Narnia bloggin'

The Chronicles of Narnia was the first fandom I ever participated in online, having loved the books since I was seven, and it's still very near and dear to my heart (just look at my Instagram handle). I used to be very active on the NarniaWeb forums around the time of the first Disney movie (TCoN: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) through probably a bit after the second (TCoN: Prince Caspian) or third (TCoN: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). More clearly, this was 2005-ish to around 2009/10. It was about the only social life I had at the time, until my last two years of undergrad; I think I was in grad school when I finally stopped reading and posting in the forums for good, although I still think of them and the people I met on there fondly. The NarniaWeb admins still send me a birthday message every year despite me being inactive. 

In terms of how I see the Disney movies, I liked the first one the best (LWW), Prince Caspian the worst, and VotDT the mediumest. There were of course additions to LWW that I didn't like, little remarks and actions for the kids that were annoyingly precious or modern or childish (clearly added to up the drama and cater to modern American audiences), and the (IMO) unnecessary waterfall scene. I was most active in the NarniaWeb forums during the making of Prince Caspian, poring over and freaking out about movie news for probably a year and a half with other die-hard Narnia fans, which whipped me into a frenzy probably no movie could have lived up to. Prince Caspian, which strayed even farther from the source material than its predecessor and was given even more unnecessary and egregious additions such as the Susan/Caspian kiss (I shudder and C.S. Lewis rolls in his grave), was a huge let-down that disappointed me greatly. I was busier during VotDT's making, not reading or participating in the forums as much, partially because of school, having IRL friends, and due to the disappointment I had incurred. I enjoyed VotDT more because of this; if you expect nothing, there is room to be pleasantly surprised. I heard from my most recent CSL class professor that CSL's stepson put a stop to the Disney Narnia movies after the third because he felt they were straying too far from the Christianity of the books (my professor knows him personally). I of course would have liked to see more Narnia books turned into movies, but understand fully. He was right to do so, I think.

All this is to say: I've heard that Netflix is going to make new Narnia movies and possibly a TV show/s. This of course makes me a bit nervous but rather intrigued. Greta Gerwig is going to be the director, which I'm not totally on board with but trying to have an open mind about. I liked Lady Bird okay, liked Little Women quite a lot, and loved Barbie, but I'm not sure how her brand of feminist introspective teen-girlhood and young womanhood is going to fare. TCON has a few strong, well-rounded female characters, but they do not spend any time thinking about what it means to be a teenage girl/young woman in society and the way cultural and parental expectations effect their attempts to be themselves and live their lives the way they want. The closest to do so was Susan, and look where that got her. I didn't like Disney/Walden's attempt at this (introspective teen-girlhood), which consisted of having Susan be awkwardly talked to by a boy in the beginning of Prince Caspian, much to her dislike; this was clearly supposed to be a foil or something for her "relationship" with Caspian, which was barely (and badly) developed anyway. I'm not sure what the point of it was (the boy trying to talk to her in England); was it to show how Susan preferred muscular hot older guys to nerdy skinny boys? Was it an attempt to show character growth and maturing (Susan didn't like boys and then she did)? Was this their attempt at laying groundwork for what happens to Susan at the end of the series??? 

While typing this, I just remembered how they added a character to VotDT (a sailor's young daughter who stowed away on the ship to be with her dad) in order for the film to have another female character besides Lucy and the star's daughter (who is there for five seconds and isn't even named in the book) and to pass the Bechdel test, lol. I know the books are just so male, and there's not really a way to change that in a way that will keep everyone happy (far from it). IMO, the best way to do it is to make some minor characters female. Doctor Cornelius could be Doctor Cornelia, the seven lords Caspian tries to find in VotDT could be the seven lords and ladies, etc. This will make a lot of people angry but who cares. I'm sure the diversity that was "added" to the background characters made people upset; look at the blowback the current LOTR prequel TV show got for their Afrolatino elf (whom I love of course). As the books are set during the 1940s in our world and a classic fantasy European medieval era-inspired world, plus were written in the 1950s, there are period-typical attitudes towards gender roles. I'm curious to see how Greta Gerwig deals with these without making the changes too focus-pulling.

The Disney/Walden movies' director, Andrew Adamson, put in his boyish love of the battles and fighting in the Narnia books, expanding and inflating them to mythic LOTR-like proportions. I obviously feel the battles and fighting and war etc. have their place, but it was unnecessary to inflate them and add more; this made the movies feel like kiddie-LOTR or LOTR-lite. There are as many views of Narnia as there are readers, I guess. I personally liked the fantasy and magic stuff the best, as well as the history that is only hinted at but never fully told. I know Greta Gerwig loved the TCON books as a kid, as did most of us; hopefully the adaptations she helms will be balanced and not too much of anything.

I do think it makes sense to turn Voyage of the Dawn Treader into a TV show; the stories are very episodic anyway and would translate nicely into TV episodes. The Silver Chair would also work decently well as a TV show, as would The Last Battle. The other books, I feel, would not, although LWW and PC have of course already been turned into BBC miniseries (TV shows with only one series, usually of 4-6 episodes) as well as movies. 

One thing I am really looking forward to is new Narnia merch. When the Disney movies came out, I was in college and had very little money, so I couldn't buy everything I wanted to. This time I have plenty of money to spend on frivolities, but my fear is that Netflix won't put out any official Narnia merch. I can't recall seeing any official merch for most Netflix shows, apart from a few shows' merch on Hot Topic/Boxlunch. Well, there's always fan-made merch. 

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A new set of illustrated covers for the TCON books were announced; they remind me a lot of Cliff Nielsen's excellent cover illustrations as they're both dynamic and computer/digitally illustrated, only the new ones look extra dramatic. I mostly liked them, until someone online pointed out that they look AI-generated, and my stomach sank. After scouring them and finding Digory's case of AI-hand, I commented on the official Narnia Instagram post about the covers asking if they were AI-generated, and both the artist and his daughter replied that they were not (kind of embarrassing but I did comment somewhere very visible, so). I do kind of agree with some of the other comments that all fantasy covers look kind of the same nowadays. I don't think I'll buy a set of the new covers books brand-new, unless I find a great deal or something, and my guess is that it'll take a few years after they are published for copies with these covers to make their way to thrift stores and secondhand bookshops if I want to buy them the way I've bought the others (aka individually and slowly depending on what the thrift stores have at the time).

I was intrigued by the artist adding Easter eggs to the cover illustrations in the form of the planetary symbols for the planet each book falls under according to Michael Ward and his Planet Narnia/seven heavens theory. I don't subscribe to it but I was brought much closer to agreement by a classmate's presentation on that theory in my CSL class (Dr. Ward also gave a presentation on his planetary theory to my CSL class since my professor knows him as well). For Owen Richardson (the new book covers' artist) to use the books' assigned (by Dr. Ward) planetary symbols show that he loves the Narnia books enough to read books about them; I am comforted by this knowledge.

Someone else pointed out online that they're using the Disney logo/font for the new books' titles, and won't that look dated, especially by the time the Netflix movies come out? I like the Disney font a lot but I rather agree; it'll be cool to see what Netflix does with the titles design.

Book (and movie) Review: Matilda by Roald Dahl

Ok, right off the bat, this is not going to be a traditional book review, as I've read this book several times and it's one of my favorites. Much like my All Creatures Great and Small review, I'm just going to be talking about both and comparing them. Spoilers for both, obvi.

Matilda is one of my favorite books of all time. She's the first character I remember looking at and thinking "oh she's me for real". As the tiny, dark-haired, overlooked, book-loving daughter of a smallish, angry, mustachioed man prone to shouting, I added her to my heart immediately. She's the first mirror I remember. While I technically haven't read Matilda that many times, I remembered quite a lot of the book and its little details. I had forgotten Matilda was kind of rude to Miss Honey about being poor and living in a cottage just barely better than a shack (unsurprising, given her awful parents), leaving me to mentally go "that's not in the book!" when the movie showed it. I'd forgotten about the boys Miss Trunchball tortured, although I re-remembered the ear-stretching scene when it happened in the movie. I remembered Bruce Bogtrotter and the enormous chocolate cake, Mrs. Phelps and the library, and Lavender and the newt. I'd remembered most of Matilda's revenge pranks on her family, and of course the wonderful comeuppance at the end. It struck me how quiet and slow-moving the book is, compared to my memory of it. Each chapter focuses on a specific part, and we move along like a bulleted list.

It's interesting how many British authors have written about characters stuck in horrible, abusive schools. This mirrors their own experiences; British boarding schools have historically been neglectful, abusive places filled with bullies and tyrannical teachers who used physical force. Major trigger warnings for all the abuse, but this article talks about it. Roald Dahl himself wrote a memoir, Boy, about his childhood and experiences in said schools. C.S. Lewis went to one such awful boarding school, and the schools in his children's books are similarly awful. It strikes me that having so many generations go through abusive & neglectful schools kind of explains why England was so awful to the countries it invaded; abused people often abuse people.

On to the movie. Going off of people's clothing and hair, the movie is set in the 1980s, which is when the book was published. This is an interesting choice, and I like it. It makes sense too, as they were more lenient on physical punishments in schools back then. The opening song mirrors the book's opening chapter about parents who think their kid is special and brilliant despite what they're really like. The girl who played Matilda was basically perfect. She played Matilda a trifle less quiet than she seems in the book, but that's to be expected in a musical and movie, where you want your characters to stand out. Matilda has dark eyes as well as hair in the book, and the actress having blue eyes as well as brown hair made her look rather like me as a child (definitely a plus). It made me a bit sad that the lovely language Matilda uses to describe how she feels when she uses her powers was downgraded: "flying over the silver stars" etc. to "it fizzes". Matilda and all the children were a bit too old, which is expected in movies. Matilda and her class are basically kindergartners (5 or 6 years old), and seemed about 7-9 years old in the movie. Hortensia, the one older kid Matilda talks to, seems about 12 or 13 rather than 11. She is so cool in the movie and rather wasted, imo. I'm wondering if one of the songs that was cut from the movie was her describing her pranks on Miss Trunchbull like she does in the book. I wish they'd left all the songs in.

The parents were pretty much perfect (i.e. gross and mean). The actress playing Mrs. Wormwood is very thin; the book Mrs. Wormwood is fat, and the view and descriptions of her character are pretty fatphobic, so I'm not mad at the change. Both movie parents have more middle?-class accents, which makes sense for a used car dealer and his wife, but can come off as classist as all the other characters have nicer British accents (I love all British accents). In the movie, Mrs. Wormwood didn't want to be pregnant or have a baby at all, being in denial about it, and Mr. Wormwood wanted a boy and not a girl. He refers to Matilda as "boy" and he/him during the movie, with Matilda saying "I'm a girl" after each time; this, as some tumblr user pointed out, makes her trans-coded. They cut out Matilda's older brother, which I guess kind of makes sense for movie streamlining, but that also lowers the heartbreak and unfairness as the parents treat the son normally/nicely and treat their daughter terribly. This is consistent with what narcissistic parents often do; they have a favorite child and a scapegoat child. The only parental prank they cut out was the parrot one, which makes sense. It's probably the least satisfying one, anyway. It would have been funnier if Mrs. Wormwood cut the glued-on hat off Mr. Wormwood's head like in the book, but I guess they wanted to cut down on the hair and makeup budget. I'm guessing the other song that was cut was the parents', maybe the "you chose books/I chose looks" line, which would make a fantastic song. In the end of the movie, when Matilda magics the hat off her father's head as a thanks for finally calling her his daughter and letting her stay with Miss Honey, was nice but not in the book. The Wormwoods deserve no redemption.

I like the diverse casting for the movie. I'm guessing they changed Mrs. Phelps' library into a cute retro bookmobile library so they could shoot in different pretty locales, but I'm not mad at it. I want to dress like her when I grow up. I'm not sure why the movie adaptations all tend to make Lavender (Matilda's best friend) meek and sometimes even mousey; maybe it's to set off how courageous Matilda is? In the book, they are described as equally gutsy and adventurous. The movie understandably made the other memorable kids (Bruce, the pigtails girl) be in Matilda's class. I get the reason for this, but it does mean we don't deal much with the other students. I didn't like how Bruce gets dragged to the chokey after finishing the cake in the movie; this doesn't happen in the book, as Trunchball accepts her defeat angrily. Miss Honey was perfect. You felt for her and rooted for her to be free. Emma Thompson played Miss Trunchbull very well, with her weird square fake jaws and fatsuit and weird, blocky platform shoes. She was adequately scary. I'm not sure why they moved the chokey from her headquarters to the woods, but it was creepy. It could definitely be argued that movie!Matilda's final revenge was definitely way past her abilities (making a chain monster AND destroying all the chokeys [excellent choice btw] AND plaiting Trunchball's hair into two braids at the same time AND spinning and throwing her out the window by her hair). That would've knocked Matilda out a third of the way through. The changes did feel more cathartic, though; Trunchball deserved to be thrown out the window by her hair. Having the children read out the "ghost's" words on the chalkboard out loud in unison? Perfectly creepy.

On the biggest addition to the movie: despite their backstories already being incredibly similar, the movie decided to really underscore this by giving Matilda psychic abilities on top of her telekinesis: she sees pieces of Miss Honey's story, in which Miss Honey's parents are circus performers for some reason and Miss Trunchbull is responsible for Miss Honey's mother's death as well as her father's, and abused Miss Honey as a child. It is really interesting, though, how we the audience are made to think it's Matilda dealing with her parents' abuse and neglect through this story she's telling Mrs. Phelps; indeed, Matilda sees herself as the abused little girl. They sadly left out Miss Honey's courageousness in becoming a teacher and renting the cottage behind her aunt's back; I love that for her. I love her cottage, too; it makes sense she'd decorate it with her pupils' art, and it should have been like that in the book. TBH, the book takes it a bit too far: Miss Honey sleeps on the floor and owns no furniture. You're telling me she wouldn't find stuff off the street or at yard sales? Anyway. The movie ends very similarly to the book, with Miss Honey getting her house back and the Wormwoods running away from the consequences of Mr. Wormwood's crookedness and letting Matilda live with Miss Honey. In the movie, Miss Honey is also left in charge of the school and turns it into a beautiful, colorful, carnival-inspired Montessori dream. The book is more practical: an older, good teacher became headmaster after Trunchbull bounced.

I really liked the songs in the movie; they intersected and played together beautifully. I really like the cleverness of the alphabet/school song and had "Revolting Children" stuck in my head for days. It's been ages since I've watched the 1990s Matilda, but I feel that this one is the closest adaptation yet. Matilda the Musical is on Netflix, and I really recommend it.

link

 

Trigger warnings for both book and movie: child abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, neglect, child endangerment, children forced to stand in nail-studded spiky closet for hours without being able to sit, child forced to eat a huge cake (food-related abuse), abusive parents, narcissistic parenting, abusive and enabling school staff, adult basically enslaves child and forces her to do all the cleaning, adult waterboards child (book only), off-page/screen suggested murder, poor adult, food insecurity, newts


Sanditon miniseries, and books I've reread lately

I finished watching PBS's Sanditon miniseries, which is based on an unfinished novel that Jane Austen was writing when she died. It was pretty good, but I felt it was too soap opera-y. You already know that I don't like it when people insert random stuff into Jane Austen adaptations, especially if it's only for the drama. There are trysts! Kidnappings! A page is taken out of Cruel Intentions' book! There's a love triangle between two hot dudes and the heroine! There's a love triangle between the hero and two ladies who love him! There's at least one manipulative bitch who isn't afraid to use sex as a weapon! You know, a lot of stuff that does not belong in a Jane Austen adaptation (unless she already wrote it in there).
Also, I didn't like it that the hero walked around in stubble all the time, and that the heroine almost always wore her hair down despite being of Out age. They also did not wear hats and gloves in public/outside nearly enough. I also feel that there was too much obvious makeup on the women (I'm pretty sure ladies did not wear smoky eye makeup with crimson lips in the Regency era). I hate it when historical period pieces aren't accurate.
The heroine felt like a cross between Catherine from Northanger Abbey and Lizzie from Pride & Prejudice. The hero was definitely a Darcy type. The bitchy old rich lady was basically the same as she was in the book. One thrills to think of the frenemy relationship she would have with Lady Catherine de Bourgh. They really fleshed out the sole character of color, a young lady from the West Indies who is an heiress in the miniseries. I liked her and felt bad for her to be stuck in a town full of just white people who were often racist to her. The trips to London showed how diverse it was back then, which was nice and interesting. The ending was very abrupt and unsatisfying, which I thought was because maybe they ended the miniseries where Austen's novel did, but no! They fleshed it way out more than the novel, and just chose to end it that way! WTF. Despite all that, it was pretty good.

So obviously after I finished Sanditon, I decided to reread the book to see how similar the miniseries was to it. The answer is: not very. It was all right. It usually takes me a while to get into nineteenth century writing nowadays, thanks to the Internet and social media, and by the time I was hitting my stride, it was over. Anyway, my volume of Sanditon also has The Watsons and Lady Susan, and I decided to reread Lady Susan because I remember finding it so funny and scandalous. It... was fine. It did make me watch Love & Friendship, its adaptation that stars Kate Beckinsale, who is perfect, if a bit tamer than Lady Susan in her letters to her best friend. So random how they made her best friend American just because Chloe Sevegny (sp?) wanted it be in the movie for some reason. Anyway.

I organized more of my books, consolidating several piles into one megapile next to the stairs. This action of course revealed several books that I need to read and decide whether to keep or not.  I  reread Franny and Zooey for this reason. I wrote about it last time I read it, and I really liked it at the time. This time it was mostly just okay. I still liked the Jesus/religious stuff, but I guess there's something about reading a book where young people in their early to mid twenties have quarter-life crises when you yourself are in your thirties, that lowers the appreciation for the book. I last read it 9 years ago, when I was in my early twenties, so it makes sense that I liked it more then. Anyway. I'll be giving this one away.

Latinx representation

Study finds films lag significantly in Latino representation

Latina women in films are all maids, immigrants (undocumented or not), gang girls or cholas, spicy and tempestuous, Jennifer Lopez, or all of the above. I'm trying to think of a Latina in movies I could relate to. America Ferrera has come close; she played Carmen in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but her story was not my story. I have yet to watch Real Women Have Curves, but it's on my list.

Representation matters. Ask me why I, a white, blue-eyed, brown-haired girl, never really saw any character I identified with. (Maybe I would feel differently if I had watched Gilmore Girls. Alexis Bledel is a white Argentinian with blue eyes and brown hair and her character loved books. But her character was white.) Ask me why I saw America Ferrera's awkward bespectacled face as Ugly Betty and immediately placed the TV show in the #1 slot in my heart. Ask me why her Mexican apron-wearing, cooking dad and prettier, more popular sister felt so familiar. Ask me why I latched on to Jane the Virgin, with her love of books and dreams of being a writer and the specter of religion haunting her desires. When Jane and her mom and her abuela sang feliz cumpleaños to her son, harmonizing, I burst into tears. My family does that. I had never seen anything on television so close to my personal experiences. I feel uncomfortable when, in TV shows and movies, second and third generation Latinx Americans speak in English to their parents and grandparents while they speak to them in Spanish. I do that to my dad without knowing, and it makes me feel guilty.

Depending on your interpretation, Latinxs have been here since before the United States claimed its independence. J.Lo goes to the gym every day, but she cannot carry us all on her shoulders. Nor should she.

January 2017 books

The first book I read and finished this year was Debating Disney: Pedagogical Perspectives on Commercial Cinema, which was a series of essays about Disney films under different lens (feminism, race, gay or Semitic stereotyping, etc.) It was interesting but somewhat dry as it is an academic work, but I would recommend it if you like analyzing Disney movies and can stomach reading academia. In my notes I had put that some facts were incorrect, but I didn’t put what so now I don’t remember. This was a library book. I may have skimmed this a bit, rather than reading every essay (early January, 3.9/5 stars)

I actually read a lot of library books since mine were packed up in boxes until a few weeks ago. The next one I read was In the Open Hand: Sonnets from the Californian, which is a book of poetry by a faculty member at the university where I work. It was pretty good but the reading experience was marred somewhat by the fact that I met him and it’s kind of awkward reading love poems by someone you’ve personally met. Not his fault; the writing style was quite good. (early January, 3.5/5 stars)

C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: A Biography is exactly that: the biography of a book. How meta is that? It went over the circumstances leading up to Mere Christianity being written, such as WWII and C.S. Lewis’s radio talks, as well as its reception and influence. This would be a great resource for someone wanting to write a book report on MC, or any other CSL megafan. I think I kinda skimmed this one towards the end as it is scholarly and dry. (mid-January, 4/5)

Later that month I went to my achilles’ heel, the thrift store, and bought several more books. Among them was a TV spinoff book, The Douche Journals, Volume 1: The Definitive Account of One Man's Genius. Basically the book is written as if it’s Schmidt from New Girl’s journal where he writes down every “clever” thing that caused him to be made to put money in the douchebag jar. It was just as crude and hilarious as I expected. (mid-January, 3.4/5)

I also acquired The Code of the Woosters at the thrift store, to my delight. These are laugh-out-loud funny, and I’m going to try to buy them all. I had seen parts of it from a BBC Jeeves and Wooster episode, but it was still hilarious.(mid-January, 4/5)

Also from the thrift store came The Mysterious Affair at Styles, my first Agatha Christie. I liked Hercule Poirot and the mystery was quite interesting, but I pretty much hated the narrator. He kept falling in love with every attractive woman and girl he saw, regardless of whether they were married or appropriate for him to date, then pouted when they didn’t like him back. His thoughts about the women were unnecessary and detracted from the story. I would have liked to know more of Poirot rather than that bimbo. I did like the story, but I won’t be keeping this one. (mid-January, 3.5/5)

Continuing my Artemis Fowl series reread, I read the fourth book, The Opal Deception. This one may have the most suspenseful plot of the series, and it pretty much held up reread-wise. (mid-January, 4/5)

My next library read was Youth and Sexuality in the Twentieth Century United States, which is a well-researched yet readable scholarly work. It was very interesting and showed that adolescence wasn’t as squeaky clean in the past as your grandparents would have you think (premarital sex was pretty common, for instance). The most interesting thing I learned was that children under 15 or so were expected to not be interested in the opposite sex at all, but in the same sex! Same-sex crushes were completely expected and seen as normal in older children and young teens. (lateish January, 4/5)

I was going to do a trimester-type post of my Jan-Mar books, but since I read so much in January, this is just for that month. That's why this post is so late.

Hispanic Disney Princess, part 2

Here we go again.

Princess Elena of Avalor, a confident and compassionate teenager in an enchanted fairytale kingdom inspired by diverse Latin cultures and folklore, will be introduced in a special episode of Disney Junior’s hit series Sofia the First beginning production now for a 2016 premiere. That exciting story arc will usher in the 2016 launch of the animated series Elena of Avalor, a production of Disney Television Animation.

Remember my hit* post about Princess Sofia? I got all excited for a second that we were going to have a real Latina Disney Princess, but it turns out it's just a spinoff of Sofia the First on the Disney Channel. Elena does look 'more Latina', which yay for representation for brown girls (especially brown Latina girls), but you can't claim she's Latina since she's from a made-up country. Please read that post I wrote about Sofia for all my thoughts about giving us "Latin@" characters who are from a made-up world.
I am further annoyed by the "this fake world is inspired by Latino and Hispanic cultures around the world!" nonsense that I hate. Latin@s are not all the same; please don't lump us together. A ~*Latin-flavored*~ setting (when done by white people) is just insulting; there's better representation on a tortilla chip bag. I get that the amount of countries and cultures is overwhelming, but try to do better by us.
Although I guess you could argue that like half the white Disney Princesses are from made-up lands (Atlantis or whatever the mermaid city is called, wherever Frozen is set, etc.). So I guess what I'm annoyed by the most about this is that it's more of the same. They already did this to us with Sofia. Why aren't Latina princesses good enough to get a feature film? This feels like some "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" nonsense.

p.s. I am so excited for Moana!! PLEASE GO SEE MOANA; it needs to be super successful so that Disney will keep making movies about non-white people!


*not really

Thoughts about The Santa Clause 2 after watching it for the first time in a decade

Spoilers, I guess, if you care about that sort of thing

• The premise is silly and unrealistic, even for a Santa Claus movie. Why should Santa be forced to get married in order to be able to remain being Santa Claus? I guess the position is thousands of years old, so it makes sense the contract's author(s) would hold antiquated positions on marriage.
• Who made the Santa Claus contract and its subsequent clauses? Who is hiring Santa? Who established Santa? God? Santa hangs out with Mother Nature, Father Time, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, and Cupid, but it's clear none of them have anything to do with the Santa politics and there is no mention of God.
• Are Mother Nature and Father Time married?
• I'm guessing the contract writer would have been more powerful than all of them, because then couldn't the current Santa Claus rewrite the contract? I guess it's not like the President rewriting or overwriting laws he doesn't like or adding amendments or whatever.
• What does Mrs. Claus do anyway? I always had the vague impression that she just baked cookies for Mr. Claus, maybe cooked all the food for him and all the elves, and occasionally took pictures with children along with Santa. Why is it so important for Santa to be married if that's all she does?
• Does that mean you can get out of being Santa by getting divorced? What if your wife dies? Are you forced to remarry?
• What if Santa's gay? Does he still have to get married? Santa & Mr. Claus? I have no doubt such a contract as antiquarian and matrimonial-minded would be completely heteronormative; that wouldn't even occur to the contract writer. 
• When Scott accidentally killed the original Santa and put on his clothes, he became Santa (the first Santa Clause movie). This is very folklore/fairytale standard, but in light of this movie's new information we know that Santa must have a Mrs. Claus in order to continue, so...
• What happened to the original Mrs. Claus? Did she die at the same time as her husband? Did she also disappear the way the original Santa's body did? 
• Did the original Santa die because he didn't have a wife? Is having a Mrs. Claus insurance against being killed and replaced as Santa?  
• Is Santa Claus immortal, if he is not killed? Santa Claus as immortal has been suggested by all the Santa Claus mythology I have read and seen (that I remember anyway), but nothing of it apart from the Santa Clause movies suggests Santa can be killed. 
• If Santa is immortal, does this mean Mrs. Claus is too?
• If Scott as Santa Claus lives for hundreds of years, what happens to his family? Does his son grow old and die while Scott is forever a portly white-haired man?
• If Santa's family have all grown old and died without him, why is he so jolly? Does being Santa mean you have amnesia? Only knowing all the children's names in the world and whether they are naughty or nice, but not who you used to be?
• I have questions about Bernard, the head elf. 
• All of the elves, while hundreds of years old, remain children on the outside, but Bernard is supposed to be a teen. Why is this? 
• Was he the son of the original Santa, or maybe even of the Santa before him? Does he resent the new Santa(s), who has killed and/or taken on his father's role and whom he has to serve? He is the crankiest elf we see. 
• Bernard is also a clear Jewish stereotype. Why, in a movie about Christmas and its icons?
• Do elves just age very slowly? Like all the elves who look six years old are actually six hundred years old, while Bernard, who we'll graciously say looks 18 years old, is actually 1800 years old? If he's so old, then he must be very wise. Why can't he be Santa then? Is it because he's not jolly enough? Scott is very sarcastic and he still became Santa Claus.
• Why are there no other teen-looking elves? What happened to Bernard's cohort? Do we just not see them in the movies? 
• Was Bernard the First Elf? I don't remember how elves are born or where they come from. How many elves are born at once, and how? How long do elves live? Are they immortal? Is Bernard near death?
• Why did the elves wait so long to tell Santa that he had to get married in order to continue being Santa Claus? Scott became Santa when his son Charlie was about eight years old, according to Wikipedia (I thought he was 6; he seemed so little to me). In The Santa Clause 2 Charlie is in middle school, about 14 years old. Six years have passed, and I'm assuming Scott underwent ample training from the elves. Why weren't all the clauses, including such an important one as the Mrs. clause, included? Is it because they are all written in tiny font on that business card? Why can't they rewrite it as a legible business contract on letter-sized paper? Wouldn't it make sense to have a couple of eagle-eyed legal elves (that one that's in love with the rules anyway, the glasses one, Curtis) get on the magnifying glasses to read the entire thing and make sure there are no surprises? Six years would have been plenty of time to find a wife. 28 days is ridiculous, and the movie makes it seem like a week.
• Why is the grace period for being an unmarried Santa 6 years? Why not 5 or 10 or 1 or 100? What's the hurry, if Santa is immortal (or is he, see above)?
• The first scene shows the North Pole at Elfcon 4-1, because they are afraid of being detected by a passing plane. I was given to understand that Santa's workshop at the North Pole is magical and therefore undetectable by human eyes, at least unbelieving adult ones. What is the truth?
• Wouldn't the pilots, hearing the noise/music, assumed it was from Arctic researchers or Arctic peoples and their equipment/radios?
• I'm just going to say it: Scott should have married the first lady he went on a date with, the Christmas-obsessed singer-songwriter played by Molly Shannon. Literally everything about her shows she would have been the best choice for Mrs. Claus. Yeah, it was pretty weird for her to break into song and dance right there in the restaurant when they were on their date, singing a Christmas-themed version of "Man! I Feel Like a Woman", but come on! That shows both her love of Christmas and her creativity. Both are important for the role of Mrs. Claus.
• Could Scott have liked her and been able to live with her? I don't know. Maybe after he got over the embarrassment of her singing and dancing in the restaurant, possibly. I feel like it's not really a huge deal when women go over the top on the first date, as they're very unlikely to turn out to be serial killers. You can recover from embarrassment. Who is there to embarrass at the North Pole? The elves would all enthusiastically join along. She would have loved it.
• Carol, Charlie's middle school principal, has a great name for Mrs. Claus and clearly loved Christmas as a child, plus she works with children every day. However, she's very strict and it seems that although she probably went into teaching because she liked it and liked kids, she's clearly become embittered and dictatorial. Anyone who is able to intimidate teenagers to such a degree that looking into their cold dark eyes causes them to go straight to third period geography is wrong for the role of Mrs. Claus.
• The movie made it sound that Carol was going to quit her job as principal, I guess because she'd be living at the North Pole with Scott. Does being Mrs. Claus mean you have to give up your own career and dreams? That's messed up. How very 1950s and prior of you, Santa Claus contract.
• There was a vague mention of Carol teaching in or heading the elf school, if there even was such a thing. What need is there for a school? Aren't all the elves only children on the outside? Are elves born and do they die?
• Scott's proposal to Carol was based on the sentiment that although they didn't know each other very well, Carol's known Santa Claus her whole life. YIKES, creepy much? It wasn't even Scott, though; he only became Santa 6 years ago. I guess because he's Santa that makes him trustworthy and kind, is the argument?
• So Carol just had to give up her entire life to be Scott's Mrs. Claus? Did she not have any family? It sounded like she was an only child. Could she bring her stuff from her house with her to the North Pole? What would happen to her house and stuff? Why did she, an unmarried public school principal, have a big house like that? Maybe her parents left it to her?
• Would she really have to spend the whole rest of her life in the North Pole? I don't really see any reason why she couldn't continue being a principal at her school. All schools are off for winter break, anyway, and it's not like Santa has a whole lot to do during the year and Mrs. Claus probably even less. idk.
• How great was the little girl who played Charlie's half sister? Such an adorable little girl, and a great little actress. She looked like a little ginger Olson. I think it's really sweet how she called Scott "Uncle Scott" and how close Scott was with his ex-wife and her new family.
• I'm not even going to go into the whole decoy toy Santa thing, except to say they are clearly tapping into the "sentient computers won't have compassion and will end up harming humans" thing. I think they tried doing too much in this movie.
• A couple of storylines that were started and mostly dropped: Charlie getting on the naughty list (did he get back on the nice list? Wouldn't his mom and stepdad just get him presents anyway?), the reason for Charlie getting on the naughty list in the first place, Charlie's crush on his female friend. Like the first Santa Clause movie, it starts off with Charlie as the main focus and firmly turns into the Scott Movie.
• I leave you with this. Neil Gaiman knows how to do horrifying interpretations.

Dragons I have appreciated

Apparently today is Appreciate a Dragon Day. Who am I to let this auspicious holiday go unobserved.

• Smaug (from the book, although I tolerate CumberSmaug). He's awful, but he's badass. Never over using gemstones to make armor for his chest and belly!
• as awful as the books are, Saphira (I don't remember her name exactly), the main dragon in the Eragon books. She's cool.
• Mushu from Mulan, of course. 
• I also liked the Great Stone Dragon a lot and have always sorta felt disappointed that he didn't come to life like Mushu did. And when Mulan sits in/under the statue while it rains???? Most badass seat ever
• I feel like I read at LEAST one book where the girl protagonist (a princess usually) befriended the dragon, turning that trope of dragons vs. princesses on its head. I feel like this happened in the Frog Princess books, among others.
• The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame. I love that dude; he's the Ferdinand the Bull of dragons.
• The Ice Dragon by George R.R. Martin. This is actually the only thing by him that I've read, and it is lovely and sad.
• EUSTACE WHEN HE WAS A DRAGON omg I knew I was forgetting someone important
• the image of the red and the white dragons from underground fighting each other in The Once and Future King has always stayed with me, but idk if I appreciate them
• I feel like there are scads of other dragons I've read that I'm not remembering
• the most recent dragon book I've read was called The Dragonwatcher's Guide or something. It's a "nonfiction" scrapbook type book for the newbie dragon scholar. I liked it.
• Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon (the movie, I've never read the book)
• Puff the Magic Dragon feels forever

Yardsale haul

• Lentenlands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis by Douglas H. Gresham ($1)
• Emma DVD (Gwyneth Paltrow version) ($1)
• Amélie DVD ($1)
• Bride & Prejudice DVD (yes, you read that right. It's the modern Bollywood retelling of P&P) (50 cents because it's just the DVD without the case)
• Possession DVD (ditto, 50 cents)

They also had all three extended editions of the LOTR movies but I already own the normal versions (also bought from a yard sale, lol) and let's be real, I would never get around to watching the extra footage. I haven't even watched the DVD extras from the Narnia movies.  Also they had some Tom Hanks movies and I wanted to call my sister and ask her if she wanted me to get them for her but my phone died. >:[

The Secret of Kells

For St. Patrick's Day, Hulu has The Secret of Kells available to watch. I had been wanting to see it since it's about an illuminated manuscript/book that is real, the Book of Kells (largely considered Ireland's greatest national treasure, according to Wikipedia), and I heard the animation was amazing. I am so glad I finally got to watch it. It has pretty much everything I love: illuminated manuscripts, books, medieval stuff, mythology, early Christianity, gorgeous art, nature and forests, the triumph of light over darkness... I could go on and on. It's now one of my favorite movies ever. I haven't see anything this lovely and wondrous since the Morris Lessmore film. I love it so much.

Chi Ro monogram from the actual Book of Kells. [source] Chi and Ro are the first two letters of "Christ" in Greek, so it's basically a symbol for Jesus.

Obligatory New Year's post

Tentative/vague list of New Year's Resolutions:
-lose weight/work out/be healthier/eat right etc. Because I am boring and just like everybody else, but mainly because I want to look good for my sister's wedding in May. Never let it be said I wasn't shallow!
-write more. I have a book of poetic forms that I've been meaning to go through and try to write each one. And I have a short story I've only written one sentence of, as well as other ideas I just think about and never write down. Maybe even try to publish something
-read the C.S. Lewis devotional my parents bought me as well as my Bible every day. I had been reading my Bible every day for several years, but all the grad school stuff just brought that to a creaking halt. But I will start up again.
-crochet/knit more. I have so much yarn and needles it isn't even funny
-use the craft stuff I have kicking around in storage containers/boxes
-make a sizeable dent in my to-read pile
-try to spend more time with my friends
-drive more so I'm not so bad at it

Anyway, here is an animated short of The Little Match Girl, set in Russia. I read it was made for a Fantastia movie they were making for 2006 but never finished. It's terribly sad but I always saw it as a New Year's story.

Disney's First Hispanic/Latina Princess?

All right, finally found something to blog about! I have no idea how I missed reading about this earlier, but apparently Disney is going to have its first Latina princess. Her name is Sofia and she becomes a princess because her mom marries the king of Enchancia (yeah, I know). Read this article and this one too. What I find weird is this:

• while Sofia's mom is clearly Latina (she is voiced by Sara Ramirez from Grey's Anatomy, while Modern Family's Ariel Winter voices Sofia) and has dark brown hair and eyes and brown/tan skin, Sofia has auburn hair, blue eyes and basically just looks white, and
• Sofia is going to be in a computer animated Disney Juniors television show, not in a full-length feature film like any of the other Disney Princesses.

Being Latin@ is an ethnicity, not a race, so obviously there is a great deal of physical variation among Latin@s or Hispanics (Latin@ [the @ is used as a combination 'o' and 'a' symbol; in Spanish males' words end in o and females' words end in a, so this way both genders are included] is a newer term that roughly means the same thing as Hispanic, but the latter is a word applied to our ethnic group by the US government [aka white people] to classify us, so many Latin@s prefer this word. It's roughly the same to me, although I grew up using Hispanic because my parents do). I myself am a 'white' Latina; my dad is Mexican and my mom is of Cuban descent, but there is so much Spanish blood (my dad's family were land owners and he had a French whoknowshowmany-great-grandfather, while my mom's family are Cubans who also pretty much directly descended from Spaniards) that my immediate family pretty much all pass for white (my sister is blond, even). You don't have to dig very far in this blog to find pictures of me; I do have dark brown hair but I also have white skin and blue eyes. I'm whiter than most white people. Obviously, just because someone has light skin, hair and eyes does not mean they can't be Latin@.
The problem is that this is Disney's first Latina princess. This is a big deal. I think this is just about the only ethnic group the Disney movies haven't covered. Quick rundown of Disney Princesses: Snow White (come on. It's in the name/fairy tale), Cinderella (blonde/blue-eyed), Aurora (ditto), Ariel (first redhead! still white even though she is a mermaid), Belle (brunette and brown-eyed, French), Jasmine (first non-white princess! Arabian? Clearly Middle-Eastern. Agrabah is not I think a real place), Pocahontas (Native American, an actual person but she was so not like that), Mulan (Chinese, what I said about Pocahontas although technically she is not a princess since her dude wasn't a prince), Tiana (first Black princess! also from a real place, New Orleans, and is African American), and Rapunzel (after all that diversity I guess we needed to return to a blonde, white princess. She has green eyes, though). Oh, and Pixar's Merida (Scottish; red, crazy curly hair; blue eyes. Love her). These are the official Disney Princesses™, although Giselle (played by strawberry blonde Amy Adams), Kida (Atlantean princess with tan/brown skin, white hair and blue eyes who is all *~exotic~*), Ariel's daughter Melody (also white and has black hair like her dad Prince Eric), and Eilonwy (princess from The Black Cauldron. She's your basic blonde/white/blue-eyed princess but in her defense TBC is based on a book that was heavily influenced by your typical European fairytales) also exist. There has been no Latina princess, though, so it's rather disappointing that this one looks like your basic white girl. Yes, white-looking Latina girls like me exist (obviously), but we already have enough princesses to look up to or hold up as being or looking like me (Belle 4eva). What about the brown-skinned girls? There's just Pocahontas, Jasmine and Tiana for them, but none of these are Latina.
I think it's been a long enough time since the only two Hispanic-adjacent movies in this vein that we can do another movie set in pre-Columbus America about Mesoamerican peoples. The Road to El Dorado (which was made by DreamWorks but was clearly trying to mimic Disney's movies/success) was about two bumbling conquistadores trying to find/steal from a city of gold with a wily Mayan babe's help (can't remember if she's royal but I doubt it), while The Emperor's New Groove (set loosely in the Incan empire in Peru) does not have Emperor Kuzco actually get married (his wife would be an empress, though) since it is an odd-couple buddy movie. Despite Tumblr's lovingly referring to Kuzco as the best Disney princess, he does not actually count (although he is entertaining). It would be really neat to have an Aztec or Mayan princess, but it would be just as neat to have a standard princess with the dress and tiara and everything who just happened to have brown skin and dark hair/eyes. The Disney representative mentioned as the source of this information in one of the articles linked to above said that they're not flouting her ethnic background, just treating it matter-of-factly, which I think is fine. It would be nice if a brown-skinned princess were treated as normal.
This is especially a bummer since Sofia's show is set in Enchancia (ugh), a made-up country. The people there could look like anything you want (although at least it does seem rather diverse, judging from the trailer), and you have that girl and the ruling family looking white? Disappointing. I'm definitely not saying I want a sombrero-wearing stereotype or a story you can't watch without 'Cielito Lindo' constantly being played (I'm looking at you, From Prada to Nada), but why would you say a character, especially one you're trying to market as a Disney Princess, is Latina but then not have their culture be anything relevant? As the EW article says, "Sofia is half-Enchancian and half-Galdizian. The two kingdoms are in a world where a few real countries like France exist, but they’re still fictional, making words like Latina and Hispanic less clearly applicable." Some of the light-skinned Latin@s talking about Sofia on Facebook (link from the Mashable article) are angry that other people think she's too white, pointing out that skin color doesn't determine Latin@-ness (which is true) and that the white princesses and famous people don't share our culture and experiences. However, it's not like we light-skinned Latin@s are finally getting representation either; the child's from made-up lands. How does that count as Latin@? It doesn't, in my book. It feels like Disney's trying to seem diverse without really being so. Dora the Explorer's better than this. We're getting the short end of the stick, representation-wise.
I also think it's weird that Sofia is from a (pretty basic-sounding) TV show for young children. All of the 'real' Disney Princesses were at least in their teens, of marriageable (for their medieval/fantasy settings, anyway) age, and this one is clearly a little girl. This is Disney's first Latina princess, and she doesn't even get her own movie? That plus her age makes her not really count as a Disney Princess; it makes her not very important. I just barely heard about her today, and the show starts next month. Maybe they will do a real, brown-skinned Latina princess with her own movie in the future. Who knows. It feels like we still have a ways to go.

Image from Mashable. Note Sofia's mom, fourth little box from left.

From Prada to Nada

The sister on the left never dresses like that. She is in cute but comfy clothes in the whole movie, except for the obligatory makeover montage (which doesn't take). And the sister on the right never works, for shoes or otherwise.

I watched From Prada to Nada with my parents a couple days ago, just in time for Mexico's Independence Day. It's a romcom retelling of Sense & Sensibility, which I didn't know and which made me happy because I love retellings of my favorite books (as long as they're good) and because I had been feeling meh about the movie (my dad talked me into watching it). Really, the title is groan-worthy and riches-to-rags stories with shopaholic girls are so done, but this movie was actually surprisingly good. The representations of the Hispanics/Latinos in the movie were real. Usually it's somewhat cringeworthy, but these were real Latino people saying things Latina aunts or whatever would totally say. This is because the director and the script writers were Hispanic, which pleased me. About 70% of what happened with the two main characters (the Elinor ["Nora"] and Marianne ["Mary"] characters) was just as lame/cringeworthy as you'd think, but overall it wasn't half bad. Was it predictable? Yes. I mean, if you've read S&S you know what's going to happen, obviously. And you could probably go through this movie with a Latino movie cliché checklist (cholas? check. La Migra joke? check. And so on). What I found interesting (besides the rather genuine portrayals of Latinos) was the stuff they added to the sisters' characters. Besides making Mary be all swept up in lurve with Willoughby/Rodrigo, they added the dimension that she wanted to go back to her old way of life in Beverly Hills and get out of East LA/the barrio, making her love of the hot TA more gold-digger-y/mercenary and less romantic. And Nora, instead of secretly loving Edward and then finding out he was engaged the whole time, went the standard "we banter! He likes me but I am scared and Turn My Back on Love!" and you know what happens next. It's interesting how they didn't want Elinor to be the boring perfect one and so they made her storyline more standard romcom. In S&S, Elinor really does nothing wrong while the only thing Marianne does wrong is love recklessly without thinking of propriety or consequences (well, she is quite rude and self-centered too). However, it's like for the movie they didn't want the girls to be that blameless, so they made Mary a gold digger and Nora all obsessed with her 10 year plan. idk. Overall I did like the movie and it made me sad I don't have like twelve Spanish names I can trot out at the drop of a hat (at most I have four but only two are Spanish) or a family that throws huge block parties with salsa music for El Grito where I can dress like Frida Kahlo (but I am always wanting to do that anyway. It's a pity I'm so white-looking). Overall I liked this movie, which you can watch for free on Amazon Prime. 3.5 out of 5 tacos.

Elinor: Uptight Career Woman Who Don't Need No Man (law student version). Can't speak Spanish but tries to learn. Played by a half-Brazilian actress (I was worried for a bit that they cast a white actress until I looked the movie up on IMDb).
Marianne: slutty shopaholic party girl with gold digger tendencies. Can't speak Spanish and tries to deny her Mexican heritage. Played by a half-Venezuelan actress (Carmen from Spy Kids!).
Mrs. Dashwood: dead, obviously was just like Marianne/Mary. Represented by painting.
Margaret Dashwood: axed (not necessary to story)
Mr. Dashwood: Gabriel Sr. models his mustache after Pedro Infante's, dies within the first 8 minutes of movie. Represented by topiary.
Edward Ferrars: Edward Ferris, hot lawyer. White but looks more Mexican than Nora does for some reason (played by Italian actor). Speaks Spanish badly.
John Willoughby: Rodrigo something, hot Mexican TA who turns out to be married and was just using Mary. Well, at least he got her to read a book.
Colonel Brandon: Wilmer Valderrama, hot thuggy vato who is secretly an artist/carpenter with a heart of gold. The above two actually speak Spanish well.
Sir John Middleton: actually became the girls' tia, an awesome lady who with her two comadres is also Mrs. Jennings.
John Dashwood: Gabriel Jr., who turns out to be Gabriel Sr.'s illegitimate son and has daddy issues because his father never acknowledged him, wanting to save his marriage to the girls' mom. A pushover and super wimpy, lets his wife control him, so just like the book.
Fanny Dashwood: forgot her name but she is a right bitch, just like in the book. Blonde WASP.
Lucy Steele: Bitch-in-law's bestie, is set up with Edward and he's engaged to her like immediately. Also white, but interestingly she does no scheming, just passively does whatever "Fanny" says. Is only relevant as an obstacle to Edward and Nora getting together.
Setting: Beverly Hills, East LA
Recurring themes: cultural heritage, importance of family (obvs, that's in every movie with more than one Latino person), Cielito Lindo song