Musings on art and modern audiences

Disney’s Aladdin : Princess Jasmine’s feminism Disney’s 1992 film Aladdin is a firm classic. There’s so much in the story that lends itself to visual spectacle - vast amounts of magical wealth, a foreign place and time, a star-crossed (but ultimately fulfilled) romance, and music from the ever-fantastic Alan Menken. The story of Aladdin’s place in popular media throughout history is also in fact a complex and quite mysterious one, too. Aladdin is best recognised in literature for its place in A Thousand and One Arabian Nights , as one of the so-called “orphan tales” apparently added to the Nights separate from the manuscript editions of the text which exist. And so, the story by its very nature has a rich capacity for inducing wonder in its audiences.  Of course, Disney took that and ran with it. Whilst I’d still argue Disney’s Aladdin is a wonderful film, it’s still very much been “Disney-fied”, if you will. Of particular interest to me are the ways in which Disney’s film atte...

Lockwood and Co. : the good old days... A funny aspect of a lot of young adult fiction is the absolutely slanderous representation of adults. It’s often the case that the teen heroes - whether they’re supernatural beings, or simply live in a world which happens to have an age restriction on crazy powers - get all the fun, and adults are just the boring disciplinarians (or deranged maniacs?) who sometimes have an uncanny resemblance to our parents. This is absolutely the case in Lockwood and Co . Talent for ghosthunting only really exists in children and teenagers, and that talent is eventually irretrievably lost with age. In a way, I suppose Jonathan Stroud’s concept is just another way of framing the age-old relationship between innocence and experience. Innocence, the sacred state of children and young people untouched by harsh reality. Experience, the sorry state of those who have lost aforementioned innocence to the sands of time and the sorrows of, well, experience. It’s an idea ...

  The Phantom of the Opera : stage, page, and screen One of the amazing things about adaptation is that it shows us how stories can work in so many different mediums. Whether you love The Phantom of the Opera or think it’s overrated (both valid opinions, we don’t judge here) there’s something to be noted in its success as a popular novel of its time, a hugely successful stage production, and an impressive film adaptation.  All of this success, it must be acknowledged, would be impossible without Gaston Leroux’s original 1902 novel, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra . As far as classic novels go, it’s probably not on most people’s reading lists, although I personally would very much recommend it. The novel isn’t particularly long, but it’s packed with action, and Leroux’s narrator is a very compelling storyteller.  So what’s so special and significant about the novel, and why does that make a difference in how it’s been adapted for stage and screen?  The story is, as the title ...

  Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story : just another reboot or a prophetic haunting? It should concern audiences that the issues central to West Side Story have continued to be prevalent to this day - so much so that a remake of the film was deemed viable. Modern audiences can continue to appreciate the tense relations between communities, whether or not those communities specifically reflect those depicted in the film. The fact that modern audiences can still recognise the real lived consequences of warring communities, particularly on the basis of racial and cultural differences, does not bode well. Close continuities between the original West Side Story film from 1961 (itself adapted to screen from Arthur Laurents’ 1957 stage musical) seems to suggest that the world really hasn’t changed much in sixty years. People still fight over territory they have claimed as theirs de facto, and cycles of poverty have remained just that - a circular trap.  Steven Spielberg’s West Side S...