avevale_intelligencer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2008-01-06 02:24 pm
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2008-01-06 02:24 pm
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Watched most of Jim Henson's "Jack And The Beanstalk: The Real Story" the other night, and it gave me much to think about. The plot concerns a descendant of the original Jack the Giant Killer, all of whose male issue have died unpleasantly at around forty years old as a result of a curse placed on him (the original) for nicking the golden-egg-laying goose (Galaga, pronounced Gallagher, for some reason) and the magic harp from the world beyond the clouds. The mother of the original Jack, in contrast, has lived for nearly four hundred years, and also apparently transformed from Julia McKenzie into Vanessa Redgrave (some curse), posing as a great-aunt and waiting for a Jack to lift the curse, which the one we're focusing on duly does, with the help of a denizen of the upper world named Ondine, by returning the treasures to the said upper world.
It's an interesting place. It's run by six or seven giants, who seem to have authority over the human population, and who claim that the beauty and prosperity and so on of the land is maintained by taking all the eggs the goose lays and flinging them into some sort of magic crucible (clearly a metaphor for some sort of communistic setup). Certainly, when our Jack climbs the beanstalk, he finds the place has turned, in less than four hundred days (time works differently up there, one of their days equalling one of our years), into a depressed area, all grey and dying and ghastly much like the place the original Jack was living in down below. Whether this is because the treasures were taken, or because nobody had the slightest idea how to do any actual work to keep the land beautiful and prosperous, is never adequately explored, because all the people up there want to do is kill our Jack. Because that's worked so well with all the others. And because the giants say so.
The two different versions of the original story that we see are also interesting. The version the first Jack told, which became our fairy tale, has the giant Thunderdel portrayed as moronic and cruel, whereas the version told to our Jack in the upper world has him as moronic and nice, to a truly unfeasible degree: taking the common elements as trustworthy, and looking at the other giants, Thunderdel was obviously the equivalent of the dim cousin Harold, and why he of all of them should have responsibility for the guardianship of the fundamental life support system of the land is beyond reason, and, again, never gone into. The original Jack seems as uneasy with his role as thief, deceiver and murderer in the upper-world version as he is with his sort-of-heroic role in the fairy tale. Clearly neither of these versions is "the Real Story"; the truth is obviously somewhere in the middle, but Henson never tells us that directly. And the upper-world society, with humans in subjection to a non-human race (whose castles do look an awful lot like spaceships) and incapable of governing their destiny, or even basic survival for a year, in the absence of these two magic trinkets, is clearly not the perfect place it's painted as being.
But none of these intriguing avenues for speculation are explored. The treasures are returned, presumably allowing the gigantocracy to resume its illusory prosperity and beauty (I was in the kitchen for that bit). Our Jack gets to live beyond forty, and keep all the money his ancestors made on the back of the theft, even though one of the much-hammered-at themes of the story is that if prosperity is derived from an act of theft and/or murder (as nearly all prosperity in this world is, of course, if you go back far enough) then anyone who profits by that act is guilty of it. But he invests it all in a new kind of seed that can end famine throughout the world, so that's all right. And, of course, he gets Ondine, because it's never over till the hero gets the girl. Even if she is ten thousand five hundred years old.
It's a good story, with the Henson company's typically high production values, and there are some lovely bits. I could have done with a lot more of Jonathan Hyde as an acerbic manservant, and Vanessa Redgrave is always watchable.
But it isn't "the Real Story."
It's an interesting place. It's run by six or seven giants, who seem to have authority over the human population, and who claim that the beauty and prosperity and so on of the land is maintained by taking all the eggs the goose lays and flinging them into some sort of magic crucible (clearly a metaphor for some sort of communistic setup). Certainly, when our Jack climbs the beanstalk, he finds the place has turned, in less than four hundred days (time works differently up there, one of their days equalling one of our years), into a depressed area, all grey and dying and ghastly much like the place the original Jack was living in down below. Whether this is because the treasures were taken, or because nobody had the slightest idea how to do any actual work to keep the land beautiful and prosperous, is never adequately explored, because all the people up there want to do is kill our Jack. Because that's worked so well with all the others. And because the giants say so.
The two different versions of the original story that we see are also interesting. The version the first Jack told, which became our fairy tale, has the giant Thunderdel portrayed as moronic and cruel, whereas the version told to our Jack in the upper world has him as moronic and nice, to a truly unfeasible degree: taking the common elements as trustworthy, and looking at the other giants, Thunderdel was obviously the equivalent of the dim cousin Harold, and why he of all of them should have responsibility for the guardianship of the fundamental life support system of the land is beyond reason, and, again, never gone into. The original Jack seems as uneasy with his role as thief, deceiver and murderer in the upper-world version as he is with his sort-of-heroic role in the fairy tale. Clearly neither of these versions is "the Real Story"; the truth is obviously somewhere in the middle, but Henson never tells us that directly. And the upper-world society, with humans in subjection to a non-human race (whose castles do look an awful lot like spaceships) and incapable of governing their destiny, or even basic survival for a year, in the absence of these two magic trinkets, is clearly not the perfect place it's painted as being.
But none of these intriguing avenues for speculation are explored. The treasures are returned, presumably allowing the gigantocracy to resume its illusory prosperity and beauty (I was in the kitchen for that bit). Our Jack gets to live beyond forty, and keep all the money his ancestors made on the back of the theft, even though one of the much-hammered-at themes of the story is that if prosperity is derived from an act of theft and/or murder (as nearly all prosperity in this world is, of course, if you go back far enough) then anyone who profits by that act is guilty of it. But he invests it all in a new kind of seed that can end famine throughout the world, so that's all right. And, of course, he gets Ondine, because it's never over till the hero gets the girl. Even if she is ten thousand five hundred years old.
It's a good story, with the Henson company's typically high production values, and there are some lovely bits. I could have done with a lot more of Jonathan Hyde as an acerbic manservant, and Vanessa Redgrave is always watchable.
But it isn't "the Real Story."