These two fairy tales have been appropriated to appeal to much different demographic, and honestly, I think that they will be very successful at the box office. I personally am interested to see how the filmmakers turned a move like the Beauty and the Beast, a movie I have seen in cartoon version hundreds of times, and a story like Little Red Riding Hood, a classic tale that I have had repeated to me countless times as a child – to films with recognizable actors and an overall haunting feel to it.
This is a modern example of appropriating culture into contemporary remix culture, just like the Disney movies were appropriated re-makes of these classic tales in order to reach our generation when we were kids. The popularity of these "re-make" films comes out of the need for the morals of the stories to reach an older audience. The messages in both of these tales are helpful to children growing up: you know, like beauty is from within and don’t be lured into strangers’ houses and stuff. Kids seem to be growing up faster these days and with the classic Disney cartoons pretty much obsolete from our culture, (Although I suppose Vanessa Hudgens is the “Disney character” of today, which makes a lot of sense that she’s in the “Beastly” movie), this is the next, new way to get these stories out there and have this youth generation listen to them.
Yes though this is remix, especially when analyzing in the context of adding new meanings, such as adult content to the narrative and visual images. I view this type of remix to be more profit motivated, similar to how comics and theater performance are made into movies, such as X-Men. The roles also reverse, popular movies, such as Legally Blond have also been remixed into Theater plays. When canned theater plays were first made into photo plays and filmed they were scrutinized by critics who claimed this was not art. It was a copy for the purpose of profit, not considered artistically value. However, as people look further into film they learn there is a very artistic value attached to film regarding editing, angle, techniques, narrative and even score. Comics creators were also outraged since there is a threat to print media.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I still argue this adaptation of illustration or other popular media like comics onto film is a profit motivated way to automatically have a cult following attached to the film, I still see the artistic potential filmmakers have to create new meaning within an already popular tale.
Its also interesting how Disney is seen as the original story teller, when in fact Mickey Mouse actually came from a racist comic! Chris Ware on Mickey Mouse: “What is he doing with white gloves? Gee, I wonder where that comes from.”