Introduction
The modern construction of marriage and work that separates Lila from her family and community motivates her to withdraw into fairy tale fantasies. The first sections introduce fairy tales and how they integrate into the script. The second section explores Lila’s struggle between the fantasy and the real as a metaphor for her insular life and the struggle of gaining power with in a social construction of her home. The last section with look into the culmination of Lila’s struggle, resulting in an ambiguous ending and its relationship to the fairy tale structure.
Why Fairy Tales
The origin
Attempting to survive a life of routine, fairy tales are a fitting tool for Lila to incorporate into her life. Fairy tales’ origin, its ability to make social commentary, and influence on psychological development are all relevant to how Lila uses her fantasies. Among those who study fairy tales, including Jack Zipes, Wolfram Eberhard, and Marie-Louise von Franz, most agree they originate from some form of oral tradition. Zips refer to them as “wonder tales” that result from wonderers whose stores are left behind as they move from town to town.[1] Since the stories moved to different locations and changed storytellers as other people retold them, the details are susceptible to constant change. Lila’s story continues to change throughout her retelling as her situation changes and influenced by her encounters. When she first fantasizes, the King and Queen reflect her struggle to connect with her husband. On the other hand, Lila’s nephew, Lee-Lee introduces outside forces like giants and nymphs into the story, acknowledging outside forces into Lila’s insular life. Together they make changes to the detail and course of the fairy tale, but what remains are the essential characters.
Lila and her nephew maintain recognizable threads or archetypal characters, only when she seeks help and incorporate both of their stories can Lila continue with her fairy tale. As stories were retold in the past, what remains is “the story [that has] amplified itself without fitting archetypal material exactly as rumors do.”[2] Forming these archetypes require the work of the community to recognize essential elements that survive retelling of stories. In the narrative of Lila’s journey, her community is Lee-Lee and her husband. When Lila seeks out Lee-Lee’s help and steps outside of her comfort zone, and into his space (his room), Lila gains the tools to regain her fantasies. In Lee-Lee’s retelling of the fairy tale, the detail of the motivation behind the King and Queen’s animosity changes, but the interpretation of King’s, and Queen’s relationship remain constant. Lila and Lee-Lee recognize this isolated relationship between two characters is volatile. This interpretation is a reflection of a larger community that Lila and Lee-Lee reference. Lila reminds her nephew that this story was told to her by her mother and in turn, Lee-Lee acknowledges that his mother tells him this story. While Lila’s immediate community is very small, she and Lee-Lee draws on people outside her isolated world.
Fairy tales while supporting the community’s point of view, incorporates the individual’s interpretation within that community. Zipes write,
The ideology expressed in wonder tales always stemmed from the position that the narrator assumed with regard to the relations and developments in his or her community; and the narrative plot and changes made in it depended on the sense of wonder, marvel, admiration, or awe that the narrator wanted to evoke.[3]
After her encounter with Lee-Lee, Lila takes on the responsibility to continue where he leaves off. When she does so, she tells her husband the story. Instead of engaging in fantasy after a frustrating event, Lila adds to the story Lee-Lee shares. She verbalizes the story that she wants to tell. Furthermore, “The fairy tale is both mental and public representation, and certain fairy tales becomes so significant within a culture that we become disposed to re-representing it in manifold ways in the course of history.”[4] Unaware how important the fairy tale is to Lila, when she loses her fantasy she is unable to function. Within the microcosm of her world, Lila has to continue the tradition of this bedtime story. As it moves from one generation to the next she has to “re-represent” it, incorporating herself before she can share tell the story to her husband. Not having grown up in her world, she has to work to get his attention. In the first kitchen scene, he does not hear her. When Lila attempts to tell him her dream, Lila’s husband ignores her. When she finally tells him the story, there is a risk that he will not understand its significance. This tests the isolated structure of their marriage.
Psychological Development
UNCONSCIOUS NEED
Fairy tales are is means for Lila to interpret her everyday life and internalize her thoughts to further compartmentalize her world. There is no direct explanation of what her thoughts mean because like as passing thought, she does not always know what they mean. “In a child or adult, the unconscious is a powerful determinant of behavior… when unconscious material is to some degree permitted to come to awareness and worked through in imagination, its potential for causing harm – to ourselves or others – is much reduced; some of its forces can then be made to serve positive purposes.”[5] Bettelheim goes on to argue that when fairy tales are repeatedly told to children, the stories will teach them how to deal with their own duality. Lila, however, is at a point when she has negotiated her life so well; there is no need to live it. Instead of recognizing the evils in the world, she separates them. This is exemplified in her avoidance of any form of news.
Lila turns away from real violence while incorporating them into her fairy tale, and goes on to use this method for all her encounters. Her problem with life is this inability to incorporate the fantasy back into her life to affect change. To contrast, Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, also uses fairy tale fantasies to allow Ofelia to navigate her life, but the circumstance for evoking those tales are different. Ofelia’s life as a whole is a fairy tale and she plays the main character within her life and in fantasy world. She is a child on the verge puberty, one parent (like Cinderella) neglects, a stepparent abuses her, and she journeys into the labyrinth (usually the woods in German tales) to find adventure. Ofelia’s interaction between her fantasy and reality intertwine to improve her struggle in real life. She finds a root to help her sick mother in her fantasy. Unlike Ofelia, Lila is divorced from adventure. Lila watches her fantasy and serves as a platform for them to take place; she is not even the main character within her own imagination.
DUALITY
Lila’s fractured existence fits the mold of a common type of problem in fairy tales. Bettelheim grouped two issues often addressed in fairy tales: duality and the Oedipal complex. Lila’s struggle pertains to the former, about which Bettelheim writes,
All characters are typical rather than unique. Contrary to what takes place in many modern children’s stories, in fairy tales evil is an omnipresent as virtue. In practically every fairy tale good and evil are given body in the form of some figures and their actions, as good and evil are omnipresent in life and the propensities for both are present in every man. It is this duality which poses the moral problem, and requires the struggle to solve it.[6]
Fairy Tale stories of brothers who part and later rejoin, brothers and sisters who save each other, the most famous being Hansel and Gretel, are common. Lila’s immediate trouble lies with her other half. In her fantasy of the King and Queen they are nearly the same people, but instead of going on parallel adventures turn on each other. They and Lila look inward keeping them from understanding the events around them. The King and Queen are unable to recognize the spells that are cast on them and they do not see what effect their warring has on their land. Lila needs to find a way to unit the two separated characters, the common lesson in these duality tales .
Style and Inspiration
The major component this story revolves around the isolating existence of the modern life. I plan to use objects around the main character, Lila, such as cubicles, pillars, and other vertical lines in the modern décor to suggest the separation among people. These grounded lines are intended to sharply contrast the fantasy world Lila escapes to.
I plan to employ a similar style to Todd Haynes’ Safe in both framing and timing. The long shots of intimate moments in particular help disassociate the audience from the main character. Carol, the main character of Safe, lives a similar life to Lila. She lives a frivolous life with no deep connection with anyone. In one scene, Carol, her husband, and her stepson all occupy a different plane on the screen. Vertical lines separate them. Another method Haynes uses to heighten their Carol’s isolation is his use of long shots. When introducing characters, or in intimate moments, Haynes portrays characters from afar. This is how I will treat Lila’s conversations with her husband.
One major stylistic difference to Safe I will incorporate involves the use of extreme close ups. Haynes generally stayed away from close ups through out the film, but Lila when alone, has a creative outlet that is different from the everyday world. Lila’s intimate moments she has alone with her fantasies are larger than her life. Moments such as when she touches coffee grounds are more real to her than interacting with people. These close shots add to transition her real world into her fantasies.
The fairy tale fantasies are made up of miniature figures. They will have to be shot in extreme close-ups in order to portray them as a life-size influence on Lila’s life. Fairy tales have complex and divergent structure, but when following the logic of the modern Disneyesque happy ending form, Lila’s fairy tales pick up where the modern fairy tale ends. She poses the question of, what happens after the happily ever after? The King and Queen (oppose to the Prince and Princess) occupy a dark organic world. The organic quality juxtaposes the sterile environment Lila normally occupies.
The intertwining forms were inspired by Rebecca Morales’s installation pieces.
Soft Landing
(installation at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA)
2007
mixed media
dimensions variable
Soft Landing-detail
Soft Landing in particular played with the sterile white walls of the museum with this seemingly organic material that infests. This interplay of what Benjamin would refers to as the aura of this institution and the idea of a formless material influenced the main crux of the story’s theme. Keeping this in mind, I will use image of actual mold and animate them digitally. The mold occupies Lila’s fantasies and it threatens to interrupt her routine. The movement between the distinctly different world further stresses the separation and compartmentalized life Lila lives.
[1] Jack Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre (New York: Routledge, 2006), 52.
[2] Marie-Louise von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales (Switzerland: Spring Publications, 1974), 11.
[3] Jack Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre (New York: Routledge, 2006), 52.
[4] Ibid., 96.
[5] Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 7.
[6] Ibid., 8-9.