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Post by tannis on Feb 14, 2008 23:33:56 GMT
"Has anybody else noticed the run-out messages on the new 'The Red Shoes' 7" vinyl release? On side A it's 'ONE FOR THE ARCHERS'..."gaffa.org/moments/2_2f.htmlPowell and Pressburger were the British film-making partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, also known as The Archers. They made a series of influential films in the 1940s and 1950s, including The Red Shoes (1948). They are now regarded as two of the most significant figures in British cinema (wiki). However, KB's interest in archery (as shown in photography, and the sleeve and video for the 1985 Running Up That Hill) suggests that 'One for The Archers' may have deeper meaning.Famous Archers: APOLLO & ARTEMISApollo, the son of Zeus and Leto, was born in the island of Delos, together with his sister Artemis. ARTEMIS was the great Olympian goddess of hunting, wilderness and wild animals. She was also a goddess of childbirth, and the protectress of the girl child up to the age of marriage. Her twin brother Apollon was similarly the protector of the boy child. Together the two gods were also bringers of sudden death and disease--Artemis targeted women and girls, and Apollon men and boys. In the character of sister of Apollo, Artemis is like her brother armed with a bow, quiver, and arrows. In ancient art Artemis was usually depicted as a girl dressed in a short knee-length chiton and equipped with a hunting bow and quiver of arrows. APOLLON (or Apollo) was the great Olympian god of prophecy and oracles, healing, plague and disease, music, song and poetry, the protection of the young, and archery. As the god of song and music, we find him in the Iliad (i. 603) delighting the immortal gods with his play on the phorminx during their repast; and the Homeric bards derived their art of song either from Apollo or the Muses. "Niobe’s twelve children were destroyed in her palace, six daughters, and six sons in the pride of their youth, whom Apollon killed with arrows from his silver bow, being angered with Niobe, and Artemis Iokheaira (shaft-showering) killed the daughters; because Niobe likened herself to Leto of the fair-colouring and said Leto had borne only two, she herself had borne many; but the two, though they were only two, destroyed all those others..." - Homer, Iliad. www.theoi.com/Famous Archers: TRISTAN & ROBINTSOS: "I'll be Isolde or Marion for you..." Maid Marian was originally a character in May Games festivities and is sometimes associated with the Queen or Lady of May of May Day. She became associated with Robin Hood in this context, as Robin Hood became a central figure in May Day, associated as it was with the forest and archery.Marian is likely derived from the French tradition of a shepherdess named Marion and her shepherd lover Robin (not Robin Hood). The best known example of this tradition is Adam de la Halle's Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, circa 1283. Iseult (alternatively Isolde, Yseult, Isode, Isoude, Isotta) is the name of several characters in the Arthurian story of Tristan and Iseult. The most prominent is Iseult of Ireland, wife of Mark of Cornwall and adulterous lover of Sir Tristan. The love story of Tristan and Isolde is one of the most famous in literature. It tells of a passionate and illicit love born of a potion that the two drank by mistake. Because Isolde was pledged to marry Tristan's uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, their love could bring the young couple no happiness; instead it condemned them to suffering, guilt, exile and a tragic end. In the Béroul retelling of the legend: "Tristan was an excellent archer, skilled with the bow. Governal had taken one from a forester, and he had brought two feathered and barbed arrows. Tristan took the bow and set out through the woods. He saw a buck, drew his bow, and shot, striking the animal directly in the right side. It cried out, leapt up into the air, and fell back to the ground. Tristan brought it back with him." 'The Archers' - JCB & KB?"And then our arrows of desire rewrite the speech, mmm, yes..." (TSW).[ ] "How did the sleeve for the Running Up That Hill come to be archery themed and the idea of lyrics on Kate's back?" [JCB?] "The archery... Archery is something that we [KB & JCB? 'The Archers'?] have been interested in for many years. It symbolizes the very basic learning processes, archery. You aim an arrow at a target and you let it go and it flies towards the target, it misses the middle and it moves a little bit to the left and a little bit low, then you know that the next arrow you're going to shoot has to be a little bit to the right and a bit higher..." "JAY [JCB]: I think there's some levels of archery which now... in terms of a simple fact, you can see archery as... with the left hand holding the bow, as the future, and the right hand is pulling this way, it's going backwards, as the past. And you're the present. You could see it as the left hand as the passive thing, the female, and the right hand as the male... "And the idea of the lyrics written on Kate's back was... we'd been working on a series for about the last eighteen months and a photograph... because I never found a photograph and a poem written on the page opposite -it never seems to work. You look at the poem and you're having to read the words and that's more concentrated thing, particularly these days, because less of us are used to it. And then you look at the photograph and you get a much more immediate reaction. So trying to balance all that's going on. And I though the only way to do it was actually to write the poem in the photograph. And writing it on the person, that meant you could take a portion of the person, you could write your poem. You take a photograph too and get a much more complete thing. So I'd done a few of those and Kate saw them and liked the idea, so we tried... initially we were going to try them for the album cover, but that didn't work out, it was much too busy. But it worked well I think for the single back." - gaffa.org/dreaming/con_85.htmlJCB: "The inside artwork was more complicated. After the archer shots were completed, we headed for an outdoor location, because we wanted to use a particular doorway that we knew of. It was two in the morning, and after we had set up lights and the smoke machine, I wrote the lyrics from the song onto Kate's back--and realised as I was doing it that the cold night air was going to cause problems with the skin texture. But as it happened, by staying in the warm until the last moment, this did not become a problem." - gaffa.org/garden/jcb3.html----- EDIT: A SKY OF HONEY & TKIAPOLLO & ARTEMIS: The sun and the moon...APOLLO was the god of the sun. Each day he drove his chariot of fiery horses across the sky to give light to the world. [ Aerial Sky?] Apollo was believed to be one of the best archers. He was the son of Leto and Zeus, and also the twin brother of the virgin huntress Artemis. Apollo was also the Greek god of music and poetry and the hymns that were sung to Apollo were called paeans. Apollo was the leader of the Muses and also the expert director of their choir. Apollo became god of the sun and Artemis became goddess of the moon. ARTEMIS was associated with the moon as her brother the sun. Artemis, goddess of the Moon, is the quintessential female archetype. Artemis is known as the goddess of the night, the huntress, the goddess of fruitfulness, Lady of the Beasts, the woodland goddess, the bull goddess, the personification of the moon. The association between Artemis and the moon is revealed in one of the epithets used to describe the goddess - Phoebe ("the bright one"). Artemis was worshipped as Diana in Roman mythology. Roman worship of Apollo was also adopted from the Greeks. In 17 BCE Augustus celebrated the 'Secular Games', the culmination of which were sacrifices and prayers on the Palatine to Apollo and Diana... "Like the light in Italy Lost its way across the sea..."APOLLO & ARTEMIS (Sun & Moon) were also Famous Archers (see above)."I will come home again, but not until The sun and the moon [The Archers?] meet on yon hill..."The album covers for THE KICK INSIDE and NEVER FOR EVER both feature "the sun and the moon..." Apollo and Artemis...A SKY OF HONEY: "We went up to the top of the highest hill..." The Archers: And when KB et al return with Ariel Sky, 'the sun and the moon meet on yon hill' in Sunset, Somewhere In Between and Nocturn..."On this Midsummer night Everyone is sleeping We go driving into the moonlight..."----- [purple]PHOEBUS[/purple] - i.e. the shining, pure or bright, occurs both as an epithet and a name of Apollo, in his capacity of god of the sun. [purple]PHOEBE[/purple] - a surname of Artemis in her capacity as the goddess of the moon (Luna), the moon being regarded as the female Phoebus or sun. ----- Artemis Corona is a corona found in the Aphrodite Terra continent, on the planet Venus. Named after Artemis, the virgin hunt Archer Goddess, it is the largest Corona on Venus. It is largely enclosed by the near circular Artemis Chasma - a predominantly compressional circular arc belts. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_CoronaAs one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been known since prehistoric times and as such has gained an entrenched position in human culture. Believing Venus to be two bodies, the Ancient Greeks called the morning star Phosphoros, the "Bringer of Light". The evening star they called Hesperos. But by Hellenistic times, they realized the two were the same planet. Hesperos would be translated into Latin as Vesper and Phosphoros as Lucifer ("Light Bearer"), a poetic term later used to refer to the fallen angel cast out of heaven. The astronomical symbol for Venus is the same as that used in biology for the female sex: a circle with a small cross beneath. The Venus symbol also represents femininity, and in Western alchemy stood for the metal copper. Polished copper has been used for mirrors from antiquity, and the symbol for Venus has sometimes been understood to stand for the mirror of the goddess. With the release of the This Woman's Work boxed set there appeared a new version of the KT symbol that includes the biological symbol for woman, or the astronomical symbol for the planet Venus with her Artemis Corona. see more: gaffa.org/faq/ktfem_bg.gifen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus
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Post by tannis on Feb 15, 2008 0:18:07 GMT
And on the subject of run-out messages see: www.faqs.org/faqs/music/kate-bush-faq/What about the inscriptions on the vinyl discs? On a lot of English first pressings of vinyl records you can find an inscription in the run-out area of the disc... Kate not only knows about the inscriptions, she even writes them, so most of them are of some significance... Here's a list of the inscriptions on the first releases of the vinyl editions: Wuthering Heights / Kite: Side A: Remember the whales ['Moving' intro sound]; The Man With The Child In His Eyes / Moving: Side A: The child hides in the light; - In August 1980, Pat Benatar released her second LP, Crimes of Passion, featuring 'Hell Is For Children' ("They hide in the light, so you can't see their fears") AND her cover of WUTHERING HEIGHTS. www.stopapathynow.com/www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=3458764513820560268YouTube: Pat Benatar - Hell is for Children: - www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sa0MkWoeTk"They cry in the dark, so you can't see their tears They hide in the light, so you can't see their fears Forgive and forget, all the while Love and pain become one and the same In the eyes of a wounded child..." Hammer Horror / Coffee Homeground Side A: We're all playing a hunch; - 'Playing a hunch', going with your gut rather than simple linear, logical thinking. "I had a hunch there was nothing under it but bare skull..." - Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, 1953). Wow / Fullhouse: Side A: Thank You Emily [Emily Bronte, author of the novel Wuthering Heights]; Breathing / The Empty Bullring: Side A: We all share the same air; Side B: Happy anniversary to the p's; Army Dreamers / Delius / Passing Through Air: Side A: Life is to love; December Will Be Magic Again / Warm And Soothing: Side A: Happy Christmas; Sat In Your Lap / Lord Of The Reedy River: Side A: Well done JB 1st dan [JB is John Barrett (assistant engineer, see SIYL sleeve), not John Carder Bush [WW]]; Side B: Thank you Donovan [Donovan wrote Lord Of The Reedy River]; The Dreaming / Dreamtime: Side A: For Rolf [Rolf Harris]; There Goes A Tenner / Ne T'Enfuis Pas: Side A: Rays; Cloudbusting / Burning Bridge: Side A: For Peeps; Hounds of Love / The Handsome Cabin Boy: Side A: Woof!; This Woman's Work / Be Kind To My Mistakes: Side A: "Up yours Ugly!"; The Red Shoes / You Want Alchemy: Side A: One for the Archers [Powell & Pressburger? Apollo & Artemis? JCB & KB?]; Side B: Buzzzz [MC]. 12" maxi singles: Hounds of Love: Side A: Woof!; Rubberband Girl: Side A: Whack It On; Moments Of Pleasure: Side A: Alive and Kicking. LPs: The Kick Inside: Side A: Rember yourself; Lionheart: Side A: Hope you like it; (also Lionheart: Side A & B: Penthouse); The Hounds Of Love: Side A: Townhouse; Side B: Townhouse(Townhouse Studio in England where Kate's records were mastered); The Whole Story: Side A: KT; The Sensual World: Side A: Townhouse; Side B: Townhouse DMM; The Red Shoes: Side A: For H ['H' is for heroin].
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Feb 15, 2008 0:55:53 GMT
That's really interesting, Tannis. I have TKI and The Whole Story on vinyl, but I never noticed the messages- I'll have to look for them.
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Post by tannis on Feb 15, 2008 12:55:23 GMT
on The Red ShoesIn the Brothers Grimm version of the Snow White story, the wicked stepmother is forced to wear ret-hot iron shoes and dance in them until she falls down dead. It is her punishment for being too heated herself with envy over Snow White, and for letting that passion get out of control. Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, The Red Shoes, also warns about the dangers of vanity. A child named Karen is unable to remove her red shoes and unable to stop dancing in them. The shoes dance her feet across meadows and forests for months. Wretched and exhausted, she finally begs an executioner to chop off her feet: "Don't chop my head off," she says, "for then I can never repent of my sins. But pray, pray chop off my feet with the red shoes!" He does, and the chopped off red shoes dance away with her feet still in them... Just like on the album cover![red]The Red Shoes[/red] by Hans Christian Andersen (1845):- hca.gilead.org.il/red_shoe.html
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Adena
Moving
This time around we dance - we're chosen ones
Posts: 611
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Post by Adena on Apr 14, 2008 13:41:44 GMT
As always, nice work Tannis. I don't understand half of it, must do some research.
I can connect with this song. Do one thing (put on the red shoes), regret it immediately, and then go out of control. My experience with this ended very nastily, and I'm still rebuilding. And although you might rebuild, the effects are there still.
The music fits the lyrics and mood perfectly. Halting, haunting, a mix of emotions. I still can't place what most of this actually is, but it does seem to fit very well.
I can also remember being about 4 or 5, and reading a book about a girl with red shoes. I should try and find it.
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Post by tannis on Jun 24, 2008 13:48:11 GMT
Could KaTe have taken inspiration from Roman Polanski? GOoMH reminds me of Polanski's Repulsion (1965). The Aerial artwork features a red dress and maybe a devil in the trees; and in Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968), Rosemary is dressed in red for 'Baby Night'. And the song, The Red Shoes, could be using a line from Rosemary's Baby...
Rosemary Woodhouse: This is no dream! This is really happening! Kate Bush: Really happening to ya...And in The Line, the Cross & the Curve (1994), the Dancer dances with devils...Kate Bush-The Red Shoeswww.youtube.com/watch?v=jHnTbQHT4eA3:19Polanski's Apartment Trilogy: Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Tenant (1976)One could easily get the impression from his films that director Roman Polanski does not recommend apartment life. Three of his films, forming an unofficial trilogy, concern characters -- apartment dwellers all -- who variously succumb to different kinds of insanity. In Repulsion, Carol (Catherine Deneuve), a young Belgian manicurist, lives with her sister and her sister's fiancee in a London apartment. The couple go away on a vacation, leaving Carol alone in the flat. While they are away, Carol begins hallucinating that she is not alone in the apartment. A man appears in her dressing mirror for a split second then disappears. Hands reach out from the walls and molest her. She is unable to function otherwise, forgetting to eat and leaving food out to rot. This culminates in a rape sequence where Polanski hints at the reality by including only the "real" sounds -- a clock ticking, Carol's own breathing and heartbeat, and the rustle of the sheets as she fights her "attacker." The trauma of this experience completes Carol's break with reality. When a friend later calls on her, concerned that she hasn't been to work, she takes him for an intruder. Upon viewing Repulsion, many psychologists commended Polanski's accurate depiction of schizophrenia. They were surprised when Polanski admitted that he and co-screenwriter Gerard Brach had simply written Carol's behavior as a natural response to the circumstances. They had done no research. Catherine Deneuve's performance carries the film beyond what could have been exploitation into the realm of classic. Combined with Polanski's insight and careful direction, Repulsion is a psychological horror masterpiece. Based on the bestselling Ira Levin novel, Rosemary's Baby -- Polanski's first Hollywood film -- is a relatively faithful adaptation of the tale of Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse (Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes), their new home, and their adventures in childbearing. Moving into their new apartment, Rosemary and Guy meet their upstairs neighbors: Roman Castevet and his wife, Minnie (Oscar-winner Ruth Gordon). The Castevets make the Woodhouses feel right at home. They also make themselves at home at the Woodhouses' apartment, giving advice and becoming the young couple's friends. The first clue that things are not going as expected comes when Rosemary dreams that she is raped by a demon. She wakes to find that Guy had sex with her while she slept. She turns out to be pregnant, so this is passed off as good news. Immediately, the Castevets put themselves in control of her term, giving her a malodorous amulet, and making her drink a homemade "health" concoction. They even go so far as to recommend their own doctor, a man called Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy). When the blessed day comes, the baby, called Adrian, is never actually shown. Any questions are left to be answered by the audience's own preconceptions. It's over the top, to be sure, but it fits the mood. With Rosemary's Baby, Polanski created another classic of the horror genre; it manages to be subtle yet stunning. The performances are excellent all around, but Mia Farrow is particularly effective as she displays the myriad emotions of a new mother wanting to protect and care for her baby, but powerless to stop the snowballing events. Polanski himself plays the lead character in The Tenant, the final movie in this trilogy. The Tenant is the story of Trelkovsky, a Polish-born French citizen (like Polanski) who lucks into an apartment because the previous occupant jumped out the window. She is still in the hospital when he jumps at the room, having heard of it from a friend. Soon, everyone in town learns that he is renting this room, and Trelkovsky begins to believe they are conspiring to turn him into her. When he goes to the local coffee shop, he orders coffee but the man asks him if he would like hot cocoa instead, as that is what she would have ordered. When he asks for his brand of cigarettes, he says they are out of stock and would he like Marlboro (her brand) instead. At first, he accepts reluctantly but after many days of this, becomes hostile. Eventually, Trelkovsky does begin to assume her qualities, while denying this vehemently. He dresses in her clothes, buys a wig, puts on make-up, and eventually attempts suicide by jumping out the same window she did -- twice -- all the time screaming at the other tenants that they will not get him. An interesting portrait. Polanski also manages to poke fun at himself by becoming the helpless woman archetype portrayed in the previous two films. Obviously not for all tastes, The Tenant was not well received upon its first release, but it is my favorite of all of Polanski's films because of its layered storytelling and quirky mood. Plus, Polanski the actor has an engaging personality that immediately elicits empathy. The movie has gained a cult following in the intervening years that is likely to grow as more people discover this little-known film. www.greenmanreview.com/film/film_polanskihorror_omni.htmlRepulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTLAlBnoRlAThe Sensual World... "Carole Ledoux possessed by the nightmare world of her sensual fantasies..." (Repulsion Trailer)Rosemary's Baby Trailerwww.youtube.com/watch?v=otPyEsObI1M1976 The tenant - Trailerwww.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmhIMbdecEU
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Post by ketman on Jun 24, 2008 17:09:22 GMT
[quote author=tannis board=theredshoes thread=1752
.....and in Rosemary's Baby, Rosemary is dressed in red for 'Baby Night'). And the song, The Red Shoes, uses the line from Rosemary's Baby...
Rosemary Woodhouse: This is no dream! This is really happening!
Kate Bush: Really happening to ya...
[/quote]
I heard The Red Shoes on YouTube a few of days ago for the first time and was absolutely knocked out. But amongst the comments was one claiming the instrumental intro was almost identical to Cornflake Girl by Tori Amos (who she?). So I went off and listened to that, and indeed the first few bars are strikingly similar. But I came across something else in the song that's even more striking, which is these lyrics:
"This is not really happening, You bet your life it is!"
Very odd.
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Post by tannis on Jun 24, 2008 17:42:23 GMT
Yes, Tori's instrumental intro is pretty similar. The Red Shoes (album) was released 2 November 1993, and Cornflake Girl was released 5 May 1994 (from 'Under the Pink', released 31 January 1994). Uncanny? And the "this is not really happening"/"really happening to ya" are so like the 1968 Rosemary's Baby, that maybe both artists were borrowing from the classic film in song and video...According to wiki, the inspiration for "Cornflake Girl" came from Alice Walker's novel Possessing the Secret of Joy, about a young African woman going through the ritual of female genital cutting. Amos was angered by the idea that a mother could subject her daughter to such a brutal act, and the song arose as an exploration of the idea of betrayal between women. And of course, in Rosemary's Baby, the "really happening" is used during the ritual rape scene following Guy's betrayal... There were two different videos for "Cornflake Girl". The UK version was directed by Big TV!, two directors from the UK. Tori said that is based on The Wizard of Oz, except that Dorothy goes to hell instead. This version was considered slightly too "strange" for American audiences and a second version was made, which was co-directed by Amos herself along with Nancy Bennett. The American video features Tori driving a truck full of girls around a typical American desert.Tori Amos - Cornflake Girl (US Version)www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A9PiGyxlhUTori Amos - Cornflake Girlwww.youtube.com/watch?v=NXrgjTED5bEThe TORI AMOS UK video version of Cornflake Girl also seems to reference the KATE BUSH Suspended in Gaffa video...Kate Bush - Suspended in Gaffawww.youtube.com/watch?v=5w4y1ekS_LE2:04-12I: Many critics have compared you to Kate Bush. T: Yes, but I think that has nothing to do with my songs, just my voice. They hear these high sounds (sings) and immediately think of Kate Bush. I: But your song concepts are completely different. T: Yes, she works with other structures. But her songs are very original, and that's what matters. -- Tori; Keyboards Magazine (German), Jun 1992
see more on Kate Bush by Tori Amos:www.hereinmyhead.com/musicians/bush.html
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Post by tannis on Jun 26, 2008 15:21:30 GMT
GUIDE: "The spell is being broken..." DANCER: "I can't go on. I am torn between what I was and what is to become of me. In these shoes, every step I take is laced with madness. They fill me with pain and confusion, and with thoughts that are not my own. I have danced their dances. I see streets and buildings I know so well, although I have never been to these place. Together, we raced with wild horses till they dropped. We have leapt from cliffs into the raging waters below; and together we tripped from a stage into the pit. I see me falling. I feel my fear. And yet I was never here. These shoes are all anger and passion. I am possessed and I no longer have the strength to fight them..." GUIDE: "It's really happening to ya... Call upon those you love..." The Line, the Cross & the Curve (1994)Under a veil you must never lift... "Kate Bush reveals herself to us through a gauzy veil but, if we work hard and listen carefully, we can gain a fascinating and compulsive insight into this reclusive artist. It would be churlish, indeed, to refuse such an invitation... With 'The Sensual World' Kate Bush draws back this veil..." RAW, 1989gaffa.org/reaching/i89_raw.htmlThe 1989 KATE BUSH The Sensual World EMI promo video-box (including 11-track CD album, 11-track cassette album, glossy 12-page lyric/picture booklet & biography insert) has a cover photo strikingly similar to an image used in the 1994 KATE BUSH The Line, the Cross & the Curve*...Kate Bush - The Line, the Cross and the Curve - 5 of 7www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NQaIqJ1HXU&feature=related0:26-1:44The Sensual World [CD + Cassette Limited Edition Boxed Set]www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/B001BAUG02/sr=8-4/qid=1214487786/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=229816&s=music&qid=1214487786&sr=8-4The image might suggest the Islamic Niqab. Niqab consists of covering up completely, including gloves and a veil for the face - leaving just a slit for the eyes, or covering them too with transparent material. The niqab is widely debated. Some associate it with oppression and separation. Others regard it as an aspect of worship, virtue and freedom.A woman wearing a niqāb in Yemenupload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Muslim_woman_in_Yemen.jpg* It is interesting that this same image seems to have been quoted by TORI AMOS in the UK video version of Cornflake Girl...Tori Amos - Cornflake Girlwww.youtube.com/watch?v=NXrgjTED5bE2:48 "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" ~ C C Colton.see more: Niqâben.wikipedia.org/wiki/NiqabA Veiled Woman's Response to the Niqab Debate www.islaam.ca/forum/view-44.html
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Post by tannis on Sept 7, 2008 21:27:30 GMT
KT: "Really happening to ya." This line could have been borrowed from Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963). Just before her fatal car crash, we hear Eleanor's internal dialogue:
Eleanor 'Nell' Lance: "Why don't they stop me, can't they see what is happening? But it's happening to you, Eleanor. Yes. Something at last is really, really, really happening to me."
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Post by tannis on Sept 13, 2008 0:21:26 GMT
KATE BUSH: a dream of red shoes...In his discussion of fairy tales occurring in dreams, Freud (1913) suggested that dream analysis could help in understanding the meaning of fairy tales. If we carefully observe from clear instances the way in which dreamers use fairy tales and the point at which they bring them in, we may perhaps also succeed in picking up some hints which will help in interpreting remaining obscurities in the fairy tales themselves. This was a favourite idea of Freud: that patients in the process of gaining access to their own unconscious minds could also shed light on the universal symbols that structure our myths, literature, and art. In this paper, I shall describe a patient who, at a critical point in her analysis, reported a dream of red shoes...Which brings us to the new Kate Bush album, also titled The Red Shoes. The initial attraction to the charming story above, Bush is telling a handful of reporters during a rare in-person interview yesterday, "was the image of dance, because it is something I've really enjoyed being involved in. But it's an image you can take to almost any form of art, the idea of being possessed by one's art. Sometimes *it* controls you rather than *you* controlling it." "I think that's probably true of every album I make, really," she says, laughing. "At some point I feel like I'm just being dragged behind it -though so far I haven't had to actually cut off my feet." Toronto Sun, "Kate Bush Weaves A Fairy Tale", December 14, 1993 gaffa.org/reaching/i93_tsu.htmlTheodora: "Haven't you noticed how nothing in this house seems to move until you look away and then you just... catch something out of the corner of your eye?" ~ The Haunting (1963)Hans Christian Andersen’s stories linger in the imagination partly because they defy the world of comfort with which parents, teachers and children’s books attempt to block out the terrors of isolation, abandonment and extinction. The presence of pain in human experiences, sexuality and adult issues pervade Andersen’s writings. Anderson wrote about the relationship between the individual and the external world, about the individual’s relationship to the social world, about the response to the gaps and conflicts that arise between what is desired and what is allowed. Andersen shows how dark and light, sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure cannot be separated but in fact possesses a duality that is crucial to human development. These themes have evolved and have allowed generations of psychoanalysts to offer theories of the conscious and unconscious. Freudian Slippers: A woman's love affair with the red shoes should not be confused with the mostly male sexual fetish for them. Freudian theory suggests assorted explanations for men's fascination with high heels, most of which focus on the notion of the foot as the penis and the shoe as the vagina (the bible also uses "feet" as a euphemism for penis). Freudian theory would therefore suggest a highly sexual interpretation of the cover to Kate Bush's The Red Shoes (as it would most of KT's covers: e.g. The Hounds Of Love hounds symbolise displaced erotic attachments [Jay and Paddy?; Bonnie and Clyde = "outside the law"]; and does the SIYL dunce cap represent the humiliation of having a female body, corrected, as it were, by the phallic prosthesis, in effect a denial that woman is a castrated man, as Freud suggested?).
The Red Shoes cover www.katebush.pl/teksty_theredshoes.htm ...a lady with a hole in her stocking!
But what is the thrill for women? Why can they find as much pleasure in a new pair of ballet flats as in three-inch mules? It may be that women have fetishized shoes in other ways. "Fetishism is not only 'about' sexuality; it is also very much about power and perception," writes the fashion historian Valerie Steele. Shoes are items of indulgence that women have always bought for themselves. More public than lingerie, less expensive than a diamond and without the politics of a fur, good shoes signify that one has arrived. Shoes are a prop in defining sexuality, as evocative as a first bra. Shoes are a measure of vanity. They have signified narcissism at least since Hans Christian Andersen wrote his cautionary fairy tale "The Red Shoes".The Red Shoes: Vanity is the sin of the anti-heroine (vindictively named Karen after Andersen's loathed half-sister) in this nasty tale (made into a film in 1948). Karen's sin of going to church in bright red shoes and failing to care for her grandmother is punished by her being forced to dance unceasingly for ever. The vain girl is eventually driven to beg the executioner to cut off her feet. He says, 'Surely thou knowest not who I am. I cut off the heads of wicked men, and my axe is very sharp and keen.' To which the girl replies, 'Cut not off my head! For then I could not live to repent of my sin; but cut off my feet with the red shoes.' The shoes then go dancing away with the feet in them. The Red Shoes was based on Andersen’s anxiety as a child about admiring his own new boots in church.Fairy Tales: While verbally transmitted fairy tales express universal human concerns, the literary fairy tale, the written dreamwork creation of an individual author, permits a psychodynamic understanding of the writer. The Red Shoes has been regarded as illustrating problems in female sexual development. However, a review of Hans Christian Andersen's biographical data indicates that his stories also represent his unconscious homosexual conflicts and support Freud's concept of the role of castration anxiety in the negative Oedipus complex. Freud considered the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex to be key to the development of gender roles in identity. He posited that boys then resolved this conflict with castration anxiety and believed that the unsuccessful resolution of the Oedipus complex could result in neurosis, pedophilia and homosexuality... or Babooshka, The Infant Kiss, Wow and a sublimated Kashka from Baghdad... Theodora: "Is this another one of your crazy ideas?" Eleanor Lance: "I'm not crazy!" Theodora: "Crazy as a loon! You really expect me to believe that you're sane and the rest of the world is mad?" Eleanor Lance: "Well why not? The world is full of inconsistencies. Full of unnatural beings, nature's mistakes they call you for instance!" ~ The Haunting (1963)Castration anxiety is an idea put forth by Freud in his writings on the Oedipus complex; it posits a deep-seated fear or anxiety in boys and men said to originate during the phallic stage of sexual development. It asserts that small boys, when seeing a female's genitalia, will falsely assume that the girl had her penis chopped off, probably as punishment for some misbehavior. The boy then becomes anxious lest the same happen to him. Castration anxiety may symbolize the child's fear that he will, like Oedipus, lose his power (and his love object as well — i.e., his mother). In his 1927 paper on fetishism, Freud proclaimed, "Probably no male human being is spared the horror of castration at the sight of the female genitals". Freud's fetishism paper is itself a fetishistic document. The psychoanalytic literature on the differences between the sexes is haunted by male fantasies about the female genitals. Unfortunately Freud never made entirely clear whether these fantasies were fantasies or whether they represented the reality of the female genitals as essentially mutilated, castrated and "absent." More often than not, Freud would insist, that females suffered from "a castration that had been carried out" (1927). From this fundamental confusion of fantasy and actuality, came the next intractable psychoanalytic assumption--that penis envy must be the female equivalent of male castration anxiety. KB: "When I'm at the piano writing a song, I like to think I'm a man, not physically but in the areas that they explore... I just think I identify more with male musicians than female musicians, because I tend to think of female musicians as...ah... females. It's hard to explain. I'd just rather be a male songwriter than a female... Maybe I want to be a man," she laughs. Melody Maker, "The Kick Outside", June 3, 1978gaffa.org/reaching/i78_mm2.htmlPenis Envy: According to Freud, a girl, like a boy, is originally attached to the mother figure. However, during the phallic stage, when she discovers that she lacks a penis, she becomes libidinally attached to the father figure, and imagines that she will become pregnant by him, all the while becoming more hostile toward her mother. Freud attributes the character of this developmental stage in girls to the idea of "penis envy", where a girl is envious of the male penis. According to the theory, this penis envy leads to resentment towards the mother figure, who is believed to have caused the girl's "castration". The hostility towards the mother is then later revoked for fear of losing the mother's love, and the mother becomes internalized, much the same as the Oedipus Complex. She remains strongly attached to her father but tempers the sexual interest, which she eventually transfers to other men [The Kick Inside song may be interpreted as an unsuccessful resolution of the Oedipus complex, with transference of the Oedipal desire from her father to her brother]. In later years, bearing a child, particularly a son, enables her to compensate for her sense of deficiency. In 'Bertie', KaTe's son-shine becomes her all: Here comes the everything... One wonders whether a girl child would have got the same peacock treatment? Playing at the amateur psychiatrist: Maybe KaTe developed a masculine identification (masculinity complex) that reflects her rebellion against her own femaleness, her wishes to be a man, and her adoption of the butch masculine [songwriter] ideal. And maybe the masculine identification led to marked penis envy ("I want to be a man") and projected castration anxiety (a pathological desire to "club people over the head", with Babooshka's "Off with your balls!"). Indeed, Ran Tan Waltz is written and played by a castrated male while the wife is off ran-tanning! ... She gotta dance, she gotta dance And she can't stop 'till them shoes come off These shoes do, a kind of voodoo They're gonna make her dance 'till her legs fall off Call a doctor, call a priest They're gonna whip her up like a helicopter...Eleanor 'Nell' Lance: "Why don't they stop me, can't they see what is happening? But it's happening to you, Eleanor. Yes. Something at last is really, really, really happening to me." ~ The Haunting (1963)see more: Let's look at the biblical word translated "feet." katebush.proboards6.com/index.cgi?board=dreaming&action=display&thread=1712&page=4 Kate's Bush: For or Against Woman's Lib?katebush.proboards6.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=kickinside&thread=1677&page=1The Haunting of Kate Bushkatebush.proboards6.com/index.cgi?board=dreaming&action=display&thread=1712&page=5
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Post by tannis on Sept 13, 2008 12:44:59 GMT
Hans Christian Andersen and the Feminist Perspective
One observer described Andersen in late middle age as ''a child, according to the ideal of childhood; keenly sensitive, entirely egoistical, innocently vain, the center of life, interest, concern and meaning to himself.'' www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/20/reviews/010520.20allent.html
Hans Christian Andersen’s relationship with sexuality, specifically female sexuality, is deeply troubled. Throughout his youth, Andersen experienced rejection time and time again. Many critics identify Andersen as a homosexual, while others label him as bisexual. Whether or not Andersen repressed sexual feelings toward men is unknown. However, it is clear that he repressed feelings of sexuality in general and consequently projected these feelings onto his fairy tale characters. In Seashell Bra and Happy End, Regina Bendix comments on Andersen’s "admitted dislike for grown women and his abhorrence of sexuality". In Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller, Jack Zipes asserts that "There is something perverse in his use of children to illustrate not only how proper behavior should work, but how sexuality should be governed". Through rigorously repressing female sexuality, Andersen not only tries to adjust a basic primal desire, but he creates a female stereotype that is unattainable and unhealthy. This is seen in The Red Shoes.
The Red Shoes is a tale in which the main character embraces her sexuality and is consequently punished. Andersen begins this tale by once again depicting the protagonist, Karen, as innocent. He describes her as "nice and pretty" and refers to her as a "little girl" multiple times throughout the text. When Karen receives a pair of beautiful red shoes she becomes obsessed with them. She can think only of her red shoes and neglects all other responsibilities such as taking care of a sick old lady. In his book The Kiss of the Snow Queen, Wolfgang Lederer writes, "red is and has always been the color symbolic of sexuality. And red is the color blood and, in the context of adolescence, specifically menstrual blood". Zipes believes that Karen’s red shoes were a "sign of sin, curiosity and desire that Andersen wanted to repress". In essence, Karen embraces her sexuality to the point that she becomes obsessed with it. It is all-consuming. As a result, the character must be severely punished for expressing herself in such an inappropriate manner. Andersen punishes this overt expression of sexuality by having an executioner cut off Karen’s feet with the shoes still attached. He writes, "The shoes danced away with her little feet (…) She hobbled to church as fast as she could, but when she got there the red shoes danced in front of her (…) All week long she was sorry and cried many bitter tears (…) But the moment she came to the church gate she saw her red shoes dancing before her (…)"
Karen exorcizes her sexuality and it literally comes back to haunt her. Zipes comments, "Andersen is severe and punitive when children pursue their dreams that involve sensual and sexual exploration". Andersen ultimately channels his disgust of sexuality against this young girl. It is clear that Andersen’s feminine ideal is to repress one’s sexual desires.
One issue with the repression of female sexuality is that Andersen’s characters are unable to transition into adulthood. Meyers writes, "These stories are tragic. These girls are not developing into adulthood, but rather retreating into death and an asexual angelic idealized maternal image". This is true for the girl in The Red Shoes. At the end of the tale, Karen’s "soul travel(s) along the shaft of sunlight to heaven". This feminine ideal is unattainable because a woman cannot maintain this innocence and denial of sexuality. Andersen must instead murder his characters or place them in a state in which they are adults but possess no mature attributes.
The Little Mermaid, The Red Shoes, and The Ice Queen all promote Andersen’s feminine ideal. Andersen sought to create female characters that were intrinsically innocent. He did not know how to deal with his own sexual feelings and as a result justified them through repressing sexuality in his characters. Through the girls he created, Andersen was able to demonstrate the correct way of handling sexual impulses. Zipes asserts, "This tension between hatred of a repressive society (…) and fear of his unfulfilled sexual desires, which he condemned as transgression, is at the basis of some of his most intriguing fairy tales in which he used children to test and play out his ideals and morals". To Andersen, sexual impulses were unacceptable. He rewarded the female characters that were able to overcome them and harshly punished those that could not. This resulted in a cast of female characters, such as the little mermaid, Karen, and Gerda, that were emotionally stunted. That is, Andersen did not fully allow his female characters to develop into adulthood. They either retreated into death or remained children. Through rigorously repressing female sexuality, Andersen’s fairy tales perpetuate a feminine ideal that is unattainable.
Hans Christian Andersen and the Feminist Perspectivestorytellermisunderstood.blogspot.com/
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Post by tannis on Sept 14, 2008 15:27:50 GMT
THE RED SHOES: You gotta dance...."And you will dance with me in the sunlit pools...""Dance thou shalt!" he said. "Dance in thy red shoes till thou art pale and cold, till thy body shrivels to a skeleton! Dance from door, and wherever proud conceited children live, thou shalt knock at the door till they hear thee and fear thee! Dance, I command thee, dance!" ~ Hans Christian Anderson, "The Red Shoes," 1835 "The artist who experiences a powerful compulsion to turn away from external others and to seclude herself in her own private world. . . can become possessed by addictive and narcissistically tantalizing images of the self. This is particularly true when the internal world has been sealed off by critical early trauma, prior to the completion of core self-formation and before adequate separation has occurred. Such an artist can marry a demonic father on an instinctual level, and then become addicted to the demon psychic fantasy. Furthermore, she can become addicted to the image of intensity created by manically driven work. The intensity of such work resonates with a narcissistic longing for vivid recognition that can come to substitute for a healthy longing for a good object. We may view such an artist as trapped in a hall of mirrors, in which the reflected image of the self through the powerful affective intensity of the creative work becomes what I would call an 'image object.' The image object substitutes for real external objects in the interpersonal world. The myth of the Red Shoes. . . catches the essence of this solipsistic drama, where the male muse captures the creative power of the woman, and in so far as she strives to be a 'star,' allures her away from the world of heterosexual love and interpersonal intimacy. Fears of erotic instinctual desires, as well as limited body containment of those desires, due to early trauma, contribute to the addiction of an idealized self-image, that is to the image of being a star or being 'great'. . . The power of the Red Shoes, and of internal objects in general, becomes demonic specifically because this power is split off and alienated from our central selves." ~ Susan Kavaler-Adler, The Creative Mystique: From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and Creativity (New York and London: Routledge, 1996) The red shoes allude to Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale about a "sinful" -- Anderson’s word -- adolescent girl who likes to dance. Dance symbolizes the sexual intercourse the virgin girl has not experienced. But of course she is dancing with herself with masturbatory intensity -- certainly not with innocence.
In 1948, Anderson’s fairytale was made into a film about a ballerina trapped in a conflict between love and career -- life and art: The Red Shoes (Powell & Pressburger, 1948). In the film, her way out is to commit suicide. The red shoes have been understood by the feminist psychoanalyst Susan Kavaler-Adler as a symbol of woman’s addictive narcissistic creativity. It culminates in manic intensity -- the manic intensity of the virginal ballerina’s narcissistic dancing. For all its originality, it becomes a self-destructive performance. It is as though the ballerina wanted to keep her body for herself, rather than completely give it -- and with it her soul -- to her two male lovers, the impresario who supports her art and the composer who loves her for beauty. They both work for her -- the latter composes the music for the ballet in which the former chooses her to star -- but she is the instrument of their ambition. Both are deeply engaged with her, but for their own narcissistic reasons. Their desire for success -- fame and fortune -- seems greater than their sexual desire for the ballerina. The composer represents her own sexual desire, and the impresario represents her own desire for success -- material and social as well as artistic and spiritual success. Both gaze on her with manipulative admiration, but they are blind to her individuality -- her personal needs and independent identity. Her glorious dancing defiantly asserts it: It demonstrates her self-love, the most satisfying, consummate kind of love -- for the composer and impresario as well as herself. Dancing is thus self-creation, self-recognition, self-sufficiency, all confirming and sustained by self-love, all the love a woman -- anyone -- needs. The film, like the fairytale, is above all a study in the failure of object relations, as the psychoanalysts call it...
As noted, in both Anderson’s fairytale and the film, the ballerina dances to her death. In the fairytale, her legs are cut off and she does lonely penance for her sin of narcissism. In the film, she disappears from sight by jumping off a bridge onto railroad tracks. But the red shoes keep dancing, carrying her exhausted, spiritless body along with them. As Anderson wrote, "the executioner chopped off her feet with the red shoes on" -- punishment for her narcissistic creativity, not tolerated by man because it is a sign of woman’s independence, and thus something she must be made to feel guilty about -- "and the shoes danced away with the little feet in them over the fields into the depths of the forest." The shoes embody her perfectionism. In the film, the impresario and the composer are Pygmalions working together -- they bond with each other more completely than they bond with the ballerina, who is as much the medium of their creative relationship as the object of their devoted attention -- to create a perfect work of female art, in effect a version of Offenbach’s Olympia. Their mechanical ballerina dances whenever they wind her up. They have sacrificed her soul as well as body to the cause of art.
The dancing red shoes represent creativity for its own sake, creativity as an end in itself -- an automatic, self-generating process, autonomously moving with unflagging energy. It is completely indifferent to the human beings it is supposed to serve. It even dispenses with the human artist, who is its vulnerable vehicle: the ballerina -- like the impresario and composer -- is no more than its instrument. She is the mortal means to immortal art. Once the automatist genii of eternal élan vital has escaped from the human body, it can never be put back into it: The body is discarded. Initially a necessary condition for creativity, it is not a sufficient condition: Creativity continues to flourish without it. It has its own inhuman dynamic, ambiguously devilish and divine, and thus beside the human point. The Machine Self and the Squiggle Gamewww.artnet.com/magazineus/features/kuspit/kuspit9-17-07.asp
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Post by tannis on Sept 14, 2008 21:00:18 GMT
Rebecca Horn, Painting Machine, 1988 www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/kuspit/kuspit9-17-07_detail.asp?picnum=20 installation at Marian Goodman Gallery, 1988For me, Horn’s signature work -- the work that epitomizes her view of dancing as creativity at its most dynamic, and as such the consummate expression of female desire and élan vital -- is her 1988 Painting Machine. It is perhaps the most abstractly convincing representation of her body ego -- her most revealing self-portrait. The painting machine is positioned on the wall just below the ceiling. A pair of woman’s red shoes are also attached to the wall and suspended just above the ground. The machine has two cups -- two breasts, as it were, for they are assertively convex. But they are also concave containers, and as such symbols of the vagina. The cups are also the hands that fling the paint on the wall. The cups are a dream condensation of the essentials of Horn’s identity -- her sexuality and her creativity. In Horn’s work, streaks of blood red color drip down the wall towards the floor, forming an abstract expressionistic work in ironic process, that is, a painterly automatist drawing more or less randomly improvised. But the paint is pulled down by gravity, and thus heads in one direction however much it spatters in all directions. Horn’s painting -- clearly a mock wall painting -- "moves" as long as the machine moves, implying that it can never be completed. The machine, while not in perpetual motion, can be turned on again and again, indicating its inexhaustible energy. Where is Horn’s body? It is lost in action. It is not generated -- re-generated? -- by the action of painting, perhaps because the action is machine-generated rather than hand-generated. Horn’s body literally liquidates in the process of expressing itself. It is exhausted into invisibility, as it were. Horn’s painting machine also conveys the fear of going mad -- of being mad? -- evident in the deepest Romanticism and Expressionism. The painting machine, after all, is a somewhat mad invention -- a sort of creative monster.The Machine Self and the Squiggle Gamewww.artnet.com/magazineus/features/kuspit/kuspit9-17-07.asp
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Post by tannis on Sept 18, 2008 19:07:42 GMT
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1993 Subject: RE: H.C. Andersen's "Red Shoes"
Look into a book entitled Women Who Run With The Wolves [1992] by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Chapter 8, "Self-preservation: Identifying leg traps, cages, and poisoned bait", reproduces an ancient version of the story and interprets it in the light of the author's 20+ years as a storyteller and practicing Jungian psychologist [American poet, psychoanalyst and post-trauma specialist].
The version Estes presents is "a Magyar-Germanic version my Aunt Tereza used to tell us when we were children" (p. 215). That means that her text is an original, currently in print (and a best-seller to boot), so I don't want to transcribe it. Her knowledge about the substance of the story and about its traditions means that she has probably very accurately portrayed a version current in medieval, maybe even early medieval times. But she also talks about the roots of the 'red shoes' myth motif in very ancient Persian, Indian, and Egyptian 'threshold' rites for young women at the time they enter into their roles with respect to the passage of blood, in which they paint their feet red. There are a lot of layers between that stratum and the early European story!
Clarissa Pinkola Estes <what a trip of a name to type!> really doesn't need to reconstruct all that history in order to get at the archetypal dimension of the one we know from Hans Christian Andersen, about which Karen raised her question. Her family's version makes loud and clear the manipulations HCA used to 'moralize' the story. I can briefly outline the major changes or additions he made, assuming his source tradition was close to the one Estes tells from.
First you need to know this much about Estes' interpretation: she is clear that the brutal ending is truthful about the nature of the red shoes. The story is "variously known by the names 'The Devil's Dancing Shoes', 'The Red-Hot Shoes of the Devil', and 'The Red Shoes'." Her theme is that the girl (called Karen by HCA, but nameless in Estes's version) has had the Wild Woman in her captured and injured in instinct by the dry and near-blind rich woman who 'domesticated' her, so that when she later tries to let the Wild Woman out, she is vulnerable to "Leg Traps, Cages, and Poisoned Bait" (title of the chapter). Brian generously transcribed the specific hazards that Estes discusses: >The traps: > #1 The Gilded Carriage, the Devalued Life > #2 The Dry Old Woman, the Senescent Force > #3 Burning the Treasure, Hambre del Alma, Soul Famine > #4 Injury to Basic Instinct, the Consequences of Capture > #5 Trying to Sneak a Secret Life, Split in Two > #6 Cringing Before the Collective, Shadow Rebellion > #7 Faking it, Trying to be Good, Normalizing the Abnormal > #8 Dancing Out of Control, Obsession and Addiction This last, the most drastic, is the one dramatized by the story. It ends in disaster, with the girl quite abject. The last line: "And now the girl was a poor cripple, and had to find her own way in the world as a servant to others, and she never, ever again wished for red shoes." (Several times in the chapter, Estes talks about Janis Joplin, as an illustration of how it can go if the 'dancing-out-of-control' Wild Woman gets an audience who egg her on for vicarious excitement.)
I'll summarize HCA's major changes quite schematically: MAGYAR-GERMANIC HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON A little girl, poor, whose mother dies. A motherless poor girl Taken to "old mother shoe maker" for her childhood red shoes; given to her, first worn when mother dies. Makes her own red shoes, sewn from cloth straps, crude, but she loved them and they help her accommodate her hard life. Wealthy old woman in gilded carriage takes her in, cleans her up, burns her shoes. Big old lady portrayed as kind and feeling sorry for her, asks the parson if she can take care of her. Shoes burned. Spurious sub-plot involving Queen and Princess, tempting Karen to vanity and envy. Finds red shoes in shop of old crippled cobler. He winks at her as the old woman, color-blind, buys them for her. Shoes said to "glow." Goes to rich shoemaker; thinks of the Princess's shoes; is told these were made for an earl's daughter; shoes are said to be "shiny." Confirmation on the "Day of The Innocents." Merely said to be old enough to be confirmed. Details on red shoes in church emphasize lusciousness: "like burnished apples, red-washed plums...bright like crimson, bright like raspberries, bright like pomegranates." Karen "thought only of the red shoes," but the story details not how she thought about them, but all the pious activities going on that she was ignoring. Old soldier with red beard taps the soles of her shoes with a little song that made the soles of her feet itch. Old soldier with red beard simply "struck the soles with his hand." Old lady hides the red shoes. She becomes bed-ridden, and so Karen is free to search them out, obsessively. When she finds them and puts them on, they dance her out the door. Old lady becomes very ill. Has to be nursed and tended, but Karen is invited to a grand ball. Looks at lady "who after all could not live, " at the shoes, goes to the ball, and there the dancing shoes take over. A Spirit of Dread prevents her from entering the churchyard; he pronounces her curse. Gets in among the gravestones, but is accosted by an angel at the church door. Curse toned down, and a moralizing note on "proud, vain children" is added. Executioner cuts off her feet, the shoes dance them off into the forest, she becomes a cripple and a servant. End. Asks feet to be chopped off so she can "repent of my sins." He makes her wooden feet and crutches, teaches her a penitent's psalm. She keeps trying to go to church, but is blocked by the dancing shoes. Frightened, and seeking "real repentance in her heart," begs the parson to be taken into service. The whole rest of the 'redemption' stuff from there on is totally spurious preachment. How "She proved to be very industrious and thoughtful. She sat very still and listened most attentively in the evening when the parson read the Bible." It gets progressively more ghastly, until finally, "Her heart was so overfilled with the sunshine, with peace, and with joy, that it broke. Her soul flew with the sunshine to heaven, and no one there asked about the red shoes." Bleuch!
What I expected to find as the "magic" in this, as a children's story, is actually some pretty drastic and violent action (an authenticating aspect, as Estes makes clear)--some pretty powerful "voodoo" as Kate Bush's lyric has it. (Anybody reading Alice Walker lately is aware that the social pathologies around this whole area can be pretty drastic, too.)
So far as I can tell at this point, in the kb song only the shoes themselves and the frenzied dancing come from the folk story. The dramatic situation ("She," dancing like the Diva <'Goddess', Sanskrit> in red shoes, dancing like "I" would love to, but can't, because "all her gifts for the dance had gone") seems quite different. Also, it is not clear that for Kate the shoes are the devil's only: is the stanza with "your eyes are lifted to God" supposed to be redemptive? 3.2a: The original fairy-tale from Hans Christian Andersengaffa.org/moments/3_2a.htmlWomen Who Run With The Wolves (1992) really does sound like a book KaTe would read! Then there's the 1948 film and the HCA story. I wonder which was KaTe's original source?The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen (1845)www.fairytalescollection.com/Hans_Christian_Anderson/The_Red_Shoes.htm
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