Search Results for: fairy tales

Sex, Silver Service, and Fairy Tales: ‘Sleeping Beauty’

In her debut feature, 2011’s ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ director Julia Leigh examines consent, voyeurism, and passivity through the character of Lucy, a beautiful college student who sleepwalks through life as if it doesn’t involve her. Lucy becomes a literal Sleeping Beauty when she takes a job that involves her being drugged to unconsciousness while men are allowed to do anything they please to her naked body, with the exception of penetration. She exists in an eroticized, dream-like landscape and the film often feels like a painting come to life.

No, ‘Oz the Great and Powerful,’ We Don’t Need More Male-Centric Fairy Tales

Written by Megan Kearns. After seeing Oz the Great and Powerful, I was annoyed. And angry. Everything in the film revolves around one dude: James Franco as Oscar Diggs aka Oz. Bleh. It’s a patriarchal dream come true. Women in the film fawn over Oz, swoon over him, make googly eyes at him, get enraged … Continue reading “No, ‘Oz the Great and Powerful,’ We Don’t Need More Male-Centric Fairy Tales”

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: The Depiction of Women in Three Films Based on the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen

This is a guest review by Alisande Fitzsimons. Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is one of those writers whose stories—like those by the Brothers Grimm and Scheherazade (the Persian Queen who spun the stories that make up A Thousand and One Arabian Nights)—are so much a part of our culture that you undoubtedly heard them, … Continue reading “Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: The Depiction of Women in Three Films Based on the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen”

Guest Writer Wednesday: Fairy Tales and Female Sexuality

This guest post by Sarah Seltzer originally appeared at RH Reality Check.  Don’t go out into the woods. Beware ugly older women bearing strange gifts. Only a princely kiss can resurrect you. The anti-feminist messages in fairy tales, both in their classic forms from the tales of Grimm, Anderson and Perrault, and their sanitized Disneyfied … Continue reading “Guest Writer Wednesday: Fairy Tales and Female Sexuality”

Masculinity in ‘Game of Thrones’: More Than Fairytale Tropes

Boys are judged on their ability to swing a sword or work a trade, criticised for showing weakness, and taught to grow up hard and cold. Doesn’t sound unfamiliar, does it? Masculinity is praised in Westerosi society, as it is in our own.

Reclaiming Conch: In Defense of Ursula, Fairy Octomother

Ursula’s show-stopper, “Poor, Unfortunate Souls,” presents case studies of mermen and mermaids made miserable by culture. What this song really teaches is that internalizing cultural messages is a fatal weakness, and rejecting cultural conditioning is a source of great power. Small wonder that Ursula had to die the most gruesome onscreen death in all of Disney.

‘The Babadook’: Jennifer Kent on Her Savage Domestic Fairy Tale

Jennifer Kent: “I didn’t start with motherhood being the primary focus, but it is a very important part of the film, and I’m very adamant not to make this woman the evil mother. That’s why I placed the film very much inside her experience.”

‘The Last Unicorn’ Is The Anti-Disney Fairy Tale

DVD Cover Art for The Last Unicorn Warning: Spoilers ahead I was probably 6 or 7 years old the first time I saw The Last Unicorn. And while I thought it was pretty, I found it incredibly boring. It wasn’t until much later in my life that I rewatched it and understood why it was … Continue reading “‘The Last Unicorn’ Is The Anti-Disney Fairy Tale”

Animated Children’s Films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The History and the Legacy of Disney’s Original Fairy Tale

This is a guest review by Stevie Leigh Cattigan. ‘Hell, Doc … we just make a picture and then you professors come along and tell us what we do.’ – Walt Disney, Time Magazine (1937) With the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as their first feature length film in 1937, The Walt … Continue reading “Animated Children’s Films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The History and the Legacy of Disney’s Original Fairy Tale”

‘The Lure’ Fills the Mermaid Shaped Hole in My Heart

Closer to sirens than friendly flounders these creatures lure men to their deaths and feast on their flesh. … Deadly mermaids, Eastern European pop music, and crushing dreams may not initially seem like a wonderful combination, but The Lure mixes these elements together beautifully.

The Love That’s Really Real: ‘American Psycho’ as Romantic Comedy

Although primarily a horror film, ‘American Psycho’ has a satiric backbone that appropriates codes from the romantic comedy genre to expose the absurdities of our gender ideals. Director and co-writer Mary Harron’s lens skewers the qualities we find appealing in romantic comedies as terrifying.

The Repercussions of Repressing Teenage Girls in ‘The Virgin Suicides’ and ‘Mustang’

Both are critically acclaimed dramas directed by women documenting the coming-of-age of five teenage sisters under close scrutiny for their behavior — especially when it comes to their sexuality. And in both films, the girls’ response to this repression is to resort to desperate measures to regain control, resulting in tragedy that could have been averted if they were given the freedom for which they hungered.