There are cultural cinematic events that happen every so often. “Jaws” broke open the tentpole. “Star Wars” redefined the blockbuster. “Wonder Woman” gave us a heroine 4 the ages. And something tells me #BlackPanther is about to carry the torch & set the whole thing on fire again
I realize that Josh Gad was talking in terms of a cinematic revolution -- after all, the comparisons he draws are cinematic ones. The implication of it, of course, is that Black Panther -- and its attendant success -- will signal a new shift in cinema, perhaps marking the day when Hollywood (executives) realize that a movie like Black Panther -- an all-black cast, with a black director, and representation of African culture -- can return a blockbuster investment.
But what Josh Gad's tweet doesn't explicitly address, but what he alludes to, is that Black Panther isn't just a cinematic event, it's a cultural cinematic event -- that the ramifications extend far beyond Hollywood.
And sure, the AV Club gets a little snarky with their comment about there being "only so many disappointing Toy Story-themed Disney World attractions you can blow your money on at one time" -- which isn't entirely fair, since as much as I hate when Disney "kills" my favorite old-school rides, part of the success of Disney theme parks is how they continue to evolve, but I digress -- but the story is there.
As a swimmer, I basically spent my entire adolescence barefoot, and I was the girl who wore flip-flops unless there was snow on the ground. I've worn the same pairs of work shoes/heels for years because they're comfy and I dread the thought of breaking in a new pair of shoes and/or finding a new pair that fits. (Shout out to Man Mur Shoe Shop for saving my shoes and giving them new heels and soles.)
So I've never owned or even tried on a pair of Toms, even though I have several friends who swear by them.
Welp. That might change. Good little Disney consumer that I am, nothing tempts me to buy a new product more than a collaboration with Disney.
Apparently, the collection will feature the OG princesses -- Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora -- and will feature "rarely seen original artwork from the Disney archives."
WHAT?!? I am all in. If the artwork above is any indication, these will be beautiful. And while the OG Princesses aren't my favorite, I'm more on board with Cinderella these days and the three fairies (especially Merrywether) have always been my favorites.
BRB--Printing this off to hang up in my office. I mean, it's applicable to writing and revision, right? Just because you write a first draft and it works doesn't mean it can't be better.
Obviously, I love the Summer Olympics more, since it's the only time my sport gets coverage, in large part due to Michael Phelps, but still. This is basically me:
But when it comes to the Winter Olympics, I am a Figure Skating Junkie. When I was little, and unaware of my own clumsiness, I wanted to be a figure skater -- I idolized Kristi Yamaguchi; I remember the media coverage of the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding scandal (even though I didn't fully understand it); and I checked out all the biographies of figure skaters that the Cary library had when we first moved to North Carolina. (I guess I thought moving to the South would be good for a figure skating career? IDK.)
And...yes. I am totally invested in 2018 Figure Skating. I was Team USA for the team competition; Team Adam Rippon for Men's (he is fabulous and I want to be friends with him); Team Shib Sibs for Ice Dancing; and Team Mirai Nagasu for Ladies. (Which is what I'm currently watching...and probably staying up way too late for.)
Regardless. I just enjoyed watching Bradie Tennell skate because her music was selections from Patrick Doyle's score of the 2015 live-action Cinderella. The US ladies are not having a great night, but damn is Doyle's music not beautiful. The video below isn't from the Olympics, but it's the same program:
And, then of course, Twitter didn't disappoint with the commentary:
Johnny Weir just called Bradie Tennell’s skating to A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes “provincial”, as though he doesn’t know the difference between Belle and Cinderella. 🙄 #Olympics2018
^^^Same girl. I thought the exact same thing. Who uses "provincial" and doesn't mean to allude to Beauty and the Beast?!
OK, Bradie Tennell. I see you took your visualization exercises very seriously. This "Cinderella Story" theme complete with "A Dream is a Wish the Heart Makes," the blue dress, and tiara is very on the nose. (I don't hate it. Long live Cinderella.) #olympics
Not being an NBA fan, I didn't watch it live. Or even the first few times the story popped up in my social media feeds. But then I caved and watched it. And...TBH, I was expecting worse. Now, maybe it was truly terrible and I'm just so tone-deaf I can't tell. (I don't think so, because I am REAL picky about my Ariels and Elphabas -- I've seen Wicked like 20 times, and god forbid an Elphaba doesn't nail that mix of power and vulnerability or hit the notes in "The Wizard and I" -- she loses me.)
I'm not usually one for Teh Capslock, but in this case, I feel like it's warranted: go see Black Panther. This weekend, my husband and I visited my in-laws up at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. It's a bit of a touristy spot in the Blue Ridge Mountains of rural Southwestern Virginia, so it's nice and quiet in February. My mother-in-law loves quality time with her grandbabies, so we were able to sneak away for a few hours in the afternoon to see Black Panther at a local cinema -- where it was not difficult to get tickets. We walked up about 20 minutes before an afternoon showing and had walked right in. There were...maybe 20 people in the theater?
But it was fascinating -- it was wonderful -- to overhear the conversations of the people sitting around us. There was an African-American couple sitting a few seats down from us who frankly admitted that they didn't know anything about comic book characters or the other Marvel movies -- but they'd been to see this movie Friday night, were here again on Saturday afternoon, and couldn't wait to take their grandbabies on Sunday after church.
That's the power of this movie, y'all.
There are cultural cinematic events that happen every so often. “Jaws” broke open the tentpole. “Star Wars” redefined the blockbuster. “Wonder Woman” gave us a heroine 4 the ages. And something tells me #BlackPanther is about to carry the torch & set the whole thing on fire again
Y'all know I love me some rose gold. But this...this just seems a bit too much.
Delicious. But too much.
(And...this may be an unpopular opinion, but I thought Disneyland's Churros were just...meh. Maybe that's because we ate so much other amazing food on our honeymoon but still. I don't miss them at Disney World.)
For the longest time, Cinderella was a film I hated to teach. I didn't remember much about the film, but I remembered that I didn't like it. And, after all, Cinderella is the most popular princess, so anything that's popular can't possibly live up to the hype. (It's this mindset that caused me to refuse to read Harry Potter for years. Whoops.)
But then I watched it a few years ago when a student wanted to write a really fascinating paper on gender transgression in the 1950 film. But when I read her proposal, I was skeptical: The King has a stereotypically feminine obsession with grand babies? And acts uber-masculine to make up for this transgression? I don't remember ANY of this.... So, I rewatched it. And promptly gave the student the go-ahead to write a really fascinating and unique argument. (To this day, it's still one of my favorites.)
The point is -- Cinderella is not what I remember -- and Cinderella (the character) isn't quite as passive and spineless as academic critics sometimes want us to believe. So I added it to my syllabus.
And re-watching pieces of it yesterday (three times) just made me think of something:
#1 -- Cinderella is actually pretty relatable. I mean...this is me basically every morning (just sub a dog and two tiny humans for the birds):
#2 -- This may be the most unrealistic part of the whole movie. She sleeps on two braids all night and has magically beautiful wavy hair when she takes them out? Nope. Her hair would be kinked and frizzed all over the place. Now that's Disney magic.
One of the things I get asked a lot, once people know about the courses I teach, is whether I'll let my own kids watch Disney movies. "Surely," they say, "you can't talk about what's wrong with a movie like Cinderella and still think it's okay for your kids to watch?"
To which I respond, "Of course I can."
Because even though I can put on my Professor Cap and analyze why Cinderella presents outdated gender roles from the 1950s, I can still also see the good in it. I see a female-driven narrative with a protagonist who is unflinchingly and unfailingly cheerful and hopeful.
And, perhaps what's more important, is that my children will have a wide variety of characters to watch in their Disney [Princess] movies. For the earliest part of my childhood, the only princesses I had were Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora -- homogenous by even the loosest definition of the word. But I grew up with the Disney Princesses -- I was the target demographic for The Little Mermaid, and while I can't attest to how watching that film repeatedly unknowingly influenced me, I can speak to what I knowingly took away from that film. And my children -- my daughter -- will have even more variety than I did, both in terms of racial identity and physical appearance as well as in character and achievement.
Which is part of the reason why we're watching the Disney princess movies in reverse. While Toy Story 3 was my daughter's first Disney movie (mainly because it was on TV over a weekend when I was struggling with some first trimester ickiness), Moana is the first Disney movie she watched when she was old enough to be aware of it.
What really got me thinking of all of this (again) was the other day, when we were finishing up Frozen. My daughter's seen parts of it before -- it's been on TV often enough -- but this was the first time that we actually sat down and watched it. She's also learned who the characters are from several Frozen books we have -- Anna Loves Elsa is her current favorite, I think, but my husband reads her the Pop-Up Adventure book and she loves it -- and connects Elsa with snow (which makes my heart happy).
But then we got to this scene:
You know? One of the BEST parts of the whole movie where Anna has a choice -- she can save herself by running to Kristoff or she can sacrifice herself by running to Elsa and she chooses Elsa?
To be honest, my daughter was a little concerned at this point -- she didn't quite understand why Anna was so cold or why her fingers were turning blue and she had snowflakes on her cheeks. And when Anna froze, and Elsa flung herself on her sister out of grief -- my daughter turned to look at me, as if searching for reassurance that everything would be okay. Yes, she'll learn one day that a Disney movie means that everything turns out okay for The Good Guys, but in this instance, I just chose to tell her that Elsa was worried about her sister, and so she gave her a hug, because that's what you do when you love someone and you want them to know that.
And I watched my daughter watch Elsa hug Anna -- I watched her face as Anna's act of true love melted her frozen heart, and the happy ending arrived. Maybe, to my daughter, it was the hug that melted Anna -- not Anna's selfless act; after all, she's not even 2 -- but either way, she got the gist of it. And, right before Anna punched Hans, my daughter came up and gave me a hug.
Now. Of course my daughter has hugged me before. But it's usually reflexive, or something she seeks out when she falls, or something she does when she's asked, as if to prove that she can do it, like say her name or identify a color. But connecting the act of hugging with a voluntary display of affection...that's been a bit elusive.
Not anymore. Disney helped my daughter make that connection. Why wouldn't I want her to learn that?
I think of all the other lessons Disney can teach my daughter, and they're lessons that I want her to learn.
She loves Moana -- maybe even more than Frozen. (And I'm a proud Mama Bear that she can articulately say Moana, Maui, and hawk -- she wanted to know the words for the pictures she saw.) But I think of all the positive messages that movie can teach her. Like this one. This is her favorite scene in the movie (well, I think it is. She can't really articulate "favorites" yet, but she does ask for the "turtle scene"):
When I watch her watch this part of the movie, this is what I see: I see her anxious for the baby turtle -- even though she doesn't quite understand why, she knows Baby Moana is concerned for it, and she's concerned -- I see her watch Baby Moana protect it and care for it, show compassion for another living creature, and I see her watch Baby Moana save the turtle, reuniting it with it's parents (Squirt from Finding Nemo maybe?!).
And, again: how could I not want my daughter to learn that message?
Yes, I know Disney isn't perfect. Believe me, I know. I spend a good deal of my non-teaching-work-time reading about how awful Disney is for kids and why we shouldn't be exposing our kids to their messages.
But then I think about my daughter's spontaneous hug and watching her learn the value of caring for an animal and...the bad messages don't seem so bad. After all, it's not like she won't have me harping in her ear about why the "bad" things aren't that great ("Remember what Queen Elsa said! You can't marry a man you just met! Remember how Kristoff asked Anna's permission before he kissed her? Consent is an important thing!"). I'm totally going to be "that mom." But I guess, to me, the good far outweighs the potentially bad.
