Skip to main content

Mirror Mirror -- Review


Almost from the start you feel the director's efforts to please the audience's key and only regal lady -- the blossoming young woman, traditionally picked on by patriarchy, and whose current allegiance guarantees you status as a modern man that gets to lubricate with subservience but without any contestation, the way ahead -- and so the Queen's proclamation that it is her story being told is really understood as falsehood, pretty much moment one.  The film pleases those who are pleased when people fuss effort over them -- and much effort is fussed here.  It is to update Grimm, but with every particular summoned, dissipated for its patriarchy, chill, bigotry, and anti-democratic sentiment.  But with enough kept of at least the protector man so the tentative, growing girl gets the expected satisfaction of feeling notably special, as well as the sure companionship of someone to serve as the adroit male draught horse who's to accompany her along and familiarize her with, life's unsteadying rush of dramatic new impulses.  And also too, to have us forget about all that servile mechanism-pulling, curtain-raising / closing, young Queen-pacifying sweat and stress -- to lose sight of the chamberlain -- and simply enjoy the movie.  
If there is dissent in the movie, some measure of the not fully accounted for that could maybe one day locate ruin upon all that's been claimed, it's not the late arrival of the ostensible penultimate grim moment -- the Queen's sly bequeathing of the ruinous poisoned apple; that thunder had already been claimed by the Queen's surprise popping up into Dwarvish denizens to introduce the Beast to Snow White, a silly, appropriately ill-defined entity doomed as much as everyone else to register the princess's bequest.  Rather, it's the Queen's isolated mirror-retreat, which way trumps the dwarfs' made-to-be-domesticated forest composure to serve as an impenetrable man-cave in the film, and which at the end no one but the old Queen is aware of.
To be more clear:  This film showed "Brave" in the previews, where the great opponent to spirited young-intelligent-girl-assent is not boys, nor Father, but very clearly pissed-off Mother; and it seems pretty clear to me that if one is to look most clearly for dissent from men in this era of female appeasement, it's going to be located in the safer armor of older lady garb.  In this film, her remaining retreat is, if slight, and hardly even still clearly aligned to her, still the only remaining antidote to the princess's chilling final conquestorial gesture and proprietary dance and song at her absolutely-everyone-now dominion of the realm.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Watch out, liberal extremities!

Watch out, liberal extremities! websmith says: “White people and an increasing number of minorities are tired of being called racists by the true racists and more appalled that this loony bleeding has spread from the heart to the brain." This is what many progressives are going to have to get used to hearing -- that THEY are the true racists! I've said this before but '60's liberalism goes down when enough people have decided that, in sum, it was never truly about what minorities, impoverished people wanted/needed, but instead what certain AFFLUENT WHITE PEOPLE wanted to believe those they ostensibly spoke for wanted/needed. They (progressives) will be made to seem, not the most caring, but the most negligent, most truly self-serving. Of course, most democrats in power will not be too afflicted by this, because they're ready to turn on the ’60s too. Why? Because, sad to say, they're getting in mood to want to see the weak and needy set-up as punishment-worthy a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Conversation about Agulis at the Gene Wolfe Facebook Appreciation Club

James Pepe New Member  ·  20 hrs I’ve been rereading BotNS (this is my second read of it) and I just finished the part where Sev fights Agulis with the avern. I’m interested to hear what people think of the accusations Agilus levels agains Sevarian. Agilus says Sev has wronged him three times. Are we meant to take these accusations seriously? They're very strange. Is this just a last ditch attempt by Agilus to get out of being killed, or is Sev actually guilty of something, either legal, moral, or cultural. Are the powers that Agilus refers to simply that the avern didn’t kill Sev when it wounded him? Here the quote, “First by entrapment. You carried an heirloom worth a villa about the city without knowing what it was you had. As owner it was your duty to know, and your ignorance threatens to cost me my life tomorrow unless you free me tonight. Secondly, by refusing to entertain any offer to buy. In our commercial society, one may set...
Post a Comment
Read more

Discussion of Short Sun, at the Facebook Gene Wolfe Appreciation site

Mike Bennewitz January 15 at 5:56 PM Some thoughts on the themes in Book of the Short Sun [Spoilers] I've just finished a re-read of Book of the Long Sun and Book of the Short Sun. Short Sun infected my mind more than Long Sun, I guess. I don't have as many questions about LS as I do about SS. Wolfe is very obsessed with doubled identity throughout Short Sun. It's woven into so many aspects of the book that unless there is a transubstantial meaning I'm missing, I'm going to have to take it as a big clue that the narrator's identity is doubled. You could be forgiven for not realizing that the narrator has two mind/spirits inhabiting his body throughout half of the series. While Wolfe obscures this a little bit, he's telling you nearly everywhere that things are doubled. • A Binary System of two planets • Two quills in the pen case • Neighbors are like doubled humans, 4 arms and 4 legs. • Animals of Blue are doubled. 8 legs, 2 trunks, 4 eyes...
Post a Comment
Read more