Michial mentioned during our Snow White episode that listeners of the Christian Humanist will recall that he is not a Tolkien fan. Well, if you didn’t recall that – here’s the episode you need to get up to speed.
Category: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
During the Snow White episode, I mentioned that the pacing reminded me of Japanese animation. Hayao Miyazaki is the Japanese animator Par Excellence.
Is this the only 1000+ page novel worth reading? Michial thinks so.
- Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 – November 21, 2018
- Frozen 2 – November 27, 2019
At least I was wrong and it’s not three?
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films#Upcoming
This in depth story of what was going on with Dwarfs, the Snow White Prequel, is great. But here’s the money quote:
“The production team pressed forward on Dwarfs for about a month after Disa left. Then they pitched the film’s new storyline to Lasseter. He cancelled the project immediately.”
Immediately. Thank God for John Lasseter
“I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth”
More at Tolkien Gateway
“Unfortunately, the only known copy was destroyed in a fire”
“Hop inside a mine cart and follow the path of Snow White as she flees into the dark forest to avoid the wrath of the evil Queen. ”
“Every time an animated film is successful, you have to read all over again about how animation isn’t ‘just for children’ but ‘for the whole family,’ and ‘even for adults going on their own.’ No kidding!”
Source: TVtropes
“Once upon a time in midwinter, when the snowflakes were falling like feathers from heaven, a queen sat sewing at her window, which had a frame of black ebony wood. As she sewed she looked up at the snow and pricked her finger with her needle. Three drops of blood fell into the snow. The red on the white looked so beautiful that she thought to herself, “If only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood in this frame.”
Soon afterward she had a little daughter who was as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony wood, and therefore they called her Little Snow-White. And as soon as the child was born, the queen died.”
Do the Dwarfs align with any of the Enneagram numbers? Is Grumpy an 8? Is Doc a 5?
[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr-OEaocgOU&w=640&h=480]
More examples of civilizing affects of women, cut from the movie.
A somewhat close retelling of the original. No dancing to death though.
The Victorians invented children and disturbing children’s novels.
The Victorians invented children and disturbing children’s novels.
I went ahead and included the annotated Martin Gardner version here as well, because as Michial rightly said – unless you’re a Victorian or Victorian scholar, there is a lot you will miss culturally just reading the Lewis Carroll text.
Civilizing affect of women in American literature exhibit C: Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is fleeing south to get away of the choking northern cities full of women.
Civilizing affect of women in American literature exhibit B: Huck sails down the Mississippi because he doesn’t want to be civilized by Widow Douglass. But Huckleberry is also a bit of a layabout fitting into the line of noble hobos leading up to Jiminy Cricket.
Civilizing affect of women in American literature exhibit A: Rip Van Winkle goes off into the woods to get away from his horrible shrewish wife.
Michial traces the ideal of idleness that Jiminy Cricket and hobos fit into in American culture back to at least Rip Van Winkle.
This classic came out in 1937, just months before Snow White debuted. And the rivalry for who controls our imagination of Dwarfs has been raging ever since.
Sing to manage your fears, just like Sam Gamgee and Snow White.
“The “Disney Vault” is the term used by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment for its policy of putting home video releases of Walt Disney Animation Studios’s animated featureson moratorium. Each Disney film is available for purchase for a limited time, after which it is put “in the vault” and not made available in stores for several years until it is once again released. This also means digital copies are not available on Disney Movies Anywherewhen those movies are currently in the Disney Vault. However most titles in the Vault are available to buy online permanently”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdHTlUGN1zw&w=640&h=360]
We are a transpacific podcast – not a transcontinental one. Thanks Merriam-Webster.
Josh’s conception of pre-Tolkien and Pre-Disney dwarfs comes from this series of YA books. Even if that is a wildly inaccurate and ignorant assumption to make (probably) the story is still pretty fun.
Read along with the Christian Humanists at christianhumanist.org
It’s not a hagiography. Sorry I butchered your name Mr. Neal Gabler.
If you are interested, you can read the ever expanding list of passages I’ve highlighted on my goodreads profile.
“Tolkien didn’t like the goofball dwarfs either. The Tolkien Companion notes that he found Snow White lovely, but otherwise wasn’t pleased with the dwarves. To both Tolkien and Lewis, it seemed, Disney’s dwarves were a gross simplification of a concept they held as precious. “I think it grated on them that he was commercializing something that they considered almost sacrosanct,” says Trish Lambert, a Tolkien scholar and author of the essay, Snow White and Bilbo Baggins: Divergences and Convergences Between Disney and Tolkien. “Here you have a brash, American entrepreneur who had the audacity to go in and make money off of fairy tales.”
Consider the context here: Tolkien’s book The Hobbit was first released in the U.K. in September of 1937, just a couple of months before Snow White hit theaters in the U.S. Both works highlighted a gaggle of dwarves as major supporting characters, but they could hardly have been more different. Disney’s dwarfs were jolly, goofy miners (hey, Dopey), rooted in the stories of the Brothers Grimm; Tolkien’s dwarves were a grim, mythical race (although not wholly without whimsy), born from Nordic myth. “Isn’t it interesting that Tolkien and Disney, almost concurrently, came up with dwarves that are not evil?” notes Lambert. “I researched, is there any possibility that there was a connection? And there’s not.””
Read the whole interesting piece here.
episode 1: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Episode
Appendices
Curiosities
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Mea Culpa
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L’esprit de L’escalier
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Bibliography
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