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Posts Tagged ‘Amy Sundberg’

Run from your Relatives: Family Dysfunction in Fairy Tales

Posted in Life, Science fiction and fantasy, tagged , , , , , , on January 27, 2011| 13 Comments »

I have recently been struck by the preponderance of family dysfunction in Western fairy tales and myths. It seems that everywhere I turn, I find another evil mother or unkind sibling. Here are only a sampling of stories involving family strife and betrayal:
  • In Cinderella, she has an unkind stepmother (who I read was the biological mother in some older versions), an absent father, and cruel step/half/full sisters who compete with her for one man.
  • In Thousand Furs/Donkeyskin, the father either tries to or succeeds at raping his daughter the princess.
  • In The White Cat, we have three brothers competing for their father’s throne.
  • In Blockhead Hans, we have older brothers being cruel to their youngest “simple” brother.
  • In Toads and Diamonds, we have an evil “step”mother and sister conspiring against our heroine.
  • In Snow White, we have the evil, jealous stepmother who wants her stepdaughter to be killed. And what about the father? He’s apparently alive and just completely neglectful of his daughter.
  • In Hansel and Gretel, we have the evil wife who wants to get rid of an excess of children.
  • In Beauty and the Beast, we have a father willing to sacrifice his daughter for himself.
  • In the legends of King Arthur, we have the seduction of King Arthur by his half-sister Morgan, and his troubled relationship with his son Mordred.
  • King Lear has its root in British mythology, and shows the unhappy relationship between a king and his three daughters (and jockeying between the three daughters for position, including use of armed force).
  • In Rumpelstiltskin, we have a father willing to sacrifice his daughter to save himself because he lied, and the daughter in her turn carrying on the family tradition by being willing to sacrifice her future child for her own safety.
  • In Rapunzel (or now Disney’s version Tangled), we have the overprotective and narcissistic “mother”, exemplified by the wicked witch who pretends to be a blood relation.
  • Don’t even get me started on those crazy Greek gods and goddesses!

I find this particularly fascinating because I’m used to thinking of family dysfunction as a modern phenomenon that only began to be spoken of in the last few decades, but of course there have been dysfunctional families since the dawn of time. Not only that, but it seems to have been a subject of much interest and anxiety in times past to be featured so prominently in the surviving stories.

This consciousness in fairy tales runs counter to the zeitgeist of the 1950s, which seems to be personified by the TV series title “Father Knows Best” and idealizes maintaining an image as the “perfect family”. No, in fairy tales, the downtrodden member of the family is usually the protagonist of the story, and these heroes and heroines are often shown having adventures and using adversity to help them transform so that they are able to escape their tormenting relations. In other words, they often win. The evil family members in question often meet horrible and gruesome fates, like the step sisters in Cinderella who have their eyes pecked out when attending Cinderella’s wedding, or Snow White’s evil stepmother who is forced to wear iron shoes and dance until she drops dead. Other times our protagonists merely leave their family members far behind as they begin their new lives.

Are these tales truly discussing dysfunctional families or are they merely providing enough hardship and conflict (often in the form of evil family members) to force the protagonists into growing up and coming into their own? Whatever the answer, it’s hard for me to read them now without noticing the implicit moral of distrust of family and reliance on self — maybe with a little help from a magical item or a fairy godmother along the way.

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Favorite Musical (3/4): Next to Normal, by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey

Posted in Arts, Music, Theater, tagged , , , , , , , on January 25, 2011| 3 Comments »

I was lucky enough to see Next to Normal on Broadway when I was attending the SCBWI Winter Conference last year, and it completely blew me away. Not only did this show win the Tony Award for Best Original Score in 2009, but it also won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (the first musical to win this award since Rent in 1996).

Next to Normal can be easily compared to Rent in many ways. In watching it, I felt I was seeing the promise to American musical theater made by Rent a decade and a half before finally coming to fruition. We saw a profound movement in this direction with the success of the award-winning Spring Awakening in 2007, but Next to Normal took this progression still further. It combines the rock-inspired score with a book scored with deep contemporary issues. The lyrics are also a stand-out here; not since Jonathan Larson have I seen such clever and facile lyrics being used for dramatic (as opposed to comedic) effect.

An article about the Pulitzer prize win says, “The Pulitzer jury recognized the work for its subject matter and stated that it “expands the scope of subject matter for musicals.”” You might be noticing a trend by now in my favorite musicals. They all expand the scope of subject matter for musicals. They talk about things that matter; they have something to say. Just as I mentioned last week that this is a major quality I look for in the short fiction I read, so is it also an important criteria for the theater I love best.

In the case of Next to Normal, the subject matter is mental illness, grief, and a family in crisis. And I have to say that, while the score is excellent, it’s the emotional subject matter that makes this show so memorable for me. The show follows the journey of Diana Goodman, a mother suffering from bipolar disorder and hallucinations, along with the struggles of her family, including her husband who is suffering from depression himself and her teenage daughter Natalie, who feels ignored and isolated. It is often quite dark, and the emotional notes ring very realistically. I’ve done a fair amount of reading about dysfunctional families, and many of those dynamics were shown — indeed, played out to their messy conclusions — during the course of the play.

I can’t talk about Next to Normal without mentioning how important I find it that this show introduces an open discussion about mental illness, a subject that is often marginalized in American society. Diana Goodman is without question the main character of the musical, and we are taken on a tour of her highs and lows, her moments of lucidity and complete mental breakdown, her pain and regrets, and the tough questions she is forced to answer. But for me, it was the character of her daughter Natalie who tugged on my heart-strings the most, just wishing for as “normal” a family as possible and trying to survive in a turmoil she can’t change or leave behind her.

Here are a few of my favorite musical moments:

Natalie’s song “Everything Else”, which is sung to a Mozartian piano accompaniment. I should note that Natalie’s song “Superboy and the Invisible Girl” is possibly the more popular of the two, and also excellent.

“Who’s Crazy/My Psychopharmacologist and I”: this song is all about the lyrics.

“Maybe (Next to Normal)”: the song that gave the show its title, coming towards the end of the second act.

Happily for me, Next to Normal is currently on a national tour so I’ll have the opportunity to see it again in a few weeks. And as I said about Adam Guettel, I’m very eager to see what comes next from the talented Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey.

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Delusions of Grandeur

Posted in Arts, Life, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 20, 2011| 13 Comments »

When I was a teenager, I enjoyed dreaming big. I wanted to be a novelist, I wanted to work on animated features at Disney, I wanted to write games at Sierra (this was back when they were still doing cool stuff like Quest for Glory, Castle of Dr. Brain, and the King’s Quest series). I wanted to be a singer and actress and perform in musicals, I wanted to write musicals, I wanted to direct musicals. I knew that many of these aspirations were unrealistic and difficult, but I wanted them all anyway.

However, a family member who shall remain nameless said something to me one day, perhaps just an offhand remark, that became fully lodged in my young impressionable brain. “Amy,” the person said, “you have delusions of grandeur.” They might as well have said, “Why try, because the only possible outcome is failure.” Even today, half my lifetime later, whenever I think of trying something daring or risky or simply ambitious, those words go through my mind. “I don’t know if I can do this,” I say to my husband, “because so-and-so said.” And then he has to go through the work of convincing me to do whatever it is anyway.

Photo by Tony Fischer

 

I was reminded of this when I read Christie Yant’s recent essay, Lessons from the Slushpile: Good vs. Great. She discusses what distinguishes the great stories (and incidentally, the ones that are bought) from the rest, and one of the distinctions she’s made is that truly great stories have something to say. They say something that matters, that makes us as readers think or question or feel. They are ambitious, meant to illuminate as well as entertain.In my limited experience, these kinds of ambitious stories are rare, but it was by finding them that I first learned to appreciate, and later to love, short stories as a form.So why are these stories thin on the ground? Perhaps for one or more of these reasons (and there might well be others):

1. It’s difficult to come up with something to say in the first place.
2. Even if you’ve got something to say, it’s difficult to express it in a clear and original fashion.
3. Writing such a story means that on some level, you’ve got to have delusions of grandeur.

I think I had it right as a teenager. Delusions of grandeur are what allow us to strive, to push ourselves beyond our perceived capabilities, to dive into projects of vast scope. They give us permission to take risks, do things that make us uncomfortable, and ignore those who don’t believe we can do it. Delusions of grandeur are what allow us to become great.

So right now, I’m going to finish up this essay, and then I’m going to sit down and work on a short story that scares the pants off me. It makes me uncomfortable, it kind of makes me want to cry, I’m not quite sure I know where it’s going, and even if I did, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to follow it there. All I can do is believe in its potential, as I believe in my own.

Delusions of grandeur are the necessary caterpillars if we want our words to fly.

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Favorite Musical (2/4): The Light in the Piazza, by Adam Guettel

Posted in Arts, Music, Theater, tagged , , , , , on January 18, 2011| 3 Comments »

Not enough people have heard of this little gem, even though it won the Tony Award for best original score in 2005 (Spamalot won the Tony for best musical that year, but let’s not even go there).  The music is so beautiful, it makes me feel like there’s something inside me stretching towards the sky, and that’s really the top attraction for this show. The story line is interesting enough, the character development for the main mother character is well done, and the lyrics are passable although on the whole nothing special.  And given the music they accompany, they almost feel beside the point (which is particularly telling since I am usually all about the lyrics). 

The Light in the Piazza is not a “belty” show, as are most of the new shows we’ve been seeing on Broadway.  No, Adam Guettel draws less on rock and pop music and more on opera and classical music to create his romantic score, filled with soaring violins and Classically trained voices.  It’s possible that this choice is partly why the show isn’t more widely known, but I’m glad he made it just the same. The lush music suits the story and the setting (Florence , Italy).

My local theater company put this show on last fall, and after one of the performances I heard an audience member mention that the story was “creepy”.  Or maybe she said “strange”.  This reaction might also factor into the relative obscurity of the show.  I actually really like the story, although I will admit it’s challenging in that it takes a lot of thought, and it also depends a lot upon the interpretation of the role of Clara.  The general idea is that Clara, now 26, was in an accident when she was eleven or twelve that froze her mental and emotional development, so ever since she has led a very sheltered existence.  But now she and her mother are on holiday in Italy, and suddenly love strikes from the sky like lightning.  One of the questions the show pivots around is, exactly how impaired is Clara?  This is a question that is never answered explicitly, so one just has to guess.  Is she, as her mother finally comes to believe, capable of more than they’d assumed?  Can she aspire to a “normal” life with a husband and possibly even children?  Is she mature enough to truly love?  Or, is this all wishful thinking doomed to dreadful disappointment?  Plus we explore the obligations of disclosure (how much does the mother have to tell Clara’s lover? What about his family?) and we watch events shape and change Clara’s mother, whose worldview has been turned on its head by the end of the show. An ironic twist that happens mid-way through Act 2 highlights the differing values of the two families in question.

The fact is, a lot of these issues and questions are uncomfortable, so I can understand why audience members might be uneasy afterwards.  But for me, this is the best kind of theater: theater that makes me re-evaluate myself and how I see the world, and that leaves an open question.

A few favorite moments, both from the Second Act:

“The Light in the Piazza”, sung by Clara in Rome, when she wishes to return to Florence (and the man she’s fallen in love with).  One of my personal favorites to sing.

 

“Fable”, sung by Clara’s mother Margaret at the end of the show.  This song is truly epic.

 

Ah, so beautiful!  If you like what you’ve heard, “Dividing Day,” “The Beauty Is,” and “Let’s Walk” are also songs worthy of attention. I’ll definitely be on the look-out for any new work by this promising composer.

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The Dangers of Advice

Posted in Arts, Life, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 13, 2011| 13 Comments »

A few days ago, I read the excellent article “Writing and Mortality” by Rachel Swirsky, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  I recommend reading it and coming back here, but since I don’t always do that myself, I’ll summarize. She talks about some advice she read about writing, how if the project you’re working on is not the project you’d be working on if you only had six weeks to live, then it’s the wrong project. Rachel calls foul on this advice, saying that if she had only six weeks, she’d be busy spending time with her loved ones. “Artists,” she says, “aren’t only real artists if they would spend their last few days creating art.” 

I agree with Rachel one hundred percent. Creating art is a high priority for me; in fact, I’ve structured my life around increasing my time to do so. But it’s not my highest priority, and that’s okay. This truth was brought home to me recently when I was suffering from root canal complications.  Mostly I was thinking, “My god, the pain, the pain, please make it stop, I’ll do whatever it takes to stop the pain.”  But when I could focus beyond the immediate suffering, what did I care about the most?  I wanted to spend time with my husband and my little dog, and I wanted to write long e-mails to my best friend.  I’m an ambitious person, but when it came down to it, I wasn’t thinking about my writing anymore.  What mattered to me was the people I love.

Taking a step back, this entire discussion was sparked from a piece of writing advice. I read a lot of writing advice every week.  I even occasionally write some writing advice.  It’s amazing how much helpful information about writing I can learn from the internet (although at this point, a lot of the advice I read is a reminder more than a revelation).

But this advice is not infallible, and it cannot be followed blindly.  Each piece of advice requires consideration, and if you find it doesn’t work well for you, that doesn’t mean you’re wrong or a bad writer or anything else.  It means that advice is not for you, full stop.

People try to give me advice all the time (and not just about writing, either).  Here are some examples of advice I do not take:

1. You should write every day. Yeah, I don’t write every day.  I usually take weekends off, and then I come back to the computer on Monday full of fresh ideas and vigor.  That’s what works for me, for now.
2. You should write what you know. Sorry, I don’t actually live in a world with working magic or a world set in the future, but I still write about them.  (Yes, this advice has deeper connotations that are more helpful, but its phrasing can be misleading.)
3. You should write x words every day. Unfortunately, only I know how many words I can write per day, and this number changes over time and depending on circumstances (like, for instance, a root canal or quitting the day job).
4. You should only submit to pro paying markets. I actually kind of follow this one, but the more I think about it, the more I think it’s silly.  Really I should submit to any markets I feel like submitting to, right?  If I’d be happy seeing my work at a certain publication, then I’ll submit.  If I won’t feel happy or I think the publication is shady in some way, then I won’t submit.  So this advice isn’t for me.
5. You should/shouldn’t outline. Um, really good writers go both ways on this one.  So I’ll do whatever I like, and experiment with both.  (For those wondering, yes, I outline for novels.  For short stories, it really depends.)

I could go on, but you get the idea.  Advice is in the eye of the beholder.  People give advice about what works for them as individuals.  But we are not cookie cutter people, and therefore some of this advice will not work for you.  The trick is to learn what you can, and then adapt that learning to fit your own lifestyle, your own priorities, your own artistic strengths and weaknesses, and your own voice.

I would love it if you would comment with some advice you have read or received (writing advice or otherwise) that doesn’t work for you.  It can even be something that I have said here on the blog (gasp). I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

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