![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A gushing entry
Jul. 16th, 2004 11:41 amI love The Storyteller! For our anniversary, my husband bought me the DVD with all nine episodes of this wonderful show, and we've been watching them one by one. What a marvelous show! I just wanted to gush for a bit.
First off, I love folklore and fairy tales. I took a class my last semester of college on folklore, mythology and legends, mostly for fun, since I had finished the majority of my requirements. And it was a blast. I soak up these tales greedily. Each of them opens a window into a culture, tells something about the people who would pass around such a tale. And something really appeals to me about the oral tradition. Telling something aloud requires vastly different techniques from writing it; there's more repitition, often a rhythmic, almost singsong quality, and set phrases that can be turned upside-down to new effect. (The oral tradition underlying Hebraic writings, by the way, is something that I absolutely adore about Hebrew poetry. Read the Book of Job or a passage from Isaiah aloud; it's beautiful).
The Storyteller, meanwhile, has so much fun with the conventions of storytelling. The actor playing the title character is masterful, clever, wry and funny. The script gives him such poetic and fanciful language, and the techniques that meld his telling with the scenes from the story are so entertaining - little figures walking through a picture, or appearing in front of the flames in the fireplace - it's just so much fun to watch. I like that most of the stories they chose to adapt are obscure. I haven't heard of most of them, but by the very nature of folk tales and fairy tales, they all have something familiar about them. Overall the show takes me to places far off, exotic, and yet somehow very close to home. And that's what a good story ought to do.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Jim Henson was a genius, and I wish he were still alive, continuing his brilliant work.
...the best place at the fire was kept for the storyteller.
First off, I love folklore and fairy tales. I took a class my last semester of college on folklore, mythology and legends, mostly for fun, since I had finished the majority of my requirements. And it was a blast. I soak up these tales greedily. Each of them opens a window into a culture, tells something about the people who would pass around such a tale. And something really appeals to me about the oral tradition. Telling something aloud requires vastly different techniques from writing it; there's more repitition, often a rhythmic, almost singsong quality, and set phrases that can be turned upside-down to new effect. (The oral tradition underlying Hebraic writings, by the way, is something that I absolutely adore about Hebrew poetry. Read the Book of Job or a passage from Isaiah aloud; it's beautiful).
The Storyteller, meanwhile, has so much fun with the conventions of storytelling. The actor playing the title character is masterful, clever, wry and funny. The script gives him such poetic and fanciful language, and the techniques that meld his telling with the scenes from the story are so entertaining - little figures walking through a picture, or appearing in front of the flames in the fireplace - it's just so much fun to watch. I like that most of the stories they chose to adapt are obscure. I haven't heard of most of them, but by the very nature of folk tales and fairy tales, they all have something familiar about them. Overall the show takes me to places far off, exotic, and yet somehow very close to home. And that's what a good story ought to do.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Jim Henson was a genius, and I wish he were still alive, continuing his brilliant work.
...the best place at the fire was kept for the storyteller.
