Showing posts with label PopFTDiscussions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PopFTDiscussions. Show all posts

Sunday, January 13, 2019

Amnesty International PSA: "No Consent = No Fairytale"

A heavier subject today but a prevalent one that's been discussed inside fairy tale circles for a long time. Since the #MeToo era began, the issue of consent in fairy tales has included the public at large and brought to society's attention how prevalent and dangerous the issues surrounding consent remain in our upbringing.

Amnesty International's most recent PSA highlights the importance of having the definitive legal definition of rape as being based on the absence of consent. The campaign focusing on this issue uses something not-too-surprising: a sleeping fairy tale princess being kissed (and felt up) by a prince.

Take a look:
While the basis of recognizing rape by the absence of consent is the international standard of human rights, only nine out of thirty-three European countries recognize this "simple truth" (the UK being counted separately in this instance). While at first, it seems like a no-brainer for countries to adopt this as a legal definition, the truth is it gets murky pretty quickly due to the current, very flawed, need to "prove" rape by the victim, usually based on resistance.

From Amnesty International, UK:
"... the remaining European countries are lagging far behind, with their criminal laws still defining rape on the basis of physical force or threat thereof, coercion or inability to defend oneself.  
According to the European Commission’s 2016 survey on gender-based violence, almost one-third of respondents considered that sexual intercourse without consent may be justified “in certain circumstances.” These included, for example, if the person is drunk or under the influence of drugs, is voluntarily going home with someone, wearing revealing clothes, not saying “no” clearly or not fighting back."
When using the images of a sleeping Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, who are under enchantment, or in a death-like sleep, it should be noted these are very apt metaphors for situations in which consent is absent - and it's not due to passivity. The lack of body response or resistance has been proven to be a very real - and involuntary - physical defense. 
"In fact, despite the expectation that a “model” rape victim will fight her attacker back, freezing when confronted with a sexual attack has been recognised as a common physiological and psychological response, leaving the person unable to oppose the assault, often to the point of immobility. For example, a 2017 Swedish clinical study found that 70% of the 298 women rape survivors assessed experienced “involuntary paralysis” during the assault."
This is especially important to consider as there is a very real and justified fear by victims that resistance will equal death. (You can read more about this in the Amnesty International article.) Clearly, survivors are still getting the majority of the blame for being assaulted. How this mentality is still prevalent in 2018-19 is head-scratching.

What fairy tale folk and storytellers should be aware of is the enormous role and obstacle that myth and stereotypes play to adopting the consent-based definition. This, of course, includes how fairy tales are being told and retold. Our modern versions of 'happily ever' after might appear cleaner on the surface (with the "it's just a harmless kiss" mentality) than older tale versions that blatantly include the obsession of a prince with a dead body, or the rape of a sleeping maiden alone in the woods, but it's clear these "sanitized" versions have added to the harm by romanticizing acts of obsession, power and violence over (mainly) women and children. While there are no easy or straightforward solutions as far as retelling fairy tales go (banning just sweeps things under the carpet and does much more harm than good, and any retold version will likely include societal bias and the prevalent social attitudes), these oft-repeated and referred-to tales need to, once again, be revised in their retelling.1
It's not that this isn't being done, by the way. It's that the revised versions, and sometimes older and better variants, aren't the most popular, accessible image of those tales (still!)2. The public generally isn't aware that other ways of telling these stories exist, so the old ones are perpetuated, if at all. While Disney (arguably the strongest pop-culture fairy tale influence on the world) has finally shown a change in the way they tell their (market-dominating) versions of the tales, consistency of resistance to the harmful classic images needs to continue, and how we tell the tales to our children and audiences needs to be far more discerning. There are many (many!) resources of revisionist fairy tales, for young children through grown-ups, but there are also, it should be noted, far more 'healthy' variants or versions of these old fairy tales available - and easily accessible! - for the telling3. The age of the internet means you often don't even need to leave your house to find them. Sometimes it's as easy as going to that (rarely-visited) second or third page of Google search results.

Heigh-ho storytellers!

Footnotes:
1 It obviously isn't enough to just call a rape, a rape, in the retellings. We also need to address the issue of women, and society, accepting marriage to their attackers - and/or a payoff in terms of a crown and increased status - as a 'happy ending'.
2  And it's not (as we heard someone say recently) about removing the "classic romance" of childhood fairy tales. It's about revising what romance is considered to be. 
3  Thanks to the efforts of newly published collections of fairy tales such as the Oddly Modern Fairy Tales series, and storytellers, like Dr. Zalka Csenge Virág who are mining the wealth of old tales in libraries and universities around the world for stories we can - and should - be telling.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

The Transformation of FLOTUS: A Dark Fairy Tale for the Season

In April of 2017, writer Kate Imbach wrote a reflection on Melania Trump, the then-new FLOTUS, as considered through the lens of Melania's personal photos, titled Fairytale Prisoner by Choice: The Photographic Eye of Melania Trump. The article was prompted by the odd issue that the new first lady was so very absent, compared to most other FLOTUS'  of the past.
Imbach wrote:
Why won’t the first lady show up for her job? Why? I became obsessed with this question and eventually looked to Melania’s Twitter history for answers. I noticed that in the three-year period between June 3, 2012 and June 11, 2015 she tweeted 470 photos which she appeared to have taken herself. I examined these photographs as though they were a body of work. 
Everyone has an eye, whether or not we see ourselves as photographers. What we choose to photograph and how we frame subjects always reveals a little about how we perceive the world. For someone like Melania, media-trained, controlled and cloistered, her collection of Twitter photography provides an otherwise unavailable view into the reality of her existence. Nowhere else — certainly not in interviews or public appearances — is her guard so far down. 
What is that reality? She is Rapunzel with no prince and no hair, locked in a tower of her own volition, and delighted with the predictability and repetition of her own captivity.
Written during the time when Melania declined moving to the White House and opted to stay in Trump Tower, it's an interesting assessment, and although sympathy from readers varies, the consensus seems to be that loneliness is, indeed an ongoing factor in this woman's life. The photos from high up - an actual tower - with the same landscape and differing only in weather and time of day, do give the viewer pause.

Just as interesting is the interpretation of Melania's photos of the interior of Trump Tower:

 We can all picture the gilded monstrosity of the Trump home from publicity photos (chandeliers, sad boy astride a stuffed lion, golden pillars), but it is a different place through Melania’s eyes. She takes photographs inside her house at weird, skewed angles. It is a strange effect when the half-obscured objects, chairs and ceilings, are all so golden. It looks like what a terrified little girl held captive in a ogre’s fairytale castle might see when she dares to sneak a peek through her fingers. (source: Kate Imbach)


If you haven't seen this essay finding the parallels between Rapunzel and Melania, pre and post FLOTUS status, it's worth a read. While the writer is clearly critical of Melania's 'fitness' to be a first lady, its' nevertheless a very different look at Melania Trump as a person. You can find the whole article, with Melania's photos throughout, HERE.

FAST FORWARD TO DECEMBER 2017:

Melania is now at the White House and chose to take an active - and apparently personal - role in decorating her new(ish) home, for the season. It's safe to say the public reaction to photos has been, less than warm...

A tweet from Donald Haase:


My retweet & comment:

And back to the growing list of folklore and fairy tale references mentioned (note: I have screen-captured the tweets referred to and inserted them after my tweets so readers can easily see what's being referred to, but the links in the embedded tweets also send you to the original tweet for the sources):



   

   


Note how the feet appear in the photo - enlarged below (it's obviously a lighting issue but it's still an interesting connection):





This comment (screen-capped below) expanded the supernatural narrative. Meant to entertain, it's also an interesting place to go:

A reply to one of the earlier tweets, pointing out the use of folklore:

And the tweet that prompted me to put it all in one place:

As an interesting callback to the original article about Melania in her tower, I thought I'd finish with the final sentence by Imbach, which has more resonance than ever:
 She’s living inside a dark fairytale, and in fairytales the women trapped in towers never save anyone but themselves.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Boston Begins City-Wide Fairy Tale Reading & Discussion Of Kelly Link's "The Faery Handbag"

Charles Vess - The Faery Handbag (from The Faery Reel)
Yes. It's not a traditional fairy tale, but Kelly Link's Nebula and Hugo award wining novelette The Faery Handbag is one of those few "new fairy tales" that have stuck with us ever since we first read it, The Faery Reel: Tales From Within the Twilight Realm (Ellen Datlow & Terri Winding 2004). We have read a lot of "new fairy tales" and while the writing is usually lovely and, occasionally, a story will resonate with us, not many of those stories sink into our subconscious fairy tale soup and stay there, becoming part of the shared language. 

A very strange thing, to us, is that we remember reading it for the first time, and, while thinking it was kinda neat, though more modern, more magic realism than fairy tale, not what we would have thought as "fairy tale", so just went on to read the rest of the volume. But somehow the ideas and the story wouldn't go away and we found ourselves thinking about the story in the following days and well after that. We haven't looked closely at why this is. We agree the story feels more like a modernized Victorian fairy tale to us than a "classic" one - not our preferred tale types - but the ideas... they feel very like they fit, right in Faerie Land, and by Faerie Land we mean the land in which fairy tales take place, whether fairies appear there or not.


Magic bags that hold things larger than themselves aren't a new concept in tales. We admit we are quite enamored of the idea that you can pack an entire room - or house! - into a carpet bag (Mary Poppins, Merlin in the Sword and the Stone) and simply carry it with you to your new abode. Magic purses, sacks and knapsacks have been able to capture, tame and contain everything from the sea to Death (The Soldier and Death), not to mention come in useful for benevolent gift givers during the Yule and Christmas season. The classic rabbit in a hat magician's staple, is a variant of these as well. Modern fantasy films employ this idea regularly too, but Link brings a fresh take to this delightful idea.

But back to the news.

The annual One City One Story movement, launched as part of the Boston Book Festival, is a pretty neat idea. Here's what it is:
One City One Story is the Boston Book Festival’s version of an all-city read, but instead of a book, we print and distribute a short story. Our goal is to make a short story available to all, free of charge, to spread the joy of reading for pleasure among the teens and adults of our city, and to create a community around a shared reading experience.
As part of this initiative, in the past they have offered online translations and downloads, led citywide discussions, leading up to a town-hall style discussion with the author, library discussions, distributed the story throughout the city for free in multiple languages, held a writing contest, online reading groups and discussions with the author.

Shaun Tan's illustration for The Faery Handbag
is very different from Charles Vess'
but equally intriguing
This year they've chosen Kelly Link's The Faery Handbag, which means, people are having conversations and discussing fairies and fairy tales, especially in a modern context, in many different places in one city. Not entirely coincidentally, the story is also set in the greater Boston area, so locals are even more likely to imagine fairy tale magic just around the corner.

If you haven't heard of it, you will find many references to it. Here's a great way to introduce the central concept, by way of a discussion on fabulism:
Fabulism is a curious way to explore and understand the ordinary. In Link’s story, the speaker spends her time hunting for this handbag. It’s black, made from dog-skin, with a clasp of bone that can open three different ways:
 If you opened it one way, then it was just a purse big enough to hold […] a pair of reading glasses and a library book and pillbox. If you opened the clasp another way, then you found yourself in a little boat floating at the mouth of a river. […] If you opened the handbag the wrong way, though, you found yourself in a dark land that smelled like blood. That’s where the guardian of the purse (the dog whose skin had been sewn into a purse) lived.
Fabulism is a lot like this purse. It seems to belong to this world, but doesn’t follow all of the rules. It beckons you. It’s off. The more you explore it, the more mystery and power it has.

You can find the many, many different places they're giving out the story for free in a list HERE.
The Faery Handbag - Artist unknown
You can read the story online HERE or download an English, Spanish or Russian PDF, or a Kindle or Ebook version HERE (more languages coming apparently).

On September 28th there will be a discussion of The Faery Handbag, care of Boston's NPR, WBUR, and they promise other discussions throughout the community to be announced soon as well. There's also a writing prompt for a contest with prizes. (Gotta love that!)

Want more food for thought? Again from the highly recommended article on Diving into the Faery Handbag: On Fabulism:
The greatest part of the faery handbag is that there’s a wrong way to open it — meaning a dangerous way, a way that can eat you alive. And it’s that third compartment or “way of opening up” that separates the magical realism of childhood stories from the magical realism of stories for adults.
And because the proposed discussion questions are great to kick your brain into gear, even if you haven't read the story, we are putting the discussion prompts and questions below. Enjoy!
Chris Riddell - lady with carpet bag from sketchbook
Discussion Questions1. How did the jump between times/focuses affect your reading of the story?
2. Was Jake’s decision to go into the bag justified? Why or why not? Why do you think Zofia refused to let Genevieve go after him? 
3. After Zofia dies Genevieve becomes the official heir and guardian of the bag. What does this role mean if the bag is lost?  
4. Genevieve is a headstrong teenager entirely wrapped up in thoughts of her missing boyfriend and the fantastical world her grandmother taught her about. Does this make it difficult for you to sympathize with her or trust her as a narrator? Why? 
5. What lost item (like the Sesame Street shirt) would you like to find at The Garment District? What is the significance to you of finding something you thought was lost forever? 
6. How might this story have changed if Jake had not gotten expelled and MIT had not rescinded his acceptance? 
7. What is the importance of Scrabble tiles also acting as divination tiles in the story? Does it affect the way you read Zofia and Genevieve’s relationship to the game? 
8. What do you think will happen to Genevieve after this story ends? 
9. Does Zofia’s death (or absence, if you follow the thought that she didn’t actually die) force Genevieve to act differently than she would have before? If so, what is the difference?  
10. Do the characters in this story remind you of people you know? Is this affected by the familiar setting (greater Boston). Does this change the way you read the fantastical elements of the story? How? 
Writing Prompt 
In 500-700 words describe what you would expect or hope to see after disappearing into your own faery handbag for several decades. Email your story to info@bostonbookfest.org by Friday, September 30 for a chance to win a BBF prize package, including a signed copy of this year’s story!
The Boston Carpet Bag newspaper, 1851-1853

Monday, August 24, 2015

Disney Parodies Snow White & Other Fairy Tales in "Wish Upon A Coin"

Once of the best things coming out of the various Disney animation studios at the moment are the new generation Mickey Mouse Cartoon - Disney Shorts. The original spirit of Mickey is there, along with some needed sweetness (which Mickey has been known for since the parks opened) and it's one of the best uses of excellent comedic timing that Disney has ever done with Mickey Mouse (I cannot watch the old Mickey shorts - their comedy timing is awful and irritates the heck out of me).




One of their newest Mickey shorts, however, is a bit of a surprise. I wasn't initially surprised to see a send-up of Snow White and parodying different aspects, but I was with some of the paths it went down! Despite the borderline issues it may have, it's still one of the better parodies I've seen and still manages to be sweet in the end.

Take a look:
Not quite what you expected but still rather satisfying and funny-sweet, no?

What's MOST interesting to me, though, is the commentary on how the Disney studio currently regards fairy tales and fairy tale tropes, including their own versions. It's a good barometer for telling you where the studio is at today, sensibility-wise, as well as current pop-culture, since the "arm" that produces these shorts is rather separated from the TV series studio and the feature animation studio. To help mark these little (or not so little) things, I'm adding a hashtag: #FTBarometerCheckpoint (and if I get time/remember will add the tag to older posts that are a good pop-culture and societal "pulse check" with regard society's current thoughts and views on fairy tales).
Additional note on coins and wishing: it's interesting to me that throwing coins into a well or fountain remains such a strong superstition and/or tradition and has been adopted the world over. It's a direct link to folklore and belief in local deities and fae, as well as various tales and isn't hidden by much commercialism or "watering down" as other traditions and superstitions have received over the centuries. Interestingly, it's not fear motivated, like many superstitions are, nor is it truly greed oriented but more of a petition for additional luck to the powers that be. There's a little article HERE if you'd like to read more. I couldn't finish without mentioning Britain's amazing "wishing trees" (more pics and history at this link HERE) in which people have, over centuries (!), pushed coins into the bark for luck and good health.
 

Monday, March 23, 2015

Let's Talk About... Maleficent-the-Movie (a very delayed conversation with Christie of "Spinning Straw Into Gold")

I have invited Christie of Spinning Straw Into Gold over to our corner of the web to talk Maleficent. That is, Maleficent-the-movie, not Maleficent-the-classic-Disney-character, and not which is actually a whole other conversation...

Gypsy: What I'm missing most about seeing the film is NOT having a conversation live with fairy tale people! I don't care if we all agree or disagree - I'd just love to have a conversation and hear everyone's thoughts. You up for digital scones and coffee? ;)

She replied:

Christie: Digital coffee--all the time, all the places! Thanks for the invite. I'm excited to talk about it with other fairy tale-ers, and maybe you'll change my mind!

While I never got around to posting a proper Part B "spoilery" review before I had to disappear for a while last year, you will get a good sense of a few of my thoughts as I "chat" with Christie (finally!).

Her review was titled "Bored to Death" so, from my notes, here's my part of the conversation, though you may want to read her post first, so you can see her POV and know what I'm referencing.

Just imagine Christie, holding her newest sleeping Prince-ling, kindly indulging me, munching on digital scones and sipping cyber coffee as I talk...


Also, you should be aware: HERE BE SPOILERS!

Thanks for the review! I'm curious what other fairy tale people think too and so here is my response (and please imagine we are sitting at a table having coffee & scones, discussing it all - my response is intended to be conversation rather than rebuttal because,really, I'm just glad we can talk fairy tales!). 

Anyway, I will - weirdly - say that while I understand exactly where you're coming from and that I think many of your criticisms are valid, I don't really agree overall. As my seven year old said to me today "..it's not the REAL Sleeping Beauty story, just one idea about it.." While I too was very disappointed Maleficent didn't turn into a dragon herself (I immediately wrote out three different and valid ways that could still have happened within that premise and context), if you didn't know she was "supposed" to turn into a dragon it wouldn't have been as irksome. In fact, it may have made perfect sense that it happened the way it did.

That said - I totally get where you're coming from with the boredom. It didn't help that it started with a completely unnecessary Narrator, as well as far too early in the actual story. (I've learned to give Hollywood movies about 20 minutes of unnecessary prologue/filler before they get to the real thing - ridiculous, but there you go.) Disney (these days) tends to not trust it's audiences so over explains or over simplifies and leaves out a lot of subtlety as a result. That said, in this case, seeing many of the critic reviews, I have to wonder if that isn't justified. The movie - by itself and separate from Sleeping Beauty (of Disney or fairy tale) generally succeeds. Considering, too, it was a first time Director I would have to say, if it had been my film, I would have been happier than not. However I do get the serious sense that scenes were cut *much* shorter than they should have been, and that too much time was given to the wrong things like flying scenes (nice, but we got it, thanks) as well as unnecessary prologues. 
                     
I'm still a little astonished at the lack of understanding that critics in general have shown about the old world and belief of faerie, which was a very large part of the "world building" and premise. (Much of the 'lore' of the movie premise was based off 'olde worlde' views of Faerie and specifically Spenser's The Faerie Queene). Perhaps my Australian & UK leanings skewed me toward having this as a normal part of my fairy tales and stories but Faerie was a formidable unknown world/dimension that scared many common people, or at least, they had a very healthy respect for it. While I think stating that it was set in Scotland was unnecessary, (too specific!) it did also make it clear (to my viewing group anyway) that this was a peoples that lived uneasily alongside the border of fairy, whose lives contained many little rituals and offerings/petitions to (rarely seen) faeries, so that their human lives wouldn't be beset with additional bad luck from the Fae. Perhaps this is one of the big mistakes made: that it was assumed people would automatically know this - but it turns out they don't. 
                     
I discovered, interestingly, and after the fact of seeing the movie, that one of the two novel retellings, includes an additional (!) prologue scene that is all about a shepherd and his son leaving a fairy offering from their lunch to keep the wee folk happy. The set up in the book is clear and sets the stage for conflict, uneasiness, wariness and mistrust on both sides, as well as extreme measures by faeries who don't tend to temper their responses but are either for or against you.* 
Another interesting thing that I sort of got a sense about in the movie but not very clearly, is that in both novels, the 3 faeries ask for asylum from Faerie (essentially they betray and abandon their home and fellow folk) for the comforts and seeming growing power of the human king. In the movie I really believe they are *intended* to be shown as caricatures as BOTH what people think fairies are (small, pixie-dust laden, 'helpful' etc) AND also what we really don't want them to be (selfish, capricious, lacking a soul and unreliable). Everything from the way they were designed, to their dialogue to their motivations and focus during the movie suggested these are the sorts of fairies you DON'T want to be allied with. This, however, seems completely lost on most folk, which would say the Director did a bad job of communicating the most basic thing about them. The whole point was that, thank goodness! Aurora's godmother/s were NOT these awful fairies at all.
I have to say I liked the thorns around Faerie. It was for protection rather than to be used as a weapon - which again works better with what earlier versions of Sleeping Beauty had. What, again, could have been clearer is that King Stefan also surrounded his castle with iron thorns (missing a clear visual for that Mr. Director!) and plated it in iron so it was toxic to the fae (yes - giant plot hole for the good fairies getting in at the end but anyway...). There were parallel set ups all through the movie but some just weren't very clear. The wings, too, were bound in iron and glass, and they only moved when Aurora reached out to them (which is supposed to be a huge metaphor and it's an excellent one. They also end up saving each other which is great from the usually-passive Sleeping Beauty criticism as well).




Diaval said a lot without using actual words, which I think was also the point. Though he started as a willing slave for Maleficent there's no way, especially in that era & setting, that a master would let their slave talk and behave toward them that way if they didn't have some sort of friendship and respect for them. When the final facing of Stefan arrived and she told him it wasn't his fight, basically freeing him of his slave status (another shift toward good for her) he essentially said: "You idiot -  don't you know by now that you're not alone any more?" It was subtle but it humanized her a lot and gave us a male/female relationship that developed without any sexual tension (the scene with them flying together - both free - at the end was great, and perhaps should have been the final one, but I digress..)

Your concern that this movie missed the point of "there is evil and ugliness in the world, just as there is hope and unspeakable beauty" - was actually what the whole movie was about as well. They even said it out loud. It's just that instead of the evil being Maleficent, it was King Stefan who not only made poor choices (like Maleficent also did) but refused to turn away from them and look for another path (which is the big turn for M). Your last paragraph before the poem was beautiful and the perfect argument for the movie - even with it's two-dimensional villain faults. But then it can only be considered that way if you let the movie be it's own entity apart from the fairy tale and Disney's own animated movie as well. (Note: in the script Stefan originally killed the king by smothering him with a pillow when he laughed at Stefan's offering of the wings, assuming he would then succeed to the throne - that's also in the books). 
The one ridiculous thing that I agree on with everyone was just wrong, is that Maleficent's "real" name was still Maleficent. That made NO sense at all (I cannot find any way the name "Maleficent" can be seen as 'good'), and seems to be this giant oversight. She didn't even need a proper name at the start (you know how sketchy giving your real name can be anyway - people in fairy tales often let themselves be labeled by others, rather than reveal their true name - it would have worked if she hadn't said her real one) and yet she has to be introduced with that name. #justno
My other big negative note would be that THE major marketing point was just outright wrong, therefore misleading and ultimately when people are processing it, confusing: Maleficent was not "evil"  or "wicked" and never became the true definition of such. She did some terrible things, yes, but it was clear she was making poor choices from a place a serious pain. The entire point of the movie was that she didn't let herself become exactly that (while Stefan, in contrast, did.). I think this marketing ploy alone, while "delicious" and tapping into what a lot of people DID want to see, just wasn't true. (And now people are both angry about that or confused.) Again, a major point people just didn't get is that it was intended to be a family movie - for all ages - (heck, it didn't dawn on me that's what they were trying to do until Angelina Jolie said she was looking forward to being in a movie that her whole family could see - even the little ones!) and while older people and teens might LOVE a movie about someone truly wicked and permanently twisted in some way (eg Batman Origins) even to the point of seeing her get her comeuppance, to focus on that story for a family movie (especially with that person as the main character) just isn't appropriate. So they didn't. But that's not what they said they were doing either. 

So, ironically, many people were set up for disappointment.
Overall the movie had most of what it should have had, but not enough. But it also shouldn't need supplemental notes from novels in order to make it's point either. It just didn't have it in the right proportions and at times both underestimated the audience and then overestimated them. The film took risks with content and themes that even Walt himself would have been concerned about doing but as a result it resulted in being "a better film than it should have been". As we all know, children's books are harder to write than adult ones and the same goes for film, especially if you're trying to make something more than throwaway entertainment. I think the film succeeded as much as it did because of Angelina Jolie's involvement and attention to detail, as well as her phenomenal acting of the part, but with a more seasoned director I think it would have done better still.
Time will tell how this really pans out. As it stands audiences are generally in the thumbs up category while 1st critic rounds are not. 2nd critic rounds, however, are not as quick to dismiss it though. While they're not saying it's "good" in general, more and more are agreeing that for all it's (MANY!) faults, that we need more films like Maleficent, with that heart, message and progressive thinking - just done better.

Now, the important thing: "Would you like an extra scone?" ;)

Thanks for the opportunity to discuss with a fairy tale friend!

* There are whole fairy tales about fairies who were invited to a banquet but were a) given the wrong plate instead of the one they wanted of so had a tantrum and held a grudge for generations or, b) were left standing at the gate too long to be welcomed personally by the King, so got upset. [In the tale I'm thinking of specifically, this is ironic because the King has gone to great lengths to make sure ALL the faeries are invited so not a single one would get upset, but the list is so long that he hasn't even finished reading off the invites to go out before the first ones start arriving.. and causing trouble!]