Rewriting classic stories to suit the audience isn’t new. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Romeo and Juliet was often portrayed with a happy ending (Juliet awakens from her stupor before Romeo drinks the poison, and all is well!). Fairy tales have been rewritten and rewritten until they have lost their original moral lesson and become little more than saccharine, often sexist, entertainment (Disney’s The Little Mermaid springs most readily to mind). And then there’s GoodTimes Family Classics.
We were “gifted” with a little case of these DVDs, about a dozen or so, a few years ago, and my children recently discovered them. While many of these tales are supposedly based on “classic” works of literature (or classic fairy tales), the storylines depicted in these poorly animated, painfully musical films are anything but classic. Through the Looking Glass becomes a story about Alice, dressed like an extra from Blossom, traveling through Wonderland with a magical jester to learn how to become a queen. Red Riding Hood involves a friendly sparrow and Red helping beavers build a dam. No, seriously. My personal (least) favorite, however, is Moby — The Adventures of Young Moby Dick. Yes, you read that right — an animated musical about the adventures of Moby Dick as a young whale, with a smart-alec sea horse friend and a quest to learn the secret to leaping up in the air and become King of the Sea, as best as I can gather. It’s as bad as it sounds. Worse, probably.
It’s like watching a badly made movie based on badly written fanfiction. I’m at a loss as to the motivation behind turning the dark story of Moby-Dick into a whimsical children’s program. Could they not conjure up something original? Could they not at least try to stick to the original story? A gentle young Moby singing and swimming isn’t exactly the primer I want my children to have for classic works of American literature. Gone is the symbolism. Gone is the metaphor. Gone is Ishmael’s personal struggle with good and evil and his place in the universe.
I have half a mind to start reading Moby-Dick (Melville’s, of course) as a bedtime story, in order to minimize the shock when my children read the book later on and discover, not only no singing and swim-dancing, but leg-biting and bitter revenge. Actually, they might enjoy the leg-biting and bitter revenge.
Actually, I could go for a little leg-biting and bitter revenge right about now, aimed at GoodTimes Family Classics.
