(1) WAX TREK. The Orange County Register’s Keith Sharon should get a Pulitzer Prize for the first line of his article “$80,000 later, why this trio gave up their ‘Star Trek’ wax figures, Enterprise replica”:
Mr. Spock’s head cooled in a wooden crate for 10 years before someone noticed something was wrong.
Equally good is the rest of the article — about the fate of the wax Star Trek crew since the defunct Movieland Wax Museum sold its exhibits in 2006.
Steve and Lori had 24 hours to decide whether they wanted to pay about $40,000 for Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Uhura, Dr. McCoy, Chekov and Scott. Or they could buy just one, or just a few.
They went to Don Jose’s restaurant and had margaritas over dinner. They knew other people wanted to buy the individuals in the crew. One guy wanted to put Spock in a bar. Another guy wanted to put Captain Kirk in his house. So they decided to buy them all, to keep the crew together. They made it their mission to save the crew of the Enterprise.
“Let’s protect them,” Steve told Lori.
“We took them home and put them in our dining room,” Lori said.
That’s when it got weird. Steve couldn’t stand the life-like eyes looking at him all the time.
“We put paper bags over their heads,” Steve said.
Steve Greenthal puts on the head of his Captain Kirk wax figure at the Fullerton Airport before donating them to the Hollywood Sci-Fi Museum on Saturday, March 25, 2017. The figures were purchased when the Movieland Wax Museum went out of business. (Photo by Nick Agro, Orange County Register/SCNG)
(2) NOT ENOUGH HAMMER. Ursula K. Le Guin reviews Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology for The Guardian and finds it very well-written but wanting in some ways:
Gaiman plays down the extreme strangeness of some of the material and defuses its bleakness by a degree of self-satire. There is a good deal of humour in the stories, the kind most children like – seeing a braggart take a pratfall, watching the cunning little fellow outwit the big dumb bully. Gaiman handles this splendidly. Yet I wonder if he tries too hard to tame something intractably feral, to domesticate a troll.
… What finally left me feeling dissatisfied is, paradoxically, the pleasant, ingratiating way in which he tells it. These gods are not only mortal, they’re a bit banal. They talk a great deal, in a conversational tone that descends sometimes to smart-ass repartee. This chattiness will be familiar to an audience accustomed to animated film and graphic narrative, which have grown heavy with dialogue, and in which disrespect is generally treated as a virtue. But it trivialises, and I felt sometimes that this vigorous, robust, good-natured version of the mythos gives us everything but the very essence of it, the heart.
(3) FROM BUFFY TO BATGIRL. Joss Whedon is in talks to do a Batgirl movie says The Hollywood Reporter.
Whedon is in negotiations to write, direct and produce a Batgirl stand-alone movie for Warner Bros., adding another heroine to the studio’s DC cinematic universe.
Warner Bros. Pictures president Toby Emmerich will oversee the project, along with Jon Berg and Geoff Johns….
Batgirl will be the second female superhero stand-alone in Warner Bros. DCU (Wonder Woman will hit theaters on June 2). Whedon has long been credited as a pioneering voice for female-focused genre fare, having created the hit TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer two decades ago.
(4) DIETZ ESTATE SALE. Over 300 sf/f collectible books and other items from Frank Dietz’ are for sale on eBay. Dietz passed away in 2013.
He was chairman of the first 14 Lunacons, and was Fan Guest of Honor at the 2007 Lunacon. His activities as “Station Luna,” an effort to record the proceedings of many World SF Conventions, continued for many years. He recorded events at the 1951 Worldcon in New Orleans.
(5) WOTF IN TOWN. Ron Collins reports on Day 2 of the annual Writers of the Future Workshop.
“It’s a little overwhelming,” Andrew Peery told me during a break after the opening session. He meant it in a good way. Peery, from North Carolina, is the 4th quarter first prize winner. The group had just walked through the Author Services Hall of Writers and been given a presentation of past judges throughout the contest’s history. People here have asked me how things have changed in the 18 years since my last visit. One thing that’s different is that the list of judges has gotten a little longer and a little more prominent. It’s very cool to think about.
One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the purpose of the workshop.
“Our goal in this workshop is to help you train yourself to be a professional writer,” Dave Farland said in his opening remarks. He and Tim [Powers] then covered several topics, focusing on things like how to develop writerly habits, how stories are structured, and how to create and use suspense. And that was just before lunch. Along the way the two of them did a little brotherly bickering about the speed with this things should be done. “If you’re here, we already know you’re good,” Dave said. “But now we want to help you think about producing that good work more quickly.” Tim, followed that up with: “My first drafts take forever and are never any good.” Then he explained why that was just fine by him. I’ve seen that before, but, yeah, it holds up on second viewing! It’s always great to see how creativity is different for two such high-caliber artists.
Other authors have written about Day 1 and Day 3.
(6) EGYPT IN SF. Tim Powers was recently interviewed by Rachel Connor and described his preparation.
Rachel: I was first introduced to your work when I read The Anubis Gates, a historical fiction with time-travel, Victorian corruption and ancient Egyptian folklore. Can you tell us a little about your approach to historical fiction? What is it about a certain period of time that intrigues you?
Tim: A novel for me generally starts with something I stumble across in recreational non-fiction reading. I’ll notice some peculiarity — like Edison working on a phone to talk to dead people with, or Albert Einstein going to a séance — and I’ll start to wonder if a story might not be built around what I’m reading.
If I come across another oddity or two — like Edison’s last breath being preserved in a test tube in a museum in Michigan, or Einstein turning out to have had a secret daughter who disappears from history in 1902 — I’ll decide that this isn’t recreational reading after all, but research for a book.
For The Anubis Gates, it was a note in one of Lord Byron’s letters. He said that several people had recognized him in London at a particular date in 1810, when at that time he was in fact in Turkey, very sick with a fever.
I wondered how he might have a doppelganger, and started reading all about Byron, and his doctor in Turkey, and London at the time, looking for clues
(7) EVERY JOT AND TITTLE. Tom Easton and Michael Burstein’s collaborative short story “Sofer Pete” has been published in Nature
The visitors were crowded against one wall of bookcases, facing a large table on which was stretched a long piece of parchment. An inkwell filled with black ink sat off to the side. A hand holding a traditional goose-quill pen moved over the parchment, leaving rows of Hebrew characters behind it more quickly than a human hand ever could.
Because the hand did not belong to a human. The gleaming metal hand belonged to a humanoid robot seated on the other side of the table. Its name was Pete.
(8) THANKS DAD! Most people know Joe Hill’s father is Stephen King. Here’s what happened when young Joe turned to him for advice….
In the late 1990s I asked my Dad how to write a cover letter for my short fiction submissions. He was glad to help out. pic.twitter.com/BV5x7qbjqf
— Joe Hill (@joe_hill) March 30, 2017
(9) “EVERY WINDOW’S A SEAT”. How much will people pay to be in space for a few minutes? “Jeff Bezos just revealed a mock-up of the spacecraft his rocket company will use to take tourists into space”.
Each launch will rocket a handful of wealthy tourists more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth on a roughly 11-minute trip.
Near the top of a high arc, the rocket will detach from the space capsule, which will fall toward the ground, granting passengers about four minutes of weightlessness and letting them take in an incredible view of the fringes of our planet’s outer atmosphere.
(10) GHOSTESS WITH THE MOSTEST. The BBC says the animated Ghost in the Shell was good, but the live-action is better.
The Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell isn’t just one of the most acclaimed science-fiction cartoons ever made, it’s one of the most acclaimed science-fiction films, full stop. Conceptually and visually breathtaking, Mamoru Oshii’s cyberpunk detective flick bridged the gap between analogue blockbusters and digital ones, between Blade Runner and The Terminator, with their cyborgs and androids, and The Matrix and Avatar, with their body-swaps and virtual realities. The makers of The Matrix, in particular, were happy to acknowledge that they were following in Oshii’s future-noir footsteps.
The question is, then, is it worth bothering with a belated live-action version? Considering that the cartoon is now a cult classic, and that several other films have taken its innovations and run with them, can a mega-budget Hollywood remake have anything of its own to offer? The answer to both questions is a definite yes.
(11) RELAUNCH. First reuse of a SpaceX recoverable booster — NPR reports:
SpaceX launched a communications satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using a rocket stage that has already been to space and back. SpaceX is betting that this kind of recycling will lower its costs and revolutionize space flight.
(12) NOT FIVE? At the B&N Sci-FI & Fantasy Blog, Corinna Lawson shares the four rules that tell her “How to Know When It’s Okay to Read a Series out of Order”.
- When the character arcs are resolved by book’s end
In Sins of Empire, there are three leads, and all set out on emotional journeys that are fully resolved by book’s end.
Meanwhile, ASoIaF readers are still waiting to see what happens via-à-vis Jamie Lannister’s redemption arc, whether the Khaleesi will ever seize her birthright, if Tyrion’s suffering will amount to anything, or if Jon Snow will ever stop flailing about and realize who and what he is.
In Bujold’s The Warrior’s Apprentice, a young man who dreams of being a soldier finds more than he bargained for, and, at the end, his journey has a resolution, despite a fair dozen books that follow.
But Bishop’s Others, series, well, readers have been waiting for four books to see what happens with Simon and Meg, and though their patience is rewarded, it took four other books to get there.
(13) REVIEW HAIKU. Aaron Pound begins with a 17-syllable plot summary, then goes on to tell why he loved Kelly Sue DeConnick’s graphic story Pretty Deadly, Vol. 1: The Shrike.
Full review: I must confess that I obtained this book almost solely because it was written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, and at this point I am pretty much willing to at least take a look at anything she writes. Pretty Deadly not only met the high expectations I have for work from DeConnick, it exceeded them. This is, quite bluntly, mythic storytelling that manages to be both epic in scale and simultaneously intensely personal. Told via a combination of tight and brilliant writing from DeConnick and stunningly beautiful and evocative artwork from Emma Rios, this story presents a violent and visceral enigma shrouded in mystery wrapped up in magic, gunfights, and swordplay.
(14) THREE SHALL BE THE NUMBER THOU SHALT COUNT. This is a public service announcement from N.K. Jemisin.
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/847085088512847872
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/847085668283142145
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/847086270694260736
(15) KORSHAK COLLECTION. An exhibit from “The Korshak Collection: Illustrations of Imaginative Literature” will be on display April 10-May 16 at the Albin O Kuhn Library and Gallery on the University of Maryland Baltimore County campus. The collection, now owned by Stephen Korshak, was started by his father Erle Korshak, past Worldcon chair and founder of the imprint Shasta Publishers, and has its own impressive website.
Truly a vision of the fantastic, this exhibition is an amazing exploration of both illustrative art and the evolution of the visual landscape of science fiction and fantasy literature. Featuring work by both American and European artists and spanning more than a century, these vivid illustrations bring to life adventures, beings, and worlds conjured in novels such as Don Quixote, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Tarzan, and pulp magazines including Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Fantastic Adventures, and Wonder Stories. Accomplishing far more than simply guiding readers in their explorations of new and sometimes bizarre realms, the range and impact of these illustrations is far-reaching.
The exhibition will also include books, pulp magazines, and other items drawn from UMBC’s Rosenfeld Collection, revealing how the illustrations in the Korshak Collection were meant to appear when encountered as artifacts of material culture.
(16) BEYOND ORWELL. The 2084 Kickstarter has funded. The collection —
features 11 stories from leading science fiction writers who were all asked the same question – what will our world look like 67 years from now? The anthology features new and exclusive stories from:
Jeff Noon, Christopher Priest, James Smythe, Lavie Tidhar, Aliya Whiteley, David Hutchinson, Cassandra Khaw, Desirina Boskovich, Anne Charnock, Ian Hocking, and Oliver Langmead.
(17) BOOKS WERE SOLD. This is John Scalzi’s executive summary of The Collapsing Empire’s first week:
So, in sum: Top selling science fiction hardcover in the US, second-best-selling audio book in the US, my highest debut on the USA Today bestseller list, and a TV deal.
That’s a pretty good week, y’all.
Fuller details at the post.
(18) JURY CALL. The Shadow Clarke Jury continues to review its Clarke Award picks.
I put this novel on my shadow shortlist after reading the opening chapters on Amazon, because I was fascinated by the premise: the seemingly inexplicable overnight irruption of masses of full-grown trees into our familiar world. I said, when I explained my choices, that I was intrigued because it reminded me somewhat of John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, in which the world is transformed, first by meteors, which cause mass blindness, and then by the apparently coordinated escape of the triffids, seizing the opportunities afforded by this new blindness. I was curious to see how much The Trees might be in conversation with Triffids more than half a century on.
De Abaitua wrote one of the most complex and difficult novels from 2015, If Then, and I still find myself wondering about it at random times. I was so taken by that strange novel about an algorithmic society in decay—a novel that feels so uneven on the surface, yet so complete in substance—I couldn’t articulate my thoughts well enough to write a decent review. Since then, The Destructives has been on my “most anticipateds” list. Placed on a Clarke award shortlist only once before, for The Red Men in 2008, de Abaitua was unaccountably left off the list for If Then in 2016. The Destructives is the latest piece in this abstract thematic series and, given its scope, it seems primed to make up for last year’s Clarke snub.
Any work of fiction is a formal exercise in the controlled release and withholding of information. What is withheld and for how long is a key element in how we read the work and even how we classify it. To give an obvious example, in a detective story in the classical mode it is essential that the identity of the killer is withheld until the last page, the structure of the novel is therefore dictated by the need to steadily release information that leads towards this conclusion without actually pre-empting it. How successful the novel is depends upon the skill with which this information is managed. If too much is given away so that readers can guess whodunnit too early, the work is adjudged a failure; similarly, if too little is revealed so that the denouement comes out of the blue, it is seen as a cheat and again the work fails.
In a recent article for the Guardian, ‘How to build a feminist utopia’, Naomi Alderman briefly sets out some pragmatic measures for helping pave the way to a world in which genitals, hormones and gender identification don’t matter because ‘everyone gets to be both vulnerable and tough, aggressive and nurturing, effortlessly confident and inclusively consensus-building, compassionate and dominant’. Among suggestions such as trying to establish equal parenting as the norm and teaching boys to be able to express their emotions, she also proposes teaching every girl self-defence at school from the age of five to sixteen. In effect, this is what happens in The Power when it becomes apparent that a generation of teenage girls across the world have developed the capacity to emit electric shocks. The only difference is that this doesn’t just allow the girls to defend themselves against male violence but instead enables them to become the aggressors.
(19) STATUARY GRIPE. Copied to Twitter, a grumpy letter to the editor from a “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” type about a proposed Terry Pratchett statue.
I am delighted Mr Eric G Hart is in the minority and does not speak for the people of Salisbury. #GNUTerryPratchett #SpeakHisName pic.twitter.com/wTkHIUkWbZ
— Terry Pratchett ???? ???? (@terryandrob) March 30, 2017
(20) TV IS COMING. HBO’s latest series promo, Game of Thrones Season 7: Long Walk.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, rcade, Rob Thornton, Cat Eldridge, Mark-kitteh, David K.M.Klaus, Andrew Porter, Chip Hitchcock, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]
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@Cora: she said that American kids scare more easily than German kids. Your mother missed a propaganda point; she should have said that American \parents/ scare more easily, and so hide their kids from reality. (cf Gaiman’s discussion of ~age-based reactions to Coraline — some things in it seriously creep out adults while just getting isn’t-that-strange reactions from kids.) Or she could have made a more specifically German observation (extending @Lis’s comment): American media, like American beer, was flattened out so as to have nothing that could offend parts of the mass, rather than having substance. (Are you familiar with Minow’s contemporary reference to TV as a “vast wasteland”?) Bambi isn’t the only instance; I was surprised on reading Toby Tyler (after seeing the movie) to find out that the monkey died. NB: I’m using what I read as your equivalencing of “American” with “USian”; I’ll leave comments on Canadian culture to @James Davis Nicoll et al.
Lurkertype:
Yes, of course. Absolutely. But my comment still stands as our cultures are so much alike.
@Lis: fascinating link (re Japanese observation of Christmas). YMMV, but I’d argue that it’s a weaker demonstration of cultural appropriation, since most of Christmas was stolen from Romans (observing the birth right after Saturnalia, rather than in February as attested) and more-northerly peoples (trees, lights, …) — with the help of Dickens (who was prompted by a couple of unusually-snowy London Decembers).
When I read Christmas, I automatically translate to Yuletide which is non-religious, so I do not get the same associations. :/
Is Jesus involved at all in the japanese christmas?
I used a Chinese Christmas tree on our card one year. Took the picture thirteen years and a couple weeks back, when we went over to enlarge the family.
Actually, I’ve been looking for a version of Cinderella that I saw years ago on Denver’s channel 7. My sisters and I were fascinated by it, not suspecting at the time that it was more authentic than the US-standard version polished by Disney. The doves have a chorus role, pointing out obviousness in rhyme. “Coo-kit-y coo! / There’s blood on the shoe! This is not the girl for you!” (As one of my sisters replied, “Coo-kit-y coo! / There’s blood on her head! / This girl is dead!”)
Besides the doves, and the violence (which stops short of dragging the wicked stepmother through the streets in a barrel full of nails), the film is distinguished by having two evil pudding heads who do little jobs for the stepmother. They had a sort of Laurel & Hardy vibe going, not totally unlike Henry Calvin and Gene Sheldon as the villainous henchmen in Disney’s BABES IN TOYLAND. At the end of the movie, they must be punished, so they are forced by laughing townspeople to eat a bunch of sausages. “Eat them! Eat those sausages! Ho ho! Just look at those pudding heads eating those sausages, I tell you!”
One thing this movie gets right that Disney messed up was the ‘just desserts’ bit, in fact. The stepmother and sisters are shown understanding their defeat here. I’ve long felt that this was missing from the Disney version, and since they’ve been unafraid to recut their classics, they still could slip in a shot of that Chamberlain or whatever he is telling Mrs. Mumblemumble, “So you see, that beautiful princess was your daughter Cinderella ALL ALONG!”, to which all three (Stepmother, Stepsisters) turn out slightly to open themselves up to the audience and chorus, “Ehh! NOW HE TELLS US!!” and the one on the end pulls out a six-shooter as big as a human leg and blasts their three heads (lined up, naturally). Their feet go up, and they go back on their keesters with a satisfying percussive sound, and they put in that “bee-WHOOP!” noise Bob Clampett liked so well and wrap up with a four-note cadence. The End!
That live-action CINDERELLA, though, I just haven’t been able to find. There’s one from about 1971 that I keep finding, but that has to have been pretty much the year I first saw it (if not 1970), and I can’t imagine KLZ having a brand new movie of any sort to show in their three-to-five afternoon slot.
@Chip Hitchcock–
My perspective is rather different. First of all, the early Christians were a persecuted minority, hiding their celebrations and observances from the Roman authorities, and that’s why the celebration of Christmas coincides with Saturnalia.
Also, of course, because many of the early converts were lower class Romans, Roman slaves, and occasionally upper class Romans. They weren’t cultural marauders stealing from a a culture they thought beneath them.
Christmas trees were also not stolen, but brought in by Germanic converts, brought to England by Prince Albert, brought to the US by German immigrants and by the English influence after Prince Albert.
And it almost doesn’t matter. They’re still real American traditions, deeply valued by millions of Americans, the traditions they grew up with. The numbers have shrunk some over our lifetimes, the great majority are still Christians. This is their religion, their God, not a cultural legacy no one believes in as their real religion.
Why is that less deserving of respect and sensitivity than Hampus’s Norse gods?
@Hampus Eckerman–
According to other accounts I’ve read and seen, many Japanese have confused Jesus with Santa Claus, with the Santa Claus image of a man flying around the world in a single night, in a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer dominating with the Jesus name attached. So, no, not in any real sense, but it doesn’t strike me as particularly respectful.
And honestly, the idea that someone from one of the cultures we got some of our Christmas traditions from looks at Christmas and sees their own culture’s holiday that coincides with it roughly in date, and is (maybe?) older, strikes me rather differently than the Japanese taking the Christmas name and a few trappings, and making it into Valentine’s Day.
Which may not be fair or reasonable.
And perhaps a Japanese couple confronted on their celebration of Christmas Eve would have an utterly serious, sincere explanation based in the American occupation of Japan after the war.
Pingback: NEWS FROM FANDOM: 3-2-2017 - Amazing Stories
Well, Jesus with his reindeers is really up there with Thor as a space alien. ^^
The one Disney I’m offended by is The Little Mermaid, a very tragic HC Andersen story transformer to a romantic sing-a-long. I refuse to see it.
And to be honest, Marvel’s Thor was more WTF than something to be offended by at first. But Thor as a title, that one really got my blood boiling.
For me the worst Disneyfication of a property was the Hunchback movie. Not just for trivializing, but for whitewashing the evil done by some chief characters. It’s as if the movie was some Rashomon-like recounting of the events of the story, highly edited to get a miserable bastard off the hook.
Another prime example of overlooked cultural appropriation are the several Celtic cultures. I’ve heard a lot of very thoughtful ranting on that subject from an author I’l decline to name because she gets so much shit on the topic.
And, yeah, I’ve contributed a bit to that appropriation with my Mabinogi-inspired stories.
@Hampus Eckerman
For proper tragedy though The Little Mermaid needs to lose the ‘daughters of the air’ tacked on second ending (How to tell a story – start at the beginning, continue to the end, then STOP, Mr. Andersen!):
Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid
The only movie I recall crying at as a kid. Forget Bambi’s mom – unrequited love and dissolving to sea foam are where tears are jerked. Still hard to believe it made American TV but that’s what indie stations were good at 🙂
So, piggybacking on the folk tales discussion….
My local community theater is gong to be doing a storytelling session in August for children and adults. The theme is “ethnic folktales”, which I understand to mean “folk tales that most Americans would never have heard of.” So not English or American, but perhaps Irish or French or Welsh…. It occurs to me that there’s an international commentariat here; perhaps someone could point me to some good Swedish, or Turkish, or Russian, or Indian folk tales that can be told in about 5-10 minutes? (In English translation…)
I’d greatly appreciate it!
Aaah, it is the english translation that makes it hard. I’ll try to find some.
Try this one! If for nothing else, so for the wonderful illustrations.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0863154573/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491153685&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=swedish+folk+tales&dpPl=1&dpID=51EWDtU98BL&ref=plSrch
Hampus, I’d really appreciate it. (And I figured the English translation would be a problem; but it’s for an American audience and Americans, as you know, only speak one language. Often badly. <grin> )
@Cassy B.
I think trickster stories are usually popular. Anything with coyote, rabbit, Anansi, etc. might be worth a look. A family favorite bedtime story is:
Fire Race
Which is an adaptation of a Karuk tale of Coyote bringing fire to the people. It might be an easy 5 to 10 minute retelling.
Another place to look for ideas might be:
Myths Retold
It’s pretty much snarky modern retelling of myths from around the world (and a lovely time sink!). It might give a chance to sample a bit though and then go looking for source material behind the ones you find interesting.
As a Floridian and frequent Disney World visitor, I have to say that you’re missing out. It’s an animated classic with terrific Alan Menken and Howard Ashman songs that brought Disney back into the animated musical business.
Yes, it’s romantic and ends happily, but how many Disney movies don’t?
@Hampus – That book looks great! I recognize the art.
And @Stoic Cynic – LoL! Browsing those myths right now.
I found out last year that KFC (yes, Kentucky Fried Chicken) is an important part of Japanese Christmas celebrations too.
Stoic Cynic, that looks very promising; thank you! (I need stories for about eight storytellers, so please, folks, keep them coming….)
(edit to add) and the Myths Retold one looks great; we need some content that adults will find amusing and something in there is bound to fill the bill.
Hampus, that looks very good; thank you!
@Hampus Eckerman–
Indeed! 😀
I’m with you on that one. It may be, as rcade says, excellent, in fact I’m sure it is. But a happy ending? That’s just wrong.
@Soon Lee–
Yes. I don’t understand that choice. But weird food choices are every culture’s sacred right, surely.
Regarding the “American kids scare more easily than German kids” comment, just must remember that I was five at the time, so my Mom tried to come up with an explanation a five year old would understand and that would hopefully keep me from gleefully telling my entire kindergarten class how the story really goes and traumatising a bunch of kids in the process.
@Heather Rose Jones
I’ve heard a respected SFF author say that Celtic culture is the shared legacy of all white people, therefore it was totally okay to appropriate it. Uhm, no, I’m a white European, but Celtic culture is not my culture. And at least going by surname, I’m pretty sure that the author in question is not of Celtic origin either.
Coincidentally, what also annoys me a whole lot are stories which portray the Brothers Grimm as adventurers and monster hunters. Uhm, nope, the Grimms were staid academics who didn’t even go out to collect fairy tales themselves, but instead advertised in newspapers, asking for people to tell them fairy tales. This also explains why some stories like Cinderella show up in slightly different versions in both Grimm’s and Charles Perrault’s collections. Because a lot of the people who responded to the Grimm brothers’ advertisements were young ladies of the upper middle class, where it was fashionable to employ French nannies at the time. So these young ladies were told French folk tales by their nannies and then passed them on to the Grimms.
Regarding the Japanese Christmas as Valentine’s day thing, I find it very odd, but am not personally offended by it. But then, I am not religious. Plus, most of the current western trappings of Christmas have very little to do with the Christian origins of the holiday anyway. Though I can understand that a religious person might well feel offended by the Japanese take on Christmas.
Also, the problem isn’t so much that things like Disney’s fairy tale movies or Marvel’s Thor exist, but that they overshadow all other versions of the tale in question. How many people believe that the Little Mermaid was really named Arielle and are shocked to realise that the original Hans Christian Andersen story has an unhappy ending? How many people believe that the seven dwarves have names? How many people believe that there were always singing and dancing household implements in The Beauty and the Beast?
I expect that in any version, they do have names. We just don’t necessarily know them.
@Lis: do you have evidence for your explanation of the date of Christmas? An underground festival does not need to match the dates of an aboveground festival, and certainly gets no advantage from following those dates; AFAICT, after Constantine declared Christianity the state religion it acquired the Roman habit of appropriating other peoples’ forms.
@Cora: yes, I can see how not having you frighten your new classmates would be a good strategic move.
Here are some Vietnamese fairy tales.
http://en.vietnam.com/culture/art/fairy-tales.html
Used to have a book with those when I was a kid.
How December 25 Became Christmas has a variety of suggestions grounded in evidence, and overall discusses it as a far more complicated question than perhaps some might like. It’s clear on a few points, if one has the patience to read it: 1. That Jesus is not likely to have been born on December 25. This is, I hope, not in dispute. 2. That a date very roughly aligned with late December/early January definitely predates Constantine.
And:
When Constantine made his proclamation, he wasn’t making up shit or committing an innovation. He was making a choice between two competing midwinter dates, both already widely recognized.
Note that the article doesn’t support either version of “they were copying the pagans”:
It’s after Constantine that this starts to happen, and as noted, Constantine didn’t invent the midwinter tradition; he picked between two existing dates, fairly close together. That’s where our Twelve Days of Christmas originate.
Also:
So we’re both wrong on “they copied the pagans,” but I think I carry my main point: It wasn’t about nefariously filching someone else’s holiday.
That was not an easy post to compose on my tablet…
@Lis Carey: Interesting stuff, thanks for posting that & linking to the article.
Lis Carey:
Can’t see anything that supports this? I find it quite likely that the date of 25:th was picked to coincide with midwinter and other festivals around that time. It is not supported by the Bible anyhow.
I’ve always liked that Easter theory of Christmas. That places the crucifixion on the same date as the Annunciation, just because. The date of Easter, of course, isn’t fixed either but the time of year is: late March to mid-April. The Annunciation is on March 25 in the Catholic calendar (also the day Frodo reaches Mount Doom), nine months later is Christmas.
Combination of a very successful ad campaign which provided an answer to the question “so what do we eat at Christmas?”, and turkey not being as prominent a meat over there as in the UK or US, I think.
@Hampus Eckerman–
No one is claiming December 25 is “supported by the Bible.” No one in this discussion, and it’s not claimed by any Christian denomination I’m aware of. So I don’t know why you think that’s a point that needs to be made.
It was at a time when the Christians hadn’t started copying the pagans and borrowing pagan customs. There is no textual evidence of the date of Saturnalia being a reason for the date of Christmas.
There is, however, textual evidence of theological arguments in favor of the date, with Christians in widely separated areas coming up with similar arguments in favor of similar dates fairly close together.
There’s clear evidence of a general consensus on the midwinter timing for Christian theological reasons well before Constantine came on the scene.
So if you want to support the “Christians stole Christmas from the pagans” position, it’s your turn to pony up with some evidence.
Hampus, thank you for the Vietnamese fairy tales! Did you have a favorite Vietnamese story when you were a kid?
Lis Carey:
So if there if everyone agrees on that December 25:th is not supported by the bible, then how can we conclude that this date is not copied from somewhere else? Just a belief that christians had never copied holidays from others?
When you have ponied up the evidence for “Christian theological reasons well before Constantine came on the scene”.
As I see it, what has been written here does not make it possible to draw any conclusions regarding the reasons for the date.
Sorry, can’t remember them well enough. Will check to see if I still have the book left. But my favourite from Thousand and One Night is the story of the hunchback. Often forgotten next to the tales of Aladdin or Ali Baba.
I really like the story of the peasant and the tiger from the link you sent me; it reminds me of a Kipling “Just So” story. And the tale of the hunchback from the Arabian Nights is wonderful. Thank you SO MUCH; you’re a terrific help!
So if there if everyone agrees on that December 25:th is not supported by the bible, then how can we conclude that this date is not copied from somewhere else? Just a belief that christians had never copied holidays from others?
Because we have a well-worked out theory of how it came about, which is based on things we know Christians believed (about Jesus’ conception), and which explains the two rival dates for Christmas (25th December and 6th January), which as far as I know no other theory does.
Also because it’s not clear there actually was a pagan festival that would have given rise to that specific date. There were undoubtedly pagan midwinter festivals, of which Christmas has undoubtedly taken over some aspects, but the two biggest ones were the Saturnalia (17th December) and the Calends (1st January). The Sol Invictus festival, which is traditionally said to have provided the date for Christmas, is only clearly attested after Constantine anyway, and I believe the first document to mention it explicitly mentions Christmas as well. Also there’s evidence Sol Invictus festivals were sometimes kept on other dates.
Saturnia was in the 17th of December until the calendar was shifted, then it was placed on the 25th. Sol Invicta was also placed on the 25th. And we know that several Christmas traditions, such as gift giving, was taken from Saturnalia. We also know that both celebrations intermingled under Constantine.
Also… theological arguments. Yes. But was the birthday calculated after the theory or was the theory created after a chosen birthday? Those who think that is an offensive question should take a look at how Swedens national day was decided. 😉
the 6 Jan date is based on the Julian (“Old Style”) calendar. The Greeks and Russians still use it for religious events. (We had a Greek neighbor one place we lived. The other neighbor was Italian.)
@James Moar: as I understand it, the KFC campaign had an advantage; I’ve read that Japanese treat/luxury tastes run more to fried foods (e.g., tonkatsu) than in the ~western world, possibly because having enough oil to deep-fry something in was not common. Frying chicken seems to be much more common/established than frying turkey; I don’t know whether that’s just habit or whether turkey parts don’t fry well. (Yes, I’ve heard of deep-fried whole turkey; that’s a very different case — not to mention something that requires serious resources of oil, heat, and space.)
Saturnia was in the 17th of December until the calendar was shifted, then it was placed on the 25th.
Which calendar shift are you referring to? I know of none that would shift a feast by eight days. Certainly the end of Saturnalia came about the same time as Sol Invictus/Christmas, which would no doubt help one festival to take on qualities of the other
But was the birthday calculated after the theory or was the theory created after a chosen birthday?
The fact that the theory accounts for two different dates, both kept as the birthday, suggests the former.
the 6 Jan date is based on the Julian (“Old Style”) calendar. The Greeks and Russians still use it for religious events.
No. It’s true that the Julian calendar did at one point put Christmas on 6th January Gregorian (now it’s 7th January). But long before that, before the Gregorian calendar existed, there was a dispute about whether Christ’s birth should be celebrated on the 25th December or the 6th January. This was in the end resolved in both the Greek and the Roman Church by making the December date Christmas and the January one Epiphany; both feasts are now kept, according to which ever calendar the church follows. The Armenian Church, however, still keeps Christmas on 6th January Julian, i.e 19th January Gregorian.
@Hampus I hope we get a chance to see your kitten when we’re in Stockholm this summer!
I used to get upset about movies that changed key details of books I’d read and liked. Then I read something by (I think) George R.R. Martin who talked about what a challenge it was to turn a book into a movie, and that any sort of derivative artwork ought to be judged on its own merits, not on a basis of how close it was to the original.
Since then, I’ve been okay with sanitized stories. So I would ignore what happened in the “real” Cinderella (I read it in German once and concluded she was a witch!); all I want to know is whether any particular recounting of it was a good story.
We already have no problem doing that when then material is stretched very far from the original. If I wrote a story where Loki was the hero but everyone hated him because he was gay and so he ended up with a frost giant for a boyfriend, and then together they organized a concert called Rag’na’Rock to raise money to fight AIDS, I think people would probably handle that okay. I think we just need to be a little more flexible.
I worry that if we insist on too much fidelity to original forms of stories that we’re likely to be discouraging creativity. We’re supposed to be the progressives, after all. The other guys are the conservatives.
As for Jesus and his eight tiny reindeer, all I can say is that when I lived in Japan, my Japanese boyfriend joked about “how important Christmas is to us Japanese–even though we’re Buddhists.” The usual joke among other expats was that “America and Japan reverse Christmas and New Years in terms of which one is the big family holiday and which is the big drinking holiday.” Anyway, I never saw Jesus in any of the advertising material in Tokyo, but Santa Claus was very popular. I also never heard of Christmas being a romantic holiday.
Maybe if you got outside Tokyo you might find people who had Jesus and Santa confused, but I’m pretty sure 90%+ of Tokyoites would laugh at them.
Lis Carey on April 2, 2017 at 7:50 am said:
I believe that both are equal in their deserving of respect and sensitivity. Just not on the side you’d prefer.
Nope.
Kip W on April 2, 2017 at 7:04 am said:
Things like this I always see as a challenge to prove the power of my Google-Fu.
A West German movie called Aschenputtel from 1955 that was dubbed into English in 1966.
Skimming through it, it seems that you are off quite a bit on the details (to be expected with such an old memory) but there is no question this is it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB95Z3pasns
Surrender to my superior technique, Grasshopper!