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princesssarisa · 1 year ago

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One of the most fascinating pieces of movie analysis I've ever read is J.B. Kaufman's thesis of the "two different Snow Whites" in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

He writes about this in both of his two books on the making of the movie, The Fairest One of All and its companion piece Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Art and Creation. His argument is that Snow White's two leading animators, Hamilton Luske and Grim Natwick, each gave Snow White a slightly different personality when they drew her. A close look at the movie, and knowledge of who animated which moments, reveals subtle differences in Snow White's expressions and body language. Luske, her head animator who handled the majority of her scenes, portrayed her as a more purely innocent, childlike character, while Natwick, the creator of Betty Boop, gave her a little more maturity, sophistication, and sauciness.

You can see the difference, for example, when comparing her girlish interactions with the animals in "With a Smile and a Song" and "Whistle While You Work" (animated by Luske) to her flirtatious smiling at the Prince from the balcony, or her "mothering" of the dwarfs as she examines their dirty hands (animated by Natwick). Or her responses to Grumpy in the scene before the Washing Song: as she asks "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" she looks at him with a devilish grin (Natwick), but then when he sticks out his tongue at her, she reacts with the most wide-eyed, girlish shock (Luske).

Now, I don't know if these two men really held different views of Snow White's character, or if it just worked out that Luske drew Snow White's more innocent scenes while Natwick was assigned her more grown-up moments. But either way, Kaufman argues that this "tension," the movie's constant push-and-pull between "Snow White as a wide-eyed innocent girl" and "Snow White as a self-assured young woman," makes her an especially interesting Disney Princess. I tend to agree, especially because, miraculously, there's no sense of inconsistency in her character. She comes across as a young girl on the verge of womanhood, who naturally can still be naïve and childlike in some ways, but more grown-up and clever in others.

This thesis makes me wonder if certain "tensions" in other movies are the result of different viewpoints within the creative team.

For example, in Beauty and the Beast.

Linda Woolverton has often talked about her feminist goals in writing Belle's character, which sometimes clashed with her collaborators' visions of Belle as a more traditional fairy tale heroine. It just might have been those clashing viewpoints that created the dichotomy in Belle that I personally think makes her interesting. On the one hand, she's a strong-willed misfit rebel, partly inspired by Jo March in Little Women and by Katharine Hepburn's screwball comedy heroines, who longs for adventure, isn't looking for romance until she unexpectedly finds it, stands up to men (and beasts) who abuse their power, and refuses to let anyone dominate her. On the other hand, she's a sensitive dreamer with delicate beauty and balletic grace, who wears pretty, ladylike dresses, adores fairy tales and love stories, and is sweet, nurturing, and almost motherly to her friends and loved ones. Yet somehow these two sides of her character co-exist with no sense of inconsistency between them.

There's also the dichotomy between the two different views of the Beast that the movie seems to present at once. On the one hand, there's the Beast as an unseemly brute, who's beastly form is both a just punishment for his flawed character and an outward symbol of it, and who needs to be "tamed" into proper "human" behavior, culminating in his physically turning human again. On the other hand, there's the Beast as a suffering, self-loathing outcast, unfairly hated, feared, and dehumanized, whose plight under the spell can easily be read as an AIDS allegory, and who needs to be accepted and loved as he is. I suspect that this also stems from different goals and viewpoints in the creative team. (For example, Howard Ashman's clash with the directors over whether the Prince should be a child or a man in the prologue – the former would have made him more "tragic" but the latter makes his punishment more "fair.")

I'd like to read an analysis of these "tensions" similar to Kaufman's analysis of the "two different Snow Whites."

#disney #snow white and the seven dwarfs #snow white #j.b. kaufman #beauty and the beast #belle #the beast #animated film #analysis #characterization #dichotomy

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rememberwren · 7 months ago

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A Dichotomy of Thought || 7

Previous parts may be found here.

Johnny finds a new purpose. CW: domestic violence.

((A video begins, shaky. It focuses on you, sitting at the dining table in your old apartment, your head in your hands. Tears have dripped onto the wood in front of you. As the camera approaches, you give a great sniff and lean back in your seat, tearful eyes meeting the lens.

“What are you doing?” you ask, voice warbling.

“Filming in case you get violent,” your boyfriend says. He turns the camera around to front facing, showing where he sports a swollen lower lip, tugging it outward to show where his teeth had cut into soft flesh. “See what you did to me? Now can we talk like two civil adults or are you going to hit me again?”

“Get the camera out of my face,” you grit out through your teeth.

The camera comes closer. “You’re getting worked up. I can tell. Try taking some deep breaths.”

“I said get it out of my face!” you shout.

“There’s no talking to you when you’re like this. Why don’t you just hit me again? I know you want to,” he says.

The camera comes closer, closer, close enough to tap teasingly against your temple. The video goes chaotic as the phone is knocked from his hands to the floor, clattering loudly against the tile. Socked feet come into the frame and the phone is picked up, turned back on you. Your head is in your hands again, but no more tears are falling on the table.

He gives a quiet laugh—but that can be edited out.

The video ends.))

Johnny finds a new pastime: planning murder.

He paces the walkable space in the apartment. The sound must drive the people below them crazy: tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump, but there are never any complaints. If there were, Simon would handle them with all the grace he had left (which is to say none). When Johnny refuses to leave the apartment, he dresses warm because Simon keeps the AC up: long pants he can pull up himself (buttoning jeans is on his List of things to relearn), soft long-sleeved shirts. They put a safety pin through the sleeve without any arm to fill it because Johnny hates for it to be flapping in the breeze when he really gets walking. Like he is now.

“The camera’s a problem,” he says, accent rough. It’s the first time he’s spoken to Simon all morning. The two are still on the outs with each other—that is to say that Johnny is giving him the coldest shoulder, refusing his help for as many tasks as possible, and scowling darkly whenever he can’t.

Johnny points to the corner of the room at Simon’s blank expression. “One camera, northeastern end of the hallway. There’s another in the elevator, but it only faces inward. I’m no’ worried about it.”

Simon realizes belatedly what Johnny is getting at.

“Drop it, Johnny.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Say less. Or nothing.”

Johnny mutters something foul under his breath that Simon pretends not to have heard. He pretends that he is an empty vessel, no heart left to hurt. Before Johnny, he’d nearly believed that to be true. Now he just wishes it were.

After a lengthy silence that Johnny spends staring at the wall which separates his apartment from yours, he asks: “Do yeh think the cameras work or they’re only there fer show?”

Simon lets out all his breath through his nose and refuses to dignify that with a response. He wants to leave. He wants to disappear downstairs for a cigarette, for something to do with his hands and something to calm his jittering nerves. While he used to fear that Johnny would kill himself if left alone, Simon has a new fear: that Johnny will kill someone else if he is left alone. How fucking fucked up can things get before Simon’s vessel breaks?

He opens a text to you, debates with himself and loses. Thirty minutes? he asks.

To Johnny, he’s ashamed to say that he says: “You’re due for your pills.”

“Aye. Then give them to me.”

He dishes out two of the little green ovals, the one that usually knock Johnny flat on his arse for three or four hours at a time. Simon isn’t sure if you’ll answer his text, but he plans to try to rest either way, even if he has to pin Johnny’s body to the bed with his own to do it with any sort of peace.

To Simon’s relief, you message back just as Johnny’s eyes are drooping. His gait becomes affected by the drugs in his system, ataxic and stumbling, and when Simon goes and takes the crutch from him, tucks Johnny’s arm over his shoulder, the smaller man lets him.

“Still angry at you,” mutters Johnny as Simon lays him down in bed and covers him with a blanket. He looks relaxed the way only Oxy can make him, limbs heavy with cotton. His eyes close almost right away, soft snores filling the air, but Simon sits on the side of the bed for several more minutes just watching him. Missing him—missing the old him. The one with two arms. Hating himself for feeling that way.

“I’m begging you Johnny,” he whispers to the quiet snoring man, his mouth barely moving. “I’m begging you to leave this idea alone. Because if you’re committed to it, then I’m going to have to help you. Because I can’t let them take you somewhere ever again where I can’t follow you. Don’t make me a killer again. Please.”

There’s a quiet knock at the door. Simon thumbs at his eyes just to be safe and lets you in.

You’re dressed from the diner, sweat on your forehead from your walk to the apartment. It’s the first time you two have seen each other since that terrible day that Johnny chose to sit next to your piece of shit boyfriend at the bar. Without the other man there, there is more life in your cautious eyes as you glance toward the bedroom in silent question.

“Asleep,” Simon affirms.

“You should go join him,” you whisper. “You look tired.”

“I just might. If that’s alright.”

You nod your head. Simon’s heart clenches with the strangest sensation for you, one he hasn’t felt for anyone save Johnny: fondness. If he thinks too long about why you’re here—just repaying a debt that doesn’t truly exist—he’ll talk himself out of the rest he needs. Let him talk himself out of it another day, after a little sleep.

“Thank you,” he says, voice rougher than he would like it to be.

He goes and curls up on the bed beside Johnny, quietly closing the bedroom door behind him, and falls asleep before his head hits the pillow.

And when he wakes, nearly two hours have passed. You’re standing at the foot of their bed like a child coming to wake their parents in the night, and it nearly startles a sound out of him. Heart pounding, he sits up, sleep vanishing from his system. Your hands are anxious, wringing together in front of you as you rush out of the bedroom once you know he’s awake. He gives Johnny a cursory glance—still snoring—and follows you.

“I let you sleep as long as I could, but I really need to leave now,” you whisper.

“You should have woken me,” Simon says. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“I won’t,” you answer mindlessly, already working your apartment key from your pocket.

“Don’t lie to me,” says Simon, stern but soft.

The two of you stare at each other.

“Okay,” you say at length. “I won’t.”

A lie if Simon’s ever heard one.

That night when your boyfriend is asleep, you go back to your drawer. For a moment, you can’t find the lighter. A part of you is convinced that it will be gone, that he will have found it and moved it and be biding his time to bring it up to you, and just when you are nearly convinced to give up, your hand encloses around the hard piece of metal and plastic and you pull it free. You carry it into the bathroom just to flick the pinwheel once, watching the fire burst into life. In the little orange flame, you’re convinced that you see Johnny and Simon, their figures curled around each other on their bed in the darkness where you had stood like an intruder waiting to make yourself known. Your heart aches with a throbbing you can’t understand. You let the flame die and smuggle the lighter back into the drawer.

Johnny thinks about everything.

The cameras: who he plans to talk to to find out if they’re real and if so where the footage is being held. The entry points: the front door which you rarely leave unlocked, and the balcony doors which he is already considering how to get to. The method: simplicity is best, something which looks like a terrible, untimely accident. A slip and a fall, a head injury beyond repair, a broken neck. Nothing traceable, no weapons. The alibi: Simon.

Simon would vouch for him, Johnny knows. Even if they aren’t on good terms (and just thinking of the other man makes Johnny’s blood boil), Johnny still loves him, and Johnny knows that Simon loves him back. Simon would die for him. Nearly has, many times. Time doesn’t change something like that, except to make it stronger.

Johnny barely notices it, but as the days pass, he grows stronger too. The walking comes a little easier. Sometimes he manages inside the apartment without the crutch, his knee a dormant throb as he grips onto the nearest surface when his balance goes wonky.

With the good comes the bad. There’s a little less pain, yes, but also less pain pills in the bottle and even fewer doctors willing to prescribe them to him. They want to know what else Johnny is trying to lessen his pain; how’s therapy going, has he tried icing and elevating his knee, does he use Tylenol? None of them understand what it’s like to function at his level of pain every day. He counts the pills left in the bottle and dreads the day they run out.

The nightmares get worse, too. He starts digging through the snow every night looking for his arm and uncovering bodies instead: the men who had died on the helicopter, sometimes Simon, sometimes you. He takes his Keppra every day and has no more seizures, but the medicine makes him feel restless in his own skin, like he’s in a cocoon, like he’s transforming into something. Something else.

Maybe it’s just in his head. Maybe there’s just something in the air.

Saturday is coming, after all.

Thursday, Johnny’s anger wavers. He moves quieter now without the crutch, and it gives him the stealth to sneak up on Simon for the first time since his accident. He catches his lover with his head in his hands at the kitchen table, fingers buried in his short blond hair, the picture of exhausted defeat. Johnny must make some sound, his socks brushing against the linoleum, because then Simon’s head snaps up, face morphing into a neutral expression. But there’s no hiding the shadows beneath his eyes. There’s no hiding the way the frown lines on either side of his mouth look more at home than ever.

The craving for him rises up in Johnny so keenly that it’s almost a pain. He doesn’t fight it, just hobbles quietly across the kitchen to stand at Simon’s side and let Simon lean his head against Johnny’s belly. Johnny runs his fingers through his hair, nails scratching lightly at his scalp, thinking about how foreign it feels to be doing this with the wrong hand. With the Weak Hand.

“Yer a stubborn bastard,” Johnny whispers.

“Talking to yourself in the mirror again, Johnny?”

Before Johnny can answer, there comes the sound of rising voices from the hallway. Your voice is easily recognizable—and angry. The two meet eyes briefly and then both are dashing (as well as Johnny can dash) to the front door, holding their breath to better hear the argument taking place just beyond their door.

“—don’t like it, then you can go back to the shelter.”

A door slams shut. Johnny flinches at the sound.

Your hand pounds against the wood. “Let me in you fucking cunt!” you shout. “I pay for this shithole, you let me in or I swear to God—”

It’s rare for them to be so in sync these days, but as Johnny reaches for the latch lock, Simon reaches for the deadbolt. Their fingers brush against the knob as they twist the door open in perfect harmony, Ghost and Soap, both on your six.

You freeze, fist raised to beat savagely against the door again. Your face is swollen from tears, cheeks wet, hair disheveled. Your knuckles are peeling. Wiping your face dry of tears, you can say nothing—no excuse, no explanation for your actions. You lamely point at the door.

“He…he’s locked me out.”

Simon silently nudges their door open wider just a hair, a silent offer.

You take it.

It’s the first time you’ve ever been inside their apartment when Johnny is awake. Johnny doesn’t have his arm crutch as he guides you to the kitchen table and pulls out a chair for you, and it’s strange to see him without it.

“Would yeh make tea?” Johnny asks Simon.

Simon gets to work without comment, filling the kettle and pulling cups from the cabinet. You remember the taste of tea from the last time Simon offered you some: bitter without any sugar, but so warm in your belly. Soothing. Your stomach growls. You press your fist against it and hope to silence any further noises.

“Does that happen often?” Johnny asks, exuding an eerie calmness as he takes the seat across from you. “Him locking yeh out, I mean.”

You shrug a shoulder miserably. It happens more often than you’d admit even under duress. He knows you have limited options when you’re locked out of the apartment, with no friends to go to and no family nearby. There are shelters, but they are terrible places where terrible things happen to needful people. You won’t go there anymore. Not ever again.

You know what he really wants: for you to beg to be allowed back in. And eventually you will. You always do. Just…not yet.

“You can stay here for as long as you need to,” says Simon, setting a teacup in front of you. You had disappeared into your own head for a moment—for a handful of minutes—and you could feel their eyes on you. Judging you.

Except when you meet the clear blue gaze of Johnny, there’s no hint of judgement in them. He looks like he’s trying to see through you to the chair at your back. When he catches you looking, he forces a smile, something soft and kind and maybe not truthful.

Were you an idiot to be alone in this apartment with two strange men? You felt that they were good people, but your instincts were broken. They had misled you before.

“He makes me out to look like I’m crazy,” you whisper, speech pressured, hands wringing in your lap. “But I’m not crazy. I swear. I’m not—“

“We believe you,” Simon says simply.

And you believe him. The relief is almost enough to make you cry fresh tears, but you blink them away, on the verge of a splitting headache already from all the tears you had cried.

“How’s giving up smoking going?” you ask to change the subject. You burn your tongue on your tea again, but it feels good to fill up your belly like this, so you drain the cup.

“Fantastically,” says Johnny with a grin. “Lost my lighter.”

Your face burns with warmth.

“Bad luck,” you offer.

Johnny’s grin widens. He hums.

Simon stays silent, one hand coming to rest against Johnny’s knee beneath the table, if the slope of his arm tells you anything. It makes you want to dash your mug to the floor, it hurts so much. You want something like it so bad.

“I’m going to take a walk around the block I think,” you say, standing. A piece of you feels left behind in the chair, broken into bits. “Cool off a bit. Thank you for the tea.”

“It’s just tea,” Simon reminds you, also standing. He goes to the table by the door and you hear the rustling of keys. When he returns, he has a silver one in the palm of his hand. “Take this. If you ever get locked out again—come over here. We’re probably home, but if we aren’t, just let yourself in.”

“I couldn’t,” you say, eyes wide.

“You can.” He puts the key in your hand firmly. “You will. Understand?”

You swallow the knot in your throat and nod your head, reluctant but grateful.

You slip out the front door, the key burning a hole in your pocket.

Once the door has shut behind you, Johnny stands from the table, chair legs screeching against the linoleum. He goes to Simon and wraps his arms around him. The two embrace for the first time in days.

“Yer a good man, Simon Riley.”

Simon sighs softly and lets his head rest against the crown of Johnny’s own. First a coward, then a bastard, now a good man. What a metamorphosis.

He’s afraid of who he might turn out to be next.

#ghoap x reader #dichotomy of thought

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