By: Jennifer Rook
A few of my childhood friends and I were reminiscing (on Facebook, of course) recently about a favorite winter, Saturday morning ritual we all took part in way back in the day: The Saturday morning movie matinee at the Vernal Theater. We recalled some of the never-before-heard-of movies that we enjoyed each winter such as "Against A Crooked Sky", "Snow Queen" and some popular titles from the 60's including "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" "The Yearling" (until it melted before our eyes on the screen one day) and quite a few Pippi Longstocking adventures. We thought we were the luckiest kids in the world to get to go to the movies every weekend.
Turns out we were some of the lucky ones. Not all of my friends were allowed to attend the matinees. Their parents didn't approve of the movie content unless it was a Disney offering or some cartoon. Subsequently, these are the same parents now who ban movies such as Harry Potter and anything that has to do with magic and evil nemeses. It all makes me wonder though; are they really avoiding such movie elements by allowing G rated Disney movies and other happy cartoons?
Take, for example, Snow White, a little princess who is so pretty her stepmother hates her. HATES her because she's pretty. In fact, this woman hates her stepdaughter so much, and is so completely and totally jealous of the girl's beauty and charm, (and by the way, I'm just SURE she coveted that heavenly, melodic singing voice that seemed to tranquilize small birds and mammals too. Who wouldn't want that power? ) that she hires a hit man to murder the girl. (and just where is the loving father in all of these cartoons anyway? It seems the father is always absent and therefore totally oblivious to the abuse his freakishly gorgeous daughter suffers at the hands of some evil woman he's married to) Evil Queenie demands the hit man cut poor little Snow's heart out and threatens him with his own death if he does not return with the heart in a box. (Do you suppose she was going to keep the heart in the box on the mantle? Or preserve it and display it in the trophy room?)
So, the hit man, a hunter by trade, somehow coerces Snow White to follow him deep into the woods. The moment he raises his hand to stab Snow White the hunter realizes he's in the wrong line of work and should stick to killing animals. He lowers his knife and instead runs Snow White off like a stray dog. The deer heart he brings back to the Queen tricks her for a while, but soon that magic mirror gives the hit man away and she knows Snow White is still alive. So, she whips herself up a magic potion, yes I said MAGIC, changes her identity and tries to poison Snow White numerous times.
Well, Snow White, by this time, with no obvious survival skills and brains whatsoever, runs like a scared kitten through the dark and scary woods until she finds a little cottage. No one is home, so she goes ahead and breaks in. It just happens to be dirty so what does the brainless little pretty do? Well she cleans right up and then bakes a pie for the poor orphans who live there. Because that's all women know how to do apparently; clean and bake after running blindly through the dark and scary woods. She is but a meek, mild, frail girl and so pretty that when the grubby little men who inhabit the cottage she has broken into and rummaged through come home, they are awe-inspired by her beauty and let her stay once she promises to be good eye candy AND cook and clean for them.
So stay, she does. But Snow White is so stupid, she lets the evil queen trick her and poison her twice before she finally succumbs to the famed poison apple. The Evil Queen soon meets her demise as she tumbles off a rocky cliff. And creepily enough, the grubby little men who are lamenting the loss of their gorgeous new slave just can't bring themselves to bury her dead body so they encase it in a glass coffin, creating a shrine unto which they bow daily.
But OF COURSE a handsome prince of regular height finds the sleeping princess and just can't resist a lovely kiss on her dead, frozen lips under that glass coffin (isn't there a syndrome or a sickness for people who do stuff like that? Isn't it illegal?) The kiss awakens the dead Snow White (can you imagine the morning breath that girl had? Death breath! Mmmmmmm…attractive!) and they fall instantly in love and are married that same day. I think he may have already known what a stellar housekeeper she was though. I'm sure her pie baking skills were renowned throughout the kingdom by this time as well because, after all, it's hard to keep seven little men quiet who just hit the domestic jackpot. It's truly a great premise for a wonderful children's cartoon isn't it?
I guess singing and whistling dwarves are what makes it all okay. The Brother's Grimm wrote many dark, scary, gory tales but Hollywood movie producers clued into the whole "musical numbers makes it all better" trick and now turn many dark movies of magic and mayhem into box office gold. The underlying themes are all the same, but singing dwarves and pretty princesses who can charm small animals and rodents somehow make the subject matter more endearing and precious. I'm not sticking to the Disney only route, however. I learned early on that Disney movies are just as scary and thrilling as non-whistling dwarf movies. Thanks to the Vernal Theater (and never-heard-from-again actors like Stewart Peterson, the blonde, teenage God who starred in "Where the Red Fern Grows" and "Against a Crooked Sky") and the Saturday Morning Matinee series. Grab some popcorn and a drink and I'll see you at "the show".
No comments:
Post a Comment