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clairen45 · 6 years

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Who Let the Dogs out? A story of wolves and dogs in Star Wars

This meta was a long-time coming and prompted by @blacklakeinavalley. I always keep my promises, no matter how long it takes me, so here it goes.

Wolves or Dogs?

There have been some awesome metas on wolves in relation with Rey and Kylo more particularly, notably by resident she-wolf extraordinaire @raven-maiden (I am using the term in the most reverent way possible!). I also plead guilty to a meta I did with parallels between the Company of Wolves movie and the ST. I won’t necessarily go back to all the cool theories that have been made about wolf behaviors in Kylo and Rey, but I will draw the following distinctions, though:

in terms of symbolism, per se, there are not so many differences between wolves and dogs. There are both qualities and flaws associated with these particular animals. The qualities and the flaws are, more often than not, interestingly the same from a certain point of view

Qualities: fertility, sexual desire and power, fidelity/loyalty (to partner, pack, or master), fierceness, intelligence

Flaws: debauchery and savagery.

They are both considered chtonian divinities, that is to say linked with the “underground”, or the realm of death and Hell. Think of Cerberus, for instance, the mythical Hell hound, or Anubis in the Egyptian mythology. Which means that, as a symbol, it means both death and the potential for rebirth. The dog can guide the soul back out of Hell , or guide it through its journey into Hell (something usually called a psychopomp creature) . Dogs and wolves are usually associated with elements such as the moon, fire, and the earth. So, water (the moon is considered a watery element), fire, and earth.

So on the one hand heralds or bringers of death through destruction and carnage, and on the other hand, companions, fierce parents, and bringers of life. Life, death, decay that brings new life, peace, violence etc... Very ambivalent creatures that are either loved and revered, or despised and deemed as impure and dangerous.

If there is no huge distinction between wolves and dogs as far as symbolism goes, I would say there is a big one to draw, though. A dog, after all, is a domesticated wolf. What it gains in familiarity and companionship for mankind, it loses in grandeur and nobility. Also, this 4-legged favorite pet moniker is often used to insult people. A “bitch” is not in itself derogatory: after all, originally it just means a female dog. Yet, it is anything but when you apply it to a woman. Same goes with “dogs”. When you call someone a “dog”, except when you are the Snoop, this is usually not to sing their praises. Note that some people will even go as far as sometimes changing the spelling to avoid confusion: “dawg”... And what about “mongrel”, or “cur”? Dawg be darned, what about “rabid cur” for one?

Die, Jedi dogs!

So, in our beloved Galaxy far far away, this is how dogs find their way into the story and the mythos. On the battle of Geonosis, in ROTS, as C3P0 finds himself -as usual- flustered and confused after a mixing up of his body parts with a battle droid, he utters these very lines.

No wonder that the “dogs” get involved in an insult. Dogs are the persisting attribute of all the "wretched hive of scum and villainy”:

The bounty hunter Bossk and his ship called Hound’s tooth

The bounty hunter Embo and his hound called Marrok

That one has got a really interesting story in itself. The species is called Anooba, and is native of Tatooine, which of course will link straight to Anakin and Luke. The name is also full of possibilities: it probably comes from a medieval tale, the tale of Sir Marrok, who was a werewolf.

The vicious Corellian hound used in Solo by Moloch and his gang. BTW, one of the hound was “played” by one of “GOT’s direwolves” ... Funny thing.

Not to mention THIS famous dog in SW lore:

Oh, yea, this is happening. Because, ANH called it right away when Leia served this line to Tarkin about her papa:

Governor Tarkin. I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash.

As mighty as the Dark Lord has become in the SW universe and collective psyche, this awesome and powerful villain is presented as nothing more but a dog. Maybe not quite the poodle, but still a dog. Obedient, trained, who will bite only when his master commands. Gives the word “MASTER” quite another meaning, not just as an apprentice, but literally as seen from a dog’s perspective.

So, no surprise then to see the term re-employed by Snoke to talk about Hux, when he calls him a rabid cur in TLJ. Interesting also that the one using a reference to being “tied at the end of a string”, aka a leash, is also Hux, the rabid cur. Except, that, well, there is indeed an implicit distinction to make. Kylo is also, in many respects, as much a dog to Snoke’s bidding as Hux. Many viewers would even expect Snoke to call Kylo the rabid cur instead, given the tantrums we were privy to in TFA. But he doesn’t call him a rabid cur, and that’s the whole point. In Snoke’s mind, there is nothing rabid about Kylo -though people would have assumed as much- and he is certainly not a cur. A cur, after all, like a mongrel is clearly used to define a mixed breed. The term “rabid cur” is derogatory on two levels.

When referring to Kylo, Snoke is a bit more complicated. There is, on the one hand, the idea that, contrary to Hux, Kylo is valued as “pure breed”, a prized possession cultivated for “the potential of his bloodline”. Purity of blood (damn you midichlorians) being also alluded to, and mocked, by Luke when he talks to Rey about his failure to be a master to Kylo. Yet, at the same time, Snoke keeps on chastising Kylo for being a fraud. He is not the pure breed he expected. He has the feeling he got a mongrel that was tainted by the Solo blood. Hence the insistance of erasing Han Solo of the picture and denying him and his legacy. Yep, Ben Organa Solo is a mixed breed. Snoke wants a pure breed, maybe even a wolf. Pure blood. Untainted, untampered with. Leader of the pack. Well, that’s the project. A wolf and no lapdog.

Or not... Because, this is a little something I found on The astroly Web about the wolf and symbolism, and I will say it is quite interesting:

What I love about this portrait of Kylo as a wolf is that you get some of Kylo and some of what he could have been as Ben Solo. Some of the qualities remain, such as the sense of mystery, exuberance, instinctive and shrewdness. But most of it has been ironically ruined by his lack of self confidence. So as a wolf, he is not complete. The compassion bit really got me because it is the one thing that Snoke reproaches him with... Is he a wolf, or a dog in wolf’s clothing? Or a dog that dreams of being a wolf? Half and half, mayhaps?

Good dog! a rehabilitation

So are there any positive references to dogs in SW yet? Yep.

Anyways, dogs have always been part of the Star Wars mythos, altough not necessarily the obvious way. Take Chewbacca for instance. There would not be Chewbacca as we know him had it not been for George Lucas’s faithful pet, Indiana (who can also be thanked for giving the famous adventurer his moniker). Allegedly, Lucas got the inspiration for Chewie, Han’s copilot, when seeing his wife leave on her car with their huge dog on the copilot seat.

Funny thing is no dog played any part in Chewie’s distinctive sounds, which turn out to be recordings from a bear,a walrus, a badger, a lion, and a seal. The fact remains that Chewie exemplifies the dog’s most praised qualities throughout the saga: as a staunch and loyal friend, as a source of love and comfort (the famous Chewie hugs), and as a protector. Yes, just like dogs, Chewie can be fierce and defend his friends.

You could also argue that there are other examples of companions who exemplify the same doglike qualities in the movies. Droids such as R2D2 and BB8 just fit the model. Loyalty, check; defense, check; huggable, check. The perfect pets and companions. It says a lot that Chewie and R2 are the characters that have endured the longest in the general scope of the saga: R2 appearing in episode 1, and Chewie in episode 3, which make them the only ones that have recurring roles in the three trilogies (Chewie also scores Solo and R2 Rogue One).

There is a subversion of “dogs” as an insult that is quite interesting in the ST. Maybe it starts from this “Die Jedi dogs”, which is quite an oxymoron: the one time it is used as an insult it is to the people that are normally the golden moral standard, and also uttered by someone who is always all too polite and all too diplomatic. Also also, it is not totally incorrect as you could view the Jedi as the guard dogs of the Republic...

But wait, all that was before the ST. In the ST we get brand new examples of dogs and doglike behavior to ponder. Take Rey, for instance. Sitting there, loyally, on Jakku, waiting for her parents to return, a behavior not so different from the countless examples of dogs keeping watch on their dead masters’ graves (like that little famous Scottish from Edinburgh, Greyfriar’s Bobby, who even got his statue to commemorate). After all, this is exactly Rey’s place: Jakku is pictured as a graveyard, a place that is described literally in the novelization as where “technology came to die”. And where does she make a house for herself? As @blacklakeinavalley pointed it out to me in her original ask, in an AT-AT walker which is called non the less: the Hellhound!!!!

Seriously, like, of all the stupidest dumb names this is the one they picked! An appropriate one, to boot, since the At-AT has always had that distinctive look that made it look like a dog... And I have always been intrigued by this particular rendering with a little girl holding an At-At on a leash...

So, yes, the dog. Here really the corpse of a hound. But symbolism is not lost here... Death that feeds off new life, reborn out of hell... And who could this hellhound be, pray? Well, it gets even better when you know that this particular Hellhound was part of a ship called the Interrogator... Interrogator, mind you, and not something as dreadful as, say, an inquisitor. No, the Interrogator is quite a good one because who is the interrogator since the beginning of TFA? Ummm? Who else but our boy who “interrogates” Lor San Tekka, and Poe, and well... eventually Rey. Rey makes a home for herself there. It’s like Kylo is her home already... ain’t it cute...Also, Kylo as a dog, a “hellhound” is a good one as his job at the beginning is somehow to “hunt down” Luke, sniff his trace throughout the galaxy if you will, and then fetch the information back to Snoke. Good boy Kylo eventually fetches quite another prey... Even though again, Kylo seems more like the wolf at the begining of the story to Rey the dog... Look at the symbolism of the dog from The Astrology Web

Adventure, patience, hardworking!!!! You need to spend more time with your family!!!!!

There was yet another girl that exhibited some interesting doglike behavior in the ST, in a positive way. Unfortunately the scene got cut out. But when Rose bites the finger of Hux on the Supremacy as he mocks her and her system, this is an interesting one. Dog fight, right? What better way to get back at the rabid cur than bite him back?

Wolves will show the way

And then there are wolves in SW Rebels. When I did a piece on birds in SW, I mentioned the convor but as I hadn’t watched any of the Clone Wars or SW Rebels episodes yet, so I had no idea how truly symbolic these specific creatures could be. Careful not to make the same mistake again, and time to tie it in. Wolves (and thus in a way dogs) play quite an important part in these two series. Time to focus on Mortis then, and the World between worlds, introduced to us in SW Rebels. I think it is obvious that this is a very important addition to the SW universe. How they will eventually exploit it in ix is hard to say, yet, but the possibilities are huge in the expanded universe that Disney is preparing between the new shows and comics, and possibly future movies.

Ok, so, I don’t want to get too much into a detailed explanation (too long and complicated and some have done a good job on that already), but, as a reminder, Mortis is introduced in season 3 of Clone Wars to Anakin, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan as a mythical/mystical realm of the Force, dominated by three figures: the Father (the balance), the daughter (the light side), and the son (the dark side). Cool thing, even though we don’t get the convor and the wolf but rather a griffin and a bat, there is a moment when a wolf is plainly visible on the right next to the father:

And then, years later, comes SW Rebels. And so we get Ahsoka followed by a convor, which turns out to be the totem spirit of the daughter. Birds are therefore linked with the light side of the Force, the Eros, the life force, the one that points to protection and life. Which is really the whole point I made in my bird meta anyways (especially with porgs). So one would naturally assume that the wolf, as the creature associated with the son, the dark side of the Force, represents death, Thanatos, the impulse for destruction, the symbolic triad of the Force being the convor, the snake, and the wolf as depicted on the mural uncovered in SW Rebels in quite an Indiana Jonesque formula (evil guy covets mystical artefact that will give him superhuman powers):

But then, there is more than meets the eye... Because the wolves we actually get in the SW universe are not pictured as merely destructive powers. Quite the opposite. In SW Rebels, the wolves give access to a portal, the world between worlds, with a potential to alter past, present, and future. They truly are psychopomp creatures that guide a lost soul (here Ezra) through a world that can be at best described as a vacuum...

And there are the other wolves to reckon with.

Wolffe, the clone trooper commander, linked to Ahsoka and Anakin, one of the few who refused to be part of the code 66 protocol and became rogue, the one who lost an eye (a very symbolic type of mutilation), and lives like Rey in a modified AT-AT. which thus makes Wolffe a link of continuity between the different generations and arcs within the SW universe and saga.

The Loth-Wolves which are featured on the mural of Mortis and frame the portal to the world between worlds. Loth wolves have the ability to communicate with humans, are strongly connected with the Force, and seem to become a vessel for the soul of Kanan Jarrus after his death. Again, the psychopomp.

What to make of it eventually... well... it all depends on what type of creatures we get in IX. Keep you eyes peeled out for birds, wolves, and dogs. But mostly keep your eyes open for Porgs. Always.

To conclude, for your appreciation, this is from a photoshoot Daisy Ridley did for Vogue in 2017 .... The girl that walks with wolves... one black, one white, no less..

#star wars symbolism #wolves and dogs in star wars #star wars meta #reylo fandom #star wars parallels

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Who Will Be Doctor Who’s Next Showrunner?

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When big changes come to Doctor Who it’s the Doctor who grabs all the headlines. That, after all, is showbusiness: children don’t ask for bedsheets bedecked with the faces of the show’s writing or production team. It’s the showrunner – much more than anyone else, including the actor playing the lead role – upon whom the fate and fortunes of the show rest. They decide everything from the look, feel and tone of the seasons, to the thrust and arc of the narrative, to who writes, directs and stars – from the smallest bit-part to the Doctor themselves. The buck stops with them, in other words, and a showrunner can very much make or break an era.

So while speculation rages about who will take on the mantle of the 14th Doctor, it’s Chris Chibnall‘s replacement as showrunner who will ultimately carry the weight of the universe on their back. Realistically, a candidate needs not just writing but also producing experience (Chibnall had co- and executive producer credits on Torchwood, Camelot, Law & Order:UK, Broadchurch and more before landing Doctor Who). Because the UK TV industry has significant work to do on widening access for writers and producers of colour, that requirement frustratingly narrows the field for such jobs at present. But let’s have a look at a few options; some shoo-ins for the top spot, some just wildcards, but all of them with something real to offer.

Pete McTighe

Pete McTighe has the experience and qualities you’d want in a prospective Doctor Who showrunner: he’s been a long-time admirer of the show since the Classic days; he’s written for the show (Series 11’s ‘Kerblam’ and Series 12’s ‘Praxeus’); he’s helmed trailers for the Classic series’ Blu-ray sets; and, perhaps most crucially of all, he has hands-on experience of calling the shots. McTighe’s prison-drama Wentworth (pictured above) first aired in 2013 and has since racked up award after award in its native Australia (McTighe is British). It’s also been something of a critical darling worldwide, routinely praised for a realism and a grittiness that cleaves close to the best HBO dramas. BBC mystery thriller Pact concluded in June and Wentworth‘s final season airs later this month, meaning that McTighe now has a hole in his schedule. Might he be about to fill that jail-shaped gap with a police box? Quite apposite too, perhaps, that McTighe was able to take a show like Prisoner: Cell Block H (as it was known in the UK), a beloved old soap opera from the 1970s/80s, with rickety, wobbly sets and a low-budget aesthetic, and transform it into a lean, mean, emotionally-satisfying, rollicking thrill-ride with contemporary sensibilities. The man has form.

Sarah Dollard

Another Australian connection, this time in the form of bone fide antipodean Sarah Dollard, who wrote ‘Face the Raven‘ and ‘Thin Ice‘ during Peter Capaldi’s tenure. Prior work commitments prevented Dollard from writing for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, something she lamented at the time.

For those of the ‘Doctor Who has become too political’ persuasion, Dollard’s thoughts on the writing process for ‘Thin Ice’ should serve as both a rebuke and reassurance: “There was no way to write about a woman of colour going into the past on Earth without acknowledging how the colour of her skin would have impacted how people reacted to her there. Obviously, it also had to be entertaining and true to the tone of the show, so I tried to make it an intrinsic part of the story, rather than just add-on.”

Dollard cut her teeth on Australian soap opera Neighbours, and wasn’t long before she was writing for sci-fi and fantasy favourites including Merlin, Primeval, Being Human, Doctor Who, A Discovery of Witches (pictured above) and, most recently, an adaptation of the award-winning Young Adult horror fantasy Cuckoo Song (yet to air on Netflix). Availability could be an issue in whether Dollard could return to Doctor Who as its showrunner, given her busy schedule and writer-producer role on Netflix big-hitter Bridgerton.

Toby Whithouse

There was a time when Toby Whithouse was the heir apparent to Steven Moffat. At least in the eyes of Whovians. In 2015 he said this about speculation that he might be taking over the show post-Moffat: “No-one at the BBC has ever had this conversation with me. No-one has asked me, no-one has approached me about if Steven leaves, when Steven leaves. These are conversations that happen purely among fans, not on any official level.”

Still, he has the pedigree. Not only did Whithouse create Being Human for BBC Three (also one of Sarah Dollard’s first UK writing jobs), but he also wrote for the first three of modern Doctors, notably the episodes ‘School Reunion’, ‘The God Complex’ and ‘Under the Lake/Before the Flood’, showing terrific range, and a deft and respectful approach to the show’s mythos and history. Recently, Whithouse has written for the BBC’s new sci-fi series Noughts and Crosses (pictured above) but seems to have drifted away from Doctor Who. Acknowledging that this is just another conversation happening “purely among fans”, might the allure of the big chair tempt him back?

Kate Herron

Kate Herron may be a reasonably fresh face in the entertainment industry, but already she’s proven herself capable of taking on the sort of awesome responsibility that would make even a grizzled veteran wince. There can be few franchises heavier with expectation than Marvel (along with, perhaps, Doctor Who and Star Trek), and few characters as beloved as Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. Kudos to Herron then, for dazzling Kevin Feige with her talent and vision, earning directorial control of the first season of Loki and carrying it out to general acclaim.

Plenty have said that Loki was some of the best Doctor Who we’ve seen in years. It’s hard not to see where they’re coming from when considering the way Loki balances humour, heart, and sci-fi, whilst dabbling with time and dealing with multiple variants of its main character.

Herron recently announced that she wouldn’t be returning for Loki Season 2: ‘I’m really happy to watch it as a fan next season, but I just think I’m proud of what we did here and I’ve given it my all. I’m working on some other stuff yet to be announced.’ It’s this enigmatic ‘other stuff’ that has sent the Doctor Who rumour mill into over-drive. Might Herron be trading one time-wimey extravaganza for another? Might there be a further clue in this other snippet from a recent interview? Time will tell.

Doctor Who: Why Jo Martin’s Ruth Should Be The Next Doctor

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Mark Gatiss

In some sense, Mark Gatiss is Doctor Who. At the very least the show is encoded in his DNA. Very few people have done so much in, and for, the Whoniverse, and Gatiss has pretty much done it all. He’s written novels set in the Classic Who Universe; he’s acted in the modern iteration of the show (‘The Lazarus Experiment’, ‘The Wedding of River Song’, ‘Twice Upon a Time’); he’s written for the show (most notably ‘The Unquiet Dead’); he’s narrated documentary segments about the show; and he wrote the acclaimed 50th anniversary stand-alone about the early days of the show at the BBC, ‘An Adventure in Space and Time‘. He’s even been both the Doctor and the Master, albeit in Big Finish form. About the only aspect of Doctor Who Gatiss hasn’t embraced is being in charge. Given how prolific Gatiss is outside of Doctor Who, and how the Sherlock and Dracula (pictured above) co-creator gravitated away from the show in recent years, it’s unlikely – though of course not impossible – that he’d take over from Chris Chibnall.

J. Michael Straczynski

Now, Twitter is neither a negotiating table, nor often a particularly accurate representation of objective reality. Still, there’s no reason to suspect that J. Michael Straczynski’s recent enthusiastic offer to replace Chris Chibnall is anything less than sincere. Less tangible is the real-world prospect of the job ever being offered to him. Not because he couldn’t rise to the challenge – the man is a sci-fi behemoth, his work straddling the mediums of the graphic novel, TV and cinema, and encompassing damn near everything from Murder She Wrote to Marvel, DC to World War Z, and Ghostbusters to Babylon 5 (pictured above)– but down to the BBC preferring to hand the reins of its flagship family sci-fi show to someone UK-based. It doesn’t stop us wondering, though, how the man behind the deliciously cluttered, cultured and brilliant Babylon 5 would transform the Whoniverse.

Vinay Patel

For Series 11, Chris Chibnall wanted a range of fresh, representative voices that would better reflect the diversity of the show’s audience, and open up new avenues of dramatic possibilities. Vinay Patel is one of that influx of new writers who excelled himself by turning in arguably two of the Whittaker era’s best-regarded episodes. ‘Demons of the Punjab’ (pictured above) shone a light on a part of post-colonial history never before illuminated by Doctor Who, and did so with heart and conviction. ‘Fugitive of the Judoon’ proved that Patel could handle a more whacky, twisty-turny, lore-filled story.

Patel started as a corporate film-maker, but wasn’t satisfied with his lot, so poured his talents into an MA in writing for stage and broadcast media, an inspired choice that led him to the theatre, and then on to the BAFTA-nominated drama Murdered by My Father. His writing is intensely personal and political, barbed but with heart, intersecting notions of power, family, history and belonging.

Whether or not Vinay Patel has a realistic shot at the top spot – he’s still relatively untested in TV (but then so was Kate Herron before Loki) – it’s a shame that a show so committed to representation on-screen has so few prospective showrunners from a BAME background. Wherever Patel’s talents are next channelled, though, it’s obvious he has a blindingly bright future ahead of him.

Reece Shearsmith & Steve Pemberton

An unlikely prospect, we’re forced to admit, but a delicious one. The pair are, of course, no strangers to the Whoniverse. Steve Pemberton played Strackman Lux in the fan-favourite Tennant-two-parter ‘Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead’. Reece Shearsmith featured in Season 9 episode ‘Sleep No More‘, written by Shearsmith’s old friend and fellow League of Gentlemen star and co-creator Mark Gatiss. Shearsmith also portrayed Patrick Troughton and the Second Doctor in ‘An Adventure in Space and Time’.

However, it’s Shearsmith and Pemberton’s astonishing work on the raven-black comedy-drama anthology series Inside No. 9 (pictured above) that makes them such a tantalising prospect for the top spot. They’ve proven that they can play around with places, times, and tones like true artists, offering up silent, screwball comedy one week, then cruelly funny farce the next, followed by something so truly beautiful and heart-breaking it’ll make your soul flat-line the next. They’d be wildcards, certainly, but quite possibly a cross between a game-changer and a Godsend for Doctor Who.

Sally Wainwright

Sally Wainwright, like many of the candidates on this list, began her career writing for a soap opera, in her case the long-running and much-beloved BBC Radio 4 show The Archers. She was soon poached by the bosses of UK TV soap Emmerdale, but swiftly sacked when she said in a newspaper interview that Emmerdale“was shit, because the script editors re-wrote everything” and went on to Coronation Street.

Sci-fi fans can be sniffy about soap operas, as if sci-fi writers emerge from a cocoon fully-fledged and ready to write about far-off galaxies and alien races, but that’s tosh. If it weren’t for soaps, Paul Abbott, Jimmy McGovern, Sarah Phelps and countless other of the UK’s best screenwriters wouldn’t have had their starts. Step forward Sally Wainwright, who now stands as a behemoth in the UK TV landscape, having helmed arguably two of the most important and popular shows of recent years, Last Tango in Halifax and the astonishing Happy Valley. Her talent has now gone global. She’s currently in charge of HBO-BBC co-production Gentleman Jack, and is working with Sandra Bullock on a new TV series.

Sally Wainwright’s output and vision is supreme; her writing is raw and electric, real and illuminating, her characters so lived-in and realised that you could take them from the screen and put them in your living room and mistake them for your own family. Wainwright is probably too busy to take on the job of showrunner, but what a boon for Doctor Who her helmship would be.

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Doctor Who Series 13 will air on BBC One and BBC America this autumn.

The post Who Will Be Doctor Who’s Next Showrunner? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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mythicalmythos · 7 years

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Princess stories I wish I’d had as a child.

(So this wound up being about twice as long as planned but it feels good to finally get it all out there)

Okay so, this has kind of been bouncing around in my head since I saw Wonder Woman over the summer.

I grew up watching Disney movies and I am a huge Disney nerd to this day but the older I get the more I come to realize that as much as I love the Disney princess movies, I can’t really support some of their messages, intentional or not, as a woman in her 20s out of college, as I could in the past, even in high school.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the movies are a product of their time, and for a long time in our society the main path a girl’s life took was grow up, meet a boy, get married, have lots of babies. There was a huge amount of focus on maintaining the white picket fence life in America. Though we as women have made huge strides since the first Disney movie was produced, I feel like entertainment media takes a while to catch up to the changes society makes, especially media who’s target audience is made up of mostly kids.

In spite of all of this I think that Walt Disney himself was in favor of gender equality, even if it might not have been in the same manor and degree that we have today. He and his company made their mark on the world by making movies about female protagonists. Yes, you can argue that the women portrayed in the movies aren’t great role models and I agree with you. However, even in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” the main conflict is between two women. (Messed up and vain though that conflict may be.) Then in 1946, Disney produced a short film called “The Story of Menstruation. That’s right. Disney made a short film that gives accurate health information about periods in FUCKING 1946. While it is not perfect (come on it’s post-War, women are still expected to marry and have babies), it explains periods in accurate and scientific language and most importantly, emphasizes that periods are a normal and healthy (if annoying) part of every uterus-possessing human’s life. In 1946! I didn’t even realize that this existed until I was in college and I didn’t believe the friend who told me about it until they pulled it up and made me watch it. Why wasn’t this used or even mentioned in sex ed growing up? Though it is old and doesn’t really explain sex past mentioning that it is necessary for pregnancy to occur, it still is just a good jumping off point as anything I was shown/told as a pre-teen. Come on, this is a great resource to show a child who is asking the early questions about puberty (which happens way earlier than any parent is ready for. I myself was a very curious child and asked a lot of embarrassing questions WAY before my parents thought they would have to answer any of them.)

Okay, that was more than I thought I had to say on that but anyways, back to the Princess movies themselves. The one that I have the biggest problem with is “The Little Mermaid.” I know “Sleeping Beauty” is pretty bad too with the whole ‘unconscious therefor unable to give consent thing’ but honestly that for whatever reason doesn’t get to me like Ariel’s story does.

Before I totally start ragging on this movie let me just say I really loved this movie for a long time. I’m very musical and the music is amazing. I grew up singing them and “Poor Unfortunate Souls” is in my top 10 villain songs. (Also Ursula is based on a famous drag queen named Divine, which is awesome.) I love all of the songs in this movie, even the forgettable one at the beginning. But once you string them together with the rest of the story, I just can’t get behind the final product anymore. A few years ago, my mom showed me a video that Mayim Bialik posted on her YouTube channel where she talks about how she reacted to the movie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-9pm8Zy7SY). At first I thought ‘okay she has a point but it’s still a classic story’ then I started to think about it off and on in the back of my mind, along with reading and looking into the original story by H. C. Anderson (which, not exactly a kids story, be prepared for a lot of questions and blood). And I slowly came to realize that I can’t support showing this movie to my own kids someday without first having a serious talk about self-respect. No one should be told that they have to change a fundamental part of who they are or their body to find “love”. REAL “True Love” is accepting and unconditional, fish tail and all.

So where exactly does Wonder Woman come into all of this? Well back when I saw it in June, I was a bit hesitant because I’ve always kind of written WW off because of her outfit. Not my finest choice I’ll admit, but, nerd though I am, I never have been big into comic books or the Justice League cartoons (though Teen Titans with Raven and Starfire was one of my favorites. It hasn’t been until more recently that I have really come to appreciate the superhero genre.) But when I heard that WW was getting her own big screen story, I was intrigued. I didn’t know much going in, though I had high hopes. I’m a bit embarrassed to say I went partially because of Chris Pine because I tend to enjoy the projects he picks. But when I saw the movie, I was blown away. Not that the movie doesn’t have its weak spots for me (Ares took quite a bit of convincing). But as I came out of the theater I finally understood why my brothers love superhero movies. Seeing a woman (or in this case, a lot of women) on screen kicking butt, making their own stories, and being general badasses gave me this surge of confidence that I could do anything I set my mind to. This is a movie I didn’t know I was missing until I saw it. The more I read about how Patty Jenkins went about creating the world of Themyscira, like hiring a range of women of color, female body builders, weightlifters and wrestlers, it didn’t even occur to me that muscles on women are often considered ugly by our society. These women had bodies that reflected the work that they put in everyday and the power and strength that they possess. They are beautiful and send a beautiful message to young girls that they can be anything damn social standards of gender roles and beauty.

So I saw WW months ago and had talked to my friends about it but my thoughts and the powerful message stayed mostly in my head until now. Why? Well, I was several videos deep in a YouTube binge about a week and a half ago when I came across one from ScreenRant called “10 Rejected Princesses that Actually Exist” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3PUQtHXbiE). Now seeing as I am a total sucker for a title like that, naturally I open the video. Expecting stories from different mythos and legends from around the world (like the original Little Mermaid) I was very surprised to learn that this list was mostly made up of real women from different cultures around the world. Yes, there are a few legends and myths thrown in but mostly these women actually existed.

So turns out that this video is in fact based on a book written by a guy named Jason Porath, an ex-Dreamworks animator, who, following a bet at work, decided that these women needed to have their stories told. Some time and a book deal later “Rejected Princesses” was born. A collection of 100 stories about badass women who changed their worlds. (http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/)

I’m only about half way through but the more of the book I read the more I wish someone had given me this book as a kid. Mind you, not all of these stories are 100% appropriate (some of the ones at the end of the book are 5 on a 1-5 scale for maturity.) for every little kid but the fact that this book exists and tells real stories without shying away from the real situations that these women lived through is an amazing thing. There are women of color, lesbian and bi- women and probably many more as I haven’t finished the book yet. Haha (Trying to read three books at once is not my smartest life decision.)

The older I get, the more I see things in my childhood that reinforced the more traditional male/female gender roles on me. My parents never told me I couldn’t do something just because I was a girl and they have always encouraged me to learn and do well in school, especially they encouraged my interest in science. But as things like WW and “Rejected Princesses” come to my attention I realize that just because I didn’t realize their influence was missing doesn’t mean I didn’t feel it. I remember having few role models in media and always being told to let the boys do the physical stuff instead of me.

It is not enough to simply tell girls and women they can do anything and be anything they want. We have to give them examples and role models to show that they come from a long line of capable, independent, smart, strong, badass women and the keys to the kingdom are theirs to take and explode into the world with.

#wonder woman #badass women #rejected princesses #disney

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