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Eirenical
Registered User
(12/12/00 6:10:14 pm)
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Freeway
I don't believe I've seen this film mentioned anywhere here before, so I think I'll throw it out for you all. The movie _Freeway_ (1996) with Kiefer Sutherland (as the wolf) and Reese Witherspoon (as the girl) is an interesting update of Little Red Riding Hood. Not the best movie I've ever seen, but worthwhile anyway.
Unlike most modern adaptations, the story isn't glossed over. After all, there is a wolf out there chasing girls and eating grandmas. There's a hearty dose of abuse, sex, and violence. This is certainly not a movie that could ever make it into a high school class.
I also found this to be an unusual interpretation because, while the plot is dark, the heroine is innocent. She is the "traditional" female fairy tale protagonist, who somehow manages to make it through alive even though no one can quite figure out how. She's also not the smartest one around (although perhaps that falls into the "innocent" box), so she doesn't get through on her wits, either.
Has anyone else seen this movie? And if you did, did you think it was any better than a bad Hollywood B movie?
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Gregor9
Registered User
(12/13/00 5:13:19 am)
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Myth-making alive and well in FLA?
Not to be political or anything (me? never, I love the Grand Old Poltroons), but you all might want to investigate this story about live folk story creation going on in Miami/Dade shelters, where there are thousands of children. They've created a mythography as rich as any I've seen.
www.miaminewtimes.com/iss...page1.html
GF
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allysonrosen
Registered User
(12/13/00 1:35:19 pm)
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Films
There's also a wonderfully dark "Snow White" starring Sigourney Weaver as the stepmother, and "Labyrinth."
My undergrad Intro to Folklore prof showed the class excerpts from "Into the Woods," which was taped from PBS, which went over well.
Also, there's an amazing Julie Taymor film which aired on PBS based on an Edgar Allen Poe fairy tale and its driving me crazy because I can't remember the title! Grrr. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? It was filmed entirely with life-size puppets, except for the hero and heroine, who are (for lack of a PC term) midgets.
| Kate
Unregistered User
(12/13/00 9:23:49 pm)
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Freeway
Yes, I have seen this film, and I have to admit I love it. I show it to my upper division lit students when we do Red Riding Hood (as well as 'Company of Wolves'). I think it could be seen as a satire of the B genre rather than as a member. Reese Witherspoon's performance is simply fantastic. Also, if you watch it several times over, you notice a lot of fairly sophisticated doublings--plot overlaps, foils, reversals. I think it is more complex than it seems at first, though of course it is also high kitsch and playful. I find it, at core, fairly dark and disturbing, and its humor gratifyingly wicked.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(12/14/00 6:56:10 am)
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Speaking of puppets
I would weigh in that some more esoteric and less obviously defined films for experimentation in teaching would be those of the Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer. The mythic elements are there, sometimes in symbols laid out upon the animation stage, sometimes in the stories, but always embedded; and like fairy tales, I find them to be working on some visceral level, suggesting meanings rather than announcing them as Hollywood does. Svankmajer's "Faust" is one of the strangest combinations of live action and stop motion you're likely to see.
Greg
| Kate
Unregistered User
(12/14/00 11:10:47 am)
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Films/The Piano
This string seems to be overlapping with the lesson plan string (should this one be turned instead into a film string and started anew?). In the lesson plan string, I have also posted additional film ideas, Gregor and others. I take it from an earlier string I tried to start unsuccessfully that no one else has seen 'Careful,' a peculiar, largely unknown film by Guy Maddin? An art student introduced me to him recently and I was thrilled to discover him. It is not an obvious choice at all for classes on fairy tales, but I found it has much to add. A disturbing, whispery film on repressive lessons one learns in childhood and in relation to developing desire.
There is also a quite nice version of 'The Juniper Tree' from I want to say the mid-80's, starring none other than the beautiful-voiced Bjork. Juniper Tree is one of my favorite stories to teach.
On classes centering on doubles or stand-ins, false brides and sisters, I often show parts of 'The Double Life of Veronique.' There's a particularly lovely scene of a puppet show in it, and it ends with Veronique's lover making a puppet replica of her, who dances and dies. I am doing it no justice here of course.
I have loads of other film ideas but am on a deadline now and have to add them later. Sorry!
And Catja, as for 'The Piano,' when I show it, I have the students re-read Bluebeard of course--there are tons of Bluebeard references indeed. But I find the links to Little Mermaid more 'deep,' or more fruitful for discussion, rather than mostly contained in the plot devices which yes, are also very interesting to compare. Connections to LM are quite strong and complex (unless I'm just insane). In any case, I hand out a sheet that asks students, while they watch the film, to note down any images or plot elements that remind them of either story. You would be surprised what you get. After the film is done they write about the ending--responding to the question of why Campion decided to save Ada rather than let her die.
I have lost track of a very good interview where Campion said she had in fact based Piano entirely on The Little Mermaid. (There are of course also visual references to LRRH--the red cape, the dog...). I am writing a little essay on the connections, by the way. I haven't decided where to try to publish it yet but it should be done by spring.
As usual in my very sloppily rendered posting style--please know it is not the same as my 'real' writing style, here are some of the more obvious connections: the play of muteness/loss of voice as an assertion rather than an abnegation of desire (a sacrifice for love) (she cuts out her own tongue, essentially, by choosing not to speak--and wears it around her neck too, symbolically in her metal notepad); death by sea (in 'The Piano' reversed); the bargain she makes with Barnes in order to be 'with' the piano--what she is willing to sacrifice for longing/desire--the piano standing in for desire, the finger in this case standing in also for the tongue, because it is also with the finger that she 'speaks' and it is cobbled, made metal. Her disfigurement. It is also full of peculiar, intricate reversals and doublings of LM themes. i.e., unlike LM, Ada exchanges her decided fate not for heaven, but, as her daughter yells, to go "TO HELL" (to love)(in one of the most gorgeous, haunting moments in film I've ever seen). So there is the notion of redemption, love's redeeming qualities. LM to me is also such a story of obsessive longing, sexual or otherwise, as is 'The Piano.'
Hope that helps--interested in your thoughts on all this, too.
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Terri
Registered User
(12/16/00 2:00:27 am)
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The Piano/The Little Mermaid
Kate, I sure would love to read that essay of yours!
| Carrie
Unregistered User
(12/18/00 2:19:55 pm)
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Another film
One of my favorite films is "Ladyhawk" which I haven't seen mentioned. I believe it's fashioned on a French fairy tale. IThe lead character's humor is delightful. I love watching such a rascal playing the hero.
Carrie
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Terri
Registered User
(12/19/00 8:45:05 am)
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folklore in Florida
Greg, I finally got around to reading that article about folklore created by homeless kids in Florida. I'm too stunned to say anything more coherent than: Wow. It truly blew me away. Does anyone here want to discuss it? (Once I pick my jaw up off the floor...)
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allysonrosen
Registered User
(12/19/00 9:46:07 pm)
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Re: folklore in Florida
Terri:
I started a thread a couple of days ago tited "Abandonment," based on the mythic idea that God has left the Earth as abattle ground for demons and angels (the basis for the childrens' lore). I'd love to hear your thoughts on what was brought to my mind in the article...peruse away!
Allyson
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Gregor9
Registered User
(12/21/00 8:29:00 am)
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re: Folklore in Florida
Terri,
It IS stunning, isn't it? As if the colors of your Borderlands were bleeding into the world there.
We have Maureen McHugh to thank for it, ultimately. She sent me the web address for the article in the first place. I just kept thinking as I read that nothing I'd encountered in fiction was as rich as this cobbled-together body of beliefs. It's sort of the definitive "ecology of the supernatural" (as Mr. Dozois has coined it).
GF
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CoryEllen
Registered User
(12/21/00 8:56:51 am)
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Florida Nightmares
I read the article too, and have been leting my thoughts percolate for a few days before replying. Did anyone else find an unnerving resemblance to the Philip Pullman series here? God - Pullman's Authority - abandons the earth, leaves it to a force of fighting angels (who, in Pullman, attempt to cover up his disappearance). The Blue Lady of Florida, besides her Mary/Yemaja connections, seems something like the character of Mrs. Coulter, though more benign. The demons correspond to the various cliff-ghasts, wraiths, and evil clerics in the book.
I'm certainly not claiming that the children have read Pullman; I'm a little curious whether Pullman knew of this burgeoning folklore movement. But beyond this, isn't it fascinating how we create similar stories in such different spaces? Seeing the same physical events through various lenses (whether direct or media-ted), and using shared archetypes to reason and re-create them. Perhaps this doesn't make much sense to anyone else, but it at once frightens me and reaffirms for me the magick of the world.
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