Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 158

Faerie Magazine Issue 23

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The latest issue (quite delayed for a while, but now out) of Faerie Magazine is on newsstands and features an article by me about Bluebeard, adapted from my introduction to Bluebeard Tales From Around the World (Surlalune Fairy Tale Series). Due to editor Kim Cross's personal life, the next issue may be delayed for a little while, too, but I don't want you to miss this one if you are interested! I've seen it at Barnes & Noble in California and Tennessee so I know it is out there for you to find, too. Or you can order it online, too.

Here's an image of the full Table of Contents:

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Mermaids Magazine Update

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Since I want to help get the word out...and I know Kim Cross well since I write articles for Faerie Magazine myself. Although I have my own Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World, I didn't contribute anything to this particular publication.

From Carolyn Turgeon at I Am a Mermaid:

So last month I posted an update on Mermaids magazine, the 200+ pages of mermaidly gorgeousness that I gathered/edited/wrote and that is being published by Kim Cross, who does the lush and art-filled Faerie Magazine (and that is not to be confused with Mermaids and Mythology, which is another publication altogether), and I talked about how Kim had decided to launch a kickstarter to pay for the printing of the magazine, due to some financial troubles… and I said that the kickstarter would be launched in the near future and the idea then was to get it up on June 20th. But it’s mid-July now and there’s no kickstarter and no magazine. The reason, basically, is because Kim’s mother was dying and Kim was taking care of her single-handedly over the past few months, and it was an awful awful time, and pretty much everything else in Kim’s life ground to a halt. Her mother died a couple of weeks ago. I talked with Kim today and she’s feeling much stronger and better, and now her designer is hard at work on the magazine again and a video is being made for kickstarter, which should launch in August. Kim will be sending out her own letter to all those who’ve ordered the magazine as well. My continued hope is that the final magazine will be so stunning and so unique and such a rich compilation of art and fiction and photography and articles that anyone who’s been annoyed by the delays will forgive and forget everything.

Save $8 on Brave DVD

Save $8 on Brave

For a limited time, pre-order Brave (Five-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition: Blu-ray 3D / Blu-ray / DVD + Digital Copy) to save $8. Coupon expires on July 19, 2012.

There is a coupon on clip on the item page. The price drops to $26.99 which is a fine price for this edition. The deal ends tomorrow so be quick if you want it.

While I didn't adore the movie myself, I liked it enough to own it and prefer it over several other choices for viewing with the littler ones in my life. My 7 year old nephew and 9 year old niece both enjoyed it when we saw it together in the theatre. And despite some of the flaws, many of my mother friends have loved that it is a story about a mother/daughter relationship more than anything else. And those were the best parts of the the film. Along with all of that unruly hair that is so talked about.

We'll just not discuss the implication that Merida doesn't have to take on any adult responsibility of ruling or otherwise but gets an uninhibited freedom to play at the end in addition to a respect for her mother (which of course the mothers liked and should). But the coming of age message fell  flat, rather making her a female Peter Pan. Calls for a sequel, no?

The Nature of Cinderella by Marie Rutkoski

Last week, The Los Angeles Review of Books started an article series:

LARB's YAC Lit publishes the first installment of Fairy Tales Revisited, a close look at a classic fairy tale, then and now. Today, Marie Rutkoski investigates symbolism and nature in the Cinderella tales of yore, and later in the week, Sarah Beth Durst, Deborah J. Ross, and Sarah Skilton review modern retellings.

The first article is The Nature of Cinderella by Marie Rutkoski and I enjoyed it. Oh, we are getting some thoughtful articles about fairy tales in the media these days. Love!

I haven't had time to consider and record my thoughts on this article, so it is time to simply share since the days are passing. I am blockquoting a larger portion than usual, but I'd love to have your thoughts! As I read this, I suddenly realized I am drawn to the Grimms' Cinderella over Perrault's due to the more natural elements. I prefer the tree on the grave although I adore fairy godmothers as a rule.

This emphasis on nature may be due in part to a focus on transformation. Margaret Atwood, considering the influence of fairy tales on her writing, asked, “Where else could I have gotten the idea, so early in life, that words can change you?” Fairy tales are rife with transformation — from beast to handsome prince, from dirty scullery maid to well-dressed princess. It is perhaps no coincidence that nature in the Cinderella stories facilitates transformation, for nature itself is a changeable thing, from season to season, from a sunny day to rain, from an egg to a flying bird in a matter of weeks.

In the Cinderella stories it seems that nature serves an even greater role: as a source of power. While some Cinderellas are more in charge of their destiny than others, many of them get what they want by simply asking nature to provide. Marissa Meyer, when writing Cinder, went to great lengths to reverse this paradigm, and render her version of Grimm’s tale unnatural. The result is that her cyborg Cinderella possesses greater independence and power. In an email interview, Meyer said, “My main character's greatest assets (in my opinion) are her intelligence and resourcefulness, as shown by her ability to fix broken machinery and technology.” Manipulation of technology, the creation of energy out of inert objects, is indeed different from calling on the powers of nature.

In Cinderella stories, nature often functions in the place a fairy godmother, a figure we have come to think of as almost requisite to fairy tales. Although “Donkeyskin” does feature a fairy godmother, (one who is somewhat inept, and dispenses questionable advice on how the princess might escape her father’s lust), this character is largely absent from most versions of the tale. Instead, nature steps in, either in the form of fish bones in “Yeh-hsien,” or the hazel tree and birds in Grimm’s version. This parallelism between nature and the fairy godmother takes on intriguing significance when we consider the etymology of the word “fairy.” It comes from the Anglo-Saxon “fegan,” meaning to join or bind. “Fegan” suggests a sense of compulsion, and in most older versions of Cinderella, we can see how nature aptly fits these meanings, compelling the story toward its narrative end of a very particular kind of binding: the union of marriage.

The effect, I think, is to make nature seem to be in collusion with love. One message in some versions of the tale, particularly Grimm’s, is that love is like a force of nature, and nature will take its revenge on those who stand in its way. Many of the various cruel stepmothers and stepsisters meet violent ends. While Lin Lan’s ugly stepsister Pock Face is boiled in oil due to her own choice, in several tales her counterpart is punished by animals. The stepmother and stepsisters are pulled apart by wild horses in a Filipino version, and in the Grimm’s tale, birds pluck out the stepsisters’ eyes.

Such punishments, of course, are doled out in order to give readers the satisfaction of revenge without casting the protagonist in a negative light. Cinderella doesn’t blind her sisters; the birds do. The princess can have her happily ever after with no shade of guilt. Similar strategies are at work in other fairy tales. In Grimm’s “Snow White,” for example, the wicked stepmother is invited to the wedding dinner, and while she does not want to go, feels oddly compelled. Iron slippers heated over coals await her: “she had to put on the red hot iron shoes and dance in them until she dropped to the ground dead.” Interestingly, no one seems responsible for this punishment. In the original German, the tale’s end is carefully ambiguous. Snow White doesn’t make the stepmother go to the feast or put on the slippers — no one does. It simply happens, much in the way that someone standing in the full force of a hurricane’s gale will be pushed by the wind.

Once Upon a Time: The lure of the fairy tale by Joan Acocella

     
Once Upon a Time: The lure of the fairy tale by Joan Acocella is a new article at The New Yorker--dated for 7/23/2012 but appearing today online.

The article is lengthy and mostly draws from the works of Jack Zipes and Maria Tatar as well as some of the usual books recommended over and over here on SurLaLune. I'm adding images (with links) to this post here for easier reference.

Much of what is discussed in the article will not be new to those who have read much fairy tale scholarship, but the article is an excellent overview of theories and sources.

Here's the final two paragraphs which I think sums it up quite nicely:

Does the violence in the Grimm collection need a symbolic reading? Marina Warner, in her book on fairy tales, “From the Beast to the Blonde” (1994), says that most modern writers ignore the Grimms’ “historical realism.” Among the pre-modern populations, she records, death in childbirth was the most common cause of female mortality. The widowers tended to remarry, and the new wife often found that her children had to compete for scarce resources with the children of the husband’s earlier union. Hence the wicked stepmothers. As for the scarcity of resources, Robert Darnton has written that a peasant’s basic diet around that time consisted of a porridge of bread and water, sometimes with a few homegrown vegetables thrown in. Often, there was not even porridge. In the Grimm story “The Children Living in a Time of Famine” (Tatar moved this, too, into “Tales for Adults”), a mother says to her two daughters, “I will have to kill you so that I’ll have something to eat.” The little girls beg to live. Each goes out and somehow finds a piece of bread to bring back. But it is not enough. The mother again says to the girls that they must die: “To which they responded, ‘Dearest Mother, we’ll lie down and go to sleep, and we won’t rise again until Judgment Day.’ ” And so they lie down together and die. This is a hair-raising story, but also, I think, a wishful fantasy—that the children might die without crying.

And so you could say that the Grimm tales are no different from other art. They merely concretize and then expand our experience of life. The main reason that Zipes likes fairy tales, it seems, is that they provide hope: they tell us that we can create a more just world. The reason that most people value fairy tales, I would say, is that they do not detain us with hope but simply validate what is. Even people who have never known hunger, let alone a murderous stepmother, still have a sense—from dreams, from books, from news broadcasts—of utter blackness, the erasure of safety and comfort and trust. Fairy tales tell us that such knowledge, or fear, is not fantastic but realistic. Maybe, after this life, we will go to Heaven, as the two little girls who starved to death hoped to. Or maybe not. Though Wilhelm tried to Christianize the tales, they still invoke nature, more than God, as life’s driving force, and nature is not kind.

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Advertising and Fairy Tales: Verizon and Disney Apps

Seen these yet? Verizon, Disney and fairy tales. Oh my! I prefer the Evil Queen one myself--the humor works better for me. And the commercials rely on some knowledge the fairy tales they are referencing.

Free Ebook: Tree Shepherd's Daughter (Faire Folk, Book 1) by Gillian Summers

Tree Shepherd's Daughter (Faire Folk, Book 1) (Faire Folk Trilogy) by Gillian Summers is really bargain priced today--it's free!

Book description:

When her mother dies, fifteen-year-old Keelie Heartwood is forced to leave her beloved California to live with her nomadic father at a renaissance festival in Colorado. After arriving, Keelie finds men in tights and women in trailer trash-tight bodices roaming half-drunk, calling each other lady and lord even after closing time! Playacting the Dark Ages is an L.A. girl’s worst nightmare.

Keelie has a plan to ditch this medieval geekland ASAP, but while she plots, strange things start happening—eerie, yet familiar. When Keelie starts seeing fairies and communicating with trees, she uncovers a secret that links her to a community of elves. As Keelie tries to come to grips with her elfin roots, disaster strikes, and Keelie’s identity isn’t the only thing that’s threatened.

One part human determination and one part elfin magic, Keelie Heartwood is a witty new heroine in a world where fantasy and reality mix with extraordinary results.

ABC's Once Upon a Time at Comic Con

From 'Once Upon a Time' panel at Comic-Con: Captain Hook is coming! (Watch first-look teaser here) by Sandra Gonzalez:

The Big Revelations:

+ Captain Hook is coming!
+ We will find out the identity of Henry’s father — and Jennifer Morrison knows who it is! “We talked about it early on,” she said. Kitsis’ tease? “I think Goofy is probably going to be Henry’s father,” he joked. “We gotta give Emma more credit here,” Morrison retorted.

+ We will learn the mythical identity of Dr. Whale this season.

+ There’s room for Kristin Bauer van Straten to return as Maleficent! “I didn’t see her body,” said Horowitz.

+ What DOES it mean that “Magic is coming”? “I wonder if we will find that out. I bet you we will have to watch season 2,” said Kitsis. “We don’t know if there’s anything to go back to.” Horowitz added: “Who knows if there’s anything there?”

+ The first few episodes will not disappoint. “I never could have conceived of the brilliance that is the first couple of scripts,” said Goodwin. “I can say that as an audience member it’s exactly what I’d want to see.” Added Kitsis: “The show is not going to change from the one you loved last year…we’re still going to go back and forth and meet new people along the way. “

+ We will find out what happened to Mr. Gold’s son Bae this season.

No comment on the Captain Hook element from me. Moving on...

And here's another preview--you can see Jack and the Beanstalk if you watch carefully:



From 'Once Upon A Time': More season 2 scoops from the executive producers
by Nuzhat Naoreen: (This is the most indepth article if you want to read just one in full.)

The impact of magic on Storybrooke:

KITSIS: “Magic as we know always comes with a price and we are introducing it to a world where it has never been before and I think that’s going to have unpredictable results. It’s going to affect everybody this season because that’s what’s more fun.”

Everyone’s memories returning:

KITSIS “I think the thing that we are really excited about is the fact that not only is magic in Storybrooke but everybody knows who they are. I think that is going to enable us to really dig deeper into the characters, now that they can actually deal with all the issues in their life and their past and their future.”

HOROWITZ: “One of the things that’s interesting to us to explore is this notion that just because the memories have returned does not mean that the past 28 years did not happen. Those memories, the Davids, the Mary Margaret, the Mr. Golds, all those people, who they were existed and what they did actually happened and those are the things that will have to be dealt with.”

And the Season 2 footage screened at Comic Con:



More bits from Comic-Con 2012: 'Once Upon a Time' welcomes Captain Hook and Jack and the Beanstalk:

Who will we meet at the beginning of the episodes come fall? Well, in addition to the purple smoke monster, there were Mulan, Sleeping Beauty and Jack and the Bean Stalk, to name a few.

Although fall seems so far away, rest assured that it won't be too long until the new characters are introduced. "Very early in the season we're going to start to see some of these people join our group," says Horowitz. But the new guys won't take the focus away from the core group. "You are going to meet these people through our characters," says Kitsis. Bonus: Dr. Whale gets a fairytale counterpart.

We'll also meet Henry's father, who may or may not be someone we've seen before. "It might be Sneezy," says Kitsis, who jokes that maybe it's not significant anyway. "His name's Jeff. He lives in a suburb outside of Chicago. It's not a big deal. It was a one-time thing."

One person who does know: Jennifer Morrison. "I think Goofy is probably going to be Henry's father," Kitsis says later on. "You've got to give Emma some more credit here, geez! I just feel like she's got some taste," Morrison replies.

And here's video of the actual panel:

NBC's Grimm on DVD and at Comic Con

Did you realize Grimm: Season One comes out on DVD in less than a month, on August 7th? Since the show is returning early, so is the DVD set. And on that note, here's some bits from articles about Grimm's appearance at Comic Con.

Bits from 'Grimm' Comic-Con panel: Footage from season 2 premiere reveals what's up with Nick's mom by Emily Rome:

Big revelations: Not many. The whole Grimm gang must have had a strict no-spoilers talk beforehand because none of them were very forthcoming. Lots of questions were met with variations on “You’ll have to wait and see.” Kouf at one point said, “We have a lot of ideas where we want to go with it. We just don’t want to tell you.” Even things that we thought were done deals had an air of mystery breathed into them. On what’s next for characters who have had the Wesen world revealed to them, Greenwalt said, “Who said Hank finds out? And who said Juliette remembers?”

***

Obvious fan favorite: If it wasn’t already clear on various message boards over the past season, it was definitely evident in the room that Mitchell’s portrayal of Monroe has quite the fan club. He got the biggest cheers when he appeared on the season 1 recap video screened at the beginning of the event and when he was introduced on the panel.

Bits from New threats add to tension in NBC's 'Grimm':

With his fiancée, Julie (Bitsie Tulloch), in a coma, his partner, Hank (Russell Hornsby), not far from a breakdown and his thought-to-be-dead mother suddenly very much alive, Nick's life promises to get even more complicated on the second season of NBC's Grimm (Aug. 13, 10 p.m. ET/PT).

***

"The Grimms were early profilers," executive producer David Greenwalt told a Comic-Con audience Saturday. "The people who wrote these stories could see these people."

***

Viewers will also learn more about Nick's superior, Capt. Renard (Sasha Roiz), and where he fits in a world of Grimms, Wesen and ordinary people. Roiz, however, wasn't giving any details away. "I'm just Capt. Renard."

As is the case with many shows with deep mythologies, fans who have been burned in the past by other shows wanted promises that Grimm would resolve all its mysteries during the course of its run. "I'll make sure that happens," executive producer Sean Hayes said.

Bargain Book: Beauty and the Duke (Mystical Bliss) by Melody Thompson

Beauty and the Duke (Mystical Bliss) by Melody Thompson, a romance novel with a riff on Beauty and the Beast, has been temporarily bargain priced to $1.99 in ebook format.

Book description:

The face he shows the world is not the face she sees. . .

Once, ten years ago, they were young lovers, sharing sinful touches and desperate ecstasy. But he was bound by his promise to wed another. Since that fateful time, Christine Sommers has grown into a headstrong beauty, the kind of woman who thinks nothing of daring travels to the ends of the world. But for all her achievements, Christine has never found anyone who makes her heart race the way Erik Boughton once did.

Since that fateful time, Erik Boughton, the Duke of Sedgwick, has become something of a beast, at least according to the gossips of the ton. They say that he's cursed, that any woman who shares his bed will meet an untimely end. But when he comes to Christine, desperate for her help to preserve his family and his title, she does not fear the devil duke. Enthralled by his ravenous desire, she would give him anything he wished, even her body . . . and her heart.