Adapting the Brothers Grimm

I'm excessively fond of fairytales, folktales, and fables.  I love the dark, troubled and murky waters you land in when reading them.  They rarely have a fully happy ending; even if there is love, there is usually death.  The stories start with heartbreak, deceit, or loss and don't always resolve into something that sits gently in the corners of your mind.  But there is magic, too, made by animals who speak and bestow gifts, fairies and sprites who heal and kill, goblins who steal secrets and babies, and trolls who live under bridges and in the rocky fabric of the mountains of the cold, bleak subarctic lands. The rich stories, passed on by mouth until they were finally transcribed in numerous sources, speak to our shared cultural past.

One of my favorite fairy tales, as you now know, is Hans-My-Hedgehog.  The Brothers Grimm version is unrelentingly harsh.  The poor hedgehog boy is unwanted, untended, and unloved.  He finally flees and becomes a sort of king of the forest. He eventually, though his own cleverness, wins a princess, but is forced to have his skin of quills burned, turning his own human skin underneath charcoal-black, to be freed from his enchantment.

Anthony Minghella later retold several fairy stories when he penned them for Jim Henson's undertaking, The Storyteller.  In his rendition of Hans, he infused the characters with life, feeling, and love: we get glimpses of the pain of barrenness in a woman, the heartbreaking longing for a child, a wish and a wish answered.  A baby boy is born, part boy and part hedgehog, but the mother cherishes her baby.  But the father remained unmoved at the sight of his strange child:

“For every quill that he had on his body, Hans had an animal for a friend, as many friends as he had quills. He had a special way with these creatures and they loved him. He could talk to them. If his mother was looking for him, she would always go first to the place where the rooster strutted, a proud soldier of hens. Hans tended to this bird, polished his beak, combed his comb, and fed and fattened him, and it wasn’t long before the rooster was the biggest rooster you could imagine, a hugeness, a vast red rooster all plump and flush-feathered.  Whenever the sadness came, whenever he caught his reflection in a pool, and saw his strange beast-boy face, Hans would run to these friends and be among them, for they found him neither strange nor odd but magnificent.  “Father," he said in his flute voice, ”I want you to do some things for me. I want you to go to the village and have a saddle made for my rooster so I can ride him.  And I want some sheep and some cattle and some pigs. They would be happy to come with me where I go. Which is away. Which is to somewhere.  Where I can’t hurt no one and no one can hurt me.”

The boy grows to be the king of a fine sylvan castle, and does indeed win a princess.  In true fairytale fashion, it's not that easy.  She betrays him, he flees again.  The second winning will be done by her, proving her love for her wedded husband. 

I've made a self-portrait that weaves in two elements of my favorite fairytale: the rooster and the hedgehog.  In the background is text from the story.

"Self Portrait with Fairytale" Pencil.  Copyright 2012 Jessica Boehman

Awe

When we were kids, we were devotees of anything that had to do with the Muppets.  We loved Kermit and his gang and the Fraggles.  Emmet Otter's Jug band Christmas plays in our home every Christmas Eve (much to my Dad's dismay).  Heck, our last two dogs were named Merlin (after the wizard AND the dog in Labyrinth) and Fozzie.  Henson productions that delved into the realm of fantasy and fairytale were even more compelling: the Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, the Storyteller series filled our brains with thoughts of art, magic, and monsters.  When Jim Henson passed away in 1990, when I was thirteen, the world felt like a less happy place.  Luckily his work has been continued by his children, and this weekend, my siblings and I had the great fortune to see a screening of the movie Labyrinth with Brian Henson sitting right in front of us. Henson, who is now chairperson of the company, introduced the film, and, together with the Froud Family (Brian, who conceptualized the monsters, goblins and faeries of the movie, Wendy, who sculpted them, and Toby, who was the baby in the film but is now an amazing puppeteer and sculptor in his own right), discussed the making of the film afterwards.  What a magical evening!

I own several of the books by Brian Froud. I remember getting Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book as a Christmas gift when I was in high school, and now own the Goblins of Labyrinth, too.  It was awesome to hear them talk of the rather mundane way such a fantastical work took shape.  Little did they know that we had recreated a goblin/David Bowie scene from the movie using a Cabbage Patch Preemie in place of their son.  It's recorded for posterity.  It's a tribute to the imagination that took root in us in Germany, when we were undistracted by American television.  Brian Henson also voiced Hoggle, one of the main characters in the movie, who we've imitated for the last twenty-five years.

Working Hoggle's face

Hoggle

But I was excited to meet them mostly because of their work on the Storyteller series.  As a kid, that series was like turning on a light switch inside of my imagination.  Or maybe setting off fireworks in there.  Brian Froud also helped conceptualize the series, while Henson was the voice of the Dog, the storyteller's companion who also helped to spin those delightful yarns.

The Dog from the Storyteller series, puppeted and voiced by Brian Henson

Afterwards, we were lucky that Brian Henson came out into the audience and was willing to stand there for photos with fans.  I had wanted to give him a notecard with the Hans-My-Hedgehog illustration on it, but didn't want him to think that I was hitting him up for a job, which was not the point. A few people had tried it in advance. So we told him how happy my mom would be to see the photo, and then I thanked him for helping to give us all an imagination as children.  He smiled and thanked me and added, "We were just having some fun."  Thank you Jim, thank you Brian, thank you to the Froud family...your fun changed our lives and gave us verdant, luscious imaginations. It made creativity and art sit at the forefront of our imaginations.  For that, we will be forever grateful.

Me, Brian Henson, and my siblings Chris, Meghan and Josh at the Museum of the Moving Image