"Past the Lake of Tears
There is a seventh chamber,"
said Serpent to Eve.
Academic feminist crit! Of a faerie tale! (As opposed to a feminist faerietale) So you pretty much know what you are getting into: deep waters, populated by dragons. This is a collection of papers by various authors, so it is of various virtues & vices. Some of the people leave out important information-- one author refers to characters in films by first names, without ever telling us context; I didn't see all these movies, you can't just assume I did! Others don't assume you know the difference between an F-sharp & a B-flat: that article in particular was about leifmotif & dissonence, & prefaced its musical theory by laying out its assumptions nicely. There are people making absolutely reasonable points & arguments, but using really repetitive & combative language-- seriously, I almost started my review haiku with the line "Stop saying phallus!" One of the authors is over the top with phallo-centric Phallarchy phallophobic phallic phalluses. Phallusi? I liked it in the mean, though the penultimate essay was grueling, long, & too heavy on film crit for my taste (though I'd like
masui to take a crack at it). I was struck by a few things in particular; I didn't remember Lacan's "Masculine = Parade; Feminine = Masquerade" & I liked that, I like the basic crit of the Bluebeard myth & the analysis of it as a homme fatal. The latter because faerietales often warn of the femme fatale, but the actual statistical danger is not women to men, but men to women-- but Bluebeard is the only real culturally encoded fable of that! Crazy. 