A few weeks ago, our esteemed headmaster and a friend of this blog both consulted me in their puzzlement over the popularity juggernaut that is Disney’s Frozen. Rather than fading, the film continues to dazzle, with an ice show and Broadway productions in the works, connections on the popular show Once Upon A Time, and even a huge boom in the name “Elsa” for babies! My learned colleagues really don’t get it (and let’s be honest, the Headmaster hasn’t seen it. I think he had heard of it. Maybe…) As the resident faculty film fancier and a fully-fledged Frozen aficionado, I offered to toss out my Seven Keys to Frozen’s immense popularity, and I hope you will join me in the conversation. Please don’t shut me out, please don’t slam the door…
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“Do You Want to Read My Blog Post?” Of Course, You Do! Seven Keys to Why Disney’s ‘Frozen’ is (still) Red Hot
But Wait, There’s More! J.K. Rowling Releases New Harry Potter Story about Quidditch via PotterMore
It’s funny how some authors only want to distance themselves from their most popular creations, while others keep right on keeping on as long as there is one devoted fan still breathing. J. K. Rowling is apparently steering a middle course; she is at once writing novels for a very adult audience (I have decided The Casual Vacancy should be subtitled “How to be Really Preachy While Using all the Naughty Swears You Held Back While Fighting with Your Publishers”) and still tinkering with her Wizarding World through the new Fantastic Beasts film and her work with Pottermore. Her newest contribution is a piece on the history of the Quidditch World Cup. [Read more…]
Jack the Giant Slayer: Someone’s Been Reading My Spenser!
We love fairy tales around here, as I suppose everyone knows. I have an author friend who evaluates people’s personalities based on their favorite fairy tales (hers is Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”; mine is “Cherry the Frog Bride,” in case you are wondering). I have to confess, “Jack and the Beanstalk” has never really been one of my favorites, even in its Appalachian incarnations of “Jack and the Bean Tree” or “Jack and the Giants”; perhaps goofy Jack just always seemed like too much a klutz for my taste. Maybe I just never approved of his kleptomania. But I’ve gained a different perspective, after finally seeing Jack the Giant Slayer (2013). Join me after the jump for more on how Hollywood got some things really right with this one, and how someone did some good reading, particularly from the works of some of my favorite tellers of tales: the immortal Edmund Spenser and his protégé, C.S. Lewis.
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Susan Pevensie: Post-Narniad Progressive Super Heroine
If your knickers are still in a twist about Susan Penvensie’s not getting to Aslan’s Country at the end of Last Battle, Read all about what really happened with Susan, the Narnia Queen that dismissed her royal status as childish fancy. In this article we learn how she grew up to outshine her brothers, sister, Eustace, really, even Aslan.
The short course is that Susan becomes the perfect liberal East Coast cause fighter, because, of course, that is what the Great Lion wants for all of us.
The best part? Susan as prophylactic smuggler because it’s the heroic thing to do for college co-eds…
Forgive me for wondering, though, if the author, quite despite herself, didn’t actually portray what did happen to Susan and that this was exactly what C. S. Lewis was pointing to in his lipstick and stockings aside as her spiritual ruin, namely, egotism, power concerns, and worldliness before character.
Unlike this writer, for whom Susan is a wish fulfillment fantasy in retro fan fiction (“How I Would Have Lived the Heroic Way in the Civil Rights Era”), Elizabeth Baird-Hardy understands the death of the oldest and least wise Pevensie sister. Listen to her comments on this subject here.
The curious thing for me, after listening to The Last Battle last week, is how charitable Lewis is to Susan when he was bound or obliged as an artist to make the point that the blindness of the dwarves in that story, literal and nominalist blindness, is a quality in materialist human beings as well. Especially of the young and worldly.
The author of this ‘I Know Susan Better’ piece only confirms Lewis’ point because she neglects the chapters following the few paragraphs about Susan about the true nature of the world.
Fire Burns Brighter this Time Around, but Gamemakers Still Could use Some Schooling from my College Students
Three years ago, I began using The Hunger Games as a required novel in all sections of my Expository Writing classes at Mayland Community College. Most of my students had never even heard of the book, and only one or two had read it before, but it was a unanimous success that changed students’ outlooks on everything from reading to politics. We anxiously followed movie news, as the film adaptation got underway just up the road from our campus, and some of our students and their friends and family members worked on the movie.
When the film debuted in March last year, we made arrangements with a local theater to have a Mayland showing, at which we could all yell things like “I can see my house from here!” in scenic shots, and the students who were extras could exclaim, “Hey, that’s the back of my head!” Other than such delights, the film held a fair few disappointments for us, most of which could be summed up in the phrase “Less Seneca Crane! More Madge!”
This time around, I kept my expectations low, as the removal of Madge, the absence of a circular gold cornucopia, and the elision or removal of so much of the first novel’s symbolic power had not prepared me to be impressed with the sequel. But I made arrangements with the delightful Yancey Theater (if you are ever in Burnsville, NC, please support this local business and enjoy a classic old theater!), put out the word, and rounded up 70 or so students, faculty, staff ,and friends to see the movie early on opening day.
Much to my surprise, it seems as if, this time around, we have Gamemakers who have actually read all the books; though they might still be able to take more than a few lessons from the savvy crowd who saw the show with me Friday, they at least seemed to have made an effort to be faithful to the text, even if they miss (again) much of its symbolic weight. [Read more…]
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