Tag Archives: Disney

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08/03/2011

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Fairytale Fallacies

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The Purpose of a Fairytale

You may have heard the quote: “Disney gave me unrealistic expectations of men.” I’m not sure who invented that statement, but I have to question their accuracy. We have a tendency to blame fairytales for our distorted views of what love should look like, but you never see anyone blaming Disney for making us believe that animals can talk. You never hear anyone complaining, “Oh man, and I really thought last night would be the night Peter Pan showed up at my window.” And when’s the last time you tried to kiss a frog?

Let’s face it, we’re not really expecting to take a bite of a poisoned apple and wait for our Prince to come wake us from a comatose state. No one really expects that to happen. So why are we blaming Snow White for our troubles? Sounds to me like she had it a lot worse than I do.

Fairytales weren’t written to give you a distorted view of romance; they were written to instill hope in the hearts of those who want to give up on living. Prince Charming aside, fairytales are all about chasing your dreams and finding the courage to step into the unknown. That’s the true romance and adventure of a fairytale.

Though many of us still love fairytales to this day, we started watching them as small children – back in our “boys are icky” days. I know that I, personally, did not watch Cinderella for the wedding scene at the end, but for the music and the mice and the adventure that led up to that fateful moment at the ball. When she met Prince Charming, I wasn’t sighing because it was romantic, I was shouting, “Take that, you evil stepsisters!” That was Cinderella’s real victory. She lived as a sweet-hearted servant until she finally rose to the princess position that she deserved.

So stop blaming Disney for your broken dreams, and read the rest of the story. There’s so much more to life than finding Prince Charming. Happily ever after is the end of the story… Try living once upon a time.

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12/09/2010

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Tangled Dreams

The other night, I watched one of my favorite fairytales come to life. I have to admit that I was a little skeptical. There are, after all, thousands of ways to mess up a fairytale. How would the big screen convey this classic tale that is so dear to my heart? In a world that vies for true love’s kiss, what will they do with the tears that restore sight to a blind man? But Disney, much to my delight, pulled off the retelling of Rapunzel quite masterfully. While she was much different than I always imagined, I found her Disney persona to be just as endearing as the storybook heroine I fell in love with many years ago. And while I thoroughly enjoyed the entire movie, I find that one scene keeps replaying in my mind…

Rapunzel and Flynn have reached the Festival of Lights. Our heroine leans against the edge of the rowboat, stares into the sky, and confesses that she’s nervous. This moment is all she’s dreamed of for sixteen years. What if it isn’t everything she’s imagined it to be?

“It will be,” a confident Flynn replies.

This makes Rapunzel think of an even worse fate. What if it is everything she’s dreamed it to be? After tonight, her lifelong dream is over. What will she do then?

According to Flynn, the best part of the dream is the end, because you get to choose a new one.

Wise words coming from a man who claims he doesn’t have a dream, much less ever fulfilled one. But there it is. Straight from the mouth of Flynn Rider. The end of one dream is the beginning of another.

I don’t know about you, but that’s something I needed to hear lately. I’m in the same boat as Rapunzel. As I’m on the verge of completing my first novel, I’m nervous about what the end of the dream holds. On one hand, I can’t wait to see this vision fully come to life, but at the same time, the thought of closing the final cover on these characters who have been a part of my reality for the past three years almost makes me want to cry.

I feel like God has laid before my eyes thousands of possibilities. “Pick a dream,” He says. How do I choose just one? How do I determine which is worthy of the next three years of my life?

I think that, just as it was with Flynn and Rapunzel, the answer will be quite clear. When the time comes, I’ll know which one is worth the sacrifice. And so will you.

Look at the dreams God weaves between His fingertips much like He weaved the stars in the sky. Pick one out and carry it close to your heart until the time comes for it to finally be released in all of its splendor.

Don’t dread the end of one dream; embrace the start of another.

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09/20/2010

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Fairytale Fallacies

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Once Upon a Dream

Flashback into a Disney scene in Sleeping Beauty: It’s a typical fairytale set-up including the woodland creatures skittering about the beautiful forest. Lost in a world that is entirely her own, our fairytale heroine reflects on a dream she had recently experienced. And since this is a Disney film, of course it came out in the form of a song.

I know you
I walked with you once upon a dream
I know you
The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam
Yes, I know it’s true
that visions are seldom all they seem
But if I know you, I know what you’ll do
You’ll love me at once
the way you did once upon a dream

As she’s vocalizing and dancing about to the memory of a dream, her song is suddenly joined by a masculine voice, strong arms wrapping around her waist as her Prince materializes before her eyes. She melts into his embrace and they dance as one, both enraptured by the same dream. It’s so charming, so romantic, so… perfect. This is one of those scenes that elicits the statement: “Walt Disney gave me unrealistic expectations of men.”

Now, I’m pretty sure Walt Disney didn’t set out to crush the hopes of young women everywhere. I know he was an advocate of dreaming big, but I don’t think his intention was to set us up for disappointment. I think it’s our own skewed perspectives that are breaking our hearts. Fairytales weren’t meant to be realistic. I mean, come on, Sleeping Beauty, fairies, magic spells… When’s the last time you pricked your finger on a spindle and fell asleep for a hundred years? And would you really want to watch the movie if Prince Charming had simply walked up to her in that moment and said, “Hey, you’re kind of cute. Want to go out?” Whoo. Exciting.

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute. We’ve taken fairytales to a level they were never meant to achieve. Stop blaming Disney for your heartaches, leave Prince Charming in your dreams, and live as if you believed your life was meant for something far greater.

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08/30/2010

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You’re My Home

Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite fairytales. I always loved the Disney cartoon, then I watched a local high school perform the Broadway version. Why couldn’t all the songs from Broadway have been incorporated into the cartoon? For nearly eighteen years of my life, I didn’t know what I was missing. Me!, No Matter What, Maison des Lunes… and I found myself particularly drawn to the song Home. (Maybe that stems from the fact that I’m a notorious homebody who doesn’t know why her dreams had to carry her 450 miles away from the place where she grew up.)

Here’s a story that takes a horrible situation and gives it a happy ending. This is a girl’s nightmare turned fairytale. It’s a twist in Belle’s perspective that makes this story spectacular. It’s her willingness to change her views that brings the happy ending. She could have spent the rest of her life “shut away from the world until who knows when,” but instead she chose to open herself up to this monster who held her captive. And in the end she discovered he wasn’t truly a monster at all. As the story reaches the climax and the Beast lies dying, Belle confesses the thing she has learned throughout her time of captivity with these words: “Don’t you know how you’ve changed me? Strange how I finally see… I’ve found home – you’re my home. Stay with me.”

I guess the Beast ended up being what Belle sang about in her first rendition of Home – where the heart is. I’ve found that to be the only way of coping with being so far away from my biological home. I simply focus my heart on where I am and who I’m with. Better yet, I’ve invited Jesus to be my Home. That way I never have to leave it.  Now if I stumble upon an enchanted castle in a deep woods, I won’t have to sing a song of mourning. My song will always be one of joy because I’ve been changed, and I’ve found home. God is my home, and He will forever stay with me.

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08/23/2010

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Part of that World

Maybe it’s because I’ve been at the ocean for the past week, but lately, I’ve been having these Little Mermaid flashbacks. There’s something super mysterious about the sea. When I try to imagine what lies beneath the cresting waves, I get a headache. It’s that mind-boggling. That must be how the Little Mermaid felt about dry land. There was so much world waiting to be explored – so many things that needed to be discovered… And she discovered it, all right. According to Disney, she left everything, sacrificed her voice, and landed the prince. Life is good for the Little Mermaid, right? Not the way Hans Christian Andersen tells it. But since you can’t tell a little kid that the fairytale heroine sacrificed greatly, felt tremendous pain, and eventually died without ever achieving her intended goal, Disney decided to give “Ariel” a happy ending. And while I have a few things to say about Hans Christian Andersen’s version, I’ll save that for a later date. Today, we are talking about Ariel and the way she took the wrong approach to love.

Ariel pops up to the surface, takes a look around, and sees something she likes: Prince Eric. That, in itself, is not bad. The bad stuff happens when she starts obsessing over it. As Sebastian would say, “Ariel thinks the seaweed is greener in somebody else’s lake.” Her entire mind becomes wrapped around the fantasy of what it would be like to become a “part of that world.” Then she does the unthinkable. She contacts the sea witch, sacrifices her voice and risks everything for one chance at becoming “part of that world.” Luckily for her, it worked out in the end. Not only did she land the prince (pardon the pun), but she frees the merpeople from the influence of the evil sea witch by vanquishing her forever. But what if she hadn’t fared so well? What if her story had kept the ending of Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid? What would she have gained for all her sacrifice? Would the sacrifice have been worth it?

I can hear you now: “Heck no!” Why? Because the Little Mermaid had an entire ocean to explore. Surely she hadn’t ventured to every single corner of it, just as you and I have never covered every single square inch of the earth (and the ocean is twice as large as the land, just saying). The chances of her making a prince fall in love with her when she couldn’t even communicate the depths of her heart with him are slim to none. Had she failed, she probably would have spent the rest of her life thinking about how wrong she had been.

I feel like we are doing the same thing the Little Mermaid did. Here we are, swimming in the sea of singleness and not seeing how vast and beautiful it is. We are prematurely thrusting ourselves onto the shore of marriage and relationships. And we are more closely resembling the Hans Christian Andersen story than the Disney version we all long for. We deeply desire to become a “part of that world” when we were meant for the world we are swimming in here and now. Whether you were meant for the ocean or the shore is not for me to decide, but I want to leave you with this final question:

Is your final destination worth the sacrifice you are making? And would the pain be worth it if you didn’t get what you are seeking in the end?