Cliffhanger: The tiger and the strawberry

A story to tell…

Virginia: How was the birthday party?

Bertrand: Fun. Jeremy brought me a picture of a tiger and Bianca a box of premium strawberries. 

Virginia: A tiger and strawberries?

Bertrand: It was kind of a coincidence. You probably know this “cliffhanger” story:

One day while walking through the wilderness a man stumbled upon a hungry tiger. He ran but soon came to the edge of a high cliff. Desperate to save himself, he climbed down a vine and dangled over the fatal precipice. As he hung there, two mice appeared from a hole in the cliff and began gnawing on the vine. Suddenly, he noticed on the vine a plump wild strawberry. He plucked it and popped it in his mouth. It was incredibly delicious!
Virginia: Sounds an epiphanic tale. What is the message?

________

Voice-over

A different telling of the story is in Mahabharata. Message is either Enjoy Present Moment or Only Fools Get Distracted By Transient Pleasures.

There is a Zen Koan version too. Being a Koan it posits a paradoxical question which is very difficult to answer.

1001

Dalziel Bros, 1894

Scheherazade aka Shahrazad…

Sam: What’s after a thousand?

Sarah: Why, a thousand and one is the next number. 

Sam: So, it’s about the Arabian Nights?

Sarah: What a cast of characters. What a chequered history of collection and translation. If I could take one book to a desert island, this would be it.

Sam: Not a bible?

Sarah: Well. Maybe a bible has a bit more variety than just telling stories with cliffhangers to save one’s life. But I guess for me, narration wins out over preaching.

__________

Voice-over

What a work. What a fascinating frame using a formidable storyteller. What a study in compilations and translations. From colonial male explorers like Richard Burton, to cross-cultural female poets like Yasmine Seale.

Olympic Stories

Backstories

Athena: Stories? Yes, there have been a few. Feel good ones like the brother and sister who both won gold medals in their judo events. 

Mirai: And the swimmer who recovered from leukemia to get a place on the swimming team.

Athena: And the gymnast having to pull out of the team event because of suffering a case of twisties.

Mirai: Which most people had never heard of before that. Sounds terrifying to lose all sense of orientation when you’re twisting in midair on the way down.

Athena: And the rescue of the Bellorussian.

Mirai: And the ones who inspire speed and endurance like running a hundred meters or a marathon.

Athena: The backflip artists who inspire me to experience a backflip one more time in my life.

Mirai: The fierce table tennis players, the newer sports like surfing, skateboarding and rock climbing.

____________

Voice-over

The thrill of being the best, the overcoming of illness, courage to resist when self knowledge or politics creates pressure. Tokyo 1964 was a celebration of a gladiatorial sports, Tokyo 2020 includes urban battles and wrestles with Nature.

Art Nouveau show at RiverCity

Three nouveau artists…

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Audrey: A fascinating grouping: Beardsley, Mucha and Klimt.

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Alison: Overlapping lives.

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Audrey: Although Beardsley died young aged 26, Klimt at 56 and Mucha at 79.

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Alison: So which picture impressed you the most?

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Audrey: Walking through the 3D room with all the faces and golden arrows and chains swirling about.

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Alison: Ah. Modernizing the nouveau? For me, I liked the life stories and minimalist approach to exhibiting their works. Stories behind the pictures. Like that stunning portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. And the framing of it.

_________

Voice-over

Some say that banker and sugar baron Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer believed that his wife and Klimt were having an affair and asked Klimt to paint her portrait thinking that this would dissipate their passion. Not all artists fall out of love with their subjects but it is said that this worked. Klimt worked on the portrait for four years 1903 to 1907 leaving a shimmering image called The Woman in Gold, later stolen by the Nazis and returned to the family in 2008.

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Anthropomorphism

On cross-species communication…

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Don Quentin: Why do you call the cat Boris?

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Pete Gonzales: He looks like a Boris.

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Don Quentin: And you talk to him as if he were human. It’s not as though he understands human language.

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Pete Gonzales: Sometimes we communicate using his language.

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Don Quentin: You meow?

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Pete Gonzales: And sometimes I blink at him. Then he blinks back.

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Don Quentin: So, it’s a bilingual relationship?

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Pete Gonzales: Well, at times it seems we’re talking past each other.

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Don Quentin: Like the Chinese expression about a chicken talking to a duck.

_________

Voice-over

In writing, anthropomorphism helps us relate to animals, they come to life. The stories become more nuanced in meaning. Human language added complexity to the plots of Animal Farm, Cats and The Lion King. Imagine if those stories had been told through grunts, meows and blinks.

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The Cat in the Hat Somewhat Deconstructed

Collaborating on a children’s book...

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Roy: A story about the weather...like...

“The snow swirls about,

Hear how the wind blows.

Rhythm and Rhyme

We sit by the fire

Toasting marshmallows.”

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Theodor: Even simpler...

“The sun did not shine.

It was too wet to play.

We sat in the house

All that cold, cold wet day.”

_____________

Voice-over

Start with the beats, five for the first line, six for the second.

Character and costume off-beat, rhyme every second line.

Throw in a bit of reduplication.

Cat in the Hat overthrows Dick and Jane.

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Harry Potter as a cultural orientation text

A Japanese returns to Japan from six months at Cambridge…

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Cholmondeley: How did you prepare for it?

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Murakami: Since I don’t speak or read English well and I needed to be ready to answer questions at high table, I used Harry Potter as my cultural orientation.

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Cholmondeley: JK Rowling, eh?

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Murakami: You think a little too easy to prepare for six months on sabbatical?

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Cholmondeley: Well, you might have done worse. Like wading through the repetitive plots of Enid Blyton. There again, you could have taken on the

challenge of reading Roald Dahl.

________

Voice-over

“Words are in my not-so-humble opinion, the most inexhaustible form of magic we have, capable both of inflicting injury and remedying it.” Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
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Three best-selling children’s authors in the Top Ten, all English. Comparing their merits is difficult; Enid Blyton wins total sales, JK Rowling wins speed of popularity ascendancy. Roald Dahl wins the creativity award. But as cultural orientation texts?

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Fractured Fairy Tale: Wiesner’s Three Pigs

After story time…

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Escape from the wolf...

Adult: Did you like that story of the Three Pigs?

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Child: It was different. Not like the old story.

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Adult: No, the original story was just about the wolf and the pigs. This one jumped to other stories and mixed things up.

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Child: Pigs jumping out of the story. And mixing up dragons and cats.

___________

Voice-over

David Wiesner’s post-modern telling of The Three Little Pigs is a fractured fairy tale. Reviewers mostly liked it. Telling an old story in a different way, putting a twist in the tale, a fractured fairy tale takes a traditional fairy tale and changes the setting, characters, plot or point of view.

Most fractured fairy tales are from Europe. How about retelling a Japanese traditional tale such as Urashima Taro, or Kaguya Hime as a post-modern fractured fairy tale?

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