Who doesn't love Lettie Lutz, the Bearded Lady character in The Greatest Showman, who sings the iconic anthem, This is Me ? Yesterday, my daughter took me to a singalong version of the film for a Mother's Day treat, and we both belted out This is Me at the tops of our voices. Both Lettie and the song have become symbols for anyone who feels marginalised or different. It so happens that last week I watched another film about a hairy woman, the very beautiful Norwegian coming-of-age film, Løvekvinnen , or The Lion Woman, based on a book by Erik Fosnes Hanson. It tells the story of Eva Arctander, who is born in a small town in the early 20th century and struggles to find her place in the world. Especially, it concerns her relationship with her stationmaster father, widowed at her birth. I loved this film - which I watched on Netflix - and I definitely want to see it again. One of my best reads of last year was Orphans of the Carnival by Carol Bi...
The Red Shoes: The Archers/J Arthur Rank, 1948 The other night, I was watching the classic 1948 film, The Red Shoes. When the film was over, I decided to read up on the original tale by Hans Christian Anderson, which brought me back to the subject of amputation in fairy tales. When I was writing my novel, Silver Hands (based on Grimm's fairy tale, The Handless Maiden) I had to think carefully about how I was going to approach amputation in my re-telling. I decided early on that, in my version, the hands were not going to grow back as they do in my source tale. The 2012 Paralympics made everyone in my country much more aware of the achievements of amputees. In real life, limbs do not grow back; what can grow, however, is confidence and new abilities. This was what I wanted to portray in Silver Hands. Margaret learns new skills in painting and calligraphy, ...
"Zellandine and Troylus" by Anna Hopkinson, 2019 [Warning: contains sexual content] As Asexual Myths & Tales comes out this week, I would like to return to one of the most controversial stories from Asexual Fairy Tales , “Zellandine and Troylus”. The reaction of some readers to this story almost caused me to abandon writing the second volume of tales. Opinions were raised about the "lack of consent" in the story and how offensive it was. (Yes, yes, I know. Never read your own reviews). Be assured, I take this kind of thing very seriously. I've tried very hard to put trigger warnings into Myths & Tales . And there is also a story - "The True Love Knot" which could be considered the antithesis of "Zellandine". I won't give any spoilers here. As I wrote in Asexual Fairy Tales : “Zellandine and Troylus” is one of the earliest known versions of “Sleeping Beauty” and comes from the medieval French romance Perceforest (c.1330-44). It als...
Comments
Post a Comment