Everything Is Terrible is a website dedicated to bringing the world wonderful things. What started as a group of friends in Ohio compiling, editing, and manipulating obscure VHS tapes from the ’80s and ’90s into short video clips to get their LOLs off, has grown into an internet success story. Now the group considers themselves archivists of sorts.
“We see ourselves as filling a niche by preserving a type of media that is ignored, and even looked down upon, by other film/video archivists,” wrote Future Schlock, a member of Everything Is Terrible, in an email. “The VHS boom of the late ’80s-early 90s resulted in any old yahoo with a camera being able to release their message to the world — a moment similar to the rise of YouTube. But with a lot more neon.”
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This is the age of the Disney Princesses. When I used to teach drama to little kids, not a day would go by without a large proportion of the tiny tots arriving in outfits entirely unsuitable for the rough and tumble of pre-K theater. Sequins, ruffles, yards of itchy, uncomfortable unnatural fibers in baby pinks and baby blues: these children were no longer Jessica, Britney or Caroline — they had been transformed into Jasmine, Belle and Cinderella (next up, African American Tiana). And whilst these toddlers are at pains to tell you which princess they are, to show you their crown or to topple precariously in hideous plastic high-heels, when asked what a princess actually does, they’re stumped.
All hail then, West Coast photographer Dina Goldstein, whose almost-complete series Fallen Princesses casts light on the modern day plight of fairy tale royalty. Just what would a contemporary Cinderella be doing with herself? Take a look at a few of Goldstein’s powerful images after the jump…
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Media reactions to the new Disney movie The Princess and the Frog, the first Disney feature with a black heroine due to be released in time for Christmas 2009, have been a decidedly mixed bag. Disney’s first African-American Princess, Maddy, lives in New Orleans of the 1920s, and dreams of capturing the attention of Prince Naveen.
Some critics have lambasted the production, claiming that the movie promotes negative black stereotypes rather than challenging them. Others think we should get a grip — it’s about time Disney had a black role model for young girls, and The Princess and the Frog is no worse than other Disney releases, such as Aladdin and Mulan, which portray simplified versions of other races and cultures. Read More »
