After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre

Read this, and then write that paper on how Jiminy Cricket as both conscience and narrator embodies Alasdair’s ideas of needing to know your place within a story to know the right way to behave.

The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

Adventures of Pinocchio

By Carlo Collodi

One of the worst novels Michial has ever read. Get it for free and judge for yourself.

The Art of Walt Disney by Christopher Finch

“The fox knows just when to to throw a knowing glance, and the cat is a malicious dolt with an instinct for mischief. Neither is subject to the eruptions of sheer evil that determine Stromboli’s personality; they are self made villains, he’s a force of nature.”

episode 2: Pinocchio

episode 2: Pinocchio

Episode

Appendices

Curiosities

[display-posts category=“Pinocchio” tag=”curiosities”]

Mea Culpa

[display-posts category=“Pinocchio” tag=”mea-culpa”]

L’esprit de L’escalier

[display-posts category=“Pinocchio” tag= “lesprit-de-lescalier”]

Bibliography

[display-posts category=“Pinocchio” tag=”Bibliography”]

Letterbox

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Around the network: The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode #174: Tolkien for the Hostile

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.

Show notes

Around the network: The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode 217: Robin Hood

Michial Farmer’s other podcast discusses Robin Hood, including the 1973 Disney Animated version.

Show notes

Around the network: The Christian Feminist Podcast, Episode #45: The Films of Hayao Miyazaki

During the Snow White episode, I mentioned that the pacing reminded me of Japanese animation. Hayao Miyazaki is the Japanese animator Par Excellence. 

Show notes

The Karamazov Brothers by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Karamazov Brothers (Oxford World’s Classics)

By Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ignat Avsey

Is this the only 1000+ page novel worth reading? Michial thinks so.

How do we feel about the fact that the next two (not three) animated films in production are sequels?

At least I was wrong and it’s not three? 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films#Upcoming

Thank God for John Lasseter

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.

— Josh Armstrong

Immediately. Thank God for John Lasseter

The Euchatastrophe

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

— J.R.R. Tolkien

More at Tolkien Gateway

1917 The first feature-length animated film, Quirino Cristiani’s El apostol, is released.

Unfortunately, the only known copy was destroyed in a fire

— David Nusair

Timeline of Animated Film History

Snow White’s Scary Adventures

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.

Learn more

The Animation Age Ghetto

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!

— Roger Ebert

Source: TVtropes

Read a translation of the original version of Little Snow-White by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

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.

— Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Read the whole story here.

Enneagram Correction: 5 is the Cold Academic, 4 is the Romantic Individualist.

The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile

Do the Dwarfs align with any of the Enneagram numbers? Is Grumpy an 8? Is Doc a 5?

Snow White Deleted Scene: Music in your soup

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr-OEaocgOU&w=640&h=480]

More examples of civilizing affects of women, cut from the movie.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Usborne Young Reader) by Lesley Sims

A somewhat close retelling of the original. No dancing to death though.

Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie

The Victorians invented children and disturbing children’s novels.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

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.

Rabbit Run by John Updike

Rabbit, Run

By John Updike

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.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

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.

The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. by Washington Irving

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. 

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

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.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Sing to manage your fears, just like Sam Gamgee and Snow White.

The Disney Vault is Alive and Well

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

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault

Walt Disney’s MultiPlane Camera. Like Stacking Glass Coffee Tables.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdHTlUGN1zw&w=640&h=360]

Transcontinental vs Transpacific

We are a transpacific podcast – not a transcontinental one. Thanks Merriam-Webster.

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard By Rick Riordan

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. 

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Infinite Jest

By David Foster Wallace

Read along with the Christian Humanists at christianhumanist.org

Walt Disney by Neil Gabler

Walt Disney

By Neal Gabler

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 Has More Skin In The Dwarf Game Than I Do

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.”

— Atlas Obscura

Read the whole interesting piece here. 

episode 1: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

episode 1: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Episode

Appendices

Curiosities

[display-posts category=“Snow-White-and-the-Seven-Dwarfs” tag=”curiosities”]

Mea Culpa

[display-posts category=“Snow-White-and-the-Seven-Dwarfs” tag=”mea-culpa”]

L’esprit de L’escalier

[display-posts category=“Snow-White-and-the-Seven-Dwarfs” tag= “lesprit-de-lescalier”]

Bibliography

[display-posts category=“Snow-White-and-the-Seven-Dwarfs” tag=”Bibliography”]

Letterbox

Continue the conversation

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