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Trace the roots of many of the traditional cannon of fairy tale - Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty etc. - and women and children are often subdued by the establishment. Stardust's suggestion that there might be greater things inside all of us seems perfectly in line with traditional fairy tales.
If, however, you believe in more traditional gender roles and are very conservative in regards to family structure then Stardust may present a problem namely, that homosexuality is okay. To those coming from the hard right, Captain Shakespeare's effeminate behavior behind closed doors (or in the closet), and his revelation to the crew that he enjoys cross-dressing and they're subsequent reveal that they already knew, Stardust is definitely a challenge to the status quo. Even the heterosexual romance between Tristan and Yvaine pushes the limit as they are shown in bed together on more than one occasion. Magic and the heavy pagan influence might be of particular concern, as were parents after the release of "Harry Potter," and "The Golden Compass."
Hard liberals and feminists could pull their own message still. Both Tristan's human love Victoria (Sienna Miller), Yvaine (Claire Danes), and the witch (Michelle Pfeiffer) have blonde hair, blue eyes, and a near perfect Aryan complexion. There are no people of color...
Portrayals of women are questionable as well. They're shown as being fickle in the case of Victoria - she'll only marry Tristan if he can get her the fallen star and then complain about it being too small; conniving and deceitful as with the witches; and gullible - Yvaine gets tricked repeatedly by more than one character. Furthermore, femininity is shown as being dangerous - the more beautiful the witch the greater her power.
What all of this means is that the messages embedded into a film may not be the same messages that are extracted (Lurie, 27). The forces driving a character's actions are as much focused by the reader as they are the author. Alison Lurie alludes to this throughout her essay but never truly addresses the concept of encoding and decoding. She righteously gives credit to both the ultra-right and ultra-left in their interpretations of fairy tales but unnecessarily so. Fairy tales are no more subversive than any other literary media. While the accepting of homosexuality in Stardust does alienate the largely conservative populous, it also speaks to a growing segment of the population that pushes equality. In the end, a fairy tale can have subversive elements to one reader and be entirely comfortable to the next. Put a story in context, and it'll end happily ever after.
Love "Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering…" These were the opening lines that began a love story so powerful that Alma Singer's parents were moved to name her after the story's heroine. These lovers, Alma's parents, would also be separated when death claimed her father, leaving Alma's mother consumed with her
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Malware Attacks the Democratic Process Once upon a time, a candidate had to excel at kissing babies and stump speeches. These were the major ways in which the candidate got his -- or much less frequently her -- image out to voters. All that the candidate's staff had to do as to ensure that reporters and photographers showed up at the right time to capture the choreographed images. The world of
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The names of the characters in Spy Kids, such as Floop, give a Willy Wonka-espionage-in-fun verbal as well as visual tone to the film, and the thumb-shaped henchmen of Floop seem like a tribute to the Wonka oompah-loompas. For students of Rodriquez, Spy Kids may not be the director's most significant film, but it is an argument that the director, even when making a mainstream Hollywood genre film, has a
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