![]() That goes to fairy-tale cinema at large. At the very least, Disney, Pixar, and other studios have made recent strides in including more cultures in their fairy tale stories, leading to films like " Mulan," " Moana," " Encanto," " Coco," and more. This transmigration of an "other" Jewish tale to a "default" Christian tale reveals an inherent prejudice in American views of culture, faith, and folklore. Because, to artists like Burton, Victorian England felt like a "default" location for fairy tales, putting "Corpse Bride" in that setting was an attempt to universalize the story. It's unlikely that he felt the need to make the story a Christian allegory - or, even worse, to erase its Jewishness. So his motivation for adapting a Jewish tale was likely based on what he, an American raised in a Protestant church, considered to be "classic" fairy tale imagery. And although the characters' religion is not mentioned in "Corpse Bride," there are Christian churches and a stern bishop voiced by Christopher Lee, implying that the characters are Anglican.Īs for Burton, he's never been too forthcoming about his own religion, other than to say he was raised in a boring, passionless Protestant church, and that he is no longer religious. Many Disney animated films are based on Western European folk tales: The version of "Cinderella" we know hails from Germany, "Sleeping Beauty" is a 16th-century English tale, and "Frozen" was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen. I spent so long in the darkness, Id almost forgotten how beautiful the moonlight is.Emily upon returning to the Land of the Living Emily is the titular deuteragonist of Corpse Bride. (A modern version of this tale, "The Finger," can be found in the 1987 book " Lilith's Cave: Jewish Tales of the Supernatural" by Howard Schwartz.)įor Burton - and, indeed, for many American filmmakers - fairy-tale iconography slants aggressively toward the western European. ![]() The court sides with Rabbi Luria's argument that the marriage couldn't possibly be legitimate, and, wailing, the corpse bride collapses into a pile of bones. She retracts her requests, and they take their unconventional marriage to the rabbinic court and ask for a ruling on a marriage between the living and the dead. ![]() Rabbi Luria eventually asserts control over his new bride. "The Finger" is not a tale of finding love, but a ghost story. In the original tale, the corpse bride is not a lovelorn outsider, but a terrifying specter of death: She wails and insists on consummating her marriage with a living man. He places the ring on a branch, only to discover the branch is the corpse of a dead woman who rises from her grave, shrieking and declaring Luria to be her husband. In the original version of the story, Rabbi Luria is joking around with a ring and marriage vows in the woods.
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