Thanks for nothing, Disney. Again. Didn’t you know? “Rapunzel” is not just “for girls”. [alternatively titled: “In which I lose my s@#$ at Disney]

I get newsletters from this great e-zine called FanGirlTastic.  Here is a bit of their “About Us” : FanGirlTastic aims to celebrate creative, innovative, intelligent, and awesome images of women in horror, sci-fi, action & fantasy films, literature, and art for a primarily female audience and the men who love women.

You can see why I would love them.

Today, there’s a post about Disney and their upcoming animated movie, “Tangled”.  Yes, “Tangled.”  So, if I hadn’t mentioned “Rapunzel” in my title, would you even know what that movie was about?  Well, turns out, that’s the whole point.

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Excerpts:

Rapunzel by another name is … not Rapunzel at all.

So, back in March 2010, we got a little nervous over here because of an article that traced the reasons why Disney had renamed their newest fairy tale re-imagining, Rapunzel, to the less female-protagonist-specific title Tangled.

The U.K. Telelgraph, in an article by Anita Singh, stated that “The studio’s forthcoming version of the Brothers Grimm story will be renamed “Tangled” after market research showed that boys do not like films with girls’ names in the title.” The article added, “Disney has also shelved another film, The Snow Queen, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, fearing it will alienate boys.”

Now that the trailer for Tangled has come out (watch it below – just click here to watch), its clear that the title isn’t the only thing that changed to appeal to boys. Sure, we expect a little bit of change in a Disney adaptation (like, say, they take the blood and gore out of most things) but after watching the trailer, I am convinced that Rapunzel is no longer the star of the story. Her ‘prince’, now changed to a dashing bandit, has more jokes, personality, and the story seems more about him.

Check out the official synopsis of the story. It even spends more time talking about him than Rapunzel:

When the kingdom’s most wanted—and most charming—bandit Flynn Rider (voice of Zachary Levi) hides out in a mysterious tower, he’s taken hostage by Rapunzel (voice of Mandy Moore), a beautiful and feisty tower-bound teen with 70 feet of magical, golden hair. Flynn’s curious captor, who’s looking for her ticket out of the tower where she’s been locked away for years, strikes a deal with the handsome thief and the unlikely duo sets off on an action-packed escapade, complete with a super-cop horse, an over-protective chameleon and a gruff gang of pub thugs. In theaters this holiday season

Suddenly the tragic story of a woman held captive against her will and of motherhood gone awry is changed into a “an action-packed escapade.” Why?

Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, said of the title change: “We did not want to be put in a box. Some people might assume it’s a fairytale for girls when it’s not. We make movies to be appreciated and loved by everybody.”

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Ready to puke yet, ’cause I am.  Now, I admit, “Rapunzel” was actually my least favorite fairy tale.  As many of you may know, I have been a great reader of sci-fi and fantasy since the age of nine (that this was around my parent’s divorce was likely no coincidence) – genres full of fabulous female protagonists.  As I was explaining to someone the other day, my journey towards sci-fi and fantasy began with fairy tales, like in the Disney Golden Books.  Then, I found the “real” versions (Grimm Bros., Hans Christian Andersen) – and read Rapunzel, of course.   Then, I segued into fairy tales and folk tales from around the world.  I was young.  The stories got pretty dark. Many scared the living  bejesus out of me (reading sci-fi and fantasy actually did that, but that’s anther story).  But, I kept reading.  This all coincided with my horse books and dog books and Trixie Belden phase, so I didn’t have too much horror overload.  After that, the natural evolution of my reading to sci-fi and fantasy was effortless.  I lived in the school and city libraries.  I even got my local library to order the whole series (as they came out) of my favorite books of all time by Tamora Pierce: The Song of the Lioness Quartet, beginning with Alanna: The First Adventure (about a girl who wants to be a knight in a fictional “man’s world”.) I got that library to order a lot of books, come to think of it. Heh heh. I grew up with Alanna.  I actually wrote to Pierce soon after I married Steven, telling her how much she’d inspired me in life, and to be a writer.  She wrote back a lovely email.  I’ll share that with you someday.

ANYWAYS. (If you get me starting to talk about books, we’ll be here all day)

Here’s my Disney’s “Rapunzel” a.k.a, “Tangled” rant (Did I say I was going to do less ranting?  Let’s amend that to, now I’m going just going to rant about a more wide variety of subjects):

*cue the sarcasm*

By all means, let’s throw “them” a bone make her “spunky”, but make sure to it all about the man. Because there aren’t any movies at all aimed for boys. Nope.  None at all. We need more movies aimed at boys.  Girls deserve strong, capable, independent female leads?  WhatEVER.  Isn’t this AN INGENI-ASS ingenious MARKETING STRATEGY *cough* – turning a girl’s story into a boy’s story and convincing everyone that that’s how it was all supposed to be in the first place.

Disappointing, to say the least. Perhaps less so for me, however, than for the legions of little girls who would want to see this and may not realized the story has been hijacked.

“Rapunzel” – It’s not just “for girls” you know.

END OF RANT

As an addendum, I would like to link you guys to the stories of “Rapunzel” by the Brothers Grimm, and to “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen.

“Rapunzel” end on more of an upbeat, considering.  Ok, maybe LESS dark than your average “real” fairy tale.  “The Little Mermaid” is a beautifully written fairy tale.  Darker.  Yes.  Upon reading it again after many years, I got a very different *moral of the story* out of it – that a girl/woman should never change her core being for a boy/man.  Perhaps HCA was a feminist.  Who knows.  (Now, I’ll have to look up his life story of course.  Watch.  He probably was a raging misogynist.  And no, the movie starring Danny Kaye does not count.  Anybody else remember that one?)

NOT DONE YET

On Disney canceling, “The Snow Queen”: What, the female population is only good enough for weenie princess movies?  Can’t have girls thinking at a Queen-size level?  Can’t have the boys ALIENATED and PRE-EMASCULATED by a movie about a FICTIONAL QUEEN?

Screw you, Disney.

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No Going Back…

i just read an article in my LiveScience newsletter about how some scientists say travelling back in time is just not possible – now, as an avid fan of the whole concept of being able to travel back in time, i am not pleased to hear this – apparently, some scientists thing, in this four-dimensional space we are living in, we can only travel forwards! – i'm not at all qualified to argue, so…to read about the explanation of all this, go to the article at LiveScience, here – quite interesting (and not long at all) – and, at the end of the article, they tell you how to travel forwards a million years in time – DIY style:) – it's really quite simple – calculate the amount of time you need to travel (at the speed of light), take your spaceship out for a spin for that amount of time, then come back – whether the Earth is here or not, you will have travelled forwards in time a million years and will have only aged about a year! – so ridiculously simple, i should have thought of it myself – ha!

a term in the article which fascinates me – and i have never seen before (although some of you may have) – is super civilization – as in, while WE haven't figured out how exactly to travel through time, a super civilization may have already figured it out and may already be wandering around space and time as we speak – as i read it, perhaps the term, super civilization is a scientific euphemism for "beings from outer space" – even really brilliant astrophysicists don't want to seem super-weird and use the term, aliens – funny:) – i can, though – i don't really care if people think i'm nuts 🙂

fascinating:)

anyways, what is your favorite time-travel movie? or tv show?

as a child of the 80's (and a girl), mind "Back to the Future" (never mind that i have a life-long crush on Michael J. Fox) – LOVE that movie – fluxcapacitor anyone?



tv show? – Voyagers! – any of you remember this one? – Phineas Bogg and his boy/sidekick travel around fixing time (not that anyone knew why it was messed up in the first place), using this Omni thingamajig 
   
not particularly intellectual choices, but they were fun and whimsical – and, both of these involve going BACK in time – eeenteresting – i know it would screw up the space-time continuum (?) or history as we know it – or whatever, but…

FASCINATING!!!

**from my Dreamers and Thinkers group

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Atlantis – the way cooler Utopia

Atlantis – this mythical underwater land – why does it hold such a draw for people? – Plato started it, then Bacon wrote about it – a utopian world – but a perfect utopian empire under water! – people have been trying to find the damn thing for centuries – the idea has inspired books, movies, tv – does anyone remember Man from Atlantis (the tv series from the 80's) – with Patrick Duffy? – apparently it was the first American series to be shown in China! – unsuprisingly, it didn't last long (but I put this series in the same category as Manimal and The Powers of Matthew Starr – i watched them all – ah, the 80's)

anyways, wouldn't we all like to be able to breathe underwater? – in The Abyss  – remember how they were able to breathe underwater? – you basically had to drown in order to do it -  you'd really have to be dedicated  – i thought it was the coolest thing – scary, but cool – and that was Atlantis that surfaced in the end, wasn't it? – personally, if i could breathe underwater, i would want to be able to talk to animals a la Aquaman – but that's just me

and there's always Stargate: Atlantis – i think it was a cool addition to the whole Stargate thing – i like the whole mythos, but i would have liked to see some Atlanteans – maybe one of the preserved ones could have actually survived and became a member of the team or something

the ocean world is really one which holds many mysteries – our technology hasn't quite gotten us there yet – it's gotten us into space, but not down into our own planet, where the the giant squids live – when will we be able to go down that far? – what else is down there? – i think it's comforting to us to have the myth of Atlantis – it would mean the seas were once known and may not have been so hostile to us – to this day, people still theorize about the location of Atlantis – was an off of India, somewhere in the Canary Islands, in the Mediterranean Sea – who knows – people will probably still be looking for it years from now – it's that strong of a mythos – i guess we'd all like to think that there used to be a perfect utopian society with obviously highly advanced technology – the whole underwater angle just makes the whole idea way cooler – that's so sci-fi

**from my Dreamers and Thinkers group

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Dreamers and Thinkers

visit and/or join My Group on all things sci-fi/fantasy and life – (for newbies – find the link under the My Groups link the left side of this page) 

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BTW – the picture set next to Dreamers and Thinkers…

Hubble/Spitzer nebula image

photo created by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes – amazing isn't it? – if you like this image and would like to see more, visit http//hubblesite.org – you will be blown away by the beauty in the universe

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The Neverending Story – in my friend Rebecca’s words

The NeverEnding Story

Rebecca (who is doing her Ph.D in English at Princeton) – is one of my best friends in the whole world and emailed me a very sweet letter after reading my blog – anyways, one of the things she wrote to me was about the movie, The Neverending Story, which was also one of my favorite movies when it came out – here's an excerpt of what she said (just in case she doesn't come do this herself)

"…the first fantasy/scifi movie i ever saw—and I'll confess, it had me in tears.  It was the Neverending Story, and it scared the buhjeezus out of me.  But, in retrospect, it was rather an awesome and sublime type of fear—the idea of another world existing in close proximity to ours, and the  more frightening idea of its possible termination.  A lot for a little kid to face on the big screen…"
– Rebecca

As for me?  I really wanted that gigantic dog/dragon to be my close and personal best buddy:)

**from my Dreamers and Thinkers group

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Welcome! to my Blog – also – Please join Dreamers and Thinkers if you are so inclined!

I like to say that from the first fantasy book I read – or from the first sci-fi book I read, I was hooked for life – i must have been about nine when I first read Tamora Pierce's Alanna: The First Adventure –

Alanna: The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness)

To this day, I read her Lioness Quartet practially every year (and to my absolute but until now, private embarassment, act out loudly Alanna's part with a ridiculous Brit accent) – I wrote to the author after I

Dune (1984) [HD DVD]

had gotten married (10years ago – wow!) and to my delight, she wrote me back a very sweet letter! How many fans get a personal letter from their favorite author of all time!!! – My first recollection of watching a movie of this genre is mixed with the beginning of not altogether happy period in my life -  My parents had gotten divorced and I was visiting my dad – it was like midnight – i was in my bed watching my tiny-ass little purple portable black and white tv – i couldn't fall asleep and somehow ended up watching "Dune" – the Dino DeLaurentis Dune – can you imagine – on a four inch by four inch screen? – i was blown away – and of course it took two nights to watch the whole thing – now, you may debate the merits of the actual movie now, but to my very young self, i thought i had literally slipped into another world under the covers of my bed – And, of course, I was eternally in love with Kyle McLaughlin for the rest of my adolescent life! – My point is, I'll never forget that feeling.

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