too much.  At that point, he tells her to help by getting him a sword.  She manages to do this with Fritz’s help.  This is about where I’m going to leave you.  We’re closing in on the climax and I don’t like giving away endings unless I really, really have to.  You may have some sense of what it’s like if you’ve seen the ballet, though.  You can read an English translation of the story right HERE, though.

Overall, if you like the Nutcracker ballet, I suggest giving E.T.A. Hoffmann’s original story a read.  It’s a lot like the story of the ballet but longer and deeper with more background information and detail.  The story is a wonderful piece with a really interesting combination of reality and dream-like whimsy.  Is there any wonder this story has become a holiday classic in some form?

The Santa Claus Phenomenon.

Hey, kids!  We grown-ups are just going to talk about boring things here using big, technical terms like “motif” and “archetype”.  You don’t want to hang around here.

They gone?

Good!  This is because we have to talk about the whole Santa Claus thing. 

Thomas Nast's Santa Claus

 

Why?  Well, because Santa Claus is a sort of folklore.  An unusual bit of folklore from a modern perspective, too.  At a basic level, Santa Claus could maybe be considered a legend.  I mean, there was a Saint Nicholas, right?  So, he is based on a real, historical figure of some sort.  However, over the years he’s picked up bits and pieces from other places as people have chosen to reinterpret this legend.  Not all these influences have been all that folk-y either.  The Saint Nicholas Center claims the first use of the saint as “Sante Claus” came in 1821 with the publication of the first lithographed book in America entitled The Children’s Friend.  This book depicts the saint as a man who visits children on Christmas Eve and leaves gentle toys like dolls, tops, balls and books to good children and left a “long, black birchen rod” for the parents of naughty children so that they may make them get back into line (and you thought a lump of coal was bad).  The History Channel actually fills in some other gaps crediting Clement Moore and his poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” with Santa’s method of entry (chimney), transportation (sleigh and “eight tiny reindeer”) and his depiction as “a right jolly old elf”.  They also credit illustrator and political cartoonist Thomas Nast with giving Santa Claus his home at the North Pole, red suit, wife Mrs. Claus and lists of naughty and nice children. 

Thomas Nast himself.

 

Santa’s elves likely first appeared in a poem in Harper’s Weekly entitled “The Wonders of Santa Claus”.  Some credit Christmas elves as first appearing in an unfinished work by Louisa May Alcott entitled Christmas Elves while others say it was in engravings in Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1873.  However, these are just a handful of the people who have interpreted the Santa Claus legend among many others including advertising artists with the Coca-Cola company.

But one thing I want to talk about is what the Santa Claus legend is.  For you see, I keep using the word “legend” even though it doesn’t fit with how we usually see the idea of a legend.  Usually, a “legend” suggests some kind of folk narrative.  However, there really is no story for Santa Claus except the ones that authors wrote for him.  I could call it a tradition, but it’s a unique tradition that has a sense of character to it and personality.  To many children, Santa is viewed as a real entity and not just something that people do during the holidays.  So, he’s not quite a folk story and more than a tradition.  The folklore tradition surrounding traditional gift givers and sometimes punishers of naughty children (and there are plenty of both) is a rather unique one in general.  I'm not even sure what I'd call it.

This brings me to my next question.  Is perpetuating the Santa Claus tradition/character/legend a good idea?  People are split on this one.  Lots and lots of people love the idea of Santa Claus and promoting belief in him to their children.  Others see it as a form of manipulation as well as lying to children.  One is reminded of Natalie Wood’s character from Miracle on 34^th Street and her rather cynical mother.  I can see where they’re coming from to a certain extent.  There is some degree of lying and sneaking involved.  These are things that many parents would consider to be negative in any other circumstances.  So, there is probably some feeling by parents that they are being hypocritical.  Also, unlike most other forms of folklore, this is one of the few where some sort of results are expected to be delivered.  Sure, there are legends that people claim actually happened.  There are also ghosts stories in which people claim things are still happening.  However, it’s only in the legend of Santa Claus and other ceremonial gift givers that parents are expected to provide gifts and eat cookies as a sort of proof that the legend has some veracity all while leaving the children none the wiser.  There’s got to be some pressure there.  Maybe this is pressure that parents do not want.  I don’t know.  Personally, I’m pro-Santa.  It’s generally my belief that there is a difference between believing a lie and believing a legend.  While lies fool us and lead us astray, legends often tend to lift us up and point us toward being better.  More than a didactic means of teaching children good behavior, I see Santa Claus as a way to teach the rather Christmas-y values of hope, faith, kindness, goodwill and generosity.

So, where do you weigh in on the whole Santa Claus situation?  Pro-Santa?  Anti-Santa?  Somewhere in between?  Let me know with your reasons in the comments section below.