Black Swan as done by The Kids in the Hall

In honor of the Oscars.

I Want This Book Out Of My Head: A Look at The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

"It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that need are. But it is easy to sigh. Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous." --The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West

But obviously that's not going to happen because I'm writing a review of it.

I've been sitting here for an hour trying to figure out how to begin writing about this complicated, depressing, horrific, thrilling novel and all I can think about is the movie Annie. Annie as in Little Orphan Annie, or rather the movie based on the musical based on the comic "Little Orphan Annie." Annie was one of my favorite movies growing up. It takes place In New York during the Great Depression and follows the adventures of an optimistic orphan girl after a blustery Wall Street tycoon takes her in. What does this have to do with The Day of the Locust? Well, there's this one scene where Annie goes to the movies for the first time in her life. At Radio City Music Hall, no less. It's a lot of fun, complete with countless ushers, giant moving set pieces and the Rockettes (who can sing without moving their mouths!). I always loved this scene and I think it says a lot about what going to the movies meant for people during the Great Depression. A chance to get away from the harshness of reality and escape into magical worlds, manufactured by Hollywood, where everybody lived in beautiful homes, burst into song, always had enough to eat and always lived happily ever after. It's easy to understand why people spent money on movie tickets even when they didn't know where their next meal was coming from. Movies made them feel good, and more than anything else, they needed to feel good. As the song goes in Annie, "Headlines holler 'Big Depression!' What do we care? Movies are there. Only happy endings. That's our recipe." A little ironic since they're about to watch Greta Garbo's Camille, but you get the idea.



The Day of the Locusts is a book about the movies. It came out in 1939, the last year of the Great Depression, and the year World War Two started. It's also the year considered by many to be Hollywood's finest, but in The Day of the Locust, Hollywood seems like a world unto itself, rotting in the wake of a coming apocalypse. Author Nathanael West focuses not on the stars, but on the lost souls who come to the coast filled with dreams, only to be met with disappointment and heartache. In the middle of this mess is Faye Greener, a beautiful but untalented would be-starlet, whose hunger for success has no hope of being fulfilled. West paints her as a symbol for Hollywood itself: a pretty shell with nothing of substance to offer. Faye uses the many men who desire her for what they can provide, but they too are riddled with delusions. Her neighbor, Tod Hackett, an artist fresh out of Yale, endures Faye's chatter in hopes of sleeping with her--to no avail. Another suitor, Homer Simpson, loves Faye, but is so self-deprecating and sexually repressed, he makes an easy target for abuse. There's no plot to speak of. The book unfolds as a series of encounters between these and other characters as they try to get along in Hollywood. Make no mistake though. This is a horror story. One I haven't been able to get out of my head for days.

Is it surprising that these characters are all miserable human beings? Faye is a petulant little girl, grotesque in spite of her beauty. Her dreams of stardom would be endearing if they weren't so thoughtless. Tod (whose name is spelled the same way as the German word for death AHEM) is convinced he's in love with Faye, but he also repeatedly wishes he had the "courage" to rape her. Homer is particularly frightening: a tightly wound time bomb, whose loneliness is as relentless as it is incurable. West's account of the emptiness of his life is deeply unsettling. There's also a vicious child actor, his inevitable stage mother who makes him perform sexually suggestive songs for Tod and Homer, two men who stage cockfights in Homer's garage, and Faye's alcoholic father, whose dreams of performing Shakespeare ended in a doomed vaudeville career. And then there are those who crowd the city streets and flood movie premiers, the locusts of the title, who "come to California to die," and ultimately discover what terrible things can happen when large groups of people are possessed by a single idea.

What especially fascinated me about The Day of the Locust, and made me want to follow these unlikable characters on their journey, was West's use of what can only be called realistic surrealism. There's that old saying that fiction has to make sense; real life doesn't. Nothing fantastic happens in this book, but everything is imbued with a kind of strangeness, made all the more eerie by the fact that it can actually happen. Homer's nervous tics and Tod's Goya-inspired drawings. The too-mature words of a kid too young to understand what he's saying (who hasn't seen that before?). A wealthy movie man who builds a model of a dead horse in his swimming pool because he is just that wealthy. A realistic (read: gory) depiction of a cockfight. The canyons and hills and constant sunshine of California. It all contributes to a sense of uncomfortable unreality, but it all can (and does) really happen. Many scenes were inspired by West's own experiences as a Hollywood screenwriter. The Day of the Locust doesn't even feel like a story half the time. It feels like real life, and this just makes it scarier. And what better setting than Hollywood where reality and fantasy exist side by side until you can't tell where one ends and the other begins? The Day of the Locust explores the uncanny, decadent world of the movies and the effect they have on us. When we go to the movies, we know it's all fake and we accept it, but we still expect reality to measure up. And we get mad when it doesn't.

This is a great book. Nathanael West's writing is simple and beautiful even as it describes the most horrific behavior. It's also very (darkly) funny, and incredibly disturbing. Now remembered as one of the most important writers of the 1930's, West didn't achieve commercial success in his own time, constantly overshadowed by his good friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Day of the Locust is now considered the best book ever written about Hollywood. It also makes a fitting metaphor for the rise of the Third Reich (remember what I said about Tod's name?) and is definitely worth the read. The last line (which I don't dare spoil) is one of the creepiest I've ever read.

Unfortunately, West never lived to see his book achieve the status it has. He died, along with his wife, Eileen McKenney, in a car accident on December 22, 1940--the day after F. Scott Fitzgerald. He was 37.

Inevitably (and perhaps ironically), The Day of the Locust was made into a movie in 1975. Like its spiritual cousin, Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They, it was too depressing (and truthful) to be filmed in its own decade, so they had to wait until America was ready to be more honest with itself. I haven't seen the movie yet so I can't vouch for it, but the trailer makes it look really good (and faithful to the book). Let it double here as a book trailer if you're interested.

One question remains, however: did it have a fancy premier?

Defending Sisters Red

As you may have heard, On January 28, Bitch Magazine posted a list called 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader. Jackson Pearce's Sisters Red, which I devoted a long entry to back in June, was initially on the list, but it has since been removed. You will also find no trace of Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels and Elizabeth Scott's Living Dead Girl either, even though both were included in the original list. And that's where the fun begins. The day after the list went up, a complaint surfaced in the comments about Sisters Red. User Pandora wrote, "I am surprised that you included Jackson Pearce's Sisters Red on the list, mainly because of the rape culture debate it brought about..." This refers to a review that appeared in the blog, The Book Smugglers shortly after the book's publication last summer. In this review, two readers complained of the book's supposed victim-blaming attitude towards survivors of rape.

Just in case, you're at sea about all this, Sisters Red is a refreshing take on the classic fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood. It's about two sisters, Scarlett and Rosie, who survived a brutal werewolf attack when they were little girls. Now as young women, they hunt and kill "Fenris" (werewolf-type creatures who have a lot in common with sexual predators). Scarlett kept Rosie safe during the attack. She lost an eye and gained disfiguring scars as a result. Consequently, she lives for the hunt, even though Rosie wants a more normal life, especially after she falls for their childhood friend and fellow hunter, Silas. About halfway through the book, while out hunting, Scarlett stops outside of a club and sees a bunch of girls she refers to as "Dragonflies." Here's the passage:

"They’re adorned in glittery green rhinestones, shimmery turquoise and aquamarine powders streaked across their eyelids. Dragonfly girls. Their hair is all the same, long and streaked, spiralling down their backs to where the tiny strings holding their tops on are knotted tightly. Their skin glows under the neon lights – amber, ebony, cream – like shined metal, flawless and smooth. I press harder against the crumbly brick wall behind me, tugging my crimson cloak closer to my body. The scars on my shoulders show through fabric when I pull the cloak tight. Bumpy red hills in perfectly spaced lines.
The Dragonflies laugh, sweet, and bubbly, and I groan in exasperation. They toss their hair, stretch their legs, sway their hips, bat their eyes at the club’s bouncer, everything about them luring the Fenris. Inviting danger like some baby animal bleating its fool head off. Look at me, see how I dance, did you notice my hair, look again, desire me, I am perfect. Stupid, stupid Dragonflies. Here I am, saving your lives, bitten and scarred and wounded for you, and you don’t even know it. I should let the Fenris have one of you.
No, I didn’t mean that. I sigh and walk to the other side of the brick wall, letting my fingers tangle in the thick ivy. It’s dark on this side, shadowed from the neon lights of the street. I breathe slowly, watching the tree limbs sway, back lit by the lights of skyscrapers. Of course I didn’t mean it. Ignorance is no reason to die. They can’t help what they are, still happily unaware inside a cave of fake shadows. They exist in a world that’s beautiful normal, where people have jobs and dreams that don’t involve a hatchet. My world is parallel universe to their's – the same sights, same people, same city, yet the Fenris lurk, the evil creeps, the knowledge undeniably exists. If I hadn’t been thrown into this world, I could just as easily have been a Dragonfly." --Sisters Red, Jackson Pearce page 208

Shortly after this, Silas joins her and they have the following dialogue:

"His eyes narrow in something between disgust and intrigue, as though he’s not certain if he likes looking at them or not. I want to comment, but I stay quiet. Somehow it feels important to wait for his reaction. Silas finally turns to look at me in the shadows.
'It’s like they’re trying to be eaten, isn’t it?' he asks pointedly. 'Can I tell you how glad I am that you and Rosie aren’t like them?'
'No kidding.” I grin, relieved. “Rosie could be if she wanted, though. She’s beautiful like they are.'
'Beauty has nothing to do with it. Rosie could never be one of them. Do you really think they’d dress and act like that if they knew it was drawing wolves toward them?'"

Okay. I have to admit, this exchange bothered me too when I first read the book, because it does sound like victim-blaming. There's the classic argument that when a woman is raped, it's because she somehow "asked for it" (through her clothing, behavior, the look in her eye, that unattended drink that was just begging for a Roofie). Never mind the fact that she said no. This argument always infuriates me because it suggests that if women are stupid enough to behave like anything other demure, tight-lipped little girls who have no idea what sex is, they deserve what they get. There seems to be this attitude in society that a silent contract exists between men and women. Men have a constant, violent sexual appetite that can only be kept in check by the virginal behavior of the women around them. As soon as a woman violates her end of the contract with her dress etc., the man is free to break his and rape her if necessary. Therefore, it's the woman's fault, not the man's. After all, men can't help themselves and women know the rules, dammit. Not only does this attitude ignore that men can be raped and women can be rapists, it's insulting to just about everyone and doesn't do anything to prevent rape or help rape victims. And women are just as guilty of it as men. I've heard one girl call another a slut because of her outfit so. many. times. It doesn't make sense. When a person is raped, it is the fault of the rapist and only the rapist. It is NEVER the victim's fault. Rape is not a fact of life that we have to deal with like Mondays or too much snow. It's a crime, and to blame the victim is to ignore its severity.

So does this mean I agree with The Book Smugglers? Was my unabashed enjoyment of Sisters Red based solely on its connection to one of my favorite fairy tales? No. I really liked Sisters Red and I stand by my original opinion of it. We'll get to that in a minute. Those at Bitch Magazine, however, did not stand by their opinion. On February 1, after Pandora's complaint and others like it, they posted this:

"A couple of us at the office read and re-read Sisters Red, Tender Morsels and Living Dead Girl this weekend. We've decided to remove these books from the list -- Sisters Red because of the victim-blaming scene that was discussed earlier in this post, Tender Morsels because of the way that the book validates (by failing to critique or discuss) characters who use rape as an act of vengeance, and Living Dead Girl because of its triggering nature. We still feel that these books have merit and would not hesitate to recommend them in certain instances, but we don't feel comfortable keeping them on this particular list....We've replaced these books with Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley and Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden."

I do not think Pearce meant to "blame the victim." True, it bothered me at first, but I think it's supposed to bother the reader. We're not dealing with happy feelings here. The first passage is entirely from Scarlett's perspective, and it shows her mindset. Scarlett has one mission in life: to take down as many Fenris as possible. Unlike Rosie, she has no desire to fall in love or find a new interest, because only hunting matters to her. That doesn't stop her from observing the outside world. The Dragonfly scene, in my opinion, gives us access to Scarlett's vulnerability. When she looks at the Dragonflies, she can't help but think how different she is. She doesn't feel beautiful or desirable, and it bothers her. Not enough to make her give up hunting, but it does bother her. So when she sees pretty, flighty-seeming girls, made up for a night on the town and having fun, she projects her anger and regret onto them. It doesn't help that these are the girls she's fighting to protect and they get to live in oblivion while she has to live a life of constant responsibility. She understands her resentment is misplaced, but she can't help it, especially since she sees Rosie's Dragonfly potential. The only thing Scarlett cares about besides hunting is her relationship with Rosie, and to lose Rosie to the world of normality, represented by the Dragonflies, would be the worst kind of abandonment.

Which brings us to Silas and the second passage. At this point in the book, we know that Rosie and Silas are falling for each other and he's encouraging her to pursue interests that don't involve hunting. We know, but Scarlett doesn't (the sisters take turns narrating present-tense chapters). Scarlett isn't in love with Silas, (Pearce mercifully avoids the "sisters in love with the same guy" trope), but he is the person she's closest to besides Rosie. Silas has dialogue here, but the scene is still from Scarlett's perspective. She needs to see how he reacts to them. If he ever gets the urge for a normal life (again represented by the Dragonflies), she will lose him, because she will never be normal. When he dismisses the Dragonflies and talks about how glad he is Scarlett and Rosie aren't like "them," Scarlett is reassured. I interpreted Silas to have alternative motives here. He's going behind Scarlett's back, not being entirely honest and potentially threatening her relationship with Rosie, so he's appeasing her by telling her what she wants to hear. Which is essentially, who would want to be normal, when normality amounts to ignorance? He reinforces Scarlett's confidence, and keeps it all about hunting, letting her hold a higher ground. I don't see Silas as a devious character. He just wants to protect Scarlett from pain.

In other words, these passages, in my opinion, aren't about the Dragonflies or what makes the Fenris attack. It's about Scarlett and her feelings of isolation. The Book Smugglers criticized Sisters Red for suggesting that warrior women like Scarlett should be celebrated, while women who care about their appearance and like attention are lesser than. This ignores the fact that...

SPOILER

SPOILER WARNING

Rosie chooses a more normal life at the end of the book, even though Scarlett continues to hunt. They understand that they will always love each other no matter what, and they don’t need to want the same things out of life. They are both strong, capable young women, and their choices don’t change that. In other words, Rosie is not portrayed as weak for being pretty and wanting love. She chooses the world represented by the Dragonflies, and Scarlett accepts this. I really loved this about Sisters Red. I appreciated that Rosie got what she wanted, and Scarlett didn’t need to be “fixed.” I’m so glad there was no makeover scene, but I’m equally glad Rosie didn’t sacrifice her desires to make Scarlett happy.

END OF SPOILERS

There’s also the fact that nobody gets raped in Sisters Red. Even though I haven’t read them, I know Tender Morsels and Living Dead Girl both deal explicitly with rape. Sisters Red does not. The Fenris kill their victims, but they don’t rape them. That said, it’s naïve to expect a reader not to be reminded of rape when reading Sisters Red. Little Red Riding Hood has long been associated with sexuality, and the Fenris come across as metaphorical sexual predators. Their transformation from men to monsters is rooted in lust and they target young girls. However, this controversy seems to have marked Sisters Red as a novel specifically about rape, and it isn’t. This misinformation has seeped into the dialogue surrounding its removal. One anonymous Bitch Magazine commenter acknowledged that she hadn’t read the book, but had “heard” it glorified the pretty sister who hadn’t been raped, and negatively portrayed the sister who had been. True, she admitted she hadn’t read it but that’s not Sisters Red.

I’m not Jackson Pearce, so I can’t say for sure what she intended. Of course, everybody is entitled to his or her own opinion. All I’m saying is that a character’s opinion is not necessarily the opinion of the author or the message that author is trying to put forth in her book. Authors trust their readers to think for themselves. If Pandora, the Book Smugglers and other readers were offended by the Dragonfly scene, that's their prerogative. Likewise, Bitch Magazine can do whatever it wants, but I don't agree with their decision to remove these books from their list. Neither did a mess of YA authors, including Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier, who wrote in, requesting their books be removed as well. It feels like a very cowardly move on Bitch Magazine’s part. It's also confusing because these three books are not the only ones that deal with difficult issues. Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, which had to fight against being banned last September because of its frankness about date rape, has the number 4 spot. Wintergirls also by Anderson, has been cited as potentially triggering for people suffering from eating disorders, and it's still on the list. So why these three? Because they started the loudest fireworks? It’s kowtowing, plain and simple. In their eagerness to please and not offend, the staffers at Bitch Magazine made themselves look foolish. Obviously, the list has no impact on the availability of these books, but it does stuff them in a closet, potentially hiding them from readers who might have found comfort and understanding in them, and that’s a shame.

I feel bad for Bitch Magazine because they were trying to do a good thing here. It’s impossible to please everyone with a list like this, because as this controversy proves, whether or not a book has value from a feminist standpoint often depends on the reader. I’ve heard the much-maligned Twilight saga championed as a feminist narrative because even though Bella Swan chooses immortality with her boyfriend over a human life, that’s her choice and it’s perfectly valid. And even though Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games is a hardened survivor who risks her life to save her sister, she still spends much of the series trying to decide between two guys. So is there such a thing as the perfect feminist narrative or heroine? I don’t think so. Does loving Disney princesses and fairy tales make me a bad feminist? I can give you plenty of reasons why it doesn’t, but I’m sure some of you could give me just as many reasons why it does. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. In the meantime, I’m on Jackson’s side.

UPDATE: On February 5, Bitch Magazine posted this. It's not a retraction or an apology, but you can tell they're feeling antsy.

"They Were Both Very Unpleasant Characters!" : A Look at "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll

Happy Birthday, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson...also known as Lewis Carroll, author of the Alice Books!

In honor of Mr. Carroll's 179th birthday, I have taken the liberty of posting two versions of "The Walrus and the Carpenter," one of Carroll's most beloved poems. The first clip is from the Disney animated version. The poem is heavily abridged, but I love the music and it features some awesome voice acting. J. Pat O'Malley, Disney voice veteran, plays EVERY ROLE: The Tweedles, the Walrus, the Carpenter AND all the Oysters. Crazy. The second clip is a proper unabridged recitation. I wanted to post the scene from the 1998 BBC version that starred Kate Beckinsale as Alice. It is tied with the Disney animated version as my favorite Alice adaptation. Alas, the embedding is unavailable, but seek it out yourselves!

People love analyzing "The Walrus and the Carpenter." Some people interpet it to be about religion or imperialism. Some just see it as a poem about a walrus and a carpenter who deceive and eat a bunch of oysters. Personally, I like reading the poem as an examination of "Action vs. Intention." Who is the worse character? The Walrus who eats more oysters but feels sorry, or the Carpenter who doesn't eat as many, but is very callous about it all? Alice's conclusion? "They were both very unpleasant characters!" Whatever the interpretation, it's definitely one of the most whimsical poems about deception and murder I've ever read.

Happy Birthday, Lewis Carroll!

My Ten Favorite Books of 2010

December was a dark abyss, my friends. A dark abyss of Christmas carols, room cleaning and general laziness. Hence my harsh abandonment. But I have returned and what better way to resurrect this self-indulgent soundboard than with...a LIST!!!Yes. A List of my ten favorite books of 2010. Books I loved and gushed about to friends and strangers alike. Everybody neat and pretty? Then on with the show!


10. Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

A classic fairy tale. A hero who knits. And the loveliest description of black sand I have ever read. All around wonderful. Also rescued me from one hell of a reading rut. THREE months of so-so books and then this. Magic.

9. The Diaries of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain

Twain presents the parents of mankind as a pair of (seemingly) mismatched kids who have no choice but to face the fledgling world together. One of those books that wins your heart with humor and then tears it shreds. Funniest part: Adam trying to explain to Eve why they can’t domesticate a dinosaur.

8. Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce

Take Little Red Riding Hood. Now craft her into TWO teenage heroines who know how to fight. Now take the Big Bad Wolf and turn him into a species of scary, sex criminalish man-wolves. See who makes it out alive.

7. The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart

The Parent Trap in Northumberland. Only with murder, ballads and a hot Irish sociopath. Am I over-simplifying? Hells yes. But don’t tell me you aren’t intrigued.

6. The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins (I’m counting them as one!)

Kids fighting to the death on live TV. Is it any mystery why this series is so popular? These books are brutal, bleak and unbelievably addictive. And of course, there's an impossibly perfect love interest.

5. The Collector by John Fowles

A butterfly collector kidnaps the young woman he’s stalked for years and keeps her locked in his basement as his “guest.” He wants her to fall in love with him. She keeps a diary. They talk about The Catcher in the Rye. What starts as a provocative character study subtly evolves into a meditation on life, God and humanity.

4. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

A love letter to stream-of-consciousness and the scent of honeysuckle. Three brothers, each with his own issues (mental disability; sexual neurosis; all-around awfulness), narrate the story of their sister Caddy's “moral downfall.” I had to read a good amount aloud just to figure out what was going on, but I had the time of my life. It's all a metaphor for the post-Civil War South, but the unsung tragedy is that Caddy Compson never gets to speak for herself. Her brothers have to tell her story for her, and as fascinating as they are, it speaks to how women have been and continue to be silenced for their transgressions. Intellectually and emotionally satisfying, this is one classic that deserves the title.

3. Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

Powerful. A book that reduced me to tears not only because it’s sad, but because it’s so beautifully written. The Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche retold by Orual, the archetypal “ugly stepsister.” One of the best and most meaningful books I’ve ever read.

2. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Is it wrong that I want to have dinner with a family decimated by poison? Maybe, but Jackson is just that good at what she does here. Our narrator, Merricat has an ucannily eerie voice that somehow manages to be familiar and oddly welcoming. Provided you’re not her cousin Charles, that is. Post scriptum? Best title ever.

1. The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

I love this book for many reasons.

A. It's a wonderful book. A great adventure yarn about storytelling (and grave robbery!) that evokes Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens, but does it in 19th century America. Great characters, excellent writing, and a story that is both fun and very moving. (Whaling gets a shout out too!) In short, just an all around pleasurable reading experience.

B. I read it in Disneyland, my favorite place on Earth (and the Happiest, as you may have heard).

C. It is the luckiest book in the world. After I finished it, I looked up the author and discovered she co-founded a magazine called One Story that just happened to be sponsoring a summer Writing Workshop. I applied and got in and it was a great experience. It also led to a writing fever that got me to finally finish my story, "Slut." The story that eventually got published. So yeah. The Good Thief is the luckiest book in the world. And a great, great read.

Rapunzel gets more done in one song than I get done all day! : A Look at Tangled

Tangled is wonderful.

I went to see it out of pure obligation, all ready to hate it because of the CGI and the fact that it looked nothing like Rapunzel, but it won me over. I loved it. I have now seen it twice. I even paid the ridiculous price and saw it in 3-D today as a reward to myself for winning NaNoWriMo (*bows head proudly*). I laughed a lot. I squealed with joy. I got chills and leaned forward in my seat and cried. The animation is beautiful, the songs are splendid and the story is good. It's not Rapunzel as the Brothers Grimm told it, but there were enough references to keep me happy--one in particular which I would tell, but then you would have every right to kill me. Going in, I was especially curious to see how they handled one of the story's more infamous plot points.

In the fairy tale, the Prince visits Rapunzel in the tower at night when the Witch isn't there. And at the end of the fairy tale, there are twin babies, even though there was no wedding. It was a fun day when little Erin realized this meant they had had sex during those nightly visits. The Brothers Grimm got a lot of complaints from parents about that one and had to do their fair share of moral clean-up, but it's there. Needless to say, Disney cut this. And even though I would have liked to see the House of Mouse pull off late-night tower trysts and premarital pregnancy, maybe now is not the time. Besides such a thing would most likely make the planet fall of its axis, and we wouldn't want that to happen.

I did quite a bit of griping when the trailer first came out because this clearly was not the Rapunzel I knew and loved. But Tangled knocked me off that high horse but quick. I enjoyed it too much. The fun thing about fairy tales (besides the gore and the Jungian archetypes) is that they belong to a colorful, fascinating tradition. Through the centuries, storytellers passed fairy tales down to the next generation changing details, adding twists and putting their mark on them. Disney has gotten a lot of flak for tampering with their source material, and yes, when it's a book or a literary fairy tale (hello, Little Mermaid), I get the griping, but when the story's from the oral tradition (as Rapunzel is) Disney's doing what storytellers have always done. After all, at its most basic, what is Rapunzel about? A girl with hair long enough to climb spends her days locked in a tower, the prisoner of her overbearing foster mother, until a man comes to the tower and rocks her world. And that, at its most basic, is what Tangled's about. The difference is in the details. If I hated Tangled because it isn't exactly like the fairy tale, I would also have to hate Revolting Rhymes, Ever After, The Company of Wolves, Kissing the Witch and Ella Enchanted (the BOOK), and I love all those things--note I said Ella Enchanted the BOOK. Besides the nice thing about this post-printing press, post-Internet world we live in is that you can still read the Brothers Grimm version any time you want.

"Oh, don't mind us. We're just going to stay in and have illicit relations that will scandalize parents for generations to come. You two enjoy your adventure."

Anyway. With that off my chest...

In Tangled, Rapunzel is a fully developed character, torn between obeying her mother and becoming her own person. She fulfills her fair share of princess stereotypes (pretty, sings while she cleans, animal sidekick), but her main focus is not a prince or true love, it's becoming a woman in her own right and discovering the world on her terms. Also some kind of miracle must have gone down at the Disney studio because they managed to produce a love interest who is not simply a love interest, but ALSO a fully developed character. His name is Flynn Rider, and I have a big crush on him. I am always a sucker for boys and girls working together on an equal plane, and this movie delivered that: two fully developed characters working in tandem, being equal partners, having awesome adventures AND actual conversations before they fall in love. Someone sound the trumpets! My biggest problem with The Princess and the Frog was that the romance between Tiana and Naveen felt way too rushed. One minute they hated each other, the next they were in love. Rapunzel and Flynn actually become friends during their adventure. And it's fun. Yes, the main action of the movie goes down over the course of three days, but I still felt like I knew them and they knew each other.

Speaking of which, Tangled seems to have sorted out a lot of the problems I had with The Princess and the Frog. Don't get me wrong. I like The Princess and the Frog. The animation is beautiful, and Tiana is kickass, but now when I watch it, it feels a little...preachy. Disney was way too aware of its reputation making that movie. I'm thinking primarily of the Charlotte's princess obsession, and Tiana's father's speech about "it takes more than wishing." I could practically hear the Disney people saying "See! See! We know what we've done in the past, but loooooook! We have a head on our shoulders now!" That doesn't make the animation less beautiful or Tiana less awesome, but it does take me out of the movie when I watch it now. I had a few teeny, tiny problems with Tangled's story, but for the most part it's good and tight. I got completely lost in it both times. The commercials made Tangled look like a Dreamworks knock-off, but it isn't. It has the heart of ten Shreks plus two. It feels like a Disney movie.

As for the voices: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi and Donna Murphy are the headliners as Rapunzel, Flynn Rider and Mother Gothel (the villain) respectively. When I heard Mandy Moore had been cast, I was concerned that come movie time, I would only see and hear Mandy Moore and not Rapunzel (such is often the case when famous people do voice work). However, I need not have worried. Her voice fit the character to a tee. It's a credit both to her performance and the strength of the animation that I only ever saw and heard Rapunzel. Donna Murphy, an acclaimed Broadway actress, does a deliciously evil turn as Mother Gothel. I had a few issues with this character (which I would go into if they didn't totally spoil the movie), but Murphy's performance was not one of them. She has one of those voices that can bring out a myriad of sounds in one word, adding a lot of life and nuance to the character. And boy can she sing. Zachary Levi was the real surprise here. Evoking Errol Flynn (the character's namesake), he makes Flynn sarcastic but never smarmy, lovably arrogant, very funny and refreshingly genuine. Brad Garrett, Jeffrey Tambor and Ron Perlman are a few of the familiar voices that add to the fun. And everybody does their own singing! Yay!

As for the animation: I'm a sucker for hand-drawn. I will always love hand-drawn. I will always resent that Disney felt the need to abandon the artform that gave them their start, the artform American animation was built on. I've never understood why computer animation is considered a higher level of animation, as if hand-drawn evolved into computer animation. They're two different kinds of animation, two different means of creating art. I enjoy both as long as there's a well-told story behind it all, but I still nurse an aching loyalty to hand-drawn. Until Tangled, I always felt that as moving as Pixar's films are, there's an intimacy and warmth to hand-drawn animation that CGI can't imitate. Wall-E, Up and Toy Story 3 did their part to challenge that, but Tangled pushed me over the edge, probably because it is a Disney movie (not a Pixar movie being released by Disney) and I no longer felt the need to be defensive. Throughout this movie, you can see so much life and emotion in the characters eyes. You can count individual blades of grass and almost feel the sun on your face. Rapunzel's hair looks real. And there's one scene (again I can't spoil it), that moved me to tears, because of the combination of everything: music, story and animation. The scene was so astonishingly beautiful, I couldn't help crying. I was just so happy to be a part of it.

As for the music...whew, this review is getting long. Let's just say I bought the soundtrack as soon as I got home, and I've been playing it non-stop. If "I See the Light" doesn't win the Oscar for Best Song, I will be one unhappy camper.

There's been a lot of hoopla about how Disney has decided to move away from fairy tales and princess movies in the coming years. They actually changed the title of the movie from Rapunzel to Tangled to assure audiences that this wasn't (GASP) a GIRL'S movie (shudder). On one level, I agree with the title change, because this isn't a straight retelling of Rapunzel; it's a completely new take on it. It would be damn confusing if every retelling of Cinderella were actually called Cinderella. However, Disney's REASON for the title change makes my blood boil. Flynn Rider's prominence over Rapunzel in the advertising was another result of this blatant sexism (and Disney, I love you, but it is sexism). My theater was PACKED with boys AND girls, and everybody seemed to be loving it. Put that in your market testing pipe and smoke it, Disney. Not to mention the fact that there are LOADS of fairy tales with boys at the center. Or that there are LOADS of NON-fairy tale stories you could tell about girls. Or that it's flat out wrong that boys apparently have to be catered to and bathed in testosterone every time they go to the movies, while girls are expected to enjoy anything--even though girls are consistently and repeatedly forced to serve as tokens or love interests in movie after movie. Tangled is not just a princess movie. It's the story of a young woman's coming-of-age. And so far, it's pretty darn successful--the most successful opening weekend a (non-Pixar) Disney animated movie has had since The Lion King in 1994. I know it's not just Disney. It's all of Hollywood, but I hope Tangled does its part to prove that audiences want and need movies about girls, fairy tale-based or not.

In short: Go see Tangled. It's very good. That is all.

Silly old bear.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

Obviously, I have to turn in my mouse ears because I did not even know this was in the works. A hand-drawn Winnie the Pooh based on the original A.A. Milne stories!

I love Winnie-the-Pooh. I love the books, and I love the Disney cartoons. These cartoons, starting with the first animated short "Winne the Pooh and the Honey Tree" in 1965, purposely imitated the look of E.H. Shephard's classic illustrations. They include numerous short subjects, feature films, and TV series. I've been reading and watching Winnie the Pooh forever. I cried when I learned that Disney had lost the rights to use Christopher Robin for their TV series and had replaced him with a girl character. So when I saw this trailer for a new movie to be released in 2011, I was struck dumb with delight.



First of all, it's hand-drawn. That alone would be cause for rejoicing. I'm excited for Tangled (even if it looks like no version of Rapunzel I ever read), but Tangled is CG. As much as I love Pixar, hand-drawn animation feels like home to me. Second of all, Christopher Robin is back. From the start, the tears were biding their time, but as soon as Christopher Robin appeared (a little taller if I'm not mistaken), the floodgates burst open. Also the new movie is based on Milne's stories and features the "book format" of the original Disney-Pooh cartoons.

Did I mention it's hand-drawn? Beautifully hand-drawn too, from the looks of things. The combination of Pooh and old-school animation is almost too good to be true. Pooh needs to hand-drawn. There's a warmth and melancholy beauty to the Hundred Acre Wood that hand-drawn animations brings out so well. I am a slave to nostalgia (especially Disney nostalgia), so this well and truly made my day. I officially can't wait.

In the meantime, if you ever want to know why "pooh" is the best thing to say to swan, I will happily tell you.

P.S. That uncannily appropriate song in the background is Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know."