[Belin]

(heh, that's quite a brilliant link, thanks Thena [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] )

charly—-Thank you, I thought I was going insane for a moment there. Indeed, the two stories are not very similar at all. There is a dwarf in "Snow-White and Rose-Red," but he’s a nasty, disagreeable sort who goes around grumbling and putting curses on people, while the dwarves in Snow White are very helpful, and take care of her, and untie the tight sash and take out the poisoned comb and so forth. In any case, from the impression I get from “On Fairy-Stories,” it seems unlikely that Tolkien would have disliked Disney simply because they changed fairy tales, which is something that happens inevitably anyway, but because he detected a condescending tone in Disney movies like that he criticized in Lang. This is, however, pure speculation.

Tirned Tinnu—-Well met, friend of Prydain!! I, too, was appalled by the movie with its bizarre Gurgi, its inexplicably diminutive and fluttery Doli and the total absence of anyone even faintly resembling Gwydion, or Ellidyr, or Adaon, or Achren (that is what you mean by Arainrod, isn’t it? Or have I completely overlooked someone?) and its ridiculous attempt to collapse two novels into one movie..but I think this is a different case, because it is meddling with, as you say, a person’s writing, rather than a fairy tale that belongs to everyone and may exist in several different versions.

But, ahem, this has nothing to do with the original question, the connection between seven and dwarves. I think, charly, that it’s hardly something he would have forgotten (although I must admit I didn’t notice it before), and Tolkien wouldn’t be above putting in such a thing as a subtle little joke of that kind. I often get the sense that there is deep, quiet laughter behind the seriousness of the story...

--Belin Ibaimendi

[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: Belin ]