513: Sneak Peeks (1 and 2)

I think sticking to just stories that have been Disney-i-fied is a huge mistake. The world is full of interesting myths and legends who’s themes and constructs are universal. And don’t the writers owe it to their fans to broaden their minds to the wider world?

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Yes and no. Whilst the show shouldn’t necessarily just stick to Disneyfied stuff, at the same time because of the limited amount of screentime available with the 11/11 split, I’d rather the writers focus on the characters we have and tie in the more well known stuff with them rather than going off on a tangent with an obscure myth or folklore that is not heard of outside that country of origin.

But how do you determine what people know and don’t know? And since most mythology is constructed out of basic archetypes then everyone knows the figures, if only be different names. For example: the Trickster character. You can pull in Loki who is probably very familiar to many in the audience either through myth readings or Marvel. But Loki is a trickster, same as, say, Anansi, Br’re Rabbit, the Coyote, or…Rumple to an extent. I think sticking to just stories that have been Disney-i-fied is a huge mistake. The world is full of interesting myths and legends who’s themes and constructs are universal. And don’t the writers owe it to their fans to broaden their minds to the wider world?

I am not saying that it is just disney movies that they need to do. I also agree that it is a mistake that they are going down that route. I think that for me though, what they should have done is, like i said, separate the characters from the story. It makes it seem like a really small amount when you do a thing like group all of Greek mythology into one story. They should instead just use one or two characters at a time from each story and tell us how they know our characters. They should have also made some of the stories older in the Enchanted Forest. For example, make a character be a known characters grand daughter just like Emma is Snow White’s daughter, instead of making all the characters be the same age. I also think they should have played around more with things like Dickens or Shakespeare.

I am not completely against unknown stories, but i don’t think they should focus on that. If they want to put a character from something less known that would be fine, but i do think that the attraction was that they were the characters we knew, from the fairytales we saw and read growing up. They are too disney now for sure. They are leaning too hard on those disney versions. The Frozen story was too much the same, as was the Brave story, but i still think that is where they should start even if the execution has been terrible.

If done right, I think any story could be well adapted and loved by everyone. Now I don’t think OUAT is the place to really initiate this. But someone should.

I completely agree. OAUT’s problem is not so much the cultural homogeneity of the fairytales, but the fact that their starting point is the Disney version. Which is, frankly, not just sanitized but often downright saccharine in comparison to how most of these fairytales are in any of their folkloric versions. So OUAT’s not just working with Western stories, they’re working with uniquely 20th century US cultural products.

RG, I take your point about broadening the audience’s horizons, but considering OUAT’s relationship to ABC and Disney, I think the best they can hope to do is to say “look, there’s a lot more to these stories that the Disney version you might have seen.” Which is sort of where they started, but then introducing new characters just became a cynical cash grab, with no real depth or narrative force. I mean, I absolutely get what you’re saying, and it can be done in a wildly successful and original way (I might have mentioned American Gods once or twice on here ;)), but I don’t think OUAT’s team could ever hope to pull off something quite so radical, and not just because they don’t have the writing chops — but because it’s a family show and a Disney subsidiary.