Happy Birthday, Jacob Grimm

[filkertom]

On this date in 1785. He became famous for being transformed by cosmic rays into the Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed...






... Sorry. Wrong guy. This Grimm, and his brother Wilhelm, collected Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Different approach from normal: What fairy tales bug you the most? For me, trying to describe the plot of Rumplestiltskin is like trying to describe the plot of The Rocky Horror Show. It makes absolutely no frickin' sense at all.

Comments

[batyatoon]

If you're referring to the movie, you've got startlingly little basis on which to condemn Dahl. Read the book first, please?

Also, even in the film, Wonka doesn't actually do anything to the kids. He just fails to protect them from the consequences of their own actions, every one of which he warns them against taking.

You could get him on child endangerment, hell yeah, but you'd be hard put to it to get him on abuse. And endangering children to test their character is something fictional adult good guys do all the time. Adult good guys like, f'rinstance, Batman.

[tomreedtoon.livejournal.com]

Okay. On the one hand we have young kids who want to become crimefighters deliberately choosing to be trained by dangerous methods. And they know that The Batman is nobody's friend, especially not the friend of kids.

On the other we have kids expecting a nice factory tour, damn near killed by a guy who hates them and probably the whole human race. (How many kids died from diabetes and heart attacks from eating all those crappy Wonka bars to find those golden tickets, any way?) You seem to have mistaken Batman for the Frank Miller version of The Joker - another guy who poisoned a lot of kids with a sugary product.

And I tell you again, in caps, so maybe you'll get it this time, PRINT IS DEAD. The original Wonka books don't matter. What matters is that Dahl approved of the film with this top-hatted Ed Gein. Those books were never read by one hundreth of the kids who went to see "The Rocky Horror Picture Show for Kids," as one author called the film. The film is the only text that matters, because that's the only one people know about.

If you want to blame something for that situation, blame the incompetents who call themselves "America's finest teachers" for the inability of this generation to read, as well as their indifference to text. But don't blame me. I'm just introducing you to what's happening in reality.

[batyatoon]

And I tell you again, in caps, so maybe you'll get it this time, PRINT IS DEAD.

I do hope you appreciate the irony of telling me this in a text-based format.

The original Wonka books don't matter.... The film is the only text that matters, because that's the only one people know about.

That, of course, depends entirely on what you mean by "matters." Popularity is an important gauge for story power, of course, but hardly the only one.

And I've seen this generation's indifference to text firsthand, in the form of long long long lines to buy the next Harry Potter book -- much longer than the lines to see the next movie. I was working in a school when the third Potter movie came out, and polled the kids who'd seen it; every one of them had read the book first (multiple times!), and every one of them said the book was better.

Sorry to crush your cynicism, but print's alive and well.