[ SECRET POST #2273 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2273 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 117 secrets from Secret Submission Post #325.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ], [ 1 2 3 - trolls ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[truxillogical]

A) Pinocchio counts if Wizard of Oz counts.

B) Ali Baba would also be recognizable. Open sesame, Popeye cartoons, etc. Same goes for the Brave Little Tailor.

C) Sleeping Beauty, for reasons mentioned, doesn't count as the female lead of a fairy tale. She doesn't lead and is not the protagonist, she makes no decisions, she only has stuff done to her. Wendy isn't the lead, Peter is. And Mulan is something that pretty much no one in the States had heard of until the cartoon. And if Thumbelina counts, then Tom Thumb surely does as well.

[(Anonymous)]

B) Ali Baba, maybe (although I'd wager that most people who say "Open sesame" don't even know where it's from). Brave Little Tailor, no. Maybe the older generations might recognize the story from the Disney short, but that came out all the way back in 1938. Modern kids? No way.

C) Regardless of whether or not Sleeping Beauty is proactive, she IS the female main character. She's fairly boring (imo) but very iconic, and what the whole story revolve around. As for Wendy, eh. I never read the book, but the Disney movie is very much about Wendy's journey and her realization that she must grow up, whereas Peter has zero development iirc (he's there to hold her back, basically). And so what if no one knew about Mulan before the cartoon? Now (mostly) everyone does, and her story is the post popular Asian folk tale. And if you were to poll random people I'm sure Thumbelina is more recognizable than Tom Thumb due to the 90's movie, even if Tom Thumb was around longer.

[truxillogical]

B) Came out in 1938, but kept playing on TV well into the 90's. Modern kids might not have any idea who Thumbelina is either.

C)
1) The story revolves around her as if she were an item. She is NOT the protagonist. She is NOT the lead. In the Disney movie, the fairies and the prince are the leads. In the fairy tale, the Prince is the lead. It's like saying that the Firebird is the lead character in The Firebird--it's just the object that sets things into motion.

2) Firstly, Mulan isn't a fairy tale any more than Pocahontas is a fairy tale. Secondly, her story isn't nearly the most popular Asian folk tale (Into the West/Monkey King would be that one). Thirdly, why are we only talking about fairy tales that are immediately recognizable in this generation or about the movie versions of things instead of the actual tales they're based on? I'm pretty sure the stupid quote was him lamenting the sort of source material he had to draw from. And it proves you can take any source materiel, even something as obscure (to Western audiences) as Mulan, and turn it into a popular movie.


And none of this changes the original point, which was that there are a lot of fairy tales that feature male leads (or animal leads, which get cast as male characters ninety percent of the time), and that fairy tales don't "usually" revolve around female characters--it's actually a pretty even split. If anything, fairy tale-based movies get made with female characters because it's one of the few things studios can figure out how to market to girls ("Princesses! You all want to be Princesses, right?").

[(Anonymous)]

B) Kids today? Maybe not, but I think a lot of girls of the nineties would recognize Thumbelina. As far as the Brave Little Tailor goes, I have to ask what channels it kept playing on, and how frequently, because I never once saw that short played on TV. It was only after I looked up the summary did I vaguely recall the basic plot, and that was because I read it in one of those Disney picture books when I was a kid. Either way, I think we may have strayed from the initial point, which was that the Brave Little Tailor and the like do not have the same level of recognition as stories like Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, etc.

C)
1) Yup, she's basically a prop. Still gets top billing and is the most iconic element of the story though. Compare how many people remember Phillip's name, as opposed to Aurora.

2) Wtf? Pocohontas is a person that actually existed. Mulan is a legendary character from a poem. While there may have been a woman that dressed as a man to fight in the army (or multiple women, more likely), the character of Hua Mulan is only that, a character. There is a helluva lot more reliable evidence going for Pocohontas's existence than Mulan's.

Mulan is the most popular Asian folk tale for contemporary audience's, yes. Does anyone in Western society outside of academic circles or folk tale buffs actually know what Journey to the West is?

Well, I brought up movie versions and recognizable characters because that's the whole draw of the Oz movie: taking a character everyone is familiar with and giving it a fresh new take. It's a lot less risky to adapt a property all moviegoers are familiar with than to try something new.

As far as his actual quote goes, I read his lament of the lack of "good strong male protagonists" to refer to the possible pool of male leads that could draw in good, strong box office numbers. Like I said before, adapting a well-known property like Cinderella or Snow White is a lot less of the risk than making a movie about the Boy Who Went in Search of Fear. With Cinderella and Snow White, you already get a built-in fanbase who will see the movie based on the premise alone. Same with the Wizard of Oz fans. After opening up Wikipedia and reading the whole quote again in its entirety, I don't know if this is what he was getting at; probably not. In that case, he clearly is unfamiliar with fairy tales beyond the basic ones that everyone knows, which goes back to the point that there are much fewer ICONIC male fairy tale leads.

And yes, if you look at the source material there are a lot of male leads, but like I said, I assume he's approaching the topic from the POV of someone who has just a basic pop culture understanding of the different fairy tales, and not someone who has done extensive reading on the topic. Are there fairy tales with male leads he could have used? Absolutely. But using the Wizard was a much stronger choice from a money-making standpoint than picking a tale from obscurity. And I would still say that, as a whole, the female protagonists in fairy tales definitely outnumber the males (not that that's necessarily a bad thing). Aside from the obvious ones that I've listed, there are plenty of obscure ones like the heroine of Donkeyskin, Brother and Sister, Gretel (really, she was the heroine of that story), the Maiden with No Hands, Snow White and Rose Red, Maid Maleen, Tatterhood, the Farmer's Clever Daughter, the mother in the Little Shroud, the Snow Queen, etc.

That being said, I agree there need to be more movies marketed towards girls that do not center around princesses, and that the whole idea of someone whining that there needs to be more male protagonists is laughable.