Grimm, Indeed - Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997)

I'll start by stating that we horror fans owe Germany a great debt for their contribution to the genre. Not only, as I previously discussed in an entry on S.S. Prawer's Caligari's Children, did the Germans bring a rich folkloric and oral tradition of horrific tales into popular culture - namely Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmärchen - but also the lovely chiaroscuro of German expressionism. Not to mention the collective mental scarring the western world suffered under than hands of one particular German, though it would hardly be appropriate or moral to go around thanking anyone for that. But I digress.

It's the Grimm's fairy tales that always seem to capture my imagination the most. It seems I've been rather obsessed with the effect horror has on the child's psyche this summer - maybe I've been reading too much Stephen King. However, I would argue, as others before me, that children's fiction is often a blueprint for adult life: a social road map of negotiating adulthood. Often intertwined with horror tales, or featuring moments of unspeakable terror, myths/fairy tales/folk stories are antiquated horror shows, where issues of mortality and society are played out within the stage of the imagination.

Shuli Barzilai quotes Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar in her article, "The Ideology of Mothering: Disruption and Reproduction of Patriarchy" in Signs, Volume 15, Number 3: 515-534 by saying

"'...myths are fairy tales often both state and enforce culture's sentences with greater accuracy than more sophisticated literary texts'" (519).

If this is so, then what does 1997's Snow White: A Tale of Terror say about the Snow White mythos? In particular, the portrayal of the Wicked Stepmother? Though my thoughts are hardly yet cohesive - I was hoping a couple of veterans might chime in with some more seasoned opinions - I have a few thoughts.

• I was exceptionally pleased that the film didn't reduce the tensions between Claudia and Lily to the annoyingly superficial "Who's the fairest of them all?" crap.
• I was irked to see Snow White waiting around for her Daddy to come save her - save your own ass, you spoiled brat!
• I liked that Claudia's character was a strange mixture of witch and mentally unstable. Her power didn't make her evil - her break from reality upon the death of her son pushed her over the edge.
  
• On a personal note, I really, really liked that the dwarves were broken men disillusioned and alienated for their refusal to join the Crusades - much more interesting than Disney's bearded miners! And that Lily fell in love with one of them - the incredibly hot one. Sorry, got carried away for a bit. Their romance was a little romance novel-esqu (I don't count that as a bad thing). Gave me a case of the vapors, though. Again, not a bad thing.
  

Can anybody think of anything I might have missed? What are your thoughts? Good movie? Bad?

Bottom line: Entertaining movie for its folkloric and horrific moments, but not anything to write home to Mom about. Shall we say a solid B, in academic terms?

Here's the trailer if you haven't seen it (apparently, you can also see the entire film on YouTube, in segments):

You, Sir, are a Gentleman and a Scholar (and a horror fan)

If I have any beef with Horror as a genre and a cultural institution (and I have many, torture porn and obsessive fans, notwithstanding - but those will be dealt with later) it's that there is an over-abundance of novice horror criticism floating about. Everyone - from the fangirl who's gotten her hands on Max Brook's World War Z or the reviewer when a rare high budget horror film comes around - feels qualified to take a stab at what horror films really mean, what it's all about, the social significance of monster/killer/slasher XYZ. Now, I'm not an educational snob - I think it's just as viable to be an autodidact as it is to be university taught - but the key concept is knowledge, something most would-be reviewers lack.

Horror has an egalitarianism about it, an everyman aura that welcomes the poor and huddled masses; the basis of its appeal, and its wonderful magic, depends on it.

Like any film genre, it has a vocabulary for its criticism, a delightfully varied pattern of themes that accompany it. And most people, by sheer ignorance or snobbery (as if to say, how can something as low as horror have a world of criticism to it? as the nose points in the air) lack it.

Maybe I'm just jaded by all the hoopla brought upon by the release of Captivity and Hostel II. Or maybe it's every single news source - who until recently wouldn't touch a horror movie with a ten foot pole if it lay bleeding on the pavement outside the office - jumping into the "torture porn" debate. Who knows.

That's why it's such a treat to read horror criticism from a true scholar's viewpoint. I am speaking, in favorable terms, of S.S. Prawer's Caligari's Children: The Film as a Tale of Terror (De Capo Press, 1980). I had been itching to get my hands on this book ever since I'd seen it referenced (in Robin Wood, I think) and was lucky enough to get a reasonably priced copy at a used book store. Talk about sublime! With references to literature, horror/mainstream film, psychology, philosophy, history (ad infinitum, ad nauseaum), this beautifully written piece of non-fiction is largely overlooked in splatterati circles. Not that there are many of them - especially in a university setting, but I digress.

Prawer's words, like the illumination on a medieval manuscript, manage to gild and dignify a genre that prides itself on its jocularity and readability. Though it is a bit heavy on the German horror films - Prawer is Taylor Emeritus Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, so read up on your German expressionism, kids - and a little conservative by modern standards (the man was born in 1925, so we can give him a break), the marvelous insight and language the man imbues in his writing are worth the search for this magnificent book. One can only wonder what he thinks of the horror films that came after publication, as I'm sure they're fascinating.

Do yourself a favor, get yourself a copy. You'll be a better horror fan for it.