Ask Kate Wolford About Writing New Fairy Tales discussion
What do you dislike in new fairy tale telling trends?
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I think that some 'retellings' would be better advertised as books 'inspired by'. When something is 'retold', I hope that the fundamentals of the story are the same. It might focus on a different character or the story from a different viewpoint, but the core ideas of the story are the same.
In something 'inspired', I expect that there will be more creative liberties.
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Kate wrote: "That is an excellent point. I like it very much. Can I steal it? :)"Of course.
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Anything else you look for in fairy tale retellings or "inspired by" stories?
Kate wrote: "I wish that more fairy tales ( new ones), would dig into small characters that could have been in a story. I dislike that so many fairy tales are retold as romances primarily. I actually enjoy ro..."
Yes! I don't think fairy tales are very romantic at all, overall. While there are a few, most aren't focused on the eros part of love at all (at least to my way of reading).
I think you've just helped explain to me why people look at me strangely for liking fairy tales yet not being a "romance reader" (nothing against it - just not my genre). Maybe I'm just reading the tales differently to most (or, more likely, maybe I'm reading the tales and other people are recalling an impression of the tale as told to them via someone else or by some entertainment avenue).
Interesting...
Josephine wrote: "I think that some 'retellings' would be better advertised as books 'inspired by'. When something is 'retold', I hope that the fundamentals of the story are the same. It might focus on a differe..."
"Like!" - this is one of the issues I have with eg Disney "redoing" fairy tales. If people didn't believe they were the original tales to start with but looked to see what inspired the movie fairy tales might have a very different reputation these days.
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Also, the whole wedding and fairy tale conflation is bizarre. Fairy tales very seldom dwell on weddings. A lot of them don't even mention them.
Disney, again. It's not that I don't like some of their movies (love The Little Mermaid), but I wish people would STOP blaming fairy tales for the wedding industrial complex and recognize that fairy tales seldom spend a lot of time on marriage.
That's why I included "The Nixy," in Beyond the Glass Slipper. It seems to me it is very much about the "truth" of marriage. I also find, it, unlike most fairy tales, very romantic.
Agreed (re fairy tales and weddings). At some point it seems that the phrase "fairy tale" (or "fairytale") took the place of the word "fantasy". (While the word "fantasy" took the place of the word "wish".) Fairy tales are NOT "ideal stories/ideal endings" at all. Seen the Maleficent image that says: Everybody says they want a fairy tale wedding but when I show up and curse their firstborn, suddenly I'm a jerk"? Whenever I pull that one out to show someone, after they've stopped laughing they almost all stop and say: "You know what? I guess living an actual fairy tale would be pretty awful, especially if you had no idea if there was a happy ending coming or not."
I think that's one of the reasons Pan's Labyrinth gets a massive vote across the board as being one of the best fairy tale films ever made: it has all the wonder - both dark and light - but it doesn't shy away from real life either. (I'm really, really curious about Guillermo del Toro's take on Beauty & the Beast.)
Note: I wish I could "like" comments here! Enjoying all the discussions. :)
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I dislike that so many fairy tales are retold as romances primarily. I actu..."
Yes. Everything you just said!
Gypsy wrote: "Fairy tales are NOT "ideal stories/ideal endings" at all..."Reminds me of what happened to the ending of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion
I think that's why many people put fairy tales firmly in the world of children. The idea of 'purely happy endings' is naïvely idealistic. Many of the original tales do not hold to that ideal.
That being said, I dislike retellings that overly sanitize, sweeten, or simplify a tale.
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And when you look at fairy tale movies in totality, they are very, very bad!!!
I think there's far too much concentrating on the bottom line with art in general (books, movies, etc.) The people at the top seem to think that because fairy tales (or insert whatever other subject here) are popular, the answer to making more money is to simply crank out more and more without examining why people like them and what makes the good ones good. I think I have shied away from a lot of fairy tale movies because I'm afraid they aren't what I want.
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I've always hated Disney's Snow White, except for the color and the animals. I loathe the dwarfs in that movie, and Snow White, yuck.
Kate wrote: "It's Hollywood. I say that as a true blue movie and TV lover. They just have to mess with fundamentals.And when you look at fairy tale movies in totality, they are very, very bad!!!"
I have to sadly agree. So what are the good ones in your opinion? Or, better still, why is a certain fairy tale movie worth viewing? (Even if it's not overall excellent.) eg Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm movie was... not good as "a movie" BUT I adored some of the fairy tale sequences! If I could pull out the good bits...
And here's another observation: I adore popular film but if I'm honest, I'm often more affected by fairy tales retold through other media (theater, puppetry, music, experimental film*, foreign films, installations or an actual proper storytelling, even though I don't seek them out as actively as I do movies (though perhaps that's just the age we live in - movies are very... "shiny").
*Have you seen the Red Riding Hood with Christina Ricci? Definitely worth watching - but comes under experimental heading when compared to theatrical releases. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqHCFd...
What do you all think of Jan Svankmajer's film, "Alice?" Definitely an interesting re-imagination of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It left me distinctly uncomfortable; kind of a goosebump, chills up the spine, I need a cup of hot chocolate feeling. I can't even say I actually like it, because it made me SO uncomfortable, but in that sense it was successful. It didn't kowtow to the new image of fairy tales as pleasant stories to entertain and comfort children.When I first read Carrol/Dodgson's Alice, as a child, I was always a little uncomfortable, even as I was intrigued. Alice seemed very alone in Wonderland, and none of the adults were particularly trustworthy and comforting. It made for a great story--there was suspense there, even if the book is episodic in nature--because you couldn't help but wonder if Alice was going to get out ok. What I loved best though was Alice herself -- she was a child, but she handled it. She called out the fact that the adults were all rather silly and she had to sort out the world for herself. That's a scary and very real moment in childhood; when you're first confronted with the idea--and the truth--that the adults don't really have the answers to anything. It's not shied away from in the book, and Alice doesn't let herself be cowed by the discovery.
What I do think Svankmajer's film is missing from the original is the charm. In fact, I think that's what's missing from a great many retellings of Alice. Everyone is so concerned with how bizarre/kooky/spectacular the world is, that they completely miss out on the book's original charm. It manages to tightrope walk quite nimbly through being both a lovely story and a discomfiting story. There are all these little details that quite make you want to experience Wonderland--perfect gardens espied through keyholes, magic potions that taste like every delicious confection you could ever hope to try, enchanted cakes, hookah smoking caterpillars, rabbits that wear pocket watches, giant puppies, etc. It's in the way that Carrol uses words, in his playfulness, and in the characters that seem often neglected by the adaptations. I find a great deal of the adaptations become needlessly aggressive, almost as if they are swinging the pendulum the other way. "What? You don't like the sanitized fairy tales? Well THIS IS A DARK RE-IMAGINING."I notice more and more Hollywood movies coming out that label themselves as a "dark retelling." It drives me crazy because I feel like saying, "oh, you mean, you're kind of trying to do the story the way fairy tales originally were?" Then you go see the movie, and it turns out, no, that's not quite either, because the movie STILL doesn't get the flavor of the initial tale, nor is it charming. It's plastic. It's action figure-y. It's a skeleton of the original tale, with a whole bunch of pyrotechnics and gunk and money pasted on, but completely hollow inside.
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It's so strange that a genre that has had some of the greatest illustration ever is so bad in film form.
I have a confession: I have never liked Alice in Wonderland. As a child, I found the whole idea of it scary. As an adult, I've never reconnected. But most people who love fairy tales love Alice. It's one of those quirks I have as a reader. I'm also not a Tolkien fan.
I know. It;s pretty shameful, considering how much I devote myself to fairy tales, and to a lesser degree, fantasy. But I did love the LoTR movies.
I actually meet quite a few fans of fairy tales and fantasy that do not especially enjoy reading LoTR, and even a good amount of people that love The Hobbit and hate the rest of the books. The Hobbit has that same sort of charm, I feel, that Alice does, even as it's scary. The other books remind me very much of reading The Odyssey or The Iliad. I love parts of them, but other parts seem to drag on and on and on unnecessarily. As much as I love bloodlines (I show dogs), I don't ACTUALLY feel the need to read about the parentage of the hero going back twelve generations, the parentage of his horse going back nine generations, and shoot, even the parentage of his sword? Please--let's get back to what the characters are doing!
I have mixed feelings about Alice in Wonderland also (the book). The world (and its artistic possilities) intrigue me, but I can't really get into Alice as a character. Yes, she does call the adults on their weird behavior, that's a good point, but I've never really warmed to her character--maybe I don't see her having much of a character arc.I guess I haven't seen a lot of fairy tale movies, at least I can't think of many good ones. Regarding the live action Disney Alice, and Snow White and the Huntsman, I thought it was cool to see a girl in armor--I love my adventure princess, after all--but I think it's just because we have so little in the way of cool action girls (who still are really girls/women). So yes, maybe the LoTR movies are the closest to a good fairy tale (type) movie. Eowyn is far superior to Alice and Snow White in their armor in my book. Oh, and I'm also pretty fond of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Would that count?
As for the worst, we recently checked out the latest Oz movie from the library, for want of something more interesting to watch. We couldn't even finish it.
Whoops--meant to add--you might be interested in Jan's Alice just in terms of what he manages to accomplish as an artist. It's all stop motion animation and puppetry, and very, very well done. But it's scary; much scarier and more disturbing than the original Alice.He does another stop motion tale called "Little Otik," that reminds me a bit of Guillermo del Toro's work. It involves a mandrake (it's been a while, but I'm pretty sure it's a mandrake), or a stump or some such object that a woman raises as a surrogate child, since she cannot have her own. It ends up growing and growing, and wait--it lives on blood! Sort of a Little Shop of Horrors situation. It's very bizarre, a little creepy, and also pretty fun. Reminds me of old fairy tales -- in fact, I've never thought to check if Svankmajer's film is a re-telling itself.
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It certainly feels like an old tale, doesn't it? Gotta find that one.
Random thoughts in a jumble as I vaguely reply...Little Otik is amazing - but truly very creepy. I believe it is based on a traditional fairy tale (or folktale) of the region. Don't watch with kids. It doesn't end well from memory (and I think it's a stump, not a mandrake but I could be wrong...)
For the record: I couldn't stand the LOTR movies. The production values was amazing - AMAZING - but the writing sucked and the directing was worse and the editing killed what story there was (but I gather that's Jackson's fault - he pretty much sat with the editor). I read Tolkein, the whole saga - liked the world, ideas, some characters but.. eh.. The Hobbit on the other hand was hands-down brilliant and yes, extremely fairy tale like. The movie has no idea why people love(d) that book. Yay for cool visuals - boo for killing the story. :(
On Alice: the book(s) totally creeps me out BUT (and I mean to write an essay on this sometime soon) I think Alice is a prime example of society turning an "idea" (because not that many people have actually read the books) into a cultural/societal fairy tale (I added societal because although the English sensibilities remain in many ways Americans love the world, so do the Asians etc etc). The images and motifs have been given a life of their own beyond the book and because of such, have become a fairy tale in the true definition which is continually mutable according to the world and people telling it retaining it's motifs and speaking beyond culture and time...
And I think the way fairy tales are portrayed - despite how much we hate what pop culture does to them much of the time - is very telling of where we (as a society and as a world) are now. And as always when the pendulum swings it tends to go too far one way before beginning the journey back. The pixie dust princess influx has had a retaliation of "dark incarnations" for good reason. Neither have any real connection to the "originals" beyond "this tale has remained in the vague conscious and subconscious of our society for a reason: let's tap that and make some money!" (which is one of the reasons I keep trying to put the older ones out there - show people that no idea is new and in order to make something new, you need to know your roots).
Anyway - the nature of the fairy tale is that it transforms, rarely in a way that we expect (or approve of, though sometimes we are pleasantly delighted). Watching the tales move through society and being retold in various forms is completely fascinating. The biggest challenge is to keep them all in circulation - something which, I believe we CAN influence and that will be for the good of everyone. Tapping a rich heritage means we don't need to start from scratch every time, which means more moving forward, less going around in circles.
Am I making any sense at all?
Haha, I do recall that Little Otik is definitely not a film for young children. (And yes, I think you are right - I do think it's a stump now). Besides being a bloody and murderous film (the family ends up feeding people to Otik to keep him alive), there's a really creepy old man that maintains a far from innocent interest in the little girl that learns of Otik's existence. And yes, you are making sense. I'm in agreement that you'll always see the pendulum swing back and forth in that way--I just think it's fascinating that very often, it starts with a story that people purport to love, and often ends in such a way that you wonder what it was they ever really found enchanting about the original idea. With large films, I think it's pretty easy to see why this happens. There's a ton of people involved, and often people that aren't particularly knowledgeable about storytelling wield a great deal of power over the story. With books, I find it a little more mystifying, although I certainly don't think it's *easy* to capture the sort of enchantment that an original creator or storyteller managed. I just find it fascinating that quite a few re-tellers seem to just derail entirely.
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What we don't like our fairy tales anymore, we change them. Heck, when we DO like them, we change them.
The cultural heritage aspect of them is one of the reasons we return to fairy tales. Just looking at the discussions here today, you can see how fairy tales grab people. We'll never quit them. The discussion here today show how far into the cultural DNA they are.
My husband hates the LoTR movies. Like you, he gets that they have great visual appeal, but in his case, he just finds them bloated and self important.
I've got to find this "Little Otik."
Alice just always seemed like a tedious, superior little girl to me. I would have had it out with her at the lunch table somewhere in the very early 70s if I could have. She always seemed like a mean girl to me. But I have no justification for that opinion.
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Little Otik is amazing - but truly very creepy. I believe it is based on a traditional fairy tale (or folktale) of the region. Don't watch with ki..."
You've summed that up very well. I think many people only think they know fairy tales, and you are so right about the capacity to get them so very, very wrong.
But people find new enchantment in a story retelling or as source of inspiration. And too many people do get involved.
I actually think Grimm and Once Upon a Time are doing better with the tales than the movie makers do. I am not a regular watcher of either, but they both have charm and mostly keep a lid on whimsy.
A little whimsy goes a long way.
Kate wrote: I actually think Grimm and Once Upon a Time are doing better with the tales than the movie makers do. I am not a regular watcher of either, but they both have charm and mostly keep a lid on whimsy.I disagree. I faithfully watched the 1st season of both shows, but gave up on them after that.
I felt Grimm lacked integration into the old stories, and that they were basing an entire episode on some vague, sideways aspect of the brothers' original tales. Also, it lacked the true magic of storytelling for me; the focus was on the crimes (clearly) but I didn't feel immersed in the world, or eager to find out the characters' stories.
As for Once Upon a Time... Oh brother. When you look at the fact that it's on abc, which is owned by Disney, it makes sense that their "retellings" are heavily Disney-oriented, but that doesn't make me like the show. The writing largely ignored (I'm speaking in the past tense b/c like I said, I couldn't bear to watch more than a few episodes of the 2nd season) the original fairy tales in favor of the familiar plots from the animated Disney movies. Not to mention I got so SICK of everyone and their mother having a love story! It was in darn near every episode! I felt like the focus was on the romantic aspects of everyone's path (and as you talked about earlier, fairy tales aren't really all that romantic, nor filled with weddings), instead of on things like conquering fears, what it means to be a part of a family, the maturation process, etc. that really make up fairy tales.
Has anyone watched the entire 2nd season of Grimm or OUaT and felt differently?
I might give Grimm another shot. I love the concept, love the fact that it was shot in Portland (lived there for four years, and it still feels like home), and I've had a ton of people tell me that it would be right up my alley (I was a huge Buffy and Angel fan). I saw two or three episodes, and for some reason, it just didn't quite grab me, but I have to be entirely honest and say, that may have been because I was catching episodes mid-season one, instead of right from the beginning. I'm probably going to give it another go.Speeeeeaking of Buffy, does anyone else remember the episode called "Hush?" With "the Gentlemen?" I am pretty certain that was a Joss Whedon original, but dang did it ever feel like it was a REAL fairytale, and I LOVED it. Talk about effective storytelling!
Hush! Show don't tell. SO effective. <3 (BTW Wikipedia has a good breakdown of how the Gentlemen came to be. They were specifically designed with Grimm tales in mind but not from a specific one. Brilliant stuff.)I just deleted a huge rambling comment on Grimm & OUAT and realized this as I was checking for any new news info on SWATH 2 (and thinking "gosh, I hope there's at least Ms. Atwood's gorgeous costuming in the next one as well..") - it's said in "the Biz" that no one remembers what it was like during the production - they only remember the final product - and that's actually very true overall. Inwatching films and shows we tend to forget there are a LOT of people involved and it's no surprise to find a lot more thought going into a story from the support crew than even the writers and director. What I think a lot of us are completely missing right now is that there is a LOT of fairy tale goodness happening right under our noses and, being critical types and generally focused on writing, we tend to miss it: like the layered storytelling in Colleen Atwood's costumes for Snow White & the Huntsman - they're not just stunning - they have a TON of meaning and their own stories - each piece does. I also had NO Idea that the effects guys probably worked the hardest on interpreting the tale in their medium, until I happened to read a behind-the-scenes FX article which explained their process. It was... wow. And it made me look at the film in a whole new way (which is hard to do since I'm not exactly a KStew fan).
In OUAT I'm often too busy rolling my eyes at all the soap to stop and notice the background details of the set, which are busy telling their own story even while the drama is played out in front- the motifs, the colors, the props and angles - it's all there on purpose by a very savvy set dresser and I keep getting distracted from this by inane lines of dialog.
Grimm very carefully layers in various aspects of the quote they use at the beginning and the tale it's taken from but you miss it if you're not specifically trying to figure that out while you're watching.
We're actually pretty spoiled right now with all the specifically-fairy tale pop culture options. I was brought up short yesterday by the sight of two fairy tale titles sitting next to each other on prominent display: Hansel & Gretel and Jack the Giantslayer. It's not about them being great movies but about them being right in people's faces. And, as an aside, do you have any idea how difficult it's been to find new and different images of beanstalks and giants in art and illustration? It's actually harder than you think! Now all you do is type in the title of the movie and up come a ton of different posters, all displaying aspects of the story that would have had us going ga-ga if we'd seen them by themselves (no movie attached) a few years ago.
If nothing else it's worth taking note of the people who ARE working on telling a good version of the tale - even within films and TV series that we feel fall short. If we praise and encourage that thinking you know it will trickle down, ripple out and the next "generation" or wave of fairy tale storytelling will be richer still.
Brought to you by "the glass is half full this afternoon" which means I finally got my coffee, Gypsy. ;)
Oooh thanks for the heads-up on Hush! I'll definitely be taking a look at that wiki article.And I'm certainly not one to come down on the multitudes of people that work on a film to create a shared vision. My background is in screenwriting, and my favorite part about the industry is the collaboration - the fact that one person's idea is translated, changed, shared, contributed to, played with, rewritten, and interpreted by a team of artists with the same goal. Where I think things *sometimes* get fouled up is when you have people that aren't necessarily as invested in the story itself, or in the collaboration, as they are in the idea that they must leave their mark on it, that they must "have a say," because they're the funding, they are the money, etc. I'm by no means saying this always happens, but I've talked to enough people and read enough stories to know that it can and does happen, and I find it a shame if it results in a final product that might have felt more honest and true before someone changed with something for the sake of changing it. I think of the example of Brenda Chapman's history with the film "Brave;" she spent years of her life working on and developing this story, and kept butting heads with people that were higher on the totem pole who wanted to change the story because it didn't feel "fresh" anymore. Her argument was that of course it didn't - it takes years to make an animated movie! - but that it would feel fresh to the audience. From what I've read, it sounds like the final product ended up closer to her original idea than it was heading when she ended up leaving, but it sure makes you think - how many movies does that happen in?
But I've got loads of movies that I love, which I fully recognize are probably "flawed" in some way, and I love the hell out of them anyway. Who ever feels completely satisfied by their art? At some point you have to say, maybe not, "it's done," but "ok - I'm now ready to work on a new project, and this one is ready to find an audience." One of my favorite movies is Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. Yes, it's VERY different from the original tale. Yes, the plot gets convoluted at points. But it is a BEAUTIFUL film, it's evocative, it's heartfelt, the filmmaker is having a great time. I could watch it over and over again. Colleen Atwood's costume design sure doesn't hurt here either! She is a wonderful storyteller in her medium.
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You both make good points about the variety of movie options about fairy tales. The media options about fairy tales I should say.
And, like movies and popular music, fairy tales have always been for popular consumption. They really work as vehicles that have had lost of hands ( or minds) involved in them.
And, when you get lots of people involved with any project, a vision gets watered down.
I love "Hush," so much. But then again, Buffy is one of the greatest TV shows of all time!!
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It has been awhile since I watched either. I must admit. I really have trouble liking the lead guy on Grimm because he's bland.
OUaT was fun for me because I liked the concept of the town and how people were stuck. I did like some of the costumes, too.
I get very crazy on the topic of Disney and fairy tales-- and not good crazy. So I will stop while I am ahead.
Oooh--I've completely forgotten another fairy tale gem that is not a movie, but TV series: Jim Henson's The Storyteller, featuring John Hurt. Oh, it is a lovely lovely series, which completely captures what I call the fairy tale feel. The stories are a bit less well known (or versions of them), things like Hans My Hedgehog, and feature a lot of up-and-coming (for the time period) actors before they were stars, like Sean Bean and Natasha Richardson.
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It's brilliant. He did a Greek Myths as well, but I didn't respond to that one quite as much.
I dislike that so many fairy tales are retold as romances primarily. I actually enjoy romance reading--always have! Always will. But fairy tales don't, in my opinion, truly lend themselves to romance, and that is why some (not all) romantic retellings seem strained to me.