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This sounds like one of the stories out of A Thousand Nights of Snowfall btw...
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'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
Having introduced Snow* White I wondered about the wicked witch.
Did she have a sex life? As she could make herself appear younger and beautiful, and was so in the Disney Cartoon movie (quite Anne Bancroftish, I thought) she should have been able to attract whatever partners she wished, especially as many people are willing to become submissive to a dominant woman. Surely she must have been repressed sexually to have these thoughts of destroying Snow White when other options giving more pleasure were available. It also meant that she did not have to go up that mountain in the storm and get her make up wet.
* In the chemistry nomenclature world W is for Wolfram later named Tungsten. For some reason, no doubt due to the Astronomer Royal, whenever I see the W in a word I immediately think of a T.
So our heroine becomes Snot White, which I think better reflects her character as an invasive little do gooder on the run from legally constituted authority after having instigated a breach of legal responsibility and eco-damage in the huntsman not following a direct order and also killing wildlife to help in the deception.
Isn't Snow White the only Disney cartoon to show blood?
But not as much as the version my grandmother told me, with the whole eating of raw heart, lungs brain etc... And the thing that seemed suspiciously like sexual assault on a minor.
Sleeping Beauty has as well I think. But that is only a fingertip being pricked if I recalled rightly.
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'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
I misheard the story of Sleeping Beauty and thought she woke up fingering a prick. Hmmmm, I think I still have the same problem, whatever it was.
In Science of Discworld 3 they discuss the 'cleaning up' of 'fairy stories' and the true story of Rumplestiltskin is revealed -, before your very eyes - as was said on days of yore, and gore, and other things.
Still, to speculate on the motivators of the characters in fairy stories, such as 'Puss in boots' which has been dealt with nicely in then porn literature, is to maintain intellectual vigour. I am waiting for someone to explain 'puss in boots' as the adventures of a lass in a chemist store in England. Any story tellers out there want to set up the basic scenario?
Hah! The version of Sleeping Beauty I remembered best didn't involve spinning wheels at all... And she gave birth to twins when she was still comatose- The 'noble' prince never woke her up.
Fairy tales are weird.
And I think Anne Rice (A. N. Roquelaure) is your best bet there.
Zillions of moons ago, before it was available in print in Oz, someone I know in the maritime services sent to me a text copy of the first volume of 'Politically Correct Bedtime stories' (sic) (Apologies if I have title wrong but I will update with edit if I can get the old floppy on which it is stored to function.
If you know of these you will appreciate them, if not, as you may guess from the title they are the old fairy stories reworked to remove the gender biases (sometimes forcibly). They are very funny reads for that.
How about a radical feminist reworking of a fairy tale?
That one has "Pigmentally-challenged and the Seven Vertically-challenged Persons" yes?
It was the second Science of Discworld by the way. Because I remember that but have not read 3 yet.
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'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
In Disney's "Pinocchio", Pinocchio is actually dead from drowning at the end. I'm not sure how or why a solid wood marionette breathes (or subsequently drowns) but he is shown face down in the tidal pool and then dead on the bed with Geppetto mourning him. It is this lifeless body that the Blue Fairy reanimates.
Even creepier is Collodi's original, where the 'real' Pinocchio is able to look at his previous marionette body, up on the shelf and lifeless, and remark, "How ridiculous I looked".
In Spielberg's oedipal reworking ("AI") the robot David 'falls asleep' with his mother and, presumably, shuts himself down into death.
Recalling the dinosaur fight in Fantasia I don't recall seeing any blood, nor in Robin Hood (the cartoon version, or come to think of it, in the Errol Flynn version either. Must watch both again in a spirit of research).
And Kitten,
Concerning the Sleeping Beauty: isn't it most females experience that they don't get excited enough with most males that they could sleep through the whole thing?
robert Wrote:
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>
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> In Spielberg's oedipal reworking ("AI") the robot
> David 'falls asleep' with his mother and,
> presumably, shuts himself down into death.
God, I hate that end bit! It's got to have one of the most beautiful pieces of film prose ever. Still can't think of it now without blubbing, and it doesn't help to remember that Hailthee Don Osmond, or whatever his name is, is actually a very hale and healthy teenager with pimples and a brain the size of an Easter bunny currant. Probably.
I have a book with pictures from the Errol Flynn movie. I used to love it.
Still do. Just that it is on the other side of the country.
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'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland