{"id":497,"date":"2010-09-15T13:05:19","date_gmt":"2010-09-15T17:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/?p=497"},"modified":"2010-09-15T13:46:37","modified_gmt":"2010-09-15T17:46:37","slug":"untangling-tangled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/2010\/09\/15\/untangling-tangled\/","title":{"rendered":"Tangled and Its Roots"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“He’s fearless” – “He’s dangerous”: Disney’s Tangled<\/em> announces with great fanfare in the opening scenes of its trailer.\u00a0 We learn a lot about the Prince in just a few moments as he fearlessly takes on the challenges of physical dangers until . . . he chooses the wrong place to hide and meets his match in the long hair of a woman he addresses in the trailer as (I kid you not) Blondie.\u00a0 The Adrien Brody\/ Patrick Dempsey look-alike says a lot\u00a0 (in the voice of Zachary Levi), but poor Rapunzel manages nothing more than “Best day ever!” and a shrill laugh.<\/p>\n

Tangled <\/em>is inspired by “Rapunzel,” written down by the Brothers Grimm in the early part of the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Their Rapunzel also doesn’t say much, and Ruth B. Bottigheimer has pointed out that, as in many of the Grimms’ tales, the heroine is silent.\u00a0 “We learn of her ‘song’ and ‘her sweet voice’ but do not hear her sing.\u00a0 We are told that ‘at first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man, such as her eyes had never yet beheld, came to her,’ but the prince cries out his surprise and his intention: ‘If that is the ladder by which one mounts, I too will try my fortune.'”\u00a0 The Grimms themselves were inspired by oral storytelling traditions in which Rapunzel, after her daily romps with the prince in the tower, becomes pregnant and asks the sorceress in the tower why her clothes are getting so tight.\u00a0 The Brothers edited out that question, and Rapunzel’s twins are never directly connected with those visits to the tower.<\/p>\n

<\/em>For The Grimm Reader, <\/em>just published by W.W. Norton this fall, I put on the cover Arthur Rackham’s stunning illustration for “Rapunzel.”\u00a0 The image reminds me of how the story turns on the relationship between both banished girl and the enchantress (who becomes a witch when the Grimms edited their tales) as well as Rapunzel and the prince.\u00a0 Disney is evidently focusing on the prince in an effort to draw boys to theaters (think: lessons learned from “The Princess and the Frog”).\u00a0 Did they go too far with “Tangled”?\u00a0 I’m more worried about the creepiness of the long hair and how it is used to practice Hair Kwando.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“He’s fearless” – “He’s dangerous”: Disney’s Tangled announces with great fanfare in the opening scenes of its trailer.\u00a0 We learn a lot about the Prince in just a few moments as he fearlessly takes on the challenges of physical dangers until . . . he chooses the wrong place to hide and meets his match […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}