Filed under: Essay | Tags: Beauty and the Beast, Disney, disney princesses
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is, undoubtedly, an outstanding film. It’s the only traditionally-animated feature film to ever be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Cinematically, it’s brilliant, featuring lovely animation and an impeccable score. The story is deeply compelling, with its resonant characters, touching romance, and heart-wrenching tragedy. It also has an atrociously bad ending.
In case the basic plot has escaped your memory, allow me to recap the salient points (spoilers, etc.):
- Handsome prince is cursed for his selfishness, becomes the Beast
- Beautiful girl meets Beast
- Girl and Beast fall in love
- Beast is critically wounded by a jealous suitor
- Girl saves Beast with power of love, and he becomes a handsome prince again
On paper, this sounds fine, if a bit cliché. It’s a tale as old as time the storytelling tradition itself: you’ve got the character development, the romance, the villain, the climax, the resolution. What more could you want?
The problem is Item 3: Girl and Beast fall in love. Well, there’s nothing wrong with that per se, but the motives for it happening aren’t consistent with Item 5, or at least not the way Items 1 and 3 flow into Item 5…look, let’s back up a bit.
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The Cannon [sic] of the Disney Princess
If I had even the barest smattering of drawing ability, I would draw a picture of the various Disney princesses as cannoneers. But since I don’t, I’m going to have to ask you to just imagine it: the deck of a ship, worn and battered from the ravages of combat at sea; the tempestuous waters, rising in a fury, ready to claim those who fail the trial of war; enemy ships fast approaching (have them manned by Disney villains if you’re really feeling it); and of course the lovely ladies, grim-set and determined, hard at work readying the guns for battle. (more…)
For those who sail the seas are as the waves: peregrine, forever traveling, origin and destination unknown. They seem to drift aimlessly, subject to the whims and eddies of Poseidon. But no, they seek with purpose, and like the waves crash wrathfully on the beasts of the water. But even the hunt that drives them is merest semblance.
Calvin gazed listlessly out into the wind-strewn night. The sky was black and the sea was black, and Calvin couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. Nor did he care; he loathed the night watch. Not only did it mean he wasn’t curled up asleep with his fellow whalers belowdecks, but it meant he had more time to think than he cared for. Being alone with his thoughts was rarely a comfort.
As the wind whipped and whirled through the ship’s rigging, Calvin thought back on the recent events of his life. He had just last year graduated from whaling school, and he was now seven months into his first real whaling voyage. So far, it had been a luckless trip; not a drop of precious oil greased their holds. But Calvin didn’t mind so much; he was still going to get paid, and he was learning how to live life on the high seas.
Like many people who write (certainly people who write more than I do), I maintain a running list of ideas for things to write about. Ideas range from novels to screenplays, short stories to essays, as well as titles and even individual words I’d like to get around to using if I could only think of a clever enough context. (The number of things I have written purely in order to use a particular word or phrase is larger than I care to admit.)
But by far the oddest thing to end up on my idea list is “whaler fanfiction”.
It’s odd for the obvious reason, i.e. it’s whaler fanfiction. But it’s especially befuddling to me because I have no memory of adding it to the list, and I cannot for the life of me think of why I would have put it there.† But if it’s on the list, I must have thought it was a good idea at some point, right? (That, or I was just trying to sabotage my future self.)
So let’s run with this. How would one write whaler fanfiction?
Filed under: Fiction, R-R-Random | Tags: Crime and Punishment, high school, literature, parody
I dug up this old high school piece that I’m quite proud of. The assignment was to write a short story parodying Crime and Punishment. Most people in the class chose to basically recreate the same plot with different characters; my partner (Adam “Polish” Peczalski) and I went for the throat, taking all of the things we found obnoxious about the book and cramming them into three pages of text. This is basically how I did all of my assignments in eleventh-grade English, and I got A’s on most of them so I must have been doing something right.
The story is essentially an alternative ending to the book. If you’ve never read Crime and Punishment, you probably won’t find this especially amusing. Oh well.
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Raskolnikov ambled down the streets of V———, muttering to himself. “I haven’t eaten . . . for almost . . . a week now . . . . Do I even deserve to eat? If I eat, they may suspect . . . but if I don’t eat . . . it will only be more evidence of my insanity!” In his delirious stupor, he stumbled over a stone and fell immediately asleep in the bushes on the side of the road.
As he slept fitfully, he began to feel a great weight upon him. He could not make out the nature of the shape; he saw only darkness pressing upon him. The weight pressed against his chest, making it difficult to breathe. “What does this mean?” he thought to himself. “The press of this darkness . . . is suffocating . . . .”
Suddenly, he awoke to find, to his utter surprise, a small kitten sitting on his face, impairing his ability to breathe. He began to mumble to himself aimlessly about this, but found that he could not, as there was a kitten on his face. Surprised at this new turn of events, he decided that, although it may not turn out to be the wisest choice in the future, it would be best to remove the kitten from his face.
Sitting up, he looked at the kitten now sitting next to him, looking at him with its big black eyes. “So, Cat, you have come to me too. Do you ask me too to confess . . . just like the rest of them? You think that just because I have committed this heinous crime, I deserve punishment! What have I done wrong . . . I have only tried to do what is best . . . but then . . . what have I done right? Oh, Cat! I fear that you are right in this . . . though my goal was to further society, the results of my actions have helped only a few, least of all myself . . . very well; I will go. . . .” Resolved to this new course of action, he promptly got up and immediately fell down again; his poor health made it difficult for him to move quickly. Dragging himself slowly to his feet, he began to trudge his way down the X——— Street to the police station.
Finally reaching the police station, he went up to the office of Ilya Petrovitch, the Explosive Lieutenant. As he stood at the door, he decided that it would be unwise to confess to this particular police officer. “The police have nothing but contempt for me, thanks to the accusations of that Porfiry Petrovitch! I will not receive the justice I deserve from the likes of him.”
He opened the door and surveyed the scene within. In front of him was the desk, at which sat Ilya Petrovich. A lone window let a single beam of light into the room. The light fell on a potted plant, and it was to this that Raskolnikov now turned.
“Oh plant . . . ,” he began, but was unable to continue. His mind reeled: was this really the way to go? Must he turn himself in, even to this fine example of Perovskia Atriplicifolia? Bewildered, he left the offices and stumbled down the stairs. When he reached the door, he smiled an ugly, meaningless smile. He was free! Nobody could tell him what to do! As he gazed over the city that was now his domain, his eyes fell again the kitten.
“Cat!” he cried. “Have you returned to torment me? Is a small, fluffy mammal to make demands of me . . . ?” But then, as he gazed into the kitten’s eyes, a wave of guilt washed over him, knocking him back up the stairs. As the shame pushed him up the three flights, he realized that he must go through with this: “I can not . . . let others suffer for this . . . when my goal was only to help!” Finally, beached in Ilya Petrovich’s office once again, he turned to the plant in the corner. He fell to his knees; “Oh plant . . . I must confess . . . it was . . .”
Suddenly, the window shattered into infinitesimally small pieces as a suited man swung through and rolled into the room. He stood in the middle of the office, tall, majestic, and partially bald. The room filled with silence as he began to speak: “Bob Dole says it was Bob Dole killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Lizaveta with an axe and robbed them.”
Конец.
