Showing posts with label silence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label silence. Show all posts

Friday, April 13, 2018

Reflection: Whatever Happened To That Enchanted Ball of Yarn?

Leimomi Oakes - textile and fashion historian and seamstress,
in a Ramie (nettle linen) smock she created, based on the story
of the Wild Swans and historical research.
Note: Our Fairy Tale Newshound was doing some research last month and wandered down a rabbit hole, only to find newish information that put a well-loved tale in a different light. Here are her musings on The Six Swans, weaving shirts out of nettles and that enchanted ball of yarn we lose track of after the beginning of the tale. We thought you might enjoy the thread...

Whatever happened to that ball of enchanted yarn?
Was it made of nettle-fibers, spun fine as royal linen*?
Was its thread then woven to silence your brothers?
Was it the example left for unraveling the curses' sting?
Was it all of these?
(Gypsy Thornton - March 2018)
*Nettles have a fiber which, when extracted can make something like linen, only much finer, called Ramie. It was one of the main sources of plant fiber in Europe for most of history. Many garments thought to be linen are now being discovered as made from nettles! Raime is specifically made from stinging nettles – urtica dioica - though there are many kinds of non-stinging nettles too, which could be used. The pain from the stinging nettles is clearly important to the story though, so urtica dioica is the plant it likely was. Interestingly, people who work with these fibers seem to often refer to them as 'silk'.


Nadezhda Illarionova
In the Six Swans a king secretly hides his children, six boys and a girl, from his new queen, and can only find them by unraveling and following, an enchanted ball of yarn.

I got to thinking: what if that yarn-of-secrets was more key to the story than we've thought before? What if the yarn betrayed the hiding place one day to the jealous (aka evil) queen? What if that yarn was made of the finest quality at the time, which we now know would likely have been by using nettle fibers, and inspired a cascade of tragic events?

The witch-daughter-queen makes more balls of enchanted nettle-yarn, which not only is bound to the family so the King can find his children, but she then weaves it into fine, royal-linen-quality shirts? Shirts that look like priceless gifts but are also designed to be binding, transforming traps? Being so enchanted and family-bound, the shirts bind themselves to the actual forms of the princes as they put them on, cruelly changing them to become silent swans**. The unspoken family secret, once revealed, bites them in the back and becomes their compulsive silence.

But enchantment likes to work in circles...

It may be that those magicked, fine-threaded, nettle-yarn balls also held the key to the princess finding her brothers again and unbinding them from their curse**.

Of course it would make sense that to create the reverse of this spell it would have to be done in silence! And it makes sense that the princess would have (be given/gifted/discover!) a prototype of nettle-yarn on hand so she would know when she had beaten and refined the fibers of that spell enough for it to work.

So she would know when it was time to weave the shirts.

So she could be certain her spell would work.

So she would be reunited with her family, again.

But there's one more relevant bit of history for this story, and it's related to the bittersweet ending where the youngest prince is left with one swan's wing. It's one of the reasons this story pulls at our heartstrings so very much.

Apparently, there was a revival - of sorts - in creating ramie during the 1980's, that is, linen made from nettle fibers. The linen created was finer yet more durable than hemp and creased more precisely too. One of the concerns that reportedly came up was that nettle fibers were often so long and fine that they could become nearly invisible (!º) and could easily catch alight if they came close to an open flame.

In The Six Swans (and related tales) the Princess, (Elisa in The Wild Swans^), is hurriedly working on finishing the shirts on her way to be burned at the stake for witchcraft. (Full circle indeed!) We read the story as that the shirt for the youngest prince was unfinished and only had one sleeve, but perhaps it was less straightforward than that. Perhaps it was hurriedly done so the fibers weren't woven so well together as they ought to have been. Perhaps the sleeve hadn't reversed the curse weaving quite enough and perhaps the fibers, loosely woven on that final portion, hadn't yet been transformed themselves from the fine weavings of the not-easily-visible, to the weft of obviously a finished fabric form, and so that sleeve caught alight as it neared the flames.The undoing of the spell vanished in a puff of smoke, and the consequences of those loose threads remained forever.
Anna & Elena Balbusso

** Side note: in medicine of 'yore' and now, nettles are used to treat joint pain - something I imagine would be extremely prevalent in transformation! Nettles are also used to treat hay fever, bleeding, eczema and alopecia - all symptoms easily connected to transformation.

º Invisible thread?? That sounds like the inspiration for another tale. Or inspiration for the tricksters of another tale at least.
^And The Shape of Water! Consider this an Easter Egg. ;)

Sources used: 



Saturday, March 3, 2018

Fairy Tale Oscar Watch 2018

One thing you may have missed in the all the Oscars advertising hype:
Best Picture is (very likely) between two fairy tale related films:
"The Shape of Water" and "Get Out".

The 90th Academy Awards  have quite a large representation with regard to folklore and fairy tales this year. With the Beauty and the Beast-like The Shape of Water up for a slew of awards (13!), including Best Picture and Best Director, the 'flipped' Beauty and the Beast/Bluebeard thriller/horror Get Out also up for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay (4 in all), the not-at-all-revolting Revolting Rhymes putting fairy tales front and center in the short film category, Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast getting noms for costume and production design, and the highly folkloric Coco up for best animated feature, fairy tales are likely to be a strong theme at the awards show this year. 

There's a good possibility there will be lots of water and beast type imagery, musical numbers, spoofs and jokes...
Illustrator Yoshitaka Amano (famous for character design of Final Fantasy) created a collaborative art piece for The Shape of Water, directed by Guillermo del Tor. Amano commented "I imagined he wraps himself in his cloak of water".
(Click for full size)
Fairy tales and fantasy have been in high demand the past year, meaning that in a year of great social unrest and confusion in the US (and inevitably, due to being a major world power, the rest of the world), fairy tales (and fantasy) are being turned to for many and varied reasons. They're a source of distracting - and positive - entertainment, they're used as a method for processing confusion and challenges and as a medium for expression for hope, anger, despair, and a call to change. From newly-desperate wishes for a happily-ever-after in a time of extreme difficulty and stress for many, to reflecting on simple truths that can cut clearly through a swath of fake news, to a beacon of creative inspiration that connects to human truths, fairy tales are surfacing everywhere. Fairy tale themed ads on TV tend to be split between sorting truth from fiction and being an inspirational element of hope despite various circumstances. Fairy tale based books, while always prolific, this past year have been hitting the bestseller lists when exposing their teeth, their dark underbellies and their smart, wily and take-no-prisoners heroines. 

Fairy tale films, in particular those with a happy ending, have caught the imagination and attention of the general public. While a film like The Shape of Water would be considered excellent at any point in history, we believe it's appearance at this time, has helped boost its profile, as this is the type of triumphant story of love winning over all odds, and the little people beating 'the big machine' that has resonated so strongly. It's the inspiration - and reassurance - people are searching for. Once again, a film's popularity has risen to meet its excellence in filmmaking, and it's a joy to see that being recognized at the Academy Awards - doubly so because its not at all shy about its fairy tale roots.

Here's the rundown of fairy tale and folklore-related films that are in the running, and for which category:



Film: The Shape of Water
Fairy Tale/Folklore Tie-ins:
  • Beauty and the Beast
  • The River God of the Amazon (Brazilian folklore meets The Creature From the Black Lagoon/Gill-man pop culture/urban legend)
  • The silent heroine/hero and those keeping secrets [ATUs: 451 (eg. Six Swans), 442 (eg. Old Woman in the Forest), 533 (eg. Goose Girl),  945 (eg. Princess Who Couldn't Laugh/Speak), 923 (eg. Love Like Salt), and The Little Mermaid/Undine/The Fisherman and His Soul]
  • There are even parallels that can be made with Sleeping Beauty (ATU 410) 
  • There's even a little of the Moses story - both fishman and found in a river, grows to become savior of enslaved people, *spoiler* (highlight to view) disappears behind a wall of water to destiny *spoiler over*
Nominated for:

  • Best Picture
  • Best Director
  • Best Actress
  • Best Supporting Actress
  • Best Supporting Actor
  • Best Original Music Score
  • Best Original Screenplay
  • Best Cinematography
  • Best Costume Design
  • Best Film Editing
  • Best Sound Mixing
  • Best Production Design
  • Best Sound Editing

Oscar Favorite? Yes - especially for Best Picture, Best Production Design and possibly Best Director

Film: Get Out
Fairy Tale/Folklore Tie-ins: Beauty and the Beast, Bluebeard
Nominated for:
  • Best Picture
  • Best Director
  • Best Original Screenplay
  • Best Actor

Oscar Favorite? Yes - contender for Best Picture, Favorite for Best Original Screenplay (Note: this film appears to have Maria Tatar's vote)




Film: Revolting Rhymes
Fairy Tale/Folklore Tie-ins: 
  • A mix of classic fairy tales
  • Red Riding Hood
  • Snow White
  • Three Little Pigs
  • Cinderella
  • Jack and the Beanstalk (etc)

Nominated for: Best Short Film (Animated)
Oscar Favorite? Yes




Film: Disney's Beauty and the Beast (live action)
Fairy Tale/Folklore Tie-ins: Beauty and the Beast (Villeneuve as well as Disney's animated classic)
Nominated for:

  • Best Production Design
  • Best Costume Design

Oscar Favorite? No




Film: The Breadwinner
Fairy Tale/Folklore Tie-ins: Afghan storytelling and fables
Nominated for: Best Animated Feature
Oscar Favorite? No




Film: Coco
Fairy Tale/Folklore Tie-ins: 
  • Mexican Day of the Dead/Land of the Dead
  • Mexican spirit animals
  • Dante (dog's name)
  • Aztec gods
  • Alebrijes (Mexican folk art imaginary creatures - newish 'lore' dating back to 30's)

Nominated for:
  • Best Animated Feature
  • Best Music (Original Song)

Oscar Favorite? Yes - both for Best Animated Feature & for Best Song

Fairy Tale Bonus of the Day:
Check out this wonderful essay by Dr. Jeana Jorgensen:
This essay (available to read online for free) explores the use of silence in fairy tales, for both female and male heroes, discussing the many aspects of silence/mutism (voluntary, non-voluntary, tasks, spell-breaking etc) and looks at the variations from different cultures and eras.
Highly recommended!

In that vein, we bring you a timely reinterpretation of Oscar statues for a group of people long silenced in Hollywood: women. These re-visioned statues were created this year by A-list artists, especially in the wake of the #MeToo era. (If only we could see more of these on the red carpet as opposed to the 'casting couch' statue, that appeared days before the Oscars*, making a similar, but very differently focused, statement.)

The Oscar Statues Reinterpreted by A-list Artists for the #MeToo Era

*Only to be removed two nights before due to inclement weather. Reports are that it's unlikely to be reinstalled in time for the Academy Awards for the same reasons.