I've got issues with fairytales.
Don't get me wrong I love them, and I'm not one of those people that hate on them because of some bullshit PC reason ... well not much. I just have issues with the way they screw you over with the choice they always make the characters have and then act like it's all so sad that things couldn't have worked out.
Take for instance Peter Pan. Now I've always thought that Wendy was the fool for not staying. More so because regardless of what the books and the early film versions might have told you, she and Peter loved each other and even to my jaded heart which {shockingly} longs for such emotions for myself, I always thought that love should conquer everything and that she should have stayed with him.
But then I watched the latest version of Peter Pan. Starring the very beautiful and engaging Jeremy Stumpter and Rachel Hurd-Wood as Peter and Wendy. And I finally saw what I'd been looking for in this story, because these two young stars had me at hello. Yes I'm being cheesy, but they had such wonderful chemistry and they seemed so perfect for each other that halfway through the movie I wanted Wendy to stay, but then after realizing that the problem really wasn't Wendy not loving Peter enough to stay, but that it was Peter being too afraid of growing up, even though I could see how desperately he loved her.
Needless to say I loved this movie, but that doesn't change the fact that like all fairytales it angered me a little, because it always leaves these gaps and pretends like they can't be filled.
Why couldn't Peter go with Wendy? He knew he loved her. He knew he'd hate it if she grew up and married someone else. And she was the same way. But yet somehow I'm supposed to just accept that he'd let her leave and not follow her? Why? Gah, I hate stories like this. Dammit give me a fairytale ending. Why call it a fairytale if you're going to screw over the characters and then tell the reader/watcher, 'Oh well, there you go, life sucks but you deal.'
Well you know what? Fuck that shit. I don't want to deal. I want Wendy and Peter together. In the END. If I can't get to see Peter follow her when she returns home to her parents, then I want to see Peter running into her ten years down the road while she's walking down the street just minding her own business and bumps into this gorgeous stranger who smiles at her in a way that's instantly familiar and she realizes that yes, Peter did leave Neverland and he left because of her and he grew up because of her and now that they're both grown and no longer 12yr olds, they can be together and get married and have little fairy tale children, who will grow up living fairytale lives and then continue the everloving, sweetly sickening, fairytale cycle.
That's what I want.
But by that same token I don't want to be bullshitted either. Don't tell me Pocahontas' story and try to force-feed me some crap about her living happily ever after. Don't make it this big love story when the truth was that she didn't even marry John Smith, she married some other English guy John Rolfe and ended up dead at 22 from pneumonia or tuberculosis or some other crappy disease, that the poor Indians never suffered from until those English bastards invaded their land. (don't get me started on Thanksgiving) I want happily ever after, but I don't want a lie.
And even for those stories that did have a fairytale ending, there are those pesky choices I was talking about embedded in them. Like in The Little Mermaid. How fucked up is it that poor Ariel was forced to make a choice between her family or the prince. And in Hercules, Herc was faced with the same situation. His family on Mount Olympus or Meg? Why can't they have both? I'm sorry, but unless you're Amish there's no reason for you to have to give up your family just because you're choosing a life that's not exactly similar to theirs?
I mean we've all read some kind of Greek myth at some point and you know those freaky gods were giving immortality and constellations and shit to people on a whim. So why did Herc have to choose either being on Olympus with his family or staying on Earth with Meg? Couldn't they have had both? Couldn't Meg have been one of the many humans who were taken up to Olympus? I mean she was the daughter-in-law of the main god. Why the hell should he have all that power and not be able to use it to benefit his own damn son?
And ditto for poor Ariel? Why did she have to give up being a mermaid just because she fell in love with a human? Did no one see Splash? What kind of lesson are you sending to the children that you supposedly make these films for? That you can only be happy if you give up something that means a great deal to you? That your family can't mix with your true love? No wonder Mother- in-laws are perpetually being portrayed as bitches. Apparently people just don't seem to believe that different families can blend together.
Nice message you're sending there Disney. You SUCK!
Of course you'd rather write stories about young women living with seven men and then pretend it's all fine because they're dwarves. Sorry, that just says to me that she's got a dwarf fetish. Or a young woman who sneaks out of the house to go party with some guy she doesn't know and then not being smart enough to take all her clothes with her. These stories you tell with such flourish and act like it's all so wonderful, but you can't tell a good story when it comes to people with real issues. People who have to make choices.
I guess I should be grateful for the good ones like The Lion King and Mulan where even the strangest folk get to be part of the family. And the choices people get to make are relevant and poignant. And above all DIFFICULT. Mulan deciding to take her father's place in the war was huge. So was Simba's choice to face his greatest fear.
Now if a damn lion can do it why can't Peter? Come on people teach the children to face their fears, not run from them.
If Simba can bring his meerkat buddy Timon and his warthog friend Pumba back to live with a den of lions then I'm positive that somehow Herc and Ariel could have managed to get their families to mix and mingle with their human spouses.
Don't make me have to stop believing in fairytales Disney. That would just piss me off.
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