We all have certain spaces carved out in the depths of our imagination, illusive spots to crawl inside during moments of anxiety, boredom or intense daydreaming. Most often, these personal chambers of refuge remain ours and ours alone.
Korean artist JeeYoung Lee, however, invites others into the dense jungles of her mind. In her series “Stage of Mind,” Lee transforms her small studio in Seoul to resemble the dreams and nightmares that bloom inside her subconscious mind.
“What I make is a re-creation of my mental landscape,” the artist explained in an interview with Business Lounge Journal. “But it is ‘real’ because it reflects my experiences and emotions. I materialize what is in my head by building an installation and documenting the scene on photograph, a media that is used to record reality. I believe this explains why I choose photography and installation as a medium.”
Lee’s process always begins the same way: with her tiny, empty studio ― 12 x 14 x 8 feet, to be exact ― and a fruitful vision pulled straight from the imagination. Personal memories, dreams, anxieties, Korean fables and famous artworks sometimes contribute to these intensely personal visions. The artist then translates said space from the realm of fantasy to reality, hand-building immersive environments that are part Yayoi Kusama, part Tim Burton.
Each environment ― most often made from humble materials like cardboard, styrofoam and lots of paint ― can take weeks or even months to complete. Refusing to use any digital manipulation whatsoever, the artist uses her hands to painstakingly guarantee every prop is perfectly in place, every light shines just so.
In “Birthday,” the studio transforms into an aquamarine jungle with oversized caterpillars slithering among cloudlike cocoons. Lee, who incorporates herself into all of her images, is nestled inside one of them, alluding to the artist’s constant evolution and shedding of old skin. “Panic Room” takes a darker turn, with turquoise checkers swallowing the room whole, disorienting the viewer like an all-encompassing optical illusion. The image is inspired by Lee’s childhood, when the artist would hide in the closet to escape the chaos of the outside world.
After setting the scene, and placing herself within the environment, she photographs the environment and dismantles it completely, only to begin anew. “The artwork is in the form of photography, but I consider the entire process of building an installation, posing, taking the photograph, and destroying the set an integral part of my artistic creations,” the artist explained.
“Capturing a moment in time, making an installation, and posing behind the camera allows me to take a step back and observe the experience as a third person. In other words, I relive the experience as the protagonist and an observer. My artwork allow me to look back at my experience but it also helps me get over the emotions involved with that experience. It is all in part of my effort to grow and progress by taking a positive look at myself and my life.”
Lee’s enchanting environments exist in the space between real and imagined, dream and nightmare, personal memory and universal myth. Through her meticulous, handcrafted sets, the artist invites strangers into the most intimate and exclusive of quarters: those that exist within the mind.
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Alzheimer’s is synonymous with memory loss ― an affliction most of us struggle to wrap our heads around. But the disease impacts those who suffer from it, along with their families and caregivers, in more ways than its common narrative suggests.
Hoping to shed light on the difficulties and complexities of Alzheimer’s, the Bob & Diane Fund, an organization devoted to raising awareness, awarded its first-ever grant for visual storytelling. The grant went to Swedish photographer Maja Daniels, whose quiet, intimate images of people with Alzheimer’s and their loved ones blend the sterility of medical facilities with the human emotion always present within their walls.
In a press release, Gina Martin, the organization’s founder, said, “Alzheimer’s is more than just memory loss. It’s the slow and painful evaporation of a life that takes an enormous toll on caregivers and families. The visual stories of patients and caregivers can humanize what is, in fact, a very cruel and dehumanizing disease.”
Daniels’ portraits, collected together in a series titled “Into Oblivion,” capture bleak subject matter in diffuse light; a pair of stockinged feet peek into the frame, atop a well-made bed in a well-lit hospital room. But she’s careful not to romanticize illness. More quotidian images, like cups of juice and dining hall spoons, are interspersed throughout the series. All were shot over the course of three years in a confined ward within a geriatric hospital in the northwest of France.
In a particularly poignant shot, a hospital cart lays toppled beside a patient, a literal manifestation of the chaotic state patients and their families find themselves in. In further images, Daniels shows patients’ family members peering through windowed doors, hoping to catch a glimpse of their loved ones. It’s an all-too-real metaphor for the desire to step inside the changing mind of a mother, father or spouse, to offer true understanding and companionship.
Of course, such a connection is impossible. But Daniels’ images can at least make empathy that much more possible.
“Due to the increased number of affected elders, the geriatric sector is confronted with a rising demand for specialized care. The ward pictured in this series is an example of a service introduced as a result of a rapidly growing demand but without additional costs or an increased number of staff,” Daniels writes online. “While giving a vision about what living with Alzheimer’s in an institution might mean, I want to motivate people to think about current care policies and the effects it can have on somebody’s life.”
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This Bruce Springsteen sidekick was born to run ― right into a political argument.
Former “Sopranos” star Steven Van Zandt, also of Springsteen’s E Street Band, says the cast of “Hamilton” unfairly ganged up on Vice President-elect Mike Pence on Friday.
In a demonstration gone viral, cast member Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays Aaron Burr, directly addressed Pence after the Broadway show. While welcoming him to the play, Dixon told the veep-to-be he was concerned how the new administration would treat the country’s diverse population and hoped the play inspired him to work on behalf of all Americans.
But Van Zandt wasn’t having it.
“It was the most respectful, benign form of bullying ever. But bullying nonetheless,” Van Zandt said on Twitter Saturday. “And by the way, human rights must be won, not asked for. When artists perform the venue becomes your home. The audience are your guests. It’s taking unfair advantage of someone who thought they were a protected guest in your home.”
Many praised the cast for openly addressing a politician who has attempted to institute anti-LGBTQ policies and has supported “conversion therapy” in his career.
Van Zandt wrote that he disagrees with what Pence represents, but “I don’t tolerate bullying in any form.”
It was the most respectful, benign form of bullying ever. But bullying nonetheless. And by the way, human rights must be won, not asked for. https://t.co/JfN4yjq8jM
Van Zandt, who has said in the past that he’s Independent and has spoken out in support of LGBTQ rights, added, “A guy comes to a Broadway show for a relaxing night out. Instead he gets a lecture from the stage! Not a level playing field. It’s bullying. You don’t single out an audience member and embarrass him from the stage. A terrible precedent to set.”
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”Hamilton,” an overwhelmingly popular musical about the political foundations of the United States, captured the attention of President-elect Donald Trump this weekend when castmate Brandon Victor Dixon read a message to a singled-out audience member after a performance in New York City.
That audience member was Vice President-elect Mike Pence, and the message read, in part:
“We, sir, we are the diverse America, who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”
Early the following Monday morning, Dixon appeared on “CBS This Morning” to deliver a simple response: “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
When asked by CBS why he and his castmates at Richard Rodgers Theatre decided to speak directly to Pence, Dixon explained that “Hamilton” is a politically-conscious production with a platform capable of reaching a global audience.
“The producers, the creatives, and the cast ― we recognize that ‘Hamilton’ is an inherently American story told by a definition of the American community,” he said. “We are men, women of different colors, creeds and orientations. You know, the resonant nature of the show throughout the world, throughout the global community, demands we make statements when there are important issues facing us as a community. So we wanted to stand up and spread a message of love and unity considering all the emotional outpour since the election.”
He added:
“Conversation is not harassment. I was really appreciative that Vice President-elect Pence stood there and listened to what we had to say. And you know, I know that some people have said that a one-sided conversation or lecture is not conversation, but it was the beginnings of a conversation I hope that we can continue to have.”
Dixon also explained that “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda helped craft the statement along with producer Jeffrey Seller and director Tommy Kail. Seller called Dixon an hour-and-a-half before curtain to see if he would be interested in sharing their words. Dixon explained how he read the message to the cast and made some adjustments ahead of his end-of-show speech.
Proud of @HamiltonMusical. Proud of @BrandonVDixon, for leading with love. And proud to remind you that ALL are welcome at the theater.
For the record, Pence said that he really enjoyed the performance and wasn’t offended by what was said. He is, according to Dixon, welcome to come to the show again ― as is Trump ― to have a conversation with the cast backstage.
Dixon had a message for the individuals coping with fear following the election of Trump, too:
“For me, I think the most important thing to me with respect to all the emotions everyone is feeling after this election is to make sure that people recognize we are not alone. We are here together. And we need to listen to one and other and speak to one and other, and maybe those of us who feel their voice has been marginalized or might become marginalized ― it’s important that they recognize that there are allies all over the place.”
Dixon has been widely supported by past and present “Hamilton” castmembers in New York City and Chicago in the days following his performance:
Proud of my @HamiltonMusical peeps. Y'all make me So Very proud.
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There’s “Hamilton,” the hit Broadway musical seen by Vice President-elect Mike Pence on Friday. And there’s Hamilton, the Canadian city which has a theater donning the same name. One is @HamiltonMusical on Twitter; the other, @HamiltonTheatre.
It’s not hard to see how right-wing supporters might confuse the two. After President-elect Donald Trump criticized “Hamilton” over the weekend for delivering a political message to Pence from the stage, supporters aimed dozens of angry tweets at the Canadian theater instead of the New York production.
“If they only had looked at our profile, it says Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, several times. That just goes to show something about hate-mongering on the internet and the lack of effort people put forward,” Riane Leonard, who handles the theater company’s Twitter account, told local news outlet The Hamilton Spectator.
“Hamilton,” the musical, covers Founding Father Alexander Hamilton’s role in the establishment of the United States and is comprised primarily of actors of color. After Friday’s performance at New York’s Richard Rodgers Theatre, star Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays Aaron Burr, voiced a message for Pence from the show’s cast and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. Trump later called it “very rude” in his demand for an apology while Pence did not mind the speech at all.
“We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” Dixon said.
Trump’s criticism of what he called an “overrated” show mobilized his followers online ― and offline.
Hashtags including #BoycottHamilton and #BanHamilton trended over the weekend, with supporters dredging up an insensitive, 4-year-old tweet by Dixon to wield as a morality critique of the production he joined in August.
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Dixon stated, later adding, “Conversation is not harassment.”
During a Saturday performance of “Hamilton” in Chicago, a front-row audience member reportedly yelled profanities and political statements after the line “Immigrants ― we get the job done” in the song “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)” and during another number, before being escorted out of the theater.
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Dancing is like having sex. If you’re not on TV doing it, it probably doesn’t look as great as you think.
On Tuesday, Louis C.K. appeared on “Conan” and had some tough love advice for those who want to be professional dancers: That’s a stupid idea.
You might not agree, but it’s still funny to hear his line of thinking.
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“I think this election has given many people an answer about why we need feminism.”
That’s just one of the powerful sentiments photographer Justin J. Wee heard from women after Hillary Clinton’s presidential loss.
The Australian photojournalist attended a viewing party on the night of Nov. 8, organized by women’s advocacy group Ladies Get Paid. Wee was eager to capture what many had assumed would be a historic night for women.
“I wanted to revel in the excitement that these women would have felt given that they have devoted their lives to fighting for gender equality,” Wee told The Huffington Post.
But the outcome was not what the group had hoped for. As more swing states went red, the atmosphere at the party completely changed.
“It was like all the energy had been sucked out by a vacuum,” Wee said. “Everyone was frustrated by what was happening, and even more confused by why it was happening. People were crying in corners. Seeing tears get shed was the moment I realized how threatened people felt.”
To capture the overwhelming emotion in the aftermath of the election, Wee photographed every woman at the viewing party. Later that week, he reached out to them to discuss how they felt post-election and what they’re doing to mobilize and stay empowered.
The series, titled “Where Do We Go From Here?,” is a powerful commentary on the 2016 election, misogyny and the growing importance of feminist organizing.
The women, who are primarily in their 20s and 30s, expressed a spectrum of emotional sentiments about Clinton’s loss. Some discussed how angry they were at the role sexism played in this election, while others seemed ready to mobilize.
“I witnessed all these public displays of feminism and solidarity, and in the moment of watching [Donald] Trump win, I felt like all that was undone,” one woman named Claire told Wee.
Another woman named Isata was a bit more optimistic: “I’m feeling really inspired by how many people have been moved to action,” she told Wee. “I’ve been on email chains that are filled with information on how we can raise our individual voices, collectively organize and ensure that the election results don’t permanently disenfranchise the people that Trump and his cabinet have targeted throughout their careers.”
Scroll below to see Wee’s portraits and read the powerful comments he heard from women.
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CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 addressed the topic in a segment Tuesday night. But when commentator Jeffrey Lord tried to make a case for how marginalized groups “provoked” white supremacists, Republican panelist Ana Navarro was not having it.
Lord told host John Berman he believed white supremacists are acting out because everyone gave marginalized groups and activists “a pass” to talk about racial identity and identity politics.
“This is exactly what happens. The left sort of provoked this,” Lord said. When Berman asked him to clarify, he added: “The left, whether it’s Black Lives Matter or La Raza, I mean you can go back and back and back. Groups that identify themselves by race provoked this group to identify by race. This is America.”
Ana Navarro responded to his reasoning by arguing it is Trump who began using identity politics in the election and thus it is his responsibility to disavow racists.
“[Lord] supported a candidate who is now President-Elect that has spent the last 18 months using identity politics as the wedge issue,” Navarro said. “Do you think when he calls Mexicans rapists and criminals that is not identity politics?... What Donald Trump has to do to is take responsibility. He has unleashed the Kraken, that’s why it is not a coincidence that after he got elected, hate crimes spiked up. It is not a coincide the KKK celebrated his victory and wanted a parade in North Carolina or that David Duke celebrated his victory. It is not a coincidence these white supremacists were holding their hands up in a Nazi salute yelling ‘Heil Trump.’”
“He needs to take leadership, he needs to take ownership, he needs to know he has a responsibility in this and he needs to go out and try to unify the country,” Navarro said. “Stop fighting with Broadway, stop fighting with the New York Times. Fight the division in the country. Fight the white supremacists. Stand up and be a unifier for God’s sake.”
Watch the exchange in the video above, in which Navarro also takes on Trump surrogate Kayleigh McEnany for defending the President-elect’s behavior.
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Looking back from a mountaintop of Elsa and Moana, it seems ridiculous that Ariel and Belle once struck Disney audiences as independent, tough, and feminist. But times can change quickly in children’s entertainment. Ariel and Belle were the stuff of my childhood. I was 10 by the time “Mulan” came out ― not too old to see and adore it, but old enough that it postdated my formative princess years. By the time films like “The Princess and the Frog,” “Tangled,” and “Brave” started to appear, I was long out of the target Disney demographic. When I was falling in love with “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast,” I wasn’t comparing them to “Mulan” and “Frozen,” obviously ― they didn’t exist yet. I was comparing them to “Sleeping Beauty” (blahsville), “Cinderella” (meh), and “Snow White” (nope).
It’s easy and, in many ways, valid to critique the feminism of films like “Beauty and the Beast” in hindsight. Twenty-five years after its debut, young people are still watching the movie, soaking up messages of mixed value, while the social context has changed and plenty of movies with independent, baggage-free heroines are now available. Is the movie a feminist manifesto? That seems like a reach. Is it a poisonous bit of anti-woman propaganda? Unclear.
Then again, I’m biased. “Beauty and the Beast” is the only movie I recall personally owning as a kid, on a VHS tape in a squeaky plastic case. I loved it. My dad touted Ariel, the heroine of “The Little Mermaid” (which actually premiered in 1989, the year after I was born), while I scoffed: Who could prefer the willingly silent, boy-obsessed mermaid princess over the bookish, brainy, self-possessed peasant girl? My favorite place was the local public library and, as my grandma will happily tell you, I was a stubborn, outspoken child; prying me away from my latest storybook and telling me to keep my opinions to myself were both losing propositions. When Belle steps into the Beast’s gleaming, palatial library, lined with stories-high bookshelves full of more novels than she could read in a lifetime, my head would spin with the romantic visions of a girl who grew up to follow Instagram accounts with names like “bookshelfporn.”
In her recent book, In Defense of the Princess: How Plastic Tiaras and Fairytale Dreams Can Inspire Strong, Smart Women, Jerramy Fine recalled similar feelings. “[T]he thing in this movie that really makes me swoon?” she wrote. “That library. When the Beast shows Belle those towering walls of floor-to-ceiling books, my heart flutters just as much as hers. And although the people in Belle’s hometown mock her constant thirst for knowledge, I love that through it all she remains an unabashed bookworm.”
Some critics counter that Belle’s reading is rarely shown in the film ― and that, unlike the practical, studious heroine of the most circulated version of the fairy tale, written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756, the movie Belle’s literary interests tend toward frivolous fiction, fairy tales with princes.
The Feminist Struggle To Make Belle More Than Just A Beauty
Still, even this version of Belle, who spends more time teaching the Beast to eat porridge with a spoon than lounging in his dream library with a stack of books, only appeared through determined effort. At least, that’s the contention of Linda Woolverton, who took over the script of “Beauty and the Beast” in 1988 after a number of pitches and treatments by other writers, including Jim Cox (“Oliver and Company”) and Gen LeRoy (“Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color”).
One treatment, crafted by British animators Richard and Jill Purdum, was scratched in 1988 after executives viewed some rough early reels and deemed it too lugubrious and dark. Once installed by Jeffrey Katzenberg, then the head of Disney’s motion picture division, to overhaul the script, Woolverton helped mold the sedate French fairy tale into a lively musical with a headstrong, yellow-clad heroine. Belle, she’s since said, was based in part on Katharine Hepburn’s character in the 1933 film “Little Women.”
“Woolverton’s fight to shape Belle into a new kind of Disney heroine was just that — a fight, every step of the way,” wrote Time’s Eliza Berman in May 2016. Her scripts took almost jaw-droppingly retrogressive rewrites:
In one scene, for example, Woolverton wrote Belle sticking pins into a map of all the places she wished to travel. By the time it got to storyboarding, Belle had been rewritten into a kitchen, decorating a cake. Woolverton protested, and the compromise that was reached had Belle with her nose in a book, a pastime at first considered too passive to be compellingly animated, which is why she always walks as she reads.
Roger Allers, the film’s story supervisor, told The Huffington Post he didn’t recall the conflict over cake decorating. “If that did happen, it must have been in the few weeks before I came on board the film,” he wrote in an email. He saw another cause behind the undermining rewrites Woolverton recalled: “The tension that existed between Linda and the story crew I think was due to her previous experience as a lone writer versus working in a collaborative group situation as was the tradition at Disney. In Story there, the script, indeed all visual ideas, are all open to review and revision in search of the best, most compelling way to tell a story. Nothing is sacred.” Not even an idealistic desire to show a princess seeking fulfillment outside of the kitchen or laundry room.
Some feminist critiques of “Beauty and the Beast” have, rightly, pointed out that the relentlessly vapid girls in the town (the Gaston fan club) serve as foils for Belle’s beauty and smarts ― implying that she is the only worthwhile woman around. “A common theme among Disney princess movies is to have the main character be isolated from other women, the rose among weeds,” noted Mari Rogers, who runs a Tumblr called Feminist Disney, in an email to HuffPost. There’s some evidence that “Beauty and the Beast” actually moved slightly away from this framing, though. A frequent tactic in earlier Disney films, right up to “The Little Mermaid,” was setting the heroine in direct opposition to a loathsome, typically older, female villain: Ursula, Cinderella’s wicked stepmother, the cruel queen of “Snow White” and the witch of “Sleeping Beauty.”
The Purdum adaptation of “Beauty and the Beast,” set in France in 1709, portrays such a character ― the sister of Maurice, who, as in the original fairy tale, is a poverty-stricken merchant. You can actually watch the choppily animated storyboards of the Purdum version’s first 20 minutes, with voiceovers, online:
In addition to a younger sister for Belle, the film featured their hateful aunt, who moves in with her brother Maurice, then a wealthy man, to help him care for his family ― and exploit him financially. When Maurice loses everything, his sister grows more and more shameless in her attempts to squeeze money out of her now-destitute brother and his family. In this write, Gaston is a wealthy and foppish suitor to whom Belle’s aunt schemes to marry her in order to open up a new pipeline of cash.
Once the Purdum script was tossed, Woolverton pushed for a version in which Belle’s interests and personal qualities come through more strongly ― and, incidentally, a version without the standard-issue bogeywoman.
A beautiful girl twirling through town with a romance novel, blissfully unencumbered with female family or friends, hardly seems the stuff of feminist revolutions ― but to see it as a positive nudge of the needle, we need only compare Belle to the previous drafts written of her by Disney creators, not to mention earlier heroines who spend most of their films asleep, voiceless, or uncomplainingly devoted to domestic drudgery. Disney’s Belle wasn’t an explosion of princess archetypes, but slight progress is still progress.
Woolverton seems well aware of the power even small changes can exert. “If you depict girls and women in these roles that we’ve never seen before,” she told Time, “then it becomes an assumption for younger generations.” Could Disney have ever moved straight from Aurora, the mostly snoozing heroine of “Sleeping Beauty,” to adventurous Merida of “Brave,” or bold Elsa of “Frozen”? Or was the normalization of Ariel, Belle, and Mulan necessary, to make a more spunky and self-possessed heroine seem not just normal, but an assumption?
The Beast Problem
Perhaps the most troubling message of “Beauty and the Beast,” for many feminist critics, lies not with Belle herself but with the Beast and his brute-force seduction. In an email to Huff Post, writer Peggy Orenstein blasted “the idea that the right woman can ‘tame’ a beastly, abusive, troubled man and turn him into a prince.” Orenstein, the author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, pointed out that both Belle’s and Ariel’s love stories contain unsettling lessons for girls about how women find partners and structure their lives. Belle’s role as the Victorian-esque angel in the house for her abusive counterpart is, she wrote, “an insidious message to girls, almost as insidious as the idea, in Disney’s version of ‘The Little Mermaid,’ that a woman would want to ― wait for it ― give up her voice to get a man. Deeply disturbing symbolism on both counts.” Rogers pointed out that Disney actually amped up this dynamic for the animated film: “In the original tale, the entire point of the story is that the beast’s scary appearance does not match his demeanor, which is consistently gentle and kind.”
That’s strike one and two for the Renaissance Disney princess films, which breathed new life into the genre after a 30-year Disney fairy tale hiatus prompted by the poor reception of “Sleeping Beauty” in 1959. Does this potentially toxic message about romance erase the gains made in crafting more ambitious, independent princesses?
Rogers doesn’t mince words about the risks of the narrative. “The love story in this one is one of the most disturbing ones in the princess lineup and rather regressive,” she wrote. “[The Beast] was undeniably verbally abusive — and used his stature to intimidate her.” What’s more, she argued, “The imprisonment adds a double layer of WTF to the situation. It perpetuates that ‘nice guy’ concept that if you can keep yourself in a woman’s company long enough/show her enough of yourself for long enough, she’ll eventually love you.”
Fine, conversely, resists the blanket condemnation of the films ― including the Belle/Beast relationship. Does the romance depict Stockholm Syndrome between a captor and his subdued victim, or an abusive relationship cycle? “I think it’s a stretch, and a tired one at that,” she told HuffPost in an email. “Because the true love story in this tale is about two marginalized people who find solace in each other.”
In the Beast, Fine sees a man who was never given a chance to love and accept himself: “Just as a child who is repeatedly told he is worthless will start believing it, the Beast has always been treated like a monster, and so after a while he started acting like one,” she wrote. “Belle is the first person in his life to see beyond this.” Meanwhile, she argues, Belle has more agency than simply a captive falling prey to distorted thinking. “Belle’s affection for him is not an irrational mental condition; rather it begins when she realises they are more alike than they are different (they’re both outsiders, they share the same values, the same love for books, etc.).” For what it’s worth, Woolverton also dismisses the argument that the relationship represents Stockholm Syndrome. “She was captured, but she transformed him,” she told IGN earlier this year. “She didn’t become, you know, an object.” Other critics, like Anna E. Altman and Gail de Vos, argue that, on the contrary, “there is nothing in the Beast for her to see until she puts it there.”
Through Fine’s pro-tiara lens, empowering messages gleam through all of the princess narratives (even that darn “Sleeping Beauty”). “I believe all Disney princess movies, and the classic fairy tales they are based on, are empowering for women,” she explained, “if we stop viewing them with a misogynistic lens and see them for what they are: actual narratives of female power and heroism.”
Her take on Belle’s romance with the Beast is a reassuring angle for fans, and there’s a gut logic to it that is likely to appeal to women who grew up with the movie ― though, of course, there lies the insidiousness of the message. “We’re just two crazy weirdos and no one understands us or our love” is a delicious ideal to embrace for one’s own relationship, as most teenagers know; but it can also mask serious problems. (Why do your friends seem uncomfortable with your boyfriend? Maybe you’re two dreamers who have found understanding only in each other ― or maybe your friends have noticed that he treats you like shit.) This narrative can allow us to downplay abusive behavior in the name of celebrating a unique and special love story. The Beast’s initially shocking behavior toward Belle “shouldn’t [be] acceptable just because she ‘chose’ to stay (not that she had much of an option) or because she vocalized her displeasure with it (and then he changed),” argues Rogers.
Watching the kids in the demographic for “Beauty and the Beast” engage with these films, though, it’s hard to grasp whether damaging ideas about romance really penetrate. When I was a little Belle fan, the Beast barely figured into my princess fantasy ― it was the sun-dappled, three-story-high bookshelves, the pretty clothes, and watching a girl onscreen who seemed so much like me (just, you know, much older and with eyes the size of saucers). Does the arguably abusive dynamic between Belle and the Beast have a real impact on young fans?
Brittney Lee Hamilton, who has worked for Disney and now performs for the party company Bella Princess as heroines including Belle, told HuffPost during a phone conversation that she’s found little girls usually pay the most attention to dress and hair color, and are looking more to identify directly with the heroines than to follow the romance. “They do understand that [Belle and the Beast have] a romantic relationship,” Hamilton said, but in terms of whether they’re really taking in the details of the love story, she’s less certain. “Watching the movies now as a woman,” Hamilton said, “you do see the messages … that it’s about looks and [...] who you fall in love with, that’s what makes your life. We see that, but I don’t think kids see that.” She also acknowledged that she and her colleagues actively try to counter harmful messages kids might receive from princess movies, such as that girls should concern themselves primarily with clothing and makeup, or that meeting and marrying a prince is the ultimate point of life.
After all, the acceptance of a romance based on unhealthy behavior, not to mention the idealization of heterosexual love and marriage, could be infiltrating nonetheless, even if kids seem outwardly impervious or, at least, uninterested. It might mean Disney’s relational narratives don’t have as direct and clear an impact as, say, that of Twilight, which is geared toward adolescent girls just discovering their taste for romance. Readers of the vampire teen romance saga notoriously tend to gush over the unique appeal of a boyfriend like chilly, carnivorous Edward Cullen. Meanwhile, women who specifically reference the Beast as their ideal mate are, in my experience, rare ― but they may fall into the same category as Edward Cullen’s fans: one film preparing girls’ minds for a certain kind of partner long before they were old enough to care about romance, the other franchise capitalizing on this quietly sown predisposition to create a teen idol who is also an inhuman outsider with barely suppressed urges of violence towards his beloved.
OK, that’s pretty specific, but it’s worth questioning whether the idealized yet abusive relationships portrayed in entertainment for very young kids might prime them to embrace the same dynamics in their entertainment, and their real lives, as they grow older. One study, published this summer, suggested that Disney princess films did have an influence on little girls― “The more the girls in the study engaged with princess culture, the more they behaved in stereotypically feminine ways,” according to researchers. As for positive effects on little girls from watching the films? The study didn’t identify any.
Taking The Love Stories Out Of Fairy Tales
If kids don’t even care much about the romantic arcs in their movies, and the values put forward in their entertainment are likely to influence their malleable young minds, that raises an obvious question: Why make love stories for children’s entertainment to begin with, aside from a not ill-intentioned desire to make the films appealing to parents and others outside the tyke demographic?
Taking the romance out is a strategy Disney seems to have embraced with recent offerings ― even princessy ones ― as Slate’s Aisha Harris pointed out in a recent review of “Moana,” a new animated film that features a Polynesian girl on a mystical journey of self-discovery. “It was ‘Frozen’ in 2013 that marked a turning point for how Disney told its stories—and sold them,” writes Harris. The slightly earlier “Brave” (2012) abandoned the classic fairy tale format to tell the story of an adventurous young princess and her relationship with her mother; in “Frozen,” the romance-free twist went full Hans Christian Anderson, and the result was a smash hit. (Even if you think you know nothing about “Frozen,” you probably know half the words to “Let It Go,” the film’s most well-known and -karaoked song.) “The movie’s “Prince Charming–turned-villain and its explicit elevation of sisterhood over hetero romance felt revolutionary in the context of a Disney fairy tale,” writes Harris.
But that was in 2013, just as feminism was going celebrity mainstream. In the early ‘90s, the picture looked mighty different. “Beauty and the Beast” was just the second animated princess movie from Disney since the flop of “Sleeping Beauty,” a movie about a woman who is best described as “pretty” and “in a magically induced coma.” It’s hard to conceive, now, of a writer struggling to have a scene storyboarded of a female protagonist engaged in a hobby other than cake decorating; indeed, showing a heroine engaged in nothing but domestic tasks would seem hopelessly archaic. Merida was an archer; Mulan and Pocahontas, for all the failings of their respective films, were a warrior and an avid outdoorswoman. Tiana, of “The Princess and the Frog,” was likely to be found in the kitchen, but only because her dream is to open a restaurant. I asked Hamilton, who plays characters such as Ariel and Belle, who she performs as most often these days. “A lot of Elsa,” she said. “the ‘Frozen’ characters ― they dominate.”
Woolverton, who calls the earlier Disney princess movies “reflective of the culture” in an interview with EW, has emphasized that setting out to write a more feminist heroine in Belle proved to be “hard. You have to understand that the whole idea of the heroine-victim was baked into the cake, especially at Disney.” And even now, she said, she is satisfied with how the movie turned out. “I mean, you can only move the needle so much. Look at all the Disney princesses before her,” she pointed out. Belle “has an independent, open mind. She loves to read and to explore the outdoors. But even so, every day was a battle of making it happen,” she added. “Every single line of her dialogue was a battle.”
Tiny Steps of Progress
This sort of incrementalist approach, certain recent elections may have reminded us, can be infuriating to those who want change. Change over 25 years seems like an insufficient compromise ― why not fight for all that change, immediately? Or, hell, throw out the Disney princess brand machine altogether and build a feminist kids’ entertainment utopia elsewhere? Even when progress is inching forward, it can take the dreaded one-step-forward-two-steps-back route. More recent portrayals of Belle, argued Orenstein, have emphasized her beauty over her brains. In a 2012 redesign by Disney, she wrote, “Her appearance goes from forthright to flirty, from noble to hot.”
Looking at the last 25 years of Disney, though, a couple things are clear: One, a savvy media giant like Disney is too pervasive and persistent to blow up, especially if it’s willing to change to appeal to increasingly egalitarian and socially-aware young consumers. Two, investing in driving incremental change can be head-bangingly infuriating in the short term, yet produce impressive results years down the line.
Rogers expressed hope that a live-action movie would be able to improve upon the deeply problematic animated original. For one thing, she suggested, it would be great if Belle could be developed beyond an interest in travel and novels. “The fact that her father is an inventor (in a small provincial town ― what are the odds!) is intriguing,” she told HuffPost. “It would be interesting if Belle shared this interest.”
About that: Early in November, Emma Watson, who will play Belle in the upcoming live-action feature, offered a teaser about the character’s portrayal: “Yeah,” she told EW, “we made Belle an inventor.”
Hit Backspace for a regular dose of pop culture nostalgia.
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Writing comedy ― trying to be funny in general ― should be an ever-growing and evolving experience, but it’s easy to fall back on lazy premises and cliches. Since Season 2, the writers of “Workaholics” have been keeping a running tab of overused comedy phrases that should be retired ― their seventh and final season airs next year.
Executive Producer John Quaintance posted a photo of the offending phrases listed on white boards in the show’s writer’s room. I’ve transcribed the full list below, because I’m in love with you and that’s what love does to people.
As a public service, here are the two boards from the Workaholics writer's room of comedy phrases that need to be retired, started season 2. pic.twitter.com/DHZqhqU5D5
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Neo-soul singer Erykah Badu embodies a level of grace, wisdom and love we should all strive to achieve.
And on Monday night, she exemplified the best of these qualities during a special vegan dinner in New York City to help celebrate her as the host for the 2016 Soul Train Music Awards, which airs on BET on Sunday. The event, which was named “Vegan With Soul,” featured fabulous food and aimed to feed the mind, body and soul of the 25 journalists of color (including yours truly) Badu invited to dine with her that evening.
“I’m happy to be here in this moment,” Badu told guests. “In being able to enjoy this moment and be in it, and not be somewhere else in my mind or be sad about something or be somewhere that I don’t want to be. I’m happy to be here right now.”
The dinner was held at The Kitchen Table, a chic dining space in lower Manhattan that was decked out with incense-burning candles, dim purple lighting and kimono-wearing guests (per Badu’s request). It was an intimate scene ― one that came with great conversation and a menu specially curated by Afro-Vegan author and chef Bryant Terry with help from the popular culinary group Ghetto Gastro.
Badu, who has been vegan for nearly two decades, kicked off the dinner by welcoming guests and introducing Terry, who shared powerful words on the importance of coming together through food ― but his opener did not come without a cautious reminder: “This is not for you all, this is for Erykah,” he joked.
The savory menu came with creative and beautiful dishes that fed our bellies and our souls. It included glazed carrots, purple potato soup, barbecue tempeh and a scrumptious “Lord Help Me” spiced apple and sweet potato pie for dessert.
Terry, who spoke with People magazine’s Janine Rubenstein following the event, said: “My work is about celebrating the diversity of vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes and expanding people’s notions of African-American cuisine.”
A photo posted by Michael Arceneaux (@youngsinick) on
The table buzzed with conversation and laughter as we wined and dined. But the night didn’t end without playing a fun game or two. For the first game, guests were asked to participate in a more playful challenge by selecting celebrity names from a hat and sharing one thing we believe they may be thankful for. Folks were fully engaged as names included everyone from Beyoncé and Blac Chyna to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
But Badu ended the night in the best way by having guests play a game aptly titled “Love, Soul and Peace.” The game prompted people to share one thing that drives their happiness, one person or thing that they could live without and one thing that they love most about themselves.
Badu played along and expressed thanks to her family, wished death to all mosquitoes and relished the fact that she is a compassionate and giving woman.
If nothing else, Monday night proved this all the more.
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The ladies of Twitter never fail to brighten our days with their brilliant ― but succinct ― wisdom. Each week, HuffPost Women rounds up hilarious 140-character musings. For this week’s great tweets from women, scroll through the list below. Then visit our Funniest Tweets From Women page for our past collections.
Thanksgiving is a great time to go home and hang out with your family. Because you failed to maintain any friendships from high school.
Uterus: I didn't bleed all day yesterday, she thinks her period ended already so she's wearing cute panties Also uterus: Surprise her pic.twitter.com/CWAuzbLGB0
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“We were looking hard in 1999 for women CEOs and women who ran companies,” Annie Leibovitz told The New York Times last month, in a discussion centered on her ongoing “Women” series. She began the portrait project in the late ‘90s, working alongside her partner Susan Sontag, photographing women in leadership positions across politics, sports, business and arts.
This year, the project has come back to life, with new subjects reflective of a different time. “Now, it seems that there really are many more women in high positions,” the photographer added. “It seemed like issues were more in the forefront.”
“Women: New Portraits,” commissioned by UBS, is currently on view in New York City, bringing together Leibovitz’s images from 1999 with photos from 2016, and several in between. Her subjects include Hillary Clinton, Misty Copeland, the Williams sisters, Gloria Steinem, Andréa Medina Rosas, Malala Yousafzai, Shonda Rhimes, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Warren, Denise Manong, Adele, Sheryl Sandberg and Caitlyn Jenner, among many others.
“You can’t look at all those images without seeing the true human diversity of women, not characterized by whatever feminine idea or roles of who we’re supposed to be,” Steinem, who helped configure the list of women photographed, added to the NYT.
It is certainly fitting that one of the world’s most recognizable photographers ― a historic woman herself ― is taking the time to honor the women breaking down barriers in their respective fields. It’s also no accident that, in New York, the images are currently on display in a former women’s prison, the Bayview Correctional Facility in Chelsea, which will soon become The Women’s Building, a space dedicated to addressing the rights of girls and women.
New York is the ninth city to pay temporary home to Leibovitz’s photos. So far, the series has toured through Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mexico City, London, San Francisco, Milan and Frankfurt, with Zurich on the horizon as the last stop. A series of public talks, dubbed “Women for Women,” are also taking place in conjunction with the tour, focused on topics of global and local relevance to women’s rights. Plus, on social media, the hashtag #ShareYourHero is encouraging people to share their own images of women who inspire them on a daily basis.
Catch a preview of “Women” here, on view until December 11, 2016, at 550 West 20th Street in New York City. The exhibitions is free to enter and no ticket is required.
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Lin-Manuel Miranda, who will long be remembered for his ponytailed depiction of a Founding Father without a father on Broadway, will make your alcohol-laced dreams come true later this month when he appears on the Comedy Central show “Drunk History.”
EW just released a teaser for the Nov. 29 episode. According to the clip, shown above, we can confirm that Miranda does indeed recount the life and times of Alexander Hamilton. And that, yes, he gets significantly sozzled.
Here are the best lines so far, because that’s what you came here for:
“F**k you, f**k you, you’re cool, Aaron Burr, nice to meet you.” -Alexander Hamilton
“[Burr] um, like, kills a lot of British dudes.” -Narration
“Motherf**ker, like, come work for me.” -George Washington
“You’re gonna be in the guy ― in with the guy who knows best.” -George Washington
“Like, can I fight? Can I ― can you just give me, like, a bunch of dudes and like, I ― I promise I’ll be so good at this.” -Alexander Hamilton
“Ba dum, ba, dum, ba dum, ba dum, blop [blows raspberry]. Ba dum, ba, dum, ba dum. [...] Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo.” -Narration
If you don’t know the basic premise of “Drunk History,” go to YouTube. But the show is essentially what it sounds like: Comedians or mildly famous people recount historical events while effectively wasted. Actors act out the accounts, no matter the accuracy. It’s funny, guys, we promise.
Here are some more details about Miranda’s drunk debut: The episode will feature Alia Shawkat as Alexander Hamilton and Aubrey Plaza as Aaron Burr. Bokeem Woodbine, Dave Grohl, David Wain, and Veep’s Tony Hale will also make appearances as various Revolutionary-era characters.
As always, you should rewatch this video while you countdown to Tuesday:
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Drunk History” episode will air on Nov. 29 at 10:30 p.m. ET on Comedy Central.
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Frank is most well-known for her diaries chronicling her time as a German-born Jewish teenager hiding in occupied Amsterdam during World War II. Frank and her family were captured late in the war. She died at 15 years old in the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp, just before it was liberated by Allied forces.
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On Wednesday, the group released its newest video, “The One Moment,” which was made in conjunction with Morton Salt’s #WalkHerWalk campaign. The clip starts off by showing the entire video ― mostly a series of small colorful explosions that take place in a matter of seconds ― before playing it over again in slow motion. Naturally, every element of the video matches perfectly with the song’s words and melody.
The statement continues, “Humans are not equipped to understand our own temporariness; It will never stop being deeply beautiful, deeply confusing, and deeply sad that our lives and our world are so fleeting. We have only these few moments.”
For the video specifically, the band “constructed a moment of total chaos and confusion, and then unraveled that moment, discovering the beauty, wonder, and structure within.”
Check out the entire video above. You can also read about the making of he video here and check out a behind-the-scenes clip from the shoot here.
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What a time to be an artist, right? If you’re not so sure you’re feeling up to making art out of the impending Donald Trump presidency, a punny video starring Sam Corbin offers a case for this approach.
Corbin, the managing editor of Brokelyn as well as a performer, gives a two-minute pep talk in the form of a stream of 50 puns on the names of famous women, urging artists not to give way to fear.
“Our situation may feel Beyoncé-ving right now,” Corbin calmly tells the camera, but “before we Mary Oliver daughters off to Canadians, let’s try something.” Instead, she says, artists should use the challenges they face in the next four years to create thought-provoking art, adding, “We need to feel Frida Kahlo-t injustice in our work right now.”
This pun-packed video addresses a progressive artistic audience that’s been rocked by recent political events. Not only the “Hamilton” cast and the “Saturday Night Live” cast, but writers, artists and performers around the country have expressed feelings of fear, paralysis, and outrage since the election of Trump to the presidency. A common thread in artists’ responses: the hope that their continued creative work will be a force for good in the coming years.
As Corbin willingly points out, this might be hard, and might result in some bad art. “I should know,” she adds sardonically. “I’m making puns right now.” Nothing wrong with that approach ― especially if you can turn “Mother Teresa” into “It’s going to be hard as a mother to raise a kid under Trump,” or “Gloria Steinem” into “This presidency is going to be the most glorious time to make some radical fucking art.”
Wow. That’s pun art.
Watch Corbin’s full tongue-twisting video:
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By early Wednesday, only 21 percent of 288 Amazon reviewers had rated the book with one star, and 61 percent had given it five stars. By the end of the day, a total of 496 reviewers had rated the memoir, with 38 percent giving five stars and 49 percent giving 1 star.
Even with Amazon’s apparent intervention, some of the negative reviews are still vicious. Others accuse Kelly of trying to smear the president-elect. Some people seemed to notice their reviews had been deleted and reposted their negative statements.
Kelly has described in detail how Trump treated her during in the lead-up to the Nov. 8 election during her promotion of her book in recent weeks.
The journalist details how Trump threatened her before the debate, when he called to complain about a segment she had done on her show a week earlier. She also writes that Trump tried to sway her with gifts for positive coverage and outlines how Fox News executives defended her against senior members of his campaign.
Amazon said its customer reviews “must be product reviews and are designed to help customers make purchase decisions.”
“There are many other forums available across the internet to discuss topics of interest which are not product reviews,” the retailer said in a statement to HuffPost.
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Armed with a 4x5 large-format camera and audio equipment, New York City-based photographer Chris Callaway has documented in intimate portraits and audio interviews the stories of these protesters. The images and audio capture the movement that has drawn people from around the world to help protect the lands that the Sioux Nation holds so dear.
“My objective is to personalize the protest by bringing the spirit, voice, and people of the camp to you,” Callaway told The Huffington Post in an email.
“As a photographer, I think it’s important to use my craft to help those whose voices can’t be heard.”
See and hear Callaway’s project by clicking the photos below:
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Bana Alabed, who has been tweeting updates about her life in the the war-torn city, recently saw a Harry Potter film. Her mother later contacted the author saying her daughter would like to read the book, but it’s not available where they live. The family’s home is in the rebel-held eastern part of the city that’s been at the center of the nation’s violent, years-long conflict.
Hi @jk_rowling I watched Harry Potter movie, Bana would like to read the book.- Fatemah #Aleppo
Twitter users noticed the exchange and told Rowling the tweet was from the young girl, who has amassed over 90,000 followers since she joined Twitter in September.
Soon after, a member of Rowling’s team got in touch with Bana’s mother.
@jk_rowling@missguppy1@AlabedBana Bana, I work for Jo. Would you be able to read an eBook? If so I'd be happy to get a copy over to you.
Mashable confirmed Bana received the books on Wednesday.
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