Ella Enchanted

I'm back! Sorry about the delay in getting this review up—I had a very productive week, but unfortunately it came at the expense of the blog. As I mentioned in my previous entry, today we're taking a look at Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine.

It's a bit of a toss-up whether you've heard of this or not, and if you have, whether the first thing that comes to mind is the book or the movie. Ella Enchanted the book was published in 1997 and received the Newbery Honor award in 1998. Gail Carson Levine has written a number of children's and young adult books since then, but Ella Enchanted was her first children's novel. The movie is very different from the book, and there's a lot I could say about it, but Gail Carson Levine actually did an interview on this very subject. She has some fascinating things to say about the way the book was changed and what she thinks of the result!

In case you're familiar with neither book or movie, Ella Enchanted is a retelling of Cinderella. Of course, there have been many, many variations of this story throughout the years, but this one sets itself apart in some very unusual ways. The story takes place in a fantasy land, not a real world setting, and Ella has a very spunky personality. In a lot of ways I would describe her as a "Postmodern Princess", which is one reason why I led up to this review with my previous two articles! Since Ella is the character who drives the entire story, let's take a look at her in more detail.

Traditionally, Cinderella in particular, and fairy tale princesses in general, have always been rather passive characters. Cinderella wishes and dreams, and eventually her fairy godmother comes along to make those dreams come true. Cinderella doesn't actually have to do much herself, except be sweet and pretty. (Gail Carson Levine said this is one reason she wrote Ella the way she did, because the original Cinderella was far too much of a goody-two-shoes, and she would hate her within ten minutes.) Ella has a similar background to Cinderella from the story—mother passed away, father remarried, her stepmother and two stepsisters treat her horribly—but her personality is totally different. We begin the story shortly after Ella's birth. It seems that fairies exist in this world, but they usually keep their magic to themselves and don't generally let on that they are fairies, or do anything really major in the way of spellcasting. There is an exception—Lucinda, who does her best to fit every fairy stereotype in existence. She is not Ella's fairy godmother, but she does show up at Ella's birth and bestows what she thinks of as a gift: the gift of obedience. Simply put, Ella must do anything she is told, no matter what it is, and no matter who tells her to do it. She finds it physically impossible to resist for more than a minute or two. To realize what an awful idea this is, you only have to imagine someone telling her to do harm to herself or someone else. Ella's mother and housekeeper (a fairy herself, and Ella's actual godmother, as we later learn) realize what a terrible "gift" this is and ask Lucinda to take it back, but Lucinda is positive that all her gifts are excellent ideas, and if anyone doesn't like them, maybe they'd like life as a cute, fuzzy squirrel a little better. Because of the general rule forbidding fairies to do much magic, no one but Lucinda can take the curse back, since she's the only one willing to break that rule. Since she won't do it, Ella grows up cursed with obedience.

This is the defining trait that separates Ella from all previous Cinderella characters that have gone before. She might have been a classic Disney goody-two-shoes, or she might have been a more modern spunky tomboy, but instead she's caught somewhere in between—she has a fun but strongly independent personality, but she is forced by the curse to do what she is told and behave. What's fascinating about the character is how she deals with this, and the little ways in which she rebels and attempts to take control of her own life. You could see this as representing the way that young women are constrained by societal norms, which works well with the book as a story about breaking free and discovering and asserting one's identity.

We learn about Ella's childhood and what a fun-loving woman her mother was. She was sweet but also mischievous, and she seldom gave Ella orders. One of the rare ones she did give was a command never to tell anyone about the curse, so that no one could take advantage of it. Of course, although not knowing about the curse makes it harder for people to use it, unfortunate results can still happen by accident, and as we see later, it's not impossible for others to figure it out on their own. It's also very difficult to explain some of the situations Ella finds herself in without telling anyone about the curse. Ella's father, a merchant spends most of Ella's childhood away on business trips. She is never very close to him, and neither Mandy nor his wife ever tell him about his daughter's curse. Ella's mother dies of illness when Ella is fourteen, which is that catalyst that sends her life spinning out of control.

Ella meets Prince Charmont (French for charming, of course) when he attends her mother's funeral. He comforts her and she amuses him with her witty sense of humor, and the beginnnigs of friendship begin to take place. At the funeral reception, Ella meets Dame Olga and her two daughters, Hattie and Olive, who are very full of themselves and rather rude. After the funeral, Ella's father isn't sure what to do with her, so he sends her off to finishing school. Ella rides there in a coach with Hattie and Olive, and although Olive is too stupid to ever really figure it out, Hattie soon discovers the curse and uses it to torment Ella all the way to the school—forbidding her to eat, making her do chores for them, demanding she give up her prized possessions such as her mother's necklace. Things don't get much better when they arrive at the school, where Ella is too clumsy and not refined enough to please her teachers, at least at first. She does make a friend there, a foreign girl named Areida. Over time she begins to do better at her lessons (since she has to do exactly what her teachers tell her, like it or not).

Unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before Hattie's vindictive nature gets the better of her, and she objects to Ella's foreign best friend. She tells her to end her friendship with Areida, and of course Ella must obey. She can't stand the thought of hurting Areida though, so she makes up her mind to run away from the school and go in search of Lucinda, in an attempt to get her to take the "gift" back. She discovers that Lucinda will be attending a giant wedding, so she sets out alone. Traveling alone isn't easy for a young woman, though, even one with a knack for languages and a way with the nonhumans that she comes across. (When encountering an elven village, she makes a far better impression on them than her father did when he was there, trading wares.) When she encounters ogres, she finds that she is way out of her depth. Ogres in this world are nasty creatures that eat people, but they have a way of speaking that can convince a person of almost anything. It's very difficult to resist what they say, even if you are not cursed with obedience as Ella is. She is only fortunate that the ogres who capture her don't eat her right away, and she practices her skills of mimicry until she can imitate their language and tone of voice to convince them to go to sleep. While she is trying to figure out what else she can do, as she has been commanded not to leave the ogres' camp, Char and his entourage of knights show up and rescue her. Before leaving, Char sends one of his knights with Ella as an escort to the giants' village.

Ella reaches the village without further mishap and is welcomed by the giants, who are extremely friendly creatures, and witnesses a giant wedding that is marred only by a horrible "gift" given by Lucinda. When Ella speaks with her afterward, the fairy refuses to take back her gift and tells Ella to be happy to be obedient. This is phrased as an order, so naturally, Ella is delighted and no longer wishes to get rid of the gift. She finds her father, who is surprised to see her but is pleased by her suddenly compliant nature. He takes Ella home in his carriage and tells her he has suffered financial ruin from a bad business deal, so she must marry a rich man to get him out of his trouble. Ella is happy to do as she is told and joyfully announces it to Mandy as soon as they arrive home. Mandy is horrified to learn what Lucinda did to her this time. After a dinner with an older noble at which Ella flirts shamelessly, Mandy finally figures out that it was an order and not another gift that made Ella glad to obey orders, so she countermands it with an order to feel however she wishes to feel. Now more or less back to normal, Ella is disgusted with her behavior and the attitude she was forced to have. Not having control over one's own mind is worse than not controlling one's actions.

Ella's father changes his mind about the marriage when it turns out the nobleman is newly destitute as well. Instead, he chooses to marry Dame Olga, making Hattie and Olive Ella's stepsisters. There is some small justice in that Lucinda shows up at their wedding as well and gives another awful gift, although I have some difficulty wrapping my head around why it's so awful. Ella's father and stepmother have a mutual marriage of convenience, and Lucinda makes it so they will always love each other, which they find distasteful and generally choose to do from as far away as possible. Thus Ella's father is not around to protect her from her stepfamily's abuses (being treated as a servant, just like in the original Cinderella story), as he is always away on business trips. When Char tries to visit before leaving to spend a year in a neighboring kingdom, Hattie commands Ella not to go down to see him. Ella writes Char and asks him to write back to her by sending letters through Mandy, so Hattie is unaware of the correspondence. Over the next six months, their friendship deepens. Eventually Char reveals that he is in love with Ella and wants her to marry him. At first she is delighted, but when she realizes what a danger she would be to the prince if she married him, she decides she can't let it happen. She writers another letter, rejecting him and breaking his heart and hers.

The next months pass miserably, and Ella hears of Prince Char's return and a series of three balls the king will be holding to welcome him home. Ella wants to see the prince again, although she intends not to speak to him and to wear a mask so she won't be recognized. She isn't able to avoid him though, and when introduced to him she gives a false name. Her natural wit and charm win him over quickly, even though he isn't aware that it's Ella at first. By the third night of balls, while Ella is dancing with Char, Hattie pulls off her mask and reveals her. Ella runs from the palace and reaches home, telling Mandy what happened. They prepare to run away, but the prince arrives and demands to see her. He doesn't understand why she lied to him, but he still loves her and asks her to marry him—only he phrases it as a command, "Marry me." Certain that marrying the prince would eventually lead to someone using her to hurt him, she refuses, and manages to use her own strength of will to break the curse. Once she realizes what's happened, she's able to explain everything to Char, and agrees to marry him.

So how is this story different from the movie, and from the original Cinderella story? First of all, and probably most importantly, Ella Enchanted the movie was almost a parody of itself. It mocked the world of fairy tales by combining it with the real world. Char has a fan club of screaming girls wearing dresses painted with hearts (like t-shirts), girls visit the mall and ride on escalators moved by hand-turned wheels, there are yellow taxi carriages, Ella attends the local community college and takes a debate class, etc. The movie is also a musical, with a variety of songs from the 70s and 80s such as "Walkin' on Sunshine," "Somebody to Love," and "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart." Although the tone seems a little strange if you've read the book first, the songs really are a lot of fun.

The many nonhuman races are in the film, but they have somewhat different attitudes and cultures than in the book, and they seem to be much more obvious parodies of fairy tale stereotypes. For example, the elf Slannen (now a major character who accompanies Ella on her journey to find Lucinda) is much sillier than the dignified village head and tradesman from the book. He's a very comic character, and much is made of his height (or lack thereof), his lack of interest in music, and his aspirations to be a lawyer. In this version of the story, Char's father was killed when he was a boy and he has been raised by his melodramatically evil Uncle Edgar, who has passed laws that prevent elves from any profession not having to do with singing, dancing, and other sorts of entertainment. The elves we meet look something like a combination between leprechauns and Broadway follies dancers, and most of them sing constantly and won't shut up. Giants are friendly and fun-loving, like in the book, but they don't have quite the same attitude toward strangers (giants in the book fall all over themselves with delight whenever a stranger comes to visit). They are seen as fairly forgiving and welcoming, however, and they love to party. Their dress and behavior seem to suggest kind of a gypsy feel. It's hard to tell though, the costumes seem to have elements of hippie, bohemian, pirate, nightclub, and 70s mod influences as well, and probably more. The costumer designer for the film said they tried to create the styles from scratch, not attempting to base them on any one thing in particular, and it shows.

Ogres are similar to the book in that they eat people, but for some reason they were at peace with humans a generation ago. They also don't have the ability to convince humans to do anything they want. Instead they're rather bumbling and goofy, as with most other creatures in the movie. Fairies all seem to behave much the same way as Lucinda—they were pink and tall, princess hats with flowing gauze, they get drunk at parties, they live in retirement homes for fairies, and they fly everywhere. Lucinda is by no means the only fairy to do big magic, and the only reason Mandy doesn't is because she's not a very good fairy and she screws things up easily. She's not the calm, self-assured grandmotherly figure that she is in the book; instead she's a bit silly and given to clumsy magical mistakes, and she's quite young, played by Minnie Driver. I'm not so sure this was a good choice, alongside Ella's mother, because her mother looks much older than I would have expected, and not nearly as playful as the character is in the book. It's as if Mandy and Ella's mother had their roles reversed.

In the novel, Mandy gives Ella a magical book before she leaves for finishing school. It shows letters and journal entries by various people Ella knows, all sorts of stories, pictures, and maps, and it's mostly there to keep her entertained, although it provides useful information, too. The contents of the book constantly change. In the movie, the book is actually a character, Benny, Mandy's boyfriend whom she accidentally turned into a book due to a spell gone awry. The book remains blank until someone asks him to show something specific. He can show pictures of people but not tell where they are, which is how Ella gets the clues to find Lucinda. It's a cute idea, but it also serves to reinforce Mandy's reputation as a clumsy fairy who is bad at magic, at least in the movie.

Prince Char is a little more naive and full of himself at the beginning of the story. He is laid back and not all that interested in responsibility or princely duties, the opposite of his book counterpart—but then again, this likely results from the change in father figures. In the film he is raised by his evil uncle, who has done his best to keep the prince from having any interest in politics or any real preparation to be king, as he wishes to keep all the power for himself. Edgar himself is an entirely new character, and a laughably silly one. He has a dark goatee and an evil smirk that seem to scream that he is the villain, not to mention a talking snake for a sidekick. It's all very silly, but he's played by Carey Elwes, who takes the character over the top in an amusing way and chews the scenery so hard you just know he's having the time of his life. The character fits the tone of the movie and provides some needed tension. After all, in the book it's not hard to explain the threat Ella poses because of her curse, but it doesn't make as much sense onscreen without showing it explicitly, by having a villain command her to kill the prince. In the book, the only real villain is Hattie, and potentially Ella's father, who seem to conspire to ruin Ella's life.

Dame Olga acts very similarly to her character in the book, as do Hattie and Olive (although Olive is much more giggly than I would have expected). Both are incredibly over the top, but it works and is kind of funny. Ella's father is a fairly nice man who actually has some kind of relationship with his daughter, and if anything he seems a little absent-minded and hands-off about his parenting. Ella's best friend, Areida, has a similar role in book and movie, although in the movie they'd been friends since childhood. She's portrayed by a dark-skinned young woman, which adds an element of racism to the other girls' treatment of her. Ella and Areida are activists, often leading rallies and protests on behalf of nonhuman races, who are unfairly oppressed by Edgar.

Ella herself seems very different to me in the movie, possibly because she is so much older. In the book she was about fifteen or sixteen for most of the story, but here she is played by Anne Hathaway and is in college. She has a very modern attitude to fit with the modern (sort of) setting. She doesn't show the same subtlety of wit as Ella in the book, but she's still strong-willed and energetic. If anything, the film version has more of a temper and is more confrontational, given her activism, skills at debate, and contemptuous attitude towards Prince Char when she first meets him. This is another difference—Char is quite full of himself and yet fascinated that there is a girl who doesn't immediately fall for his charms, and Ella thinks of him as a stuck-up airhead with no real plan for his future rule. Ella is justified, of course, and it's her influence that changes that about him, whereas in the book, she had a positive influence on him but in quite the opposite direction, convincing him to let loose a bit and enjoy his youth, not just spending all his time on princely duties. (The king and queen in the book are actually very much in approval of this change.)

At first glance, the book and the movie really do seem totally different, largely because of the way characters have become caricatures and the setting has been a parody and a mish-mash of modern and fantasy worlds. Still, the most essential elements of the story do remain, and Ella is eventually the one responsible for her own fate and saving herself from the curse. In that respect, both versions are a good example of the "Postmodern Princess". Ella isn't like other girls her age, who care more about giggling at young men and flaunting fashionable clothing and jewelry. The main difference, I'd say, is that the movie makes everything much more explicit and over the top, and a lot of the subtlety is gone. That's not entirely surprising, given the differences between book and movie target audiences and the ways in which a medium defines the story it is telling. The movie Ella Enchanted has a "fluffy" quality to it that actually makes it quite entertaining—kind of like eating popcorn or cotton candy. Since it's a musical, it's fun to sing along or just listen, even if you've seen it a number of times before. In fact, it's one of my collection of movies that I like to put on to play while I work on sewing or other projects, since I know the story well, it doesn't take a lot of concentration, but it provides some entertainment and something to occupy those parts of my mind not absorbed in measuring fabric and getting seams straight.

Overall, if pressed, I'd say I prefer the book—largely because I read it first, and it does have that element of subtlety that gives it a little more depth, especially as a children's book. The movie is great fun, and it's certainly a loving parody, but it does seem to spend a bit too much time laughing at itself and at the entire concept of a fairy tale. I have a great fondness for fairy tales and fantasy, and I prefer to take them at face value when I can. Still, I can see how the movie adaptation broadened the story's appeal for a wider audience. Gail Carson Levine herself says that the book and the movie are two entirely different creative works, and she believes they should be taken on their own merits, with comparing them with each other too much.

So what do these two versions of the story have in common with the Cinderella story, aside from the young woman who rises above her stepfamily's cruelty to marry the prince? That's a fun little Easter egg hunt, and the glass slippers, pumpkin carriage, and stroke of midnight elements all play a role in both stories, though in different ways in each one. Try checking out both the book and the movie of Ella Enchanted and see what you can find!

The Postmodern Princess, part 2

Hey everyone, as promised: an exclusive interview! What sort of interview, you ask? Well, in "The Postmodern Princess" part one, I talked a lot about Disney Princesses. It just so happens that I'm acquainted with someone who used to be employed by Mattel, where she worked on the Disney Princess line as an artist and product designer! I sat down to ask her a few questions about her experiences and thoughts. First, the transcript of our conversation, and then, my reactions and thoughts on what she had to say.

Q: What kinds of projects did you work on? Did you design products?
A: I did, actually. I did some things that came out in 2009 as well as this year. I also did a lot of Mattel's early Princess & the Frog drawings, when the movie was in its very early stages, because they wouldn't give us any visual reference. Too afraid of it getting leaked. So I'd get to see their drawings, and then back at my office I'd try to replicate them.

Q: What sorts of products did you work on?
A: I was mostly in charge of the tiny plastic figures, because what they call the "play pattern" was about acting out a story and I was trying to make that my focus. But also because they were the easiest, and I was new to toy design. I'd always been their animator, never a toy designer, which is a lot more engineering. As a cartoonist, engineering and measurements are kinda the opposite of me. :D

Q: So, who's your favorite princess and why?
A: We were each kinda "in charge" of a princess, not boss wise just as the main resource for reference and brainstorming. And of course we always knew the most about our favorites, hehe. Mine was Belle, which has been my favorite since it came out. I say I like it because I like how she's a reader, and might read something I wrote, and I like how I see similarities.

Q: So did you get to pick the one you were in "charge" of?
A: Eh, kinda sorta, it was more organic. We had probably the best boss in the world, and she kinda just let us run with it. She knew that we'd be the most passionate about something we were into, and work the hardest on it.

Q: That sounds like an excellent boss. The best ones always let you play to your strengths. So, when you designed products, were the characters pretty much always in the same outfit, or did you ever design different clothes for them?
A: Ooooh, hahaha, that's a great question. And the answer almost always is a resounding NO. Disney is veeeeerrrrrry particular about what the princesses are wearing, what specific colors every piece is. They have a whole division called Disney Consumer Products that is just in charge of that, making sure all the license companies like Mattel are all on the same page. You may have noticed, for the Princess versions of the princesses...did you see that Belle doesn't have brown hair and brown eyes anymore? She has reddish hair and greenish eyes.

Q: No, I hadn't noticed that! Weird! Do you know why?
A: It's partially to make all the princess stand out from each other - they never had to in the movies - and partially to play to market research. Girls don't want to buy brown haired, brown eyed dolls because they're "boring."

Q: Well, I can still kind of understand it. Still, it's too bad everything has to be analyzed to death for the sake of marketing.
A: It's true. I worked with market research for years, making animations for them to test before I switched to design. I saw enough of it for several lifetimes. Did you know that there's a very very specific order that the average girl likes the princesses in? You'll always find little girls that have their favorites, like all of us did at the office. But in that market research world, it's the same like 90% plus of the time. Girls like Cinderella the best because she has blond hair and blue eyes. That's it. Her story factors into it not so much. (The target age for Disney princess is girls 2 -5 years old, so they don't understand the story anyway.)

Q: Aha, I see! So the character's personality doesn't seem to matter at all, huh?
A: It does for the older crowd, like your 5 - 8s, but the "target" age doesn't care quite so much. They might like someone's outfit better, because they love dressing up like their princess whenever they can. Older girls can appreciate their personality and actions: Many don't like Snow White because "all she does is cooks and cleans." But Belle gets points because she makes her own way.

Q: Ah, so it sounds like a little feminism is actually finding its way into the line then - that's at least somewhat encouraging! I find it interesting that Tiana's not selling well, though. Maybe her story would appeal more to older girls (and women, since I love her story so much), but I wonder if that means that African-American girls just don't get into the Disney Princess line, and Tiana's not drawing them in? Or possibly African-American girls like the white princesses better, which would say something interesting about the way race is viewed in our society today.
A: Oh, there's a reason. It was a pretty big culture shock for me because many stores have their own market research, that tells them minority dolls don't sell as well as white dolls. It's in that weird area that I kept worrying was racist: some overseas countries even used slang we never would, because that's still the cultural norm over there though it may not carry the same connotation for them. But like any big company they work to their numbers, and the numbers say that they'll often lose money by devoting space to anything that won't move as well. It's easy for us to think of it like "but that's just greedy!" but in big business, not making as much money and losing money are the exact same thing. Any product that makes less than the maximum your best product could is losing money. African American moms always tell Mattel how much they'd love to see more positive role models and toys, and Mattel wants to provide for them, but many stores are shy about devoting shelf space. In this country, black families sadly do typically have less disposable income as much as I want to ignore the numbers, and stores like catering to the moms that will spend a lot or even waste money.

Q: Ah, I see. So it's a problem on multiple levels - not something that's so easy to fix.
A: It's all sales. Like you said, Tiana's movie is fantastic and she's by far the most independent. But the merchandise world really doesn't care about the story, just the product. That's mostly all they see. Disney itself tries to promote all of their princesses with equal passion, but meet a lot of resistance.

Q: It's almost encouraging to hear that. It's too easy to see Disney as a soulless conglomerate that's lost sight of its original mission. It's nice to hear they're actually trying, even if it's not working out as well as people hope. Personally, I think it's pretty important that entertainment make those strides to cross racial boundaries. A lot of people argue that one of the reasons President Obama was elected is because we've seen a number of black presidents in TV and movies, and I think there's some truth to that. But it's difficult in our society and economy, and the world of marketing doesn't encourage those risks.
A: Actually, I do have to admit that even though Disney and Mattel are both big comapnies, Disney cares about preserving their brand integrity and Mattel cares about kids and moms. So both are quite noble. I don't begrudge the stores but it's hard not to see them as greedy. Though I suppose if I worked there I might not say that. I think you're totally right about Obama, and the stores were right too. It's not the minorities that have a problem buying white toys, it's the opposite.

Q: Exactly. Have you seen the video that's going around about a study that was done with kids? They asked little kids to look at drawings of children and say which they thought was the smartest, the prettiest, the nicest. A black girl was pointing out the blond white girl in the drawing as the smartest.
A: I've seen market research that points to black kids sometimes picking white toys over black ones, on occasion. That wasn't my world so I'm not sure of all the complexities behind those times or how often they come up.
Q: Yeah, the girl's parents were stunned and saddened. It's an important realization for anyone who still thinks we live in a "post-racial" society.
A: Well at the end of the day, at least the kids are spared from all of this, though it means it can be hard if not impossible to find merchandise of their particular princess. Serious, got to any store that sells princess products. You'll see the princesses that sell well over and over, and the ones that don't much less often. Pick up a coloring book or birthday napkins or anything, anywhere: maybe they're all inside, but the popular princesses are the ones on those covers. I never realized how empowering DP was, it's like the one thing American girls love more than anything else at that age.

Q: Yeah, and I've noticed that a lot of times in group pictures, princesses like Mulan and Pocahontas just aren't included at all.
A: Pocahontas is kinda wierd, because she doesn't actually have a ballgown, and if she did it would be brown. So I kinda get her. But Mulan, Jasmine and Tiana need more princess presence. (Kids are less racist too...much of the reason they don't like Jasmine is because she has pants instead of a dress.)

Q: Ahh, so it's less about race and more about who's girliest? :D
A: Yes! At 2-5, girls love two things: being a magical princess/mermaid/fairy, or being essentially a domestic housewife. They often like both at the same time, and there's lots of photos of girls in their cherished gowns to feel pretty, playing kitchen.
But it's everywhere, the blond hair blue eye curse. You remember Kingdom Hearts? Princess Alice? Since when is she a princess? Total market research move. That's how it works.
Q: Yeah, I know. It seemed as if they could have found a real princess if they'd tried hard enough. I always felt it was annoying that they hadn't included Ariel, but I guess the fins thing got in the way.

Q: So I notice that not all of the Disney Princesses are actually princesses, but there are Disney animated characters who ARE technically princesses and have never been included, like Princess Kida from Atlantis. Ever notice that, or have an idea why it might be?
A: That's a good question, and surprisingly one I have to think about. That means it wasn't something we dealt with every day...Disney essentially wanted more Cinderella toys or whatever each year. Part of it would be anyone that wasn't girly enough in clothing or attitude, which might explain Kida. And they'd probably take pause at introducing anyone ethnic.
Q: Yeah, that was my first thought too. Plus, I'm not so sure that Atlantis did very well at the box office, and although she was a princess, it wasn't your typical princess movie.
A: But then you've got the Rapunzel problem, which is their next princess. She's blond hair pink dress just like Aurora...so how do you make them stand out, and not cannibalize your sales? I think they pushed her dress purple for that very reason, actually. I think that's probably the real answer to your question. If I put in another, less popular princess from the stable, she's going to compete with the other ones: probably one in particular. And even if they have more princesses, the ones they're already using are pretty much the heavy hitters.

Q: I only just found out about the new Rapunzel movie. Did you hear about it pretty early on?
A: As a 3D animator I can tell you that what I saw before I left was breathtaking. I can also tell you as a cartoonist I hate it with the same rage and futility of a thousand dying sons. I thought Frog was going to be the first of many. It's actually the only one they're doing. We heard about Rapunzel right on the heels of Frog, back when we all assumed it was going to be 2D. They really can't with her hair...her hair is I think 50ft long, and she's only 5 ft tall. Way too much not to let the computer do it, I suppose.

Q: That's really depressing. I just got done watching The Princess and the Frog with the commentary, and they talked a lot about how Disney had shut down the 2D animation studio and gotten rid of all the animator desks, but one guy had kept a few hidden away in a warehouse. It's sad that they're just giving up again. I'm really sad that Frog didn't do better, and I can't believe they don't seem to think 2D matters anymore.
A: Seriously! It seems like only Japan gets it. But they're also the only people that get they don't have to be just for kids. We've started to get there with Simpsons and the like, but we haven't ever had a real drama cartoon have we?

Q: No, we haven't, not that I know of. And actually, although you were complaining about Alice in Kingdom Hearts, I've heard that Square Enix actually got a fair amount of freedom to do what they wanted once they got the okay to use specific characters. Otherwise I just can't see Disney having the guts to let something like that happen, since some of the plot stuff is so far from Disney norm.
A: Oh yeah, totally. I am starting to see edgier things. We use these things called Style Guides, or Bibles, that are all the visual rules we have to follow to make this or that match. Like the Princesses have several just based on Christmas, all a little different. Anyway, they're doing this edgier thing with Tinkerbell where they give her a bratty personality. "It's all about me." Huh...wasn't she mute? :D

Q: Speaking of which, I heard that at E3 they've revealed a new Mickey Mouse game that's dark and steampunk-y and geared towards older gamers. Apparently the success of Kingdom Hearts has inspired them to do something a little different!
A: Yes! That's actually a Wii game. It's brilliant. If you remember Oswald the Rabbit, I think was the character, he was Walt's first. The game is about him getting revenge on Mickey, and both are in the older style but much darker. IGN and some other sites have screenies up.

Q: Okay, I only had one more princess question. I read an interesting blog post about the new Rapunzel movie that theorized that it's a princess movie that's actually being geared kind of toward boys. The idea is that the trailer focused mostly on the male lead for a lot of it, and it has lots of derring-do and stuff boys are supposed to like better. What do you think?
A: This is probably the first thing you've asked that I'm not allowed to talk about. I know the whole plot of the movie...granted it will change, just like Frog kept changing. But essentially no, at least, not when I last saw it. At the time there were definitely things boys would like, which I'm sure they structured that way on purpose, and boys will like the male lead. But last I saw it was still Rapunzel's show, and she does some pretty cool things herself.

Q: I did get that from it! I was just curious about the accuracy of the post I read. I thought it was interesting but wasn't sure if I agreed. I do think the male lead looks like fun though! Okay, I won't ask anymore about Rapunzel. I don't want it to be spoiled for me anyway. ;)
A: All I can say is that when I just looked it up, it looks like it's called Tangled now? I've been away from Mattel for a year, but I am allowed to say as an outside observer that changing the name from Rapunzel to Tangled does sound like they're de-girlifying it. But that would be a pretty hefty change from the last plot I knew of.
Q: Ahh. Interesting, we'll have to see if they've changed much! Maybe after it comes out you can tell me if it was really different or not. Anyway, I think Tangled is a good name, but it's not so obvious that it's Rapunzel anymore. Not sure how that will affect things, we'll see. Anyway, thanks for answering all my questions!

So, as you can see, I learned a lot about the marketing and presentation of the Disney Princesses! Some was discouraging, some of it very encouraging. Overall I got some interesting insights as to how our culture views race, and how that affects the way toys are marketed to kids—and also a little about feminism, too. My personal take on all this? I wish there was more emphasis on the Princesses' personalities, rather than what they look like, and a more inclusive, modern attitude toward the characters. I wish they didn't marginalize the ethnic characters as much. It's a tough cycle to break, though—companies market the blond, blue-eyed characters because that's what market research tells them little girls want. Parents buy those products for their kids because that's what's out there, and also because those are the ones marketed most aggressively and are also easiest to find. Little girls accept the way the products are marketed to them and internalize this as affirming that blond, blue-eyed girls in pink dresses are the ideal. Even though they're very young, they're beginning to develop prejudices based on the toys their parents buy for them and the way those toys are marketed in stores and advertisements. It's hard to know where to step in to try to break the cycle, but I believe that parents and companies all have at least some of the responsibility.

Anyway, enough with the soapbox! It's time to talk more about this idea of a postmodern princess. We've seen that the old-fashioned princess is still extremely popular, but entertainment outlets are trying to bring those princess ideals into the 21st century, even though it's difficult to do. I've already mentioned how we can see an example of this in Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, where the princess is actually a very real sort of American character, suffering from the disadvantages of her race and social class, but working hard to achieve her dreams through her own work, rather than just wishing. We also see her foil in the character of Charlotte, a blond and blue-eyed girl who always dresses in pink, wants more than anything to be a princess, and is used to having everything in life handed to her. Despite this, she's a very likable character, and I can see the two characters almost trying to resolve that dichotomy, to bridge the gap between the old ideal and the new.

Other movies have had similar ideas. One of the most popular is the Shrek series, whose Princess Fiona is anything but normal. She's got an attitude, she can take care of herself, she actually willingly gives up her classic beauty and the lifestyle that's expected of her for what she wants. This is great stuff, of course, but it's also wrapped up in the middle of satire and pop-culture references, which are definitely fun but tend to obscure the message a bit. On the other hand, we're talking about the "postmodern" princess here, so maybe it's appropriate that she isn't just in a traditional setting.

I use the term "postmodern princess" a lot, and it might seem as if "modern" would work just as well, or better. Possibly, but I do love my alliteration. :P Besides, we've seen a lot of feminism in the last few decades—self-assured girls and women are nothing new in popular media. What is different, however, is the way we're seeing this as a synthesis of old and new. Feminism is not about being a tomboy and rejecting traditional feminine norms. It's not about seeing anything womanly as bad or restrictive. Instead, we see our society attempting to reconcile feminine identity with feminine freedom. We're aware of the ways in which what we think is feminism can actually be counter-productive, and those working in the film industry or with other types of creative media often try to really examine the ways in which women are portrayed. The modern woman was trying to break out of old roles, stereotypes, and restrictions; the postmodern princess is attempting to reconcile identity and freedom, to look at traditional roles and decide what they mean to her.

A commenter on my last princess post disagreed with me on my explanation of Jasmine. Jasmine, she argued, is not really all that feminist at all. She wants to determine her own fate, but at the expense of others. She is naive and irresponsible, attempting to seek out freedom, but falling back on her position of power and privilege when things get rough. As a princess, Jasmine has responsibilities that go with the privileges of royalty, but she doesn't seem to take them all that seriously. She spends a lot of time complaining about how she is not a prize to be won, but most of the time it's just words. I think this is a decent paraphrasing of what the commenter had to say, and I think she's write about most of it. It's as if the filmmakers wanted Jasmine to be a modern feminist, but they focused too much on outward gestures and not so much on what feminism really means. Jasmine wants freedom, but as a princess she also has duties to her people. It would be very interesting to see a story about such a princess attempting to reconcile her desires and her longing for freedom with her position as royalty and the responsibilities that come with it. She might gain her freedom by running away, but at what cost?

Like Jasmine, much of Ariel's feminism is about her spunk and drive to seek out what she wants on her own. Still, what she wants is a very old-fashioned sort of thing. She wants to get her man, no matter the cost to herself and her own identity. Some of these princesses might be considered "modern", while someone like Tiana is more "postmodern". Tiana knows what she wants and knows who she is. The end of the movie is not about her completely changing her view of herself and her desires—it's about admitting that it's possible to want more than one thing and to work to reconcile those dreams. She doesn't give up her dream of owning her own restaurant; instead, she tells Naveen that she wants him to be a part of that dream.

Going back a little, though... Animated princesses of all kinds are such a Disney stereotype, however, that it isn't surprising that Shrek satirized the Disney fairy tale so fiercely. If you sit down to watch any of the movies and try to count the references to Disney characters, themes, and tropes, I imagine you'd lose count pretty quickly. The princess can easily get forest animals to sing and dance with her, with unexpected results. There's always a dragon to battle, though exploring the dragon's motivations might lead to some surprises. Shrek made fun of many classic Disney ideas and turned many story elements completely upside down. What's more, most of these jabs actually hit pretty close to home. So how did Disney react to having their creations mocked so thoroughly? Why, they decided that if they can't beat 'em, join 'em. Never let it be said that Disney doesn't know how to laugh at itself! And thus Enchanted was born.

Enchanted was hilarious in part because it was so self-aware and took great joy in lampshading as many classic tropes as possible. These fairy tale themes and stereotypes were all the more ridiculous, however, when taken out of the original animated setting and dropped down in modern day New York City. Giselle spends most of the movie seeking a way back to her charmed life in an animated fairyland, only to discover that's not what she really wants. She finds a more fulfilling life in the real world, with all its complications and gray areas and lack of clear right or wrong answers. The movie isn't a rejection of the idealistic world of animated fairy tales, however. The character Nancy ends up finding her own happily-ever-after by following the prince back to Andalasia, where she becomes animated and impulsively gets married, without looking back to her successful life as a modern New York woman. And although Giselle stays in the real world, she retains that sunny, almost foolishly optimistic personality and her love of feminine beauty, old-fashioned romance, and sugary cheerfulness. The story is about growing up, I think, but it's not so much about rejecting childhood as it is acknowledging and accepting the idealistic fairytale worlds of childhood and incorporating that into part of who you are as an adult.

There's nothing wrong with loving frilly pink princess dresses and sparkly magical fairylands with unicorns and magic. There's nothing wrong with wishing on stars, either. But you have to remember that wishing will only get you part of the way, and if you want to fulfill your dreams, you're going to have to work at it. This goes for feminism, too. It's not about just demanding freedom from traditional gender roles. It's about taking that freedom and using it to decide what role you want, and what you want out of life, and using that freedom to reach for it. It's only the first stepping stone, and if we want to achieve our dreams, we have to accept that the sparkly tiara of womanhood brings with it royal responsibility as well.

Did I just throw myself headlong overboard with that overstretched metaphor? Sorry, I guess it's the overdramatic princess in me being fed too much sugar. Time to get rid of some excess fairy dust and head out. Next week: we'll talk about this modern idea of womanhood, feminism, and the "princess" ideal as it's presented in Ella Enchanted. I'll see you then!

Oz Adaptations: They're Everywhere!

I have a really cool post coming up for later today—seriously, it's awesome! I have an exclusive interview! So you know you're going to want to read it, of course.

We'll continue with the Postmodern Princess and talk a whole bunch more about Disney princesses later, but for now, I've found some interesting news online about future Oz projects in the works. Apparently there are a number of new Oz movies coming out, and Cleolinda posted today about several new developments. There's a new movie coming up called Oz: The Great and Powerful that tells the story from the Wizard's point of view, and Robert Downey Jr. has been signed to play the Wizard. I like the sound of that, and it could be really interesting! Sam Raimi will be directing this one, which is an intriguing possibility and could be good thing or a bad thing. We'll see! This is another Disney film and will be in 3D.

There isn't a lot of information out about this next one, simply called Oz, but it looks as if it might be very faithful to the original. Dorothy is quite young and the Cowardly Lion is, apparently, an actual lion. The teaser is very short and doesn't consist of much, but it does look appealing!

Lea Michele of Glee fame will be voicing Dorothy in a 3D animated musical called Dorothy of Oz, using material from the Oz book of the same name, which is not one of the original Baum novels. I haven't read it, but it was written by Roger Stanton Baum, great-grandson of L. Frank Baum. There are many, many Oz books written by authors other than L. Frank Baum, and this may be one of the ones I have to check out, given that they're making a movie based on it. I'm not sure how faithful it is to the original spirit of Oz. We'll see. Oh, and apparently the music is being written by Bryan Adams. According to LA Times blogger Steven Zeitchik:

Because it's something that is cherished both deeply and widely, "The Wizard of Oz" is not only a cultural phenomenon but a psychological one. "Oz" is everyone's story, a piece of our individual cultural memories that the rest of the world happens to share. That doesn't mean the entire world wants to see countless new spins on "Oz." But it does mean that those with moviemaking clout have reason to make a new version of the film, and also explains why they're able to persuade others to go along. As Dorothy discovered a century ago, the Emerald City is difficult to resist, even if it can be disappointing to visit.

These aren't the only Oz adaptations being worked on, and it sounds like there are at least six titles currently being talked about. I think the whole thing is fascinating, and while I'm sure I'll like some of the films better than others, it's really exciting to see a resurgence in Oz popularity. You can bet I will be seeing these movies and reviewing them when they come out!

Be sure to come back later for my exclusive interview and more on the Disney Princesses!

The Postmodern Princess, part 1

It's hard to say exactly why princesses are such a big deal for so many young American girls. It isn't, however, very difficult to see that they are a big deal, and if you weren't a little girl who was at one point obsessed with princesses, pink, tiaras, and fairy tales at some point between the ages of five and ten, chances are you knew someone who was.

But why princesses? The United States was founded on a rejection of monarchy, after all, and not only did our founders do their best to reject the notion of royal rule, our entire society is built on principles that run counter to the whole idea of monarchy. Success is not supposed to be achieved through social connections and heredity, but rather through hard work, perseverance, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Being a princess is all about...what, exactly? Having life handed to you on a silver platter? Not having to work for what you want?

Maybe, at least to a degree. Princesses are part of royalty, an upper class that seems destined to be everything we want to be but aren't. As children get older, they start to idolize other types of upper class, ones that actually exist in modern society: rock stars, movie stars, super models, professional athletes, and more. These may be distant dreams, but they are potentially achievable, and our society never seems to tire of reaching for those heights, as evidenced by such reality shows as American Idol, America's Got Talent, So You Think You Can Dance, and America's Next Top Model. We love seeing an ordinary person reach fame and celebrity, and we imagine that it could one day be us.

So why do so many little girls dream of being princesses? It's not as if princesses are common these days, and it's almost impossible to become one. For those rare few that do marry into royalty, it's not always the dream come true that it seems—case in point, Princess Diana. Still, teens swoon over Prince Harry and little girls pester their parents for more and more products from the Disney Princess line. Princesses in pink with tiaras and sparkly gowns remain as popular as ever. Maybe some of it has to do with the fairy tale setting, the mystical and mythical element that sparks our imaginations. Maybe it's also because being a princess implies fame, respect, money, love, and freedom. If you're a princess, surely you can make any of your other dreams come true, right? But while the idea of happily ever remains popular with little girls, modern American society seems almost embarrassed by this. We want our girls to grow up self-assured, empowered, ambitious individuals who have more specific goals than just "happily ever after", and we want them to be able to work to achieve those goals. So how do we handle this problem?

That's how we ended up with the Postmodern Princess. The new fairy tale princess doesn't wait to be rescued. She (almost) always ends up with her prince charming, but there's usually some twist to it. Maybe he's not who she expected, and she has to learn not to judge on appearances or first impressions. Maybe she has to hunt her prince charming down herself, rather than waiting for him to come rescue her. Maybe she even rescues him. The Postmodern Princess is often a tomboy, or maybe she's equally comfortable in both masculine and feminine roles. She is attractive to men not because of her dainty feminine qualities (or at least not just because of them), but because of her self-assured determination and her own dreams for the future.

Disney Princesses are a pretty notorious example, as many of the early ones in particular were about as anti-feminist as you can get. They've gradually been catching up to modern ideals, however, starting with Ariel in The Little Mermaid. What? But Ariel gave up her family, her home, her voice, her tail, and her self-identity to get her man, who she'd never even spoken to! This is a common source of outrage, and I grant that it's true, but take a look at Ariel. She is spunky and often defiant, and she goes to great lengths to get what she wants—even if those lengths are not necessarily wise, and you could probably argue that she's still too young and naive to really know what she wants. Besides, what's so great about this prince, anyway? He's pretty bland—I read a review of the movie when it first came out (I was ten years old), and it described Prince Eric as a "male bimbo". (I had to ask my mom what a bimbo was.) The review was right, kind of, but on the other hand, the princes in Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty hardly did more than speak a few words. Prince Phillip in Sleeping Beauty was a definite step in the right direction, as he had a little more personality and was actually kind of likable. Prince Eric occasionally has a touch of mischievous humor, and he has a lot more screen time and dialogue than some of the earlier princes. Still, he's not all that exciting, it's true. Why is this important? Well, to really respect a Disney princess, we have to feel that the object of her heart's desire is actually worth her time. With Eric, that's somewhat debatable, but at least Ariel actively seeks out what she wants rather than letting others do all the work for her. Snow White had the dwarfs, Cinderella had the mice and her fairy godmother, and Aurora had the good fairies, after all. Ariel has help, but much of the time it's fairly ineffectual help, and she does a lot of the work herself. At least she takes the initiative.

Next up is Beauty and the Beast. I was 12 this time, and when we came out of the theater after the movie, my mom looked at me and said, "Belle is just like you!" Well, she was in that she was a bookworm who spent hours reading, and she had an obsession with dreaming of adventures and other lands. But where Ariel began showing some spunk, Belle took it several steps further. She showed initiative, and although she was kind of vague about what sort of adventure she wanted, she wasn't just waiting around for her prince to come bring it to her. She went to rescue her father on her own, and she agreed to stay in the Beast's castle to save him, giving up that freedom she wanted for the family she loved. Although I admire Ariel's initiative, Belle's is far more selfless and brave. Granted, the Beast isn't exactly a prize catch, but he does manage to woo Belle—not through his station, looks, or wealth, but by displaying true personality and character, and showing respect for her desires. Suddenly we have a prince we can admire Belle for loving. He isn't perfect, but he's interesting, and very likable as the story goes on. The final showdown involves the Beast and Gaston, and Belle only helps at the end by saying "I love you" and breaking the spell, which is a pretty standard thing for a princess to do. Still, she did her best to save the Beast and not wait around for others to do things for her, so Belle is a pretty admirable princess, all in all. (Of course, Beauty and the Beast was one of the best Disney movies ever, truly postmodern princess or not, but that's for another review.)

Although not a title character and for once, not European, Jasmine is definitely a Disney princess, and a fairly feminist one at that. Unfortunately, most of her feminist traits remain philosophical, and although she does take the initiative to leave the palace and see life out in the city, she is woefully naive and unprepared for the realities of the world. Although she spends a lot of time insisting on making her own decisions and not being a prize to be won, she still spends most of the movie being controlled by men. Aladdin seems to have a decent amount of respect for her, so I think we can hope for a positive future, but she doesn't actually accomplish all that much in the movie aside from spouting platitudes—admirable platitudes, but sadly without a lot of action to back them up.

Disney's 90s renaissance was in full swing from The Little Mermaid to The Lion King (we'll skip over the latter for now, since it's a bit debatable whether Nala counts as a princess), but things took a turn for the worse with Pocahontas. Pocahontas is often presented as part of the Disney Princess line, but there are a number of problems with her identification as a princess. She's a chief's daughter, which really isn't the same thing as a princess. She's not of European ethnicity and doesn't easily fit into the standard fairy tale mold. She's a historical figure, albeit one whose story was totally butchered in this retelling. And, finally, her movie just wasn't very good. I've seen Pocahontas a couple of times, but I have trouble taking any of it seriously. Most other princess characters are based on fairy tale and legend, but when you try to do a historical story, I believe you have a responsibility to tell the story honestly. Creative license is allowed, but to try to tell a story like this and whitewash so much of what actually happened, to make John Smith into a clean-cut blond hunk, and to pretend (or at least imply) that Pocahontas brought the Native Americans and the English colonists together to live in peace forever after, is entirely dishonest and unconscionable. Not to mention that you're teaching children a version of history that is just plain wrong, which will only confuse them when it comes up in their US history classes later on in high school. I was in high school when this movie came out, and I spent a lot of time growling to my friends about how Pocahontas did not marry John Smith, she married John Rolfe, the man who began the tobacco farming industry in America, and wasn't that a lovely contribution to history? Anyway, enough with that mini-rant. Pocahontas seemed admirable and self-assured in the Disney movie, and she did save John Smith's life, but I have a hard time finding her any sort of role model even so.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame has similar problems. I actually do like this movie, largely because it does have a very good soundtrack and a fascinating villain, but it's also guilty of butchering its source material. It was classic literature this time instead of history, and I haven't actually read the original book, but the characters and story are so vastly different from the book that the movie has caused great gnashing of teeth and foaming at the mouth among a couple of my friends. I enjoyed the movie, but at the time it came out I was at the peak of my obsession with the musical Les Miserables, based on another of Victor Hugo's works, and there really was no comparison when it comes to the quality of the adaptation. Besides which, Esmerelda wasn't a princess in any way. Pocahontas was at least a chief's daughter, but Esmerelda was a gypsy girl, and neither love interest in the movie was royalty of any sort, either. At least she was a kind, intelligent, and proactive person, which is more than you can say for the original book character, as I understand it. Still, she's just not that memorable and doesn't really fit as a princess, no matter how you look at it.

Hercules was a definite step in the right direction. Meg wasn't a princess, but boy, did she ever have an attitude, and it even turned out she was working for the villain! She definitely broke out of the standard pattern, but she also wasn't a princess and generally isn't marketed as one. (Okay, okay, she did marry a god, I guess that counts for something.) I don't know if you want to argue that someone working for the god of the underworld is a good role model, but Meg didn't just stand back and let the guy do all the work—in fact, when we first met her, she actually refused his help at first and told him she could handle it. Go Meg! So, maybe not so much a princess, but definitely fitting the "postmodern" personality. Not to mention that I am always in favor of a character who breaks out of the usual tropes and stereotypes to do things that the audience doesn't expect. (What's that? They butchered the Hercules myth, too? Shush. I know they did, but I still love it. Maybe that's a review for another time, too.)

Mulan is another not-princess who is often marketed as part of the Disney Princess line, but she is similar to Pocahontas in that she's not of European ethnicity, and she's not really a princess. She definitely breaks the mold in a lot of ways, and she seems to actively avoid a lot of princess traits. She's not after a man, and although she kind of ends up with one, it's really pretty ambiguous. She goes after what she wants pretty proactively, and her goals are kind of a mix of protecting her family and finding herself. She's a definite tomboy who isn't incredibly strong, but she's very smart and solves problems with ingenuity and skill rather than brute strength. There's a lot to admire about Mulan. I know a lot of Mulan fans who are incredibly frustrated that she turns down the offer of a position on the emperor's council, but some of my friends choose to believe that after she went home to her family, she eventually went back to the capital to take that position. She may not be a princess, but she is definitely trending toward that postmodern ideal.

Disney sure seemed to have trouble finding real princess stories to tell around this time, despite the fact that there are still plenty of Grimm's fairy tales still left untouched. Ah, well. The next feature they released was Tarzan, which I think is actually kind of underrated. I really enjoyed this one, and I thought Minnie Driver as Jane was absolutely hilarious and fun. She's quirky, intelligent, and just as strange as her bumbling father. She's also not afraid to get her hands dirty, which makes me wonder why she wore that yellow get-up out into the jungle in the first place. I'll let it slide though! Here we have a Victorian heroine, which is a pretty interesting change, and although she has to be saved by Tarzan a number of times, she's an interesting character who contributes to the story in ways other than just serving as the damsel in distress.

The next animated feature with a strong female lead was Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and gasp! This actually featured a princess. Sadly, although based on a fascinating story and featuring a number of great voice actors, it doesn't seem to have made much of a mark as a Disney film. It's too bad, too, since it appears to be the first Disney steampunk movie, and I can totally get behind that—not to mention that I've been fascinated by the Atlantis legend since high school and have read tons of books on the subject. Unfortunately, the movie messed with the legend quite a bit, although I guess that isn't surprising. (This will definitely be the subject of its own review later, so I won't get into that too much right now.) Princess Kida didn't show up till a good ways into the movie, and although in some ways she was a fairly strong character, she was overshadowed by the ensemble cast. In fact, near the end of the movie she pretty much fused with the story's MacGuffin and then, oddly enough, appeared to become useless. There was a lot of great potential in the character, but most of it went unutilized.

I've mentioned a lot of female leads who aren't considered part of the official Disney Princess line. The official line consists of nine "princesses", including Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Mulan, who I've already talked about, and also the three more old-fashioned princesses, Snow White, Aurora, and Cinderella. Although Mulan wasn't a princess and Kida was, Mulan was the last new entry into the official Disney Princess line until Tiana came along, in last year's The Princess and the Frog. It took us a long time to get to her, and Disney had actually shut down their 2D animation department after flops like Brother Bear and Home on the Range. (Did anyone even see that last one? I'd forgotten it existed.) The last Disney animated movie with a strong female lead that I remember was Lilo and Stitch in 2002, which was brilliant but doesn't fit into the princess ideal in any way. Okay, I guess there was Captain Amelia in Treasure Planet—while not a princess either, she was a pretty awesome female character. Still, her role wasn't that big, and unfortunately the movie bombed at the box office. That's pretty sad, since I actually really liked Treasure Planet, but that's a topic for another day. So by the time The Princess and the Frog came out, it had been seven years since our last strong female lead in a Disney 2D animated film, eight years since our last princess, and eleven years since our last "official" princess. It was about time!

I'm going to have to do an entire review of The Princess and the Frog to do it justice, but Tiana really is a Postmodern Princess in the truest sense. She has the spunk and determination of many of the princesses that have gone before her, such as Belle and Ariel, but she's the first princess to hold down two jobs and be totally disinterested in finding love. Yes, she's the first black princess too, and it's about time, but what truly fascinates me about her is how quintessentially American she is. Being African-American is definitely part of that, of course, and the fact that she lives in New Orleans. We seldom have a Disney princess who lives in anywhere specific—The Little Mermaid had a vaguely European/Caribbean setting, Beauty and the Beast took place somewhere in France, Jasmine was Arabian, but Tiana lives in a specific American city with a distinctive culture of its own. Not only that, she is truly a modern character who lives in the 20th century, and can even be pinned down to a specific year—1926. Her life has been shaped by events in American history such as World War II and the class differences of whites and African-Americans in the south, and she values hard work and entrepreneurship above all else. She has dreams for the future, but they are very specific ones that she is actively working toward. She finds love, but she was never searching for it in the beginning, and she never abandons her dreams for love, instead incorporating the two. Her prince doesn't sweep her off to a castle where they live happily ever after—rather, she includes him in her plans and they make their own castle, by building the restaurant she always dreamed of. He sacrifices his own wants and needs for her dream and her life, a total reversal of the typical story. It's the first time I've ever seen a fairy tale end with the prince getting a job.

There are many, many other examples of the Postmodern Princess in both literature and film. Some of these I plan to cover in future reviews, books like The Ordinary Princess and The Hero and the Crown. In my next post, I'll be talking about some other film examples of the Postmodern Princess that are actually more like satires of the traditional fairy tale or princess story, such as Enchanted and Shrek. For now, I think I'm all princessed out for one day! If you haven't had enough, you should check out a couple of the sources that inspired me to write this. First of all, I discovered a couple of articles on Overthinkingit.com (remember them? I mentioned them yesterday, and they are really awesome—you should check it out!) about Disney Princesses that really got me thinking. Click to read Belle: Princess or Not Princess? and The Princess and the Frog: A Comparative Analysis to see what they had to say! Additionally, the Nostalgia Chick recently did a wonderful video review of Ever After that talks about a lot of different versions of the Cinderella story. Specifically, she focuses on the original Disney film, Disney's Enchanted, and, of course, Ever After. Her insights were really fascinating and got me thinking about the Cinderella story. Although I'd had this title on my review list for a while, I was inspired to go ahead and bump up Ella Enchanted to my first non-Oz review. So stay tuned for tomorrow's conclusion of Postmodern Princesses, and the start of my Ella Enchanted review!

Around the Internets

If it seems as if this is the "all Wizard of Oz, all the time" blog, never fear, I do have many more topics planned. My next review is taking a bit longer than I thought, however (I have to reread the book), so it may be a few days before it's up. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some fun stuff I found recently while browsing websites and other blogs:

Lost Over-analyzed

A few months back, I finally got around to watching Lost on Netflix (they have seasons 1-5 available to watch streaming on their site). I was pretty quickly hooked, and I finally caught up with the series in time to watch the last few episodes on TV. Now, for me half the fun is the analysis of crazy stuff like this, so I found a few great places online to read up on what others had to say. One of the best that I encountered was at Overthinkingit.com, which is a great site that I highly recommend for all your time-wasting needs. Want to know what philosophical and metaphysical themes can be found in your favorite Saturday morning cartoons? Look no further! They have a great number of articles about Lost, and if you start at the beginning, you can go through the series at your own pace without having to worry about spoilers, assuming you haven't seen it all yet.

So what does this have to do with Fiction Flashback? Well, check out the following from one of the articles on season 2:

The question is, is the name Henry Gale an in-joke by Lost’s writers (like John Locke and Rousseau), or is it a clever alias? I’m leaning toward the latter. Because my guess it that this dude is not Henry Gale. He may very well have flown in on a hot air balloon, but the character in the Wizard of Oz who had a balloon was not Uncle Henry at all. It was the Wizard. Does this mean that we have found the man behind the island’s curtain, so to speak?

I also like to think that this strengthens our theory that Lost’s island is a place where all your dreams come true. At some point Mr. Gale or whatever his name is will say, “Here, Jack, you can have your brains. And Kate, here is your heart! And Cowardly Sawyer, you can have your courage! But really, it was inside you all along! See, you went through all this strife so you could learn a lesson about yourselves!” And then everyone clicks their heels and returns home to their boring black-and-white homes to pet their little dogs, too. The end.

I’m only half-joking about this.

Keep in mind that when this article was written, the author had seen no farther than season 2, episode 16. If you have any familiarity with the show, however, this is pretty amusing, whether or not it turned out to be right! That's a good question, for those of you who have seen the entire series—how right was the author?

A new take on the Ruby Slippers

I found these interesting platforms over at If Shoes Could Kill, another great site for a laugh if you have some time to kill! (You can let the shoes do it! *rimshot*)

Twisted Princesses

And finally, one of my favorite collections of Disney-inspired art! I am a huge Disney fan, and you can definitely expect some reviews of Disney movies here in the future. However, I'm not such a purest that I can't appreciate a very unusual take on Disney princesses. Have a look:



Twisted Princesses by Jeffrey Thomas

It's hard to choose a favorite, but I really like his versions of Mulan, Pocahontas, and Ariel. Jasmine is especially good, and the picture prompted my brother to announce that an Aladdin / Prince of Persia crossover fanfiction might actually be really good. (That's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time the video game, not the movie.) Sleeping Beauty's eyes being sewn shut are creepy, but really remind me of the original story of Rapunzel, another story I'll have to get to sometime—and hey, what do you know, Disney is doing a 3D-animated Rapunzel story next! You can check out the trailer at The Trailer Station. Guess what I'll be reviewing soon? Not yet though—next up is a different treatment of a fairy tale. I'll give you a hint, it's one of the many, many versions of Cinderella out there. Keep an eye out for it later this week!

Movie Review: The Wiz

Hey everyone! In honor of my birthday, I have a special birthday post for you—well, special in that I'm done with The Wizard of Oz and am moving on to...well, a another version of The Wizard of Oz. Oh well, hopefully the review is interesting! It's pretty long, but I had a lot to say about this one. In any case, on to our movie review...

The Wiz is a 1978 movie based on a Broadway musical of the same name; both are an African-American retelling of the story of The Wizard of Oz. The movie has quite a star-studded cast—Diana Ross as Dorothy, Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, Richard Pryor as the Wizard, and Lena Horne as Glinda, to name a few. I myself am about as white as you can get, but my mother has been in an African-American gospel choir since I was four years old, and I attended the choir's concerts throughout my childhood. Although I'm currently on hiatus from it, I sang in the same choir for six years as an adult. So I have a little bit of background in African-American music, and I was very interested to see how this adaptation would tell the story, especially given the impressive cast.

I don't mean to suggest that I'm an expert on African-American culture—far from it. Instead I merely point out that I have an interest in that aspect of the movie, and some small experience with a small part of African-American culture. In fact, not only am I white, but I live in a very white state. I've never even been to New York City, so I don't have much experience on which to build my understanding of the story's setting. So, you should probably take my opinions with a grain of salt, given where they are coming from. It's very likely that someone who is part of the African-American community would experience this movie in a totally different way than I did, particularly if they were familiar with late 1970s New York. I hadn't even been born when this movie came out, so I'm experiencing a generational gap in addition to the geographical and cultural gaps I already mentioned. Finally, although I was aware of this movie's existence for years, I never got around to watching it till last week. Anything you see as an adult will likely have a very different impact on you than it will if you see it as a child, so this film does not have the same nostalgic value for me as a lot of other things I plan on reviewing.

Given that the movie stars Diana Ross, we know right away that Dorothy is an adult, not a little girl. She lives with her aunt and uncle and her dog Toto in Harlem, and she teaches elementary school. Her aunt is pressuring her to take a job at a high school, telling her she needs to branch out, see more of the world and stop living inside a shell. This confused me greatly. I take it that the high school is in another part of the city, which is one reason why Aunt Em thinks it would be good for her. Dorothy insists that she likes working with little children, but Aunt Em thinks working with older children would be better for her.

I'd like to take a moment to address the character of Dorothy and how she changes in different versions of The Wizard of Oz. In the original L. Frank Baum book, she doesn't actually grow and change all that much as a result of her experiences. She is an interesting character, but not a very dynamic one. She begins the book as a cheerful, kind, loving little girl, and that's how she ends it. She isn't even especially afraid in the beginning, although she does have her moments of unease and distress. If anything, she develops her sense of wonder and acceptance of the new world around her, and the unique qualities of the people she meets—much as children do in the real world, as a regular part of growing up.

Dorothy in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz is a bit different. As I've mentioned before, she doesn't come across as so precocious because she is being played by a much older girl who is almost an adult herself. In fact, Dorothy starts out almost as a sulky teenager, complaining about her life on the farm and how no one understands her or Toto, and she'd like to leave and go somewhere far away. The story is largely about how she learns to appreciate what she already has, and to accept and love the life that's been given to her. It's actually presenting Oz as a kind of escapism, I think, a place Dorothy visits and loves but ultimately decides is inferior to the real world.

So, how does Dorothy grow and change in The Wiz, and where does she start out? She's timid, almost antisocial and even unpleasant. Although she supposedly teaches elementary school, I suspect her students run her ragged, and I could only imagine how she might try to deal with behavior management in a high school classroom. Which brings us back to the portrayal of teaching and education in this movie. I have a request for writers, whether authors or screenwriters. Please, please, if you are going to make your main character part of a specific profession, at least try to do a little research into that profession! Granted, this is New York in 1978, but I can't imagine it's all that much different from the west coast in 2010 in some ways. Teachers do not generally start at elementary school and move up to high school as a type of career advancement. Aunt Em seems to think that Dorothy stays in her current job because she's comfortable, because it's easy, and because she doesn't have to take risks. High school teaching is not an advancement from elementary school teaching, though. Teachers generally teach a specific age group because that's where they do best—one is not necessarily better than the other.

What I'm getting at, in my mini-rant about my chosen profession, is that it's outrageous to suggest that Dorothy stays in her job at the elementary school solely because it is safe and comfortable. It suggests that there is something wrong with her job. Teaching is a difficult and incredibly worthwhile profession, no matter what age level you work with, and given the challenges involved in being a good teacher, I have a hard time squaring this with Dorothy's timid personality. I know musicals don't generally devote a lot of time to backstory, but I would like a better explanation for her attitude. Maybe her parents died tragically and she has never come to terms with her loss? We'll never know, sadly, and all we're given is that Aunt Em thinks she should really go teach high school in order to become a better person, or something. I'm really not entirely sure what Aunt Em wants.

The movie begins with a rather forgettable musical number while extended family joins them for Thanksgiving dinner. Dorothy is introverted and reserved, retreating to other rooms while Aunt Em coos over babies and showers family members with love, dismissing Dorothy as being shy or having a bad attitude. I know this scene is supposed to show a loving family, but to me it suggests that Dorothy is on the outside because she isn't "good enough" for Aunt Em, while the rest of the family gets the love she withholds from Dorothy. Am I reading too much into this? Probably, but it was my initial impression during the scene.

After dinner, Dorothy is doing dishes when somehow the kitchen door ends up open. Toto sees it and makes a break for it. This is not too surprising to me—I have terriers myself (Westies, which are closely related to Cairns, the type of terrier that plays Toto in both The Wizard of Oz and The Wiz), and they are very curious little dogs who wouldn't hesitate to rush out an open front door to explore. Once they got outside, however, all it would take is one look at the raging blizzard that Toto rushes out into, and my dogs would turn around and go back inside. Just because they're dogs doesn't mean they're stupid! Dorothy rushes out into the snow after Toto and screams wildly for him, something we'd better get used to, because she spends a good portion of the movie doing this. (I can't help but picture Michael from Lost yelling "WAAAAAAALT!!" over and over.)

I was kind of pleased here, because I figured Dorothy would get lost in the snowstorm and end up in Oz. Throughout the book series, Dorothy goes to Oz a number of times, and each time it's a different type of natural disaster that sends her there—earthquakes, storms, etc. So the snowstorm seemed a perfectly reasonable way for her to end up there, except...a tornado comes rushing through the snowy streets of Harlem and sweeps up Dorothy and Toto. You can go ahead and picture me facepalming here. Can we say "unnecessary"?

Since there's no house, Dorothy flies through a lighted Oz symbol, and the Z falls on the Wicked Witch of the East and kills her. Dorothy meanwhile ends up in a sandbox in the middle of an urban playground at night. Graffiti on the walls comes to life, and the Munchkins step out from the walls to do a song and dance and thank her for saving them from the witch's curse. Sadly, Dorothy spends most of the number cowering and shrieking in terror while clutching Toto. The Good Witch of the North shows up—not Glinda!—and introduces herself as Miss One. She has silver numbers in her hair, and her speech is sprinkled with phrases like "cut your losses" and "86ing the Wicked Witch" and other number-related figures of speech. I'm really not entirely sure what she's supposed to represent—Wikipedia claims that she is a numbers runner, someone who runs an illegal lottery in poor neighborhoods. Sounds as good to me as anything else, since this is not something I know a lot about. In any case, she gives Dorothy the Silver Slippers (a mix of the Silver Shoes and Ruby Slippers from the original book and movie respectively) and suggests that she goes to see the Wiz for help, since Miss One's powers only control numbers. She tells Dorothy to follow the Yellow Brick Road, saying it's easy to find, then she and all the Munchkins disappear, leaving Dorothy in a frankly terrifying abandoned playground at night, unable to find this supposedly easy-to-discover road, wailing piteously for help. (It takes her an annoyingly long time to stop doing this every few seconds.)

Eventually Dorothy finds the Scarecrow in a very tiny cornfield, at the base of an abandoned and ruined urban building. He is harassed by crows who refuse to help him down and tell him he is better off where he is, because no matter how he tries, he will never get anywhere in life. The meaning of this, at least, is all too easy to figure out (I'm picturing Film Brain dramatically yelling, "Symbolism!!"). There's a completely unnecessary musical number that repeats the conversation the Scarecrow just had with the crows, and then Dorothy steps in to help him down. (Hint: when your musical numbers can be taken out and not damage the plot at all, you know you're doing something wrong.)

Can we talk about costuming for a minute? Dorothy spends the entire movie in a shapeless and colorless dress that's either supposed to be gray or very pale lavender. It's not at all flattering on her. Granted, it may just be the style of the era in which the movie was made, but I still don't think Dorothy's costume does anything but make her look washed out visually as well as emotionally. The Scarecrow is Michael Jackson, before the days of his radical experiments with plastic surgery, back when he was actually an extremely handsome man—but they've managed to completely obliterate all of his good looks by giving him a costume that makes him look clumsy, fat, and lumpy. Yes, he is a scarecrow, but Ray Bolger managed to pull this off by being all over the place and clumsy, yet still somehow dashing and debonair. Michael Jackson's Scarecrow is just pitiful. He wants to do great things and values intelligence, as you can tell by the way he pulls strips of paper from his stuffing and reads great literary quotes from them (he's stuffed with garbage instead of straw, apparently), but he doesn't actually seem to have much of that intelligence we're supposed to see even before he gets his brains. He does come up with an occasional idea, and he's the one who eventually finds the Yellow Brick Road (which is far harder than it should have been), but at the end of the movie, Dorothy actually has to point this out to him. In the 1939 film and the original book, no one ever pointed out all the things the Scarecrow did to prove that he's actually fairly smart already. Even Baum's young readers were expected to be able to pick up on that without having it explicitly explained, but for some reason The Wiz doesn't think we're capable of seeing it. Maybe we're not—the Scarecrow's moments of brilliance are far less impressive in The Wiz.

The Tin Man is discovered in the wreckage of an old amusement park, a sort of mechanical carny. I actually sort of like him. His mannerisms are unusual but clever, and he makes the character rather appealing. Some moments are better than others (the crying scene is awful), but overall I like his portrayal of the Tin Man better than Michael Jackson's Scarecrow. (Michael Jackson was such a talented musician and performer, it's just sad that we never see any of that in this movie.)

The Cowardly Lion they discover inside a lion statue outside a library. He's another character I like, and I think they did reasonably well with his introduction. Soon after they meet him, they follow the Yellow Brick Road down into an abandoned subway, where they are accosted by a peddler who attacks them with inhuman looking puppets that grow to a huge size and then start attacking them all. Why? We never find out who the peddler is, who sent him (if anyone), or why he wants to hurt them. A gate swings shut on the group, all except the Lion, who got out first and now runs back to help everyone. We are treated to a long scene of him saving the others from various dangers using bad special effects. Subway pillars break loose and lurch toward Dorothy, who stands there screaming while they aimlessly mill around her. A fuse box attempts to electrocute the Tin Man, but the Lion punches it into submission. It's all very overdone and obvious, while the special effects are underwhelming and the setting just overall very weird. If I'd seen this as a kid, the scene would have given me nightmares. As an adult, it's just strange. After the Lion has proved his bravery in the most anvilicious way possible, they move on to the next area, waltzing into a red light district. The "Poppy Girls" blow glittery dust into Dorothy and the Lion's faces and send them to sleep. The Scarecrow and Tin Man drag them to a rooftop, and the Tin Man cries on them to wake them up. (Why does this work? And why doesn't it cause him to rust? Wouldn't shaking them have worked just as well?) Don't even get me started on the levels of wrongness involved in putting prostitutes into one my favorite childhood stories.

Once inside the Emerald City, they find a series of impressively dressed citizens, dancing and singing about how stylish the color green is. Periodically, the Wizard's voice will come onto a loudspeaker and announce that he's changed his mind, and a new color is now in vogue, at which point the lights and costumes will change to the new color, and the citizens start singing about it instead. Obviously they represent rich people who are only concerned with the latest fad. The Emerald City has a dark background lit by the spotlights and the sparkling costumes worn by its people, but the place actually seems very depressing nonetheless. It's made out to be superficial and silly. On the contrary, in the book when it's revealed that the spectacles that made everything green were hiding the truth, it turns out that the truth is just as beautiful if not more so, and people are happy whether or not their city is completely green. In the 1939 movie, all the citizens of the Emerald City are genuinely happy, joyful people, and their clothes are an expression of that joy. By contrast, the Emerald City in The Wiz is not really an Emerald City at all.

Somehow the Wiz knows that Dorothy is there and has the Silver Slippers—how, we don't know. He demands that she come to see him, but won't allow the others to come until she says she won't appear before him without them. The giant head that greets them is motionless and entirely made of polished metal, spitting gouts of fire periodically. He demands, of course, that Dorothy and her friends kill the Wicked Witch of the West, although here her name is Evillene. (I have to give some small credit, because Evillene and the Wicked Witch of the East, Evermean, have somewhat creative names.) As they leave, the camera focuses in on the metal head's eye, where we can see Richard Pryor peeking out. Although anyone familiar with the story already knows that someone's behind there, it kind of feels like a cheat to have this shown to us so early on.

We cut to an underground sweatshop that Evillene runs, with a number of misshapen slaves chained up and forced to labor endlessly without a break. Evillene herself is a fat woman dressed in a lumpy gown that looks like a number of red and orange birds exploded all over her, and then someone sprinkled the result with sequins. She cracks a whip and is generally mean, then suddenly declares that Dorothy and her friends are on the way there. How does she know this? We never get an answer. Instead, she calls the Flying Monkeys, which is a motorcycle gang in awful masks, goggles, and leather helmets. Apparently they also smell awful. Actually, they kind of remind me of the Wheelers from Return to Oz crossed with Hell's Angels, and with some masks tossed in to make them look like old-fashioned racial stereotypes, or maybe the neanderthals from the Geico commercials, I'm really not sure.

There's a fairly forgettable chase scene, and the Flying Monkeys capture Dorothy and friends and bring them before Evillene. She demands the Silver Slippers, but of course Dorothy says no. I'm not entirely sure why—Miss One said not to take them off till she gets home, but she never told her why, and Evillene proceeds to torture her friends. I'd certainly give them over to her at that point, or at least I'd do something. But no, Dorothy just stands there and cries and wails, as she's been doing for most of the movie. Evillene has her henchman use a buzz saw to split the Scarecrow in two, they use a gigantic press to flatten the Tin Man, and they string the Cowardly Lion up by his tail. All three tell Dorothy not to worry about them, and not to give up the Silver Slippers. Then Evillene threatens to throw Toto into a cauldron filled with fire, and Dorothy loses it and agrees to give up the Silver Slippers. What? You wouldn't give them up to save your friends, but threaten your dog and they're all hers? I guess we can see where you stand now, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion. Too bad for you.

Before Dorothy can actually give up the shoes, though, the Scarecrow gets her attention and tells her to pull the emergency fire alarm. The sprinklers turn on, and Evillene is "allergic to water", so she melts. (Very unconvincingly, I might add. She looks like she's just sliding backward off the cushion she was sitting on. The special effects in 1939 were far more realistic.) Of course, it was actually the Scarecrow who saved the day, so Dorothy gives up what little control over the story she had left. Somehow the sweatshop workers are freed, and they magically repair the Scarecrow and the Tin Man within seconds (they don't show how they do this, of course, they're just standing there good as new all of a sudden). Now it's time for a song and dance number!

The witch's workers peel off their rubbery masks and costumes, and now that we see them close up, they are obviously an even closer example of old racial stereotypes. (In fact, when they found the Tin Man in the amusement park, he was pinned under a giant model of a fat black woman with a kerchief, the "Mammy" style stereotype, or maybe Aunt Jemima.) Once they've removed the ugly stereotypes with their misshapen features, huge lips and noses, and dark skin, we find African-American dancers who would be very beautiful if it weren't for the ridiculous costumes they're wearing underneath. The women wear white cloth bras that look tied on, and that might work, but both men and women are also wearing what can only be described as white diapers. I understand they were going for something simple and loincloth-like, but this looks ridiculous. They are very good dancers and I do enjoy the routine that follows, although an ugly sweatshop is possibly not the best setting for a joyful finale number that is the closest analogue this movie has to "Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead!" It's actually a very good song in a lot of ways: it's called "A Brand New Day" and features some very interesting chords and key changes that manage to keep the triumphant, victorious feeling of the song, but it sounds new and different and exciting. It's actually the only song I still find myself humming a few days later. I can hum a few bars of "Ease on Down the Road", but pretty much every other number in the whole movie is completely forgettable.

The Flying Monkeys are super nice now (why, were they Evillene's slaves too? We never find out), and they take Dorothy and her friends back to the Emerald City. They get into the palace through the back entrance and find the Wiz asleep on a rickety old cot. Richard Pryor is a great comic actor, but sadly very underutilized in this role. He's incredibly pathetic, and it turns out he's a failed politician who could never get elected for anything. He came to Oz during a failed campaign stunt and has lived in terror that someone would find out he had no powers, or that Evillene would come and kill him. If Evillene just magically knew that Dorothy and friends were on the way, why did she never know about the Wizard? Maybe she did know and just didn't care? In any case, whereas the Wizard in the 1939 movie was somewhat pathetic but not unhappy with his life in the Emerald City, and the Wizard in the book was actually rather well-loved by the citizens, Richard Pryor's Wizard is completely unimpressive and totally miserable. He doesn't even offer to take Dorothy home in the balloon, although we can clearly see it in the corner of the room. He's utterly useless and only serves as a jumping off point for Dorothy's speech to the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion about how they already have the things they thought they needed so badly—a completely unnecessary speech, I might add, since they've been practically hitting us over the head with a sledgehammer to show how smart the Scarecrow is, how kind the Tin Man is, and how brave the Cowardly Lion is. Dorothy goes into endless specific examples of each and every great thing they've done. But when Richard Pryor asks if there's hope for him, if there's something good inside him that he hasn't discovered yet, Dorothy answers that she doesn't know and he's on his own, good luck with that! Oh, very nice, Dorothy! First you give up something to save your dog that you wouldn't give to save your friends, now you just dismiss a poor, pathetic Richard Pryor who's had a rough time of it. I can't remember the last time I saw a heroine this unlikeable. After Dorothy's speech, Glinda just magically shows up. I give Lena Horne credit for a lovely musical number (although I don't get why she appears in the middle of a starry sky, with little black babies in the middle of stars behind her). After the song, Dorothy clicks her heels three times and finds herself in the street outside her home with Toto, the blizzard now over.

Apparently The Wiz was a box office flop and was panned by critics. If I'd known these things ahead of time, I might not have watched it—although honestly, I don't always trust critics and probably would have watched it anyway, just to see if it was really so bad. My verdict? Yep, it is that bad. I can sit through a lot, especially when it comes to musicals. I love musicals and can forgive a great deal as long as it's fun. The Wiz is not fun. It's dark, unpleasant, and unsatisfying. The symbolism is either completely lacking in subtlety or oddly obscure. The characters change and grow in only superficial ways, if at all, and although the Tin Man and Lion aren't too bad, the Scarecrow and the Wizard are just uncomfortably pathetic. Dorothy is unlikeable and unpleasant throughout the entire movie. If she's not actively singing and dancing, she looks terrified or confused, and although supposedly in her early twenties, she acts far more childish than the original Dorothy ever thought of being. The setting is entirely urban, whereas the original story took place almost entirely in a beautiful countryside. The Land of Oz is supposed to be a wondrous, magical place, but here it's just frightening and depressing. It's as if Dorothy is trying to escape from a bad nightmare the entire time.

I watched this movie with my mom, who had never seen it either, and I think she summed it up best. It is not so much about The Wizard of Oz as it is the African-American experience. It's possible that African-Americans might find a lot more of value in the movie than I did for this reason, particularly at the time the movie came out, but as a diehard Wizard of Oz fan, I strongly disliked it. I knew I was in trouble when I found myself impatiently waiting for the opening musical numbers to end—never a good sign, especially for someone who usually loves musicals.

My advice is to skip this one, unless you are a Wizard of Oz fan who feels you must see every adaptation that is out there, or if you are more interested in the African-American slant to the story. Otherwise, stick with the original book or the 1939 movie—you'll be glad you did!