The Faunz reimagined
I watched Pan's Labyrinth the other night and was a little upset by how one of my favorite television characters, The Fonz, was recharacterized as a menacing, child-frightening monster.Not since Wayne Rogers' happy go lucky character in M*A*S*H became the dour Pernell Roberts interpretation in Trapper John, MD has an iconic character from my youth been so poorly treated.
Despite this, Pan's Labyrinth is a beautiful, beguiling, and poignant movie that nevertheless puts me as a parent yet again on edge: What's with the goddamn faeries leading children away? It seems that, throughout literature, faeries are the manifestation of a parent's - and therefore society's - failure to keep children entertained.
I resolve to feed my daughter more gum.
The Stolen Child - William Butler Yeats
Where dips the rocky highlandSee also: Pan's Labyrinth official site
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scare could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.
Labels: art, movies, netflix odyssey, poetry
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by Marty Barrett at Tuesday, July 24, 2007
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