Isegoria

W.F. Price examines changing expectations through the lens of Disney princesses:

Snow White, a girl who cheerfully cooks and cleans for short, stout and bald working men and brings some feminine grace and genuine kindness into the mix as well is an example of the old ideal wife. Not every man would get a Snow White, but he could at least expect that women aspired to be somewhat like her as wives and, most importantly, were expected to be so.

Just 13 years later, after the war that changed everything, Disney released another fairytale movie: Cinderella. Like Snow White, Cinderella was the victim of a cruel stepmother who forced her to work as a maid, but her attitude shows a marked difference. Not only does she bitch and moan about housework, she even indulges the household pests, bringing them food and protecting them from the cat.

The plot in Cinderella revolves around a royal ball in which the prince must choose a wife at the insistence of his father. The ball therefore represents female competition along the lines of the modern mating ritual, where females deck themselves out in all manner of finery and compete for the alpha male’s attention. Again, here is another departure from Snow White. Rather than the modest, bashful young princess waiting for a prince to sweep her away, we have a horde of women descending on a giant dance floor competing for the prize, a desirable male who is reluctant to commit. It’s a scene one can see today in clubs in big cities.

After a catfight and some subsequent hocus pocus, Cinderella emerges victorious in the contest to win the prince’s affection, and the king tracks her down by means of one of the high-heeled shoes she left behind. A fabulous wedding in a palace ensues, and the movie is over.

Cinderella is the template upon which today’s girls structure their dreams. Their overriding goal is to win their reluctant prince and stand victorious over the other women at the altar. That’s it. Once it’s over and they are married, it’s all a big letdown. The man is no longer a groom and princely, there are screaming kids and filthy clothes and dishes, no more people are honoring her and the gown is in a box. Drudgery was never part of the bargain, and who the hell is this schlub sitting on the couch watching football to expect a princess to fix him dinner?

So there we have it: there are no more wives, only brides; no more marriages, only weddings. And this change in our society happened over half a century ago.

A friend recommended that I read the “incredible story” of Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. The folks at 60 Minutes also found it incredible:

The heart of Mortenson’s “Three Cups of Tea” is the story of a failed attempt in 1993 to climb the world’s second-highest peak, K2.  On the way down, Mortenson says, he got lost and stumbled, alone and exhausted, into a remote mountain village in Pakistan named Korphe. According to the book’s narrative, the villagers cared for him and he promised to return to build a school there. In a remote village in  Pakistan, 60 MINUTES found Mortenson’s porters on that failed expedition. They say Mortenson  didn’t get lost and stumble into Korphe on his way down from K2. He visited the village a year later.

That’s what famous author and mountaineer Jon Krakauer, a former donor to Mortenson’s charity, says he found out, too. “It’s a beautiful story.  And it’s a lie,” says Krakauer.  “I have spoken to one of his [Mortenson’s] companions, a close friend, who hiked out from K2 with him and this companion said, ‘Greg never heard of Korphe until a year later,’” Krakauer tells Kroft.  Mortenson did eventually build a school in Korphe, Krakauer says, “But if you read the first few chapters of that book, you realize, ‘I am being taken for a ride here.’ ”

Jim Henson’s early work was in advertising — something the work itself often joked about:

The New York Times gets around to interviewing George R. R. Martin about his beautiful dark twisted fantasy, Game of Thrones, which is coming to HBO in a couple weeks:

I always wanted to do something in epic fantasy. But not just to rehash Tolkien. I wanted to do something to make it my own. To some extent, the project was also a reaction to my own Hollywood career. I was out there for 10 years, from roughly 1985 to 1995. I was on staff on “The Twilight Zone” and “Beauty and the Beast” as a writer-producer, and then I did about five years of development, doing pilots for shows of my own and some feature film scripts. The theme of that whole period for me was, I would always turn in my first draft to whatever network or studio or producer I was working for and the reaction was inevitably, “George, this is great. It’s terrific, it’s a wonderful read, thanks. But it’s three times our budget. We can’t possibly make it. It’s too big and it’s too expensive.”

So then I would go in and I would start cutting. I would combine characters and trim out giant battle scenes, make it produceable. Although the later drafts of those scripts were always more polished, because I’d revised them several times, my favorites were always the first drafts, which had all the good stuff in it which I had to take out because it was too expensive and too big. When I returned to prose, which had been my first love, in the 90s, I said I’m going to do something that is just as big as I want to do. I can have all the special effects I want. I can have a cast of characters that numbers in the hundreds. I can have giant battle scenes. Everything you can’t do in television and film, of course you can do in prose because you’re everything there. You’re the director, you’re the special effects coordinator, you’re the costume department, and you don’t have to worry about a budget.

Of course the irony of all this is the project that I thought most unlikely to ever be filmed — the project that was actually unfilmable — is now going to be this big show on HBO.

I haven’t read any of John Norman’s Gor novels, but I’m aware of them because of their notoriety for what they evolved into over the course of the 29-book series.

The first few books start off as planetary romance adventure novels, in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars stories: British professor Tarl Cabot finds himself transported to the lower-gravity world of Gor, where he becomes a superheroic swordsman.

Over time though, the series grew more philosophical — which makes sense when you realize that author John Norman is actually Queens College CUNY philosophy professor John Lange — and more sexual, with an emphasis on the natural hierarchy that places men above women — which, I suppose, makes “sense” when you realize that Lange is also a classical scholar.

Charlie Jane Anders of io9 interviews Lange about his influences:

I think, pretty clearly, the three major influences on my work are Homer, Freud, and Nietzsche. Interestingly, however obvious this influence might be, few, if any, critics, commentators, or such, have called attention to it. Perhaps it is so obvious that it is simply taken for granted. In Homer you have the primitive, hardy, aristocratic warrior ethos; in Nietzsche you have the rank, distance, and hierarchy, concern with the etiology of belief, the trenchant culture criticism, and such; and, in Freud, of course, you have the depth psychology, and a sense of the radical centrality of sex to the human condition.

Apparently the parody, Houseplants of Gor, matches the tone of the later stories:

The spider plant cringed as its owner brought forth the watering can. “I am a spider plant!” it cried indignantly. “How dare you water me before my time! Guards!” it called. “Guards!”

Borin, its owner, placed the watering can on the table and looked at it. “You will be watered,” he said.

“You do not dare to water me!” laughed the plant.

“You will be watered,” said Borin.

“Do not water me!” wept the plant.

“You will be watered,” said Borin.

I watched this exchange. Truly, I believed the plant would be watered. It was plant, and on Gor it had no rights. Perhaps on Earth, in its permissive society, which distorts the true roles of all beings, which forces both plant and waterer to go unh appy and constrained, which forbids the fulfillment of owner and houseplant, such might not happen. Perhaps there, it would not be watered. But it was on Gor now, and would undoubtedly feel its true place, that of houseplant. It was plant. It would be watered at will. Such is the way with plants.

Borin picked up the watering can, and muchly watered the plant. The plant cried out. “No, Master! Do not water me!” The master continued to water the plant. “Please, Master,” begged the plant, “do not water me!” The master continued to water the plant. It was plant. It could be watered at will.

The plant sobbed muchly as Borin laid down the watering can. It was not pleased. Too, it was wet. But this did not matter. It was plant.

“You have been well watered,” said Borin.

“Yes,” said the plant, “I have been well watered.” Of course, it could be watered by its master at will.

“I have watered you well,” said Borin.

“Yes, master,” said the plant. “You have watered your plant well. I am plant, and as such I should be watered by my master.”