Welcome to Folklore and Mythology Part 7: A Tale As Old As Time

I was recently asked by my therapist to go see the movie "The Shape of Water". It's a beautiful masterpiece, created by Guillermo del Toro. An adult fairy tale about a mute woman who falls in love with a sea "monster" (though I prefer the designation River God). He deserves every award he gets for this film.

It bears more than a few similarities to "Beauty and the Beast".

I was first introduced to Guillermo del Toro's work through the "Hellboy" movies and later "Pan's Labyrinth", one of my favorite movies by him. His work tends to be on the darker side. Well, that's not quite what I mean. He creates beautiful stories, full of life and light, against a backdrop of the dark, grim reality his heroes live in.

I could go on and on about del Toro's work, but that's not why I'm writing this post. I'll save that for a later date. I'm writing this post to talk about one of the most common stories in the public contentiousness.

The story about how beauty comes to love a beast.

There have been a number of modern retellings of this story, from TV shows to movies. One of the most famous movies to come out of the Disney Renaissance was "Beauty and the Beast", which was remade last year as a live action production. There's even a song in both versions (which I'm sure most of my readers are familiar with) that contains the lines "tale as old as time".

I've written about "Beauty and the Beast" before in this blog (click here to view if you're curious). I didn't go back and reread that blog post before writing this, so I might repeat myself a bit. It's a movie and story that I deeply enjoy, especially the Disney version. This story is what actually inspired me to write this series of blogs on folklore and mythology in the first place.

There are the very straight forward tellings of this story, including the Disney versions and "La Belle et la Bête" created by Jean Cocteau and also remade a few years ago (you can find the remake on Netflix as of this posting). There's a great analysis on YouTube comparing these two versions to one another by Some Jerk with a Camera and Kyle from Brows Held High. I cannot recommend this three part series more (click here for part 1, part 2, and part 3). It's hilarious and done to the Disney's musical version while they are running around Disneyland.

Then there are the tragic tellings of this tale. They usually take the form of thriller or horror stories, such as "King Kong" and "Creature from the Black Lagoon". It's where we get the famous quote "it was beauty that killed the beast".

But these are all more modern examples of this fairy tale. I'm supposed to be looking at folklore and mythology too.

Well, in the oldest known written story, "The Epic of Gilgamesh", there is a version of the story (sadly I'm not super familiar with it and can't write much on it). So, we know that the story of a beauty falling for a beast is as old as the written word.

The oldest version of the story that I am most familiar with, is the Roman myth of Cupid and Psyche (literally translates as Love and Soul). It has all of the classical myth troupes such as why you shouldn't piss off a powerful god, tasks that the hero (Psyche in this story) must complete, and the general god shenanigans we're used to from these stories.

But it also has all of the classic Beauty and the Beast troupes. There's a mysterious "monster" (really Cupid in disguise), an amazingly beautiful young woman who falls in love with him after a set amount of time, invisible servants who maintain a luxurious palace, and jealous family members nearly destroying the couple's happiness. It's honestly become one of my favorite versions of the story.

Because the story doesn't end with Cupid turning into a handsome prince. The story keeps going for a while. Cupid has already proven his love to Psyche, but Psyche must prove her love and devotion to him by convincing his mother, Venus, that she is worthy to love her son. And boy, oh boy, does Venus hate Psyche. The story ends, when Cupid and Psyche are able to convince all the gods (including a still kind of pissed off Venus) just how much they love each other and how far they are willing to go to be together.

It's a beautiful story.

It's also a story with a few problems. Like the majority of folklore and mythology, they are a product of their societies. They contain the morals and ethics that that society has. And, despite popular belief, morality and ethics are not a universal constant. As Mabel Pines said in an episode of "Gravity Falls": "morality is relative".

These stories change over time with each retelling. New generations bring new lessons and morals to the table and remove the ones that no longer fit within their society. We can even see this change over the past few decades with all the jokes being made about the Disney version having elements of Stockholm Syndrome (I personally don't think it does, but better people than me have pointed this out - click here for more information from Lindsey Ellis). Regardless of how I feel about it, this is a discussion/debate that still plagues the internet.

But it is true that it isn't the healthiest example of a relationship in the stories we constantly retell.

"The Shape of Water" is proof of this metamorphosis. Guillermo del Toro took a story we were all familiar with and told it in a way that was new, exciting, and reflected how our society has changed.

And this is what makes folklore and mythology so powerful. It isn't just that these stories are old and at one time taught as religious truth, but how we retell these stories. Beauty and the Beast really is a tale as old as time and it will continue to be a tale we tell. And so is the Hero's Journey and of Death. They teach lessons, explain the unknown, and reflect what are our values.

If you haven't seen it yet, go check out "The Shape of Water", "Beauty and the Beast" (both versions), and Jean Cocteau's "La Belle et la Bête" (the original and the 2014 remake). I can't recommend these movies enough.

I think I'm almost finished with this series of posts. I'm not sure how many more myths and folklore I'll look at. If there's anything you guys feel that I missed or a story/folklore/myth or topic you feel very strongly about, let me know and I'll look into it. I am planning on ending this series with a look at stories that go into the "End of Times" (spoken with a big booming voice and echo effect).

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to Monsters Part 5: The Monsters Next Door

Some monsters are terrifying because they seem perfectly normal when you first meet them. They may be charming and extremely kind to draw people in, but it's all an act. They're manipulative and play mind games with their victims.

They are a lot like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast.

I keep using this picture.

Right after the live action Beauty and the Beast movie came out, there were the usual million and ten posts about how the movie is romanticizing Stockholm Syndrome and how Belle wants adventure, but then settles for a man. Seeing all these posts over-analyzing a Disney movie gets annoying. But then I spotted an article about how scary Gaston is as a villain.

I wish I had saved the article or (more likely) tumblr post that I had seen explaining why Gaston was so terrifying as a villain. But since I didn't (and I'm too lazy to track it down), I'll just have to summarize the conclusion the best I can.

Basically, the author of the post concluded that Gaston is that bully you know in school whom everyone loves, but terrorizes anyone that crosses them for even the slightest reason. This type of bully is even able to turn an entire community (school or village) against their victim. Remember the Mob Song? In the live action version of the movie, they updated the lyrics to include Gaston bragging about how he is able to manipulate the villagers into doing whatever he wants.

"You can bet they all will follow

For in times like this, they'll do just as I say"

I know I'm not the first person to notice this, but one of the biggest reasons Gaston is such a good villain is because how easily he could have been the good guy in the movie. He's described as handsome, heroic, and beloved by the entire village. Beloved by everyone except for Belle and since Belle refuses to worship the ground Gaston walks on (and she reads) people thinks she's weird. 

In Beauty and the Beast, it's easy to identify Gaston as the villain since we're seeing the story from Belle's perspective. Her disdain for his arrogance and ego make it easy to identify him as an antagonist early in the story. From the begining of the movie, we aren't supposed to like Gaston.

Recently, Disney has been shaking up their villain narratives by having more and more "surprise villains". These villains are much harder to identify early in the story. They usually start out as a supporting character, helpful even, but are really just using the protagonist to achieve their goals. Both Frozen and Zootopia have villains that show up in the third act that are supposed to be a "twist". 

Hans may be a pretty weak villain and almost comes out of no where as a bad guy (I still love the movie, so no real hate here), but his betrayal is very real and catches Anna completely off guard. Anna's hurt is real and she nearly dies because of Hans's cruel actions. And while Zootopia is about overcoming prejudice in society, Bellwether is the "surprise" villain exploiting the problem while trying to take over the city's government and subjugating the predators in the city. 

Hans and Bellwether may not appear scary of monstrous, but their actions certainly are. They have malicious goals and are willing to do anything to achieve them, even kill. 

Then there are the characters who are beloved by those around them while at the same time, just seem to destroy the lives of everyone they come across. The Picture of Dorian Gray centers around a man who sold his soul so that he could maintain his beauty. What makes this story really interesting his how he affects the people around him. Nearly everyone who comes across Dorian Gray suffers a horrible fate. The actress Sibyl Vane commits suicide once she realizes that Dorian no longer loves her. Dorian gets his young friend Adrian Singleton addicted to opium. Alan Campbell is blackmailed by Dorian. Basil Hallward, who painted the portrait (and may have been in love with Dorian) is murdered by Dorian in a fit of rage.

All the while Dorian Gray looks like a respectable member of high society.

If it weren't for ugliness of his portrait to show his true nature, Dorian Gray would have been seen as that dashing bachelor that anyone would have been lucky to associate themselves with. He is the insidious monster that doesn't want to take over the world, but destroys those around him slowly, methodically.

Nearly everyone knows someone who is like Gaston, Hans, Bellwether, or Gray. The people who seem perfectly normal or are even hailed as pillars of their community, but are really egocentric maniacs who will destroy anyone who gets in their way. They are the monsters who are so difficult to realize they are monsters that we don't realize we've been tricked until we are facing our own destruction.

Personally, I think these are the  most dangerous monsters. They will draw you in with a smile and make you think you deserve the knife they stab you in the back with. What's even more terrifying is these types of monsters really exist and can be really hard to identify.

They are the monsters you don't know are monsters until it's too late.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a message. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to Monsters Part 3: The Monsters That Just Need a Hug

Who didn't have that one friend who absolutely loved Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter series? Or maybe I really was the only person surrounded by his fan girls.

I swear that this picture is relevant...

Regardless, Remus Lupin made Harry Potter fans everywhere sympathetic to werewolves in a time when werewolves were still seen as evil creatures that needed to be destroyed (basically before there was a Teen Paranormal Romance section at Barnes and Nobles). He is probably one of the first examples J.K. Rowling gave us of someone who chooses to be "good" despite what society defines them as.

The fact that J.K. Rowling created characters who made choices and weren't evil because of who they were born as is a major theme of the Harry Potter series. This message is made extremely clear in book 4 (Goblet of Fire) when Dumbledore says to the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge "it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be." This stands in sharp contrast to a lot of fantasy troupes that were seen all over the place in popular culture before these books. The best (and most well known) example of evil by virtue of birth are the Orcs from The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The scene where we discover that Lupin is a werewolf (at least in the books) shows the extreme prejudice he faces every day. Harry is noticeably the only member of the Golden Trio to not react badly at the declaration that Lupin is a werewolf. Both Ron and Hermione show open distrust and hostility once the secret is revealed. They quickly change their minds about Lupin, but their initial reaction still stands as pretty normal when a wizard meets a werewolf. The only reason Remus Lupin might be considered a monster is because he turns into a werewolf once a month.

Remus Lupin isn't the first example of a sympathetic "monster". There's also the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, David in An American Werewolf in London, and an argument can even be made for Tony Stark from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Each is put in a position where they are seen as a villain or monster to someone else, but are just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

The character David from An American Werewolf in London (much like his predecessor Larry Talbot from the 1941 The Wolf Man) is bitten by a werewolf. However, unlike the situation Remus Lupin found himself in, David has zero resources to help him during his transformations. He spends a good chunk of the second part of the film seeing hallucinations of the people he has violently killed while a werewolf. The hallucinations tell him what an awful person he is and that he should kill himself before he can kill anyone else.

(Next paragraph contains spoilers for An American Werewolf in London. This is your only warning!)

By the end of An American Werewolf in London, I sincerely wanted David to have a happy ending. I really did. Though, his mental health had significantly deteriorated and he knows he is responsible for the murders he commuted while transformed, it is still very clear that he wanted to live. But (spoilers) monsters don't get happy endings in these types of stories. Much like Larry Talbot before him, David is cornered in his werewolf form and shot to death. What is most tragic is that David seems almost relieved to die.

I may or may not have cried...a lot.

Werewolves seem to have a much more sympathetic representation in our popular culture than say vampires or zombies. Maybe it's because it's easy to identify with the werewolf condition. J.K. Rowling has been quoted as saying she used Lupin's condition as "a metaphor for those illnesses that carry a stigma, like HIV and AIDS." And unlike the vampire and zombie condition, which is constant, werewolves typically look and act like normal people until their affliction takes control.

That's not to say that vampires or zombies can't be sympathetic. The scene in Shawn of the Dead where Shawn has to kill his mother, is incredibly sad. Thankfully that movie has a somewhat happy, and pretty ridiculous, ending. But it does drive home the fact that the zombies were once humans who were loved.

Then there are monsters like The Beast from Beauty and the Beast. As a human, The Beast (or Prince Adam as dubbed by his adoring fans) had a personality that was severely lacking in empathy and charity. This leads to his curse and monstrous form.

I know that if I were in Belle's shoes, I would have screamed bloody murder. The Beast looks terrifying, especially since we first see him in the shadows of a dungeon. Though Belle reacts to his terrifying looks by shirking away from him with a gasp, she is able to look past his appearance (and he stops being a jerk to her) to fall in love with him. However, when Belle shows the image of The Beast to the villagers, they immediately form a mob and go off to "kill The Beast!"

This sequence of events leads to one of my favorite lines in the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast: "we don't like what we don't understand, in fact it scares us, and this monster is mysterious at least." Society judges The Beast to be a monster simply by how he looks. The Beast is tired and thinks he is doomed to spend the rest of his existence as a monster. At this point, he doesn't care if Gaston and the villagers are going to kill him or not. It isn't until Belle reappears that The Beast is able to find the will to live.

The villagers panic over the fact that The Beast looks scary even though he has never actually done anything to them. They have zero reasons to try and kill him.

There's actually a real life example of people hiding away from society due to a scary appearance. Raymond Robinson (1910 - 1985), also known as the Green Man, became horribly deformed in a childhood accident. To prevent people from panicking when they saw him, he would only go out at night and stay away from the main parts of his hometown. He eventually became a local legend known as the Green Man. Some people in his local community were shocked to discover that he really did exist and had an unfortunate even in his life take place.

But what about the monsters who don't look like monsters? Or, more specifically, what about the people who do terrible things because they think they have to?

I mentioned Tony Stark from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (I'm not as familiar with his other media) earlier in this post and some of you might be wondering why. To be honest, Tony's ego is his biggest weakness and is what qualifies him to being a monster. It's because of Tony that Ultron destroyed the capital city of Sokovia. If Ultron hadn't had done that, we wouldn't have had half the plot of Civil War.

Speaking of Captain America: Civil War, I backed Captain America during that whole movie. What Tony was asking them to do was to essentially give up their freedom, especially Wanda. Yes, I understood his point about someone keeping the heroes in check and making sure someone was held responsible for when innocent lives are lost (a topic for another time), but Steve Rogers made some really good points too. It also didn't help that Tony locked up half the Avengers after they rebelled against the agreement in the movie.

Tony has some good arguments and tries to do the right thing, but his actions tend to be way too extreme and hurt the people he is closes to. He is the type of monster people don't realize is a monster until they are in his crosshairs. Locking up Wanda instead of trying to help her was a really bad thing to do and stands in sharp contrast to Steve seeing the best in everyone. By the end of the movie, I did feel bad for Tony. He wasn't necessarily wrong with his arguments, but his actions were and he could very easily end up alone because of that.

At the end of Civil War, I saw someone who was devastated by their own actions, even though they still thought they were doing the right thing. I wasn't sure if I wanted to smack him or hug him. Hopefully James Rhodes will be able to get Tony to see where he went wrong.

So not all monsters are the Orcs of Middle Earth. Some have been cast out of society due to things that are entirely out of their control. Others wanted to do the right thing, but instead hurt those they care about most. These characters are important because not everything in life can be put into a "good" or "evil" box.

Life is complicated and tough to figure out. Sometimes it's the monster that needs saving.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to a Fairy Tale Adventure

When first I saw that Disney was making a live action Beauty and the Beast movie (one of my favorites from when I was a kid), I thought - well that's completely unnecessary. Then I saw the trailers and listened to the music. I just knew I had to see this movie, even if I did have to sit in a theater with an army of little girls decked out in their best princess outfits.

It was so worth it.

There's just something amazing about seeing the magic of a fairy tale come to life on the big screen. Though, personally I would have been even more thrilled if they had re-released the animated movie in theaters, but the live action movie was a lot better than I originally thought it would be. I still like the original more, but that's my opinion. It was also really cool to see how much technology has changed (especially if you compare the new movie to the 1946 French movie).

The inner child in me was so happy to see this movie that I, of course, went home and put the animated version on right away. While singing along and cleaning my apartment, I was struck by a line Belle sings after she rejects Gaston's marriage proposal.

"I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. I want it more than I can tell."

I've seen that line dozens of times on social media. I think there's even a meme floating around with Belle's arms flung open in the field where she's singing.

It's a good line and I think it sums up half of the reason I love of fairy tales (and fantasy and science fiction). It's that longing for an unexpected adventure. Where my mind is so completely blown away with everything that happens, that it's hard to express my awe. It's being able to leave the boring world behind and go somewhere completely unexpected.

I can't be the only person who feels this way.

Many of the stories I enjoyed as a child had heroes that somehow found themselves embroiled in an unusual situation.

For example, the Hobbit starts with Bilbo enjoying his morning, he meets Gandalf, then later that evening a party of dwarves unexpectedly, and suddenly Bilbo is being hired as a burgle to steal something from a dragon. The ordinary quickly becomes the extraordinary in the span of a day.

Or how about how Aladdin comes across the magic genie*? He starts out his day casually stealing breakfast, accidentally comes across a runaway princess, gets arrested, and is then tricked by Jafar into going into the Cave of Wonders. I don't think Aladdin got up that morning and thought, yes today is the day that I go on an adventure.

 The other half of my love for fairy tale stories is likely because of magic.

Yeah, I know magic doesn't actually exist (or does it?), but it can signify how the improbable becomes the possible. I might not have gotten my letter to Hogwarts (or Ilvermorny), but neither did Jacob Kowalski and he got to help Newt with his escaped Fantastic Beasts. I don't expect to stumble upon a seemingly abandoned castle with sentient furniture while hiking (actually that would be really impressive since I live in North America), but neither was Maurice while he was looking for shelter.

Okay yeah, all those examples were stories and movies. They were created to teach entertaining lessons. Some even used to provide an explanation for the unknown world. But nearly all of them continue to inspire our imaginations today.

Adventures happen, even without magic and singing demigods. Some are planned vacations to new counties, others are unexpected (like having a random snow storm in mid March). Without the ordinary days, it's hard to appreciate the extraordinary ones.

Then again, I could have met a witch or wizard, but don't remember because my memory was oblivated. It could have happened.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

*I actually know a couple different versions of this story, but I'm using the Disney version as an example since more people are familiar with it.