Monday, May 23, 2011

Saving Princesses is Hard Work!

736 pages of work, in fact. I found four stories I feel would be easily disney'd up.
1.) Princess Mouseskin(It's better than it sounds)
2.) The True Bride (a not-princess in the theme of Cinderella)
3.) The Twelve Brothers (Interesting tale, easy to disney-itize)
4.) The Glass Coffin (Where Snow White's coffin was stolen from, but it's so different)

An over all review of all of the tales of the Brother's Grimm tales turns up the cute/annoying things. One is that half of the stories ended with a little rhyme or poem that had no relation to the story in general! Ex. on page 418 of my book, after the story "The Iron Stove" which is about how a princess gets saved by a stove, which has a handsome prince locked inside it, and doesn't follow his exact instructions, so she loses him. To regain him, she has to go be a kitchen maid and sell the new bride beautiful dresses that she has so she can sleep in his room and retell him what happened.
ANYWAY it ends with the little poem-y thing "There once was a mouse, but he's gone/ and now my tale is done."
Which is just distracting in general, to me. I don't see the purpose for it. I guess if might have centuries of difference, but there is no help there.
Also, they wrote up a few religious stories and  one anti-Semitic story about an old time popular(and totally stupid and useless) stereotype perpetuated at the time about the Jewish being theives. It's called "The Jew and the Thornbush" and totally worth skipping. The religious ones aren't that bad, just a bit dull at times.
So, I'll be honest, reading all these stories was worth it. Some of them were cute, some of them were interesting, and some of them were funny simply because of the time period difference. So take it as you will. I loved having fun reading it, and it was a silly task, but sometimes that helps you focus the most.

PRINCESS MOUSESKIN
About a page typed, and for all those Shakespeare fans, very King Lear-ish. A page seems to be the max attention span for the Disney executives, so I figure this one might be the easiest to sell them on. It's about a Princess who gets disowned by her father because she says she loves him as much as she loves salt(and before you go all 'That much, eh?' sarcastic eye roll on me, put down your salted popcorn, your salted chips, and your salted french fries. Don't try to hid the salt on your pretzels, either. We love salt. A lot.) So he kicks her out, she goes to work as a maid in the next castle as a boy. They figure out who she is, family gets reunited and it ends Disney Happy.

THE TRUE BRIDE
Because I'm sick of how la-dee-dah they make the princesses these days, who don't fight for their guys. I mean, no offense Cinderella, Ariel and Rapunzel, but could you please say something other than "Let me hid from the one I love" or "Oh no! There is nothing I can do. He no longer loves me." That's stupid. Especially if you don't have any proof. The non-princess in this first gets her prince, but he didn't follow her instructions to not let anyone kiss him on one of his cheeks so he forgot all about her. She finds out where he is and goes to work as a maid. She had three gorgeous dresses designed to woe him back and she discovers that he's engaged to someone else. Well, her heart is broken, but she goes through with her plan and wins him back. Doesn't rely on faith or luck or her animal friends to save the day. She just swoops in, which is good. And new.

THE TWELVES BROTHERS
Another girl to the rescue! But I liked this one because it's about a princess who saves her brothers and her marriage and there's and evil mother-in-law! It's a totally different tale than everything else. It's not about her falling in love, it's about her saving her family. Familial love, that's new. And not for parents, but the bond between siblings. Which is a strong bond.
Story summary. Right. A Queen has twelve sons, but when she's pregnant with her thirteen child, the king says, "If it's a girl we'll just kill off our sons, kay?" So, when the princess is born, a flag is launched and the brothers run off into the woods for safety. The princess, who has heard about her brothers for her entire life decides to go find them.
Everything goes fine once she does until she decides to pick twelve flowers and discovers that she just turned them into ravens and to turn them back she has to keep silent for seven years. So, life goes on and she gets married to a king.
The seven years was almost up when the mother-in-law starts casting doubts about her and the king falls for her lies. So they decide to set  her on fire. She was set on the pyre and just as it was lit on fire, the seven years ended, the ravens came back, turned into her brothers and saved her.

THE GLASS COFFIN
Should be easy enough for them to do, considering that they already have the blue prints for a glass coffin. Well, it starts off with a poor tailor (Disney's had thieves and princes, now they can have someone with a real profession) who needs somewhere to sleep for a night. In the morning he gets whisked off by a stag who takes him to a castle. Where he sees a mini castle and a still breathing princess in a glass coffin. He takes the top off and she wakes up and tells him that she was the daughter of a duke. She was stuck the way she was because a wizard had stayed over at her house, and then gone all Edward Cullen creeper on her. (Not in those words, of course). He'd sent magical music to her, broke into her room and then decided she would say yes to marrying him. So he turned her brother into the stag, locked her in the coffin and made her castle into the miniature he had seen when he come.
So, really, it is probably easy to Disney-itize. They can thank me later.

(with credit)

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Saving Princesses Takes a Lot of Work

It does! My book of the Grimm Fairytales is about three and a half inches thick of onion paper! So, even if this is really late to tell you that, I'm going to be even later. I finished the book, but it was 730 pages. A lot to process.
Now, ask yourself this..."Why did it take her five weeks to finish reading a 500+page novel and this one was done in three?
Ponder on that.
Maybe it's because I had a mission.
Maybe it's because it was separate little tales I could pick up, read for ten minutes and not get drawn into a plot line.
Or maybe it's because The Moonstone was awful.