Alex Gladwin “Big Girls Don’t Cry: Gender in the Comic Book Series Fables”
argument: writes progressive & critical takes on gender re: fairy tales, but fails to do so re: comic books. Examine two major characters: Snow White, Director of Operations for Fabletown; Goldilocks, Marxist rebel
fairy tales (European): reward passivity, beauty, silence
Snow White: head of Fabletown, given agency in choosing romantic partners (divorced Prince Charming, initially rejects Bigby)
Goldilocks: very politically outspoken, granted sexual identity
female characters in comic books: well-known problems
characters in Fables? not so good
Snow White: criticizes herself for crying not as professional, but male characters feel that hitting someone is totally so!
Goldilocks: politics makes no sense, sexual identity used to illustrate her villainy, incredibly prolonged death scene
[I don't really think it's useful to separate out good things re: fairy tales and bad re: comics, because they're such LITTLE steps overall and undercut so terribly by the rest. But I am pretty bitter that _Fables_ ended up sucking so much on so many axes.]
[I vent about _Fables_ in the question period. Sorry, other audience members!]
There was also: Laura Berger, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Reflections of Aging in Snow White and the Huntsman”, but I haven't seen that so I started poking at slide upload options instead (unsuccessfully). From what I heard, the speaker criticizes it pretty heavily. (As always, for film criticism I turn to Genevieve.)
(The last panelist was not there.)
Audience: asks about recent popularity of Snow White; speaker re: movie: maybe not Snow White in particular, just a trend? Wants to be optimistic, say that they want to adapt, but thinks just part of sequel/remake trend. Obviously movie where has to defeat another woman, doesn't agree that was feminist. Re: _Once Upon a Time_, maybe wanted a big challenge?
Panel moderator: character is just there, gives a lot of space to reclaim
speaker re: _Fables_: points to Tanith Lee etc., not sure that new
Audience: _SN & Huntsman_: upset that Snow White won, didn't think victory earned, wanted backstory for Queen that was hinted at
speaker: agrees frustrating
audience: why fairy tales so much?
speakers: storytelling economy; Disney generation; general interest in myth now; postmodernism, what do stories tell about teller?
audience: re-visiting pre-Disney versions, want to know "actual" story or darker versions
panel links to dark gritty remakes
