Shepherdofhermas - El Greco

by michelloup

So, I watched the live action Snow White and here are my takeaways:

1) Modern Disney Hates Fairytale Logic

Every change that was made to Prince Florian (a bandit named Jonathan in this version) makes his character worse. Of course, it was done so that he had more screen time and she "didn't fall in love with a man she just met" but the thing is, she still did. They have virtually no time together and in a fairytale that would work. In a fairytale, we suspend our disbelief and remember how fairytales operate---stock characters, formulas, tropes, and symbols. It's okay if there is love at first sight, because we know love at first sight represents something deeper than instalove or lust. But here's the problem: by trying so hard to subvert this trope, but still not creating a well-developed romance that takes place over a reasonable period of time, the live action feels more instalovey than the original.

2) Modern Disney also hates animation

There was no reason to make a Snow White live action in the first place. There are so many Snow White retellings that are live action. Just because something is animated, it doesn't mean it is inferior to live action. The OG Snow White was so ground breaking because of what it did with the medium of animation. We don't need to remake that bad cgi and people in hideous costumes.

3) and has a weird vendetta against motherhood

Okay, so at the beginning of the movie we learn about Snow White's parents. Both are very loving and instill her with morals. Her mother dies, and then shortly after, her father dies. So Snow White would have clear memories of both of them, and have been pretty close to both of them. However, the only person she mentions the entire movie is her father. She always talks about wanting to be her "father's daughter" or live up to what her father wanted her to be. Which is wild, considering the wayyyyyy too long narrative exposition at the beginning of the movie highlighted the importance of both of her parents.

This becomes even more interesting when you think about the "girlbossification" of Snow White. All of the original character's motherly traits have been nixed, in favor of making her a "leader" (as if she wasn't in the original. Motherly people lead too). When she thinks about being a ruler, she talks about living up to her father (so much for an egalatarian marriage and ruling style, I guess). I suppose this means we are left to assume that her mother wasn't a very noteworthy person because she wasn't a girlboss.

4) and hates princesses

Look, the song "Princess Problems" simply does not belong in a Disney Princess movie. Full stop. Absolutely not. Put it in High School Musical as a diss against Sharpay Evans. Not a Disney Princess movie. And certainly not a Disney Princess movie in which the princess in question has been viciously abused for years and treated like a slave. Not to mention that his entire premise doesn't make sense. He is trying to diss Snow White for having "princess problems" which are what, exactly? Well, according to him, wanting the world to be a better place is a princess problem? Only the rich want the world to be a better place because the poor are so focused on survival that they don't care? W h a t? How can you be simultaneously mad at your sovereign for trying to help the poor and also mad at your sovereign for being rich and calling it a "rich people problem" to want to help???? What the heck is that? (Oh and also, it's not like he doesn't know Snow White was abused. He does. When he met her he didn't realize she was a princess. She was in rags sweeping the kitchen. He knows she was forced to be a maid. He's just classist).

The moral of all of the above points is simple: Disney is trying so hard not to be offensive that they are actually more offensive. The issue is modern Disney seems to believe that all fairytales are inherently sexist and classist, so they change important plot points so drastically that the end result is not only more sexist and more classist than the source material, but also, not even a good story.

reblogged. reblogged. reblogged. youre all reblogged. none of you are free from my scrapbook

utterly UTTERLY fascinated by Nathalie in the london special (and I say this as someone who wasn’t all that compelled by her before)

I’ve changed, she says - and proves it. When both the miraculouses she’s been looking for are right in front of her, she doesn’t take them. Doesn’t even try to. As though it doesn’t occur to her.

I’m not a mother, she says - but when she sees a child in pain, her first instinct is to hug them.

I’ll go to jail, she says - once again, arguably, taking the easy way out. That way, she doesn’t have to keep looking in Adrien’s eyes every day. She can feel her own guilt in peace, with no one else’s to mingle in with it.

Adrien will be okay because he has you, she says - to a child with the weight of the world on her shoulders. Nathalie doesn’t even try to lessen that burden; instead, she makes it all the more heavier.

I’m here to kill Gabriel, she says - and then what?

Wyoming Moonrise

bashjelen

Source details and larger version.

Changing people's minds on major things is actually a very long and difficult process for both parties. I didn't actually believe that pedestrian-centric city design would be better for people that drive cars until I spent almost a year living without a car and watched hours of youtube videos explaining the issue to me. Turns out that traffic actually does go down and driving does become more pleasant if you make it harder to drive a car and easier to walk. I just straight-up refused to believe that for years. Because people just talked about it like it was obvious. But it wasn't. Because I had spent my whole life in a car-centric city going around in a car and also I was an English major in college who did not study urban planning. You can't expect me to change my entire mindset around transportation all at once. I did reach a eureka moment like two weeks ago but that was after like three years of getting exposed to these ideas periodically and living without a car for 11 months.

And yeah this post is about my big dumb animal brain accepting the science behind narrow roads and the evils of certain types of zoning laws, but it's also about stuff in general. If you don't know why someone isn't changing their mind on something, it's probably because the information they're getting hasn't reached a critical mass in their monkey brain yet. Whenever you hear stories about people changing their minds on things or leaving a certain ideology the story never goes "A person on the internet did a slam dunk on me and then I changed my mind."

It's usually a long process that happens over the course of months or years. Seeds planted here and there that coalesce eventually into a new thought or ideology over the course of years or snap together or send someone down a new path after a certain event. Same with me about pedestrian-centric cities. For me the tipping point was finding this video, which isn't necessarily super special or the best and the guy who runs the channel, in my opinion, isn't the most qualified or the most sympathetic towards every city in every situation, but it was the feather that tipped the scales in my brain to "Oh, wait. Maybe everything I thought I knew about how cities work is wrong actually." But that video alone didn't change my mind. With the amount of stuff and people that have gradually and gently been giving me information over the past couple years, something else was bound to eventually change my mind.

People on Tumblr yelling about abolishing the car, if anything, slowed down me changing my mind. Every time I saw a person saying that driving cars is stupid and that cars are bad I took a step back into my old way of thinking in defense. Because I grew up only ever using a car to get around. Rhetoric like that felt like a direct attack on my family, who I know to be loving people who care about other human beings and who drive cars literally everywhere.

And you might say, posts and videos like that aren't actually an attack on people that drive or have to drive. Okay then. Why are they phrased like that? Because that makes you feel good? Because you're angry? Alright, your anger at how it's currently impossible to get around if you don't own a car and how people who don't actually want to drive are being forced to drive is reasonable. And now I understand why it exists. I'm kind of angry too now that I get how this stuff works. However, is calling the people you're trying to convince stupid to their face and immediately bombarding them with your most radical ideas that might be completely detached from their reality and how they understand the world really the most productive way to channel your anger?

What about a guy with a knee problem that lives in rural Appalachia? Do you think he is gonna be convinced by your angry rants about bike lanes? No. He lives on a mountain that he can't climb or bike up because he's disabled and has only ever known getting around in a car. What about a person who overheats easily living in a suburb in the middle of the desert? Do you think she is inspired by your green lush pictures of trolleys running through parks in The Netherlands? No. If she leaves her house for too long without ice water she could literally die and you're going on about getting rid of, in her mind, the only thing that lets her go to the grocery store and not faint.

And again, this post is about my inability to comprehend walkable cities, but it's also about everything else you might ever want to convince someone of. The way you talk about things with your in-group that knows exactly what you're talking about should not be the same way you talk about that thing with people that you're genuinely trying to convince of something.