I am not surprised men want to turn the serial murderer into the good guy and the woman who stops his murder spree into the bad guy. It’s also not curiosity when you’re wondering what happened to the other women who were in your position; it’s self preservation. Which women aren’t supposed to have either. At least not when it comes to the men who own them.
Adding to your point (the hypocrisy of claiming her curiousity is at fault) any time period this story is portrayed in, it was literally the wife's JOB to know and maintain every room in the house! And the timing is crazy, I was just explaining the story of Bluebeard to a friend the other day - he hadn't heard of it and I don't have tiktok - so I'm glad I have a cool vid to share around!
i used to watch a children's cartoon series in arabic called حكايات عالمية/universal stories, and one episode they talked about this story and the plot didn't scare me as much as the animation & narrator's voice, they were terrifying
i still have the children’s book i read it in and it scared me for YEARS. i couldn’t even look at the first few pages i always had to skip it completely. i think i was even younger than 6. but now as an adult i have to say the illustrations are nice, tho more graphic than they should be for a children’s book
@@teasoup I still have mine too! It’s rather worn out now because it’s 20-something years old & been through more than that many house moves with me but I do still have it!
Is it just me or are there a lot of parallels between Bluebeard’s story and Guillermo Del Toro’s film ‘Crimson Peak’? The female lead marries a mysterious wealthy man and is forbidden to have the keys to the man and his sister’s house. The house’s floors are also oozing with red clay that resembles blood and the main character is haunted by several ghosts throughout the film.
the bluebeard tale is a Rorschach test; it always reveals more about the people interpreting it. How does one not see a serial killer playing games with their next mark, and how does one see a story about 'minding your own business, WOMAN" (as if there's any indication this fictional man wouldn't just find a different reason to off his newest wife anyway)? And it's already been asked, what did the first wife even do if there were no 'ex-wives' for her to stumble across? Is the blue-ness of the serial killer's beard some sort of allusion to magic, or nobility and the wickedness of the ruling class, or did the original author just like the color blue? *_Why are the curtains blue?_* -and how did he hide the smell? Magic??-
As a kid I loved the story but hated how curiosity was framed as bad. For different reasons, I hate the saying "curiosity killed the cat" (I love cats nooo). I think curiosity is a wonderful quality, it's the pursuit of knowledge. How about we start saying that Eve was the OG scientific mind ?
I encountered this story in one of those bedtime fairytale collections and honestly the moral I took was just "don't trust someone who is super secretive for reasons they refuse to explain". Absolutely insane that there's versions where the authors try to paint the victims of bluebeard as being the true villain like hello????? (Also, I am always going to be an Eve defender, she literally did not know that lies existed!!!)
@@LisaFevral stop that’s amazing omg I stan scientist!eve and her stay-at-home husband!adam (who does anything she asks him to because he loves her so very much)
@@chickofmusic001 I don't blame him either though 'cause it's not like he knew what lying was either. Plus, God never warned him about Lucifer nor that he could shapeshift into/possess these animals either (not according to what I remember, at least). It's literally like when parents get super mad at a small child for doing something wrong for the first time, they don't even know the full context of ANYTHING.
I had a fairytale book with the bluebeard in it, it's laughable how people saw women as the ones in the wrong. Bluebeard literally was the first one to mention the room.
This video is fantastic! I also highly recommend reading Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” as a companion piece to this video-she was commissioned to translate Charles Perrault’s fairy tales and ended up doing a Bluebeard retelling from a more empathetic, feminine perspective
aaaaah i found a reason to nerd out Bela Bartok is a really importen late romantic/early neoclassical composer and almost singlehandedly the reason why we have records (as in both transcriptions as well as recordings) of a huge amount of hungarian folk music. in his younger years he went around different regions in hungary (then still part of the austro-hungarian empire) and asked people to sing for him and perform their music. his original compositions are fantastic (and largely credit the hungarian folk music he collected and saved) and he only left hungary because he had to flee from the fascist regime in the late 30s/early 40s. biggest reccomendation is his concerto for orchestra, i love it and its fantastic also: the "tears, judith, tears" moment still cracks me and my entire musicologist friend group up to this day. we quote it at every minor inconvenience
love when ppl nerd out ehehe he definitely contributed so much in terms of actually preserving g Hungarian music!! ALSO omg "tears, Judith, tears" is so funny I might gonna have to join you guys and use it as well ahaha (maybe I'll get bissistant to use it too, bc we watched it together and couldn't stop laughing at that part)
Oh my gawwwd. You talking about Bluebeard?!? I don't know how to explain it without making it sound weird but it's like you're scratching just the right spot in my brain with the most colourful feather. Thank you! Ok, i'll shut up now lol.
2 days ago i watched the essay about fairytales, where philologist said that originally this stories had described a process of initiation of young people and had nothing to do with teaching kids. Clarissa Pinkola Estes also talked about woman initiation in her book Woman who run with the wolves (Bluebeard is the only chapter i remembered from it) Honestly such a horror. I rad it through the prism of abusing relationships, saviour complex and the importance of family support in your life. Not a fancy interpretation, maybe i should read it again
I think that's a fair read. the fact that Perrault wrote a "moral " into the story doesn't mean that we gotta read the og story that way, since it existed wayyyyyy before him
I remember watching and being haunted by this movie as a child but have since forgotten almost all of it. The last scene was all that remained in my mind and I always thought it was some kind of fever dream. Good to know it actually exists and that I can now rewatch this movie as an adult!
Now i want more video discussing folklore/fairytale. Never seen or engaged in analysis of folklore and only did it once for a class for Hansel and Gretel and Frau Holle but most analysis favours movies,tv shows, books and song rather than traditional folklore/fairytale. Quality video❤
the use of eve, psyche and the bluebeard’s wife at the beginning told me this would be a great video and it truly was! your explanations of topics are beautiful and wonderfully in depth, thank you for this video 🫶
Lisa, this episode was so interesting!! But to add to it, I think you'd find Clarissa Pinkola Estés' interpretation of this tale very interesting and kinda counter-complimenting to the movie version! She talks about it in her book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, which is kind of a self-help book...? Don't know if you've heard of it... I read it a few years ago, so forgive me if I can't give you precise details... but in it, Estés interprets several old tales relating them to women's intuition. She argues that as women grow up, their intuition gets restrained to a point where they can no longer count on it, and as a result, this leads them to fall victim to various traps... psychic, social, relational, and so on... and so, Estés uses the tales to "exemplify" how women can get their intuition back and return to being what they were born to naturally be: a force of nature. Again, take these words with a grain of salt, because it's been years and I only read half of the book. But I remember how much I liked her interpretation of the Bluebeard tale and how it helped me identity some of my own psychic traps and intentionally renounce them and grow. But I really liked your point about the social demonization of curiosity. It has it's place of course... one should not be nosy after all... But curiosity is an integral part of learning and evolving... so this reveals the ridiculous fear society has of intelligent and capable women... omg... I never stopped to think about it, but it makes so much sense!! How can one abuse an intelligent and capable woman... One would have to be actually intelligent and capable too. That woman would exalt one's flaws and short comings and that is a scary thing for many to face... let alone change! I also really liked your point about homme fatales...!! I'm rambling here lol so I won't say more... But this topic is so interesting! So, so interesting!!
yeah it's really interesting how this conditioning starts so early, and is snuck into even the most extreme examples(Bluebeard literally k worded SIX of his ex wives, but the seventh' curiosity is treated as a sin/crime regardless of what is found out about him through her curiosity)
Very interesting video. You're very well spoken. As a woman with ASPD, I'd like to say that people often misinterpret what lack of empathy really does to someone. The lack of empathy itself mainly breeds indifference. The problems start when you mix it with other emotions (for example anger without empathy makes you much more likely to hurt someone impulsively). Also you can still comprehend the severity of an action, at least on a logical level, you may not feel it or necessarily agree with it but people's reactions and behaviour show you the impact of what you did or said; this of course doesn't mean you necessarily care about how it affects others. Essentially what I'm trying to say is that when you lack such a fundamental trait such as empathy, how you interact with the world is reduced to constantly making a choice. And a lot of these people, mainly men, simply choose whatever appeases their ego, even if they themselves know how stupid and baseless their belief or behaviour might be.
I love when you TH-camrs post about obscure things they are passionate about!😊I am familiar with the Blue Beard fairytale but not the opera or this particular movie. I would love to hear your other fairy tale takes!
WOW, you and I must have very similar social media feeds because you're on top of all the videos and trends I've been seeing throughout the years. I just saw the same video on tiktok about 2 days ago. It's definitely an alluring scene.
Bluebeard was one of my favourite fairytale as a child ( yes I was that kind of kid ) and I was always rooting for the wife like girly wasn't just blindly obedient and it saved her ?? I also liked the fact that she married Bluebeard despite his reputation
The way I saw the psyche argument was that Judith represents a human side of him struggling to break free, demanding change and truth from him for self-realization and Hegelian synthesis. But the tyrant in control (Bluebeard) is so powerful that the light-seeking part is always crushed. The tension between them is from the dominant part forbidding disobedience but some part of him resisting and then paying the price. She doesn’t ‘know’ about the castle because she’s demanding he reveal the truth AND repent. The not knowing is a dramatized psychological performance between two halves of him: one that demands change as an outsider and one that maintains power and hegemony as the tyrant in charge. Edit: also I think Judith’s desire class-wise makes her the petit bourgeoisie that always aligns itself more with the bourgeoisie than the proles (the finance bro sympathizing with Bezos as if he’ll become a billionaire tomorrow). Her eventual entombment shows her losing her class status and becoming the prole extracted from. It’s usually what happens with PB but they don’t learn or build alliances and keep aspiring.
what would the other wives represent though in this reading? Also agree in the petit bourgeoisie part, bc my reading also involves the same look at the wives and a real life parallel of "proximity to male straight whiteness". Judith straight up ignores the blood, as long as she is gaining access to all the things he has, until she becomes another one of his victims
My God, I always had a memory of when I was a child I read a book with a princess entering a room with bodies, I still remember the illustration on the page to this day, but I never remembered the name of the book or the rest of the story. I know now!! It was probably Bluebeard, I don't know why anyone would give a book like that to a child, but I think I was traumatized because I remember that page so vividly. Anyway, thank you very much, your video made me unlock this thing from my childhood lol
The moral of “Bluebeard” and its variations “Fitcher’s Bird” and “The Robber Bridegroom” are as barbaric as the moral of “Sun Moon and Talia” and “Troylus and Zellandine” (I swear to you I’m not even exaggerating) where the rapist Prince/King Charming who “saves” Talia or Zellandine by coercively impregnating her in her death sleep, as result her baby sucks out the hexed flax from her fingernail, is presented as the hero instead of the villain, “He who has luck may go to bed and bliss will rain upon his head” a multitude of Greco Roman myths also showcase rape culture.
i just finished reading “the outsider” from your absurdism episode (amazing video btw) and i was wanting to pick up another book! bluebeard definitely wasn’t on my tbr but let’s see after watching this muahaha~. i’m not sure what ‘performs well’ but i love these types of videos! (as someone who’s studying physics, it’s nice to take a break once in a while and indulge in something more creative hahaha~)
The og fairytale is super short so it’s more like a page of a book than a book tbh ahah but i think you might like it anyway, same with the opera film! And I’m really glad you enjoyed it🤍🤍
This story always frightened me, I think I read it once when I was a child and then was too scared to check it again. I remember everything and I think that what I remembered as a lesson was to keep what people around me warned me to not have : curiosity. Curiosity is what saved her.
I LOVE this story, thanks for covering it. The implications are really striking when you take half a moment to think about any of the details in the story. Also since we're on the topic, if anyone here likes TTRPGs I'd like to recommend 'Bluebeard's Bride' - it's a horrror-themed game where you play as Bluebeard's newest wife and the concept + artwork is incredible.
Thank you for the movie rec, just watched it and it was so grotesquely beautiful, usually I find Bartók a bit too dissonant, but this was, while still dissonant to a degree, so fitting for the story and not even hard to listen to! Also I don't know what about the 80's did this to people but they had the dark, grimy fairy tale aesthethic down to a t! You're interpreation is so interesting and thought provoking, to me it felt something more like the story was about Judit thinking about mysterious bad boy with tortured past Bluebeard that she can fix him if he can just open up and than it turns out she couldn't fix him after all, to put it in meme-y terms and shortly, but there was definitely some misogynistic vibes as well, a more if Judit would just let the past be the past and not froce the issues they could have lived toghether just fine. I saw the past wives as more methaphorically still chained to him, like your past lovers as still gonna be a part of you even if it's over and as Judit learns how they made Bluebeard the man he is now, how much they gave him, made him rich, and I think it's like spiritually richer not in the literal sense, Judit feels insecure, like she can't live up to the past great loves and that somehow ends her relationship with Bluebeard... or somethin like that!! I'm just babbling, but definitely such an interesting adaptation of the fairytale and it can be interpreted so many ways, it's really fun to think about and also read and hear other people's interpretations! Also it was very weird listening to non native speakers sing in hungarian, so now I know how italians must feel if they go to the opera somewhere abroad :"D
It’s so interesting that you could hear an accent in their pronunciation bc opera always reads like noise to me when it comes to hearing words, even in languages I understand ahaha
Once again, I find that these incredibly sexist and misogynistic stories stem from beliefs propagated by the church. I've written a few essays about hysteria, purity culture, and women's issues and the common denominator is that men had to deprive women of their power by shaming normal and biological experiences. Much of those beliefs permeate the very essence of our patriarchal society. To say that curiosity is bad, is to deprive humanity of critical thinking which is exactly what the status quo wants. Curiosity helps us find our true, authentic selves and w/o it we're only a cog in the machine.
this movies visuals quite remind me of “the vampire lovers” which is a adaptation of the book carmilla and also this game on the ps2 called haunting grounds which..to put it simply is about a woman finding herself in a castle with absolute Weirdos
i positively screeched when i saw the notification for this. bluebeard's def one of my favourite stories and i'm so so happy you made this video!! random recommendation, but if you like darker takes on fairy tales in general, the book ''The Bloody Chamber'' by Angela Carter is amazing for that!! forever loyal to this channel
14:30 A very solid point. When you were describing the plot, it seemed to me that it's the sort of plot that you can't really gender-swap, but then I remembered that the legend and the first part of Bram Stoker's Dracula share a lot in common. Of course there is a vital difference: Bluebeard tells his wife what not to do, whereas Dracula and Harker play around each other, with Harker sneaking around and Dracula actively trying to hide the weirdness of both himself and his castle.
I've never really encountered a version that was anti- curiosity. Just versions that had the herione save herself (and often her sisters because magic) by being smart. Like putting the egg somewhere safe and then exploring, so when Bluebeard asked about her day she could safely lie.
Excited for this video! I remember the fairy tale faintly, it wasn't one of my faves. Think mainly bc the old book the story was in, didn't have pretty drawing accompanying it, unlike some of the other tales in the same book :) Never not been a visual creature lmaoo
omg unrelated to the vid but i just started watching your podcasts religiously and as an art student at columbia uni in ny EVERYTHING YOU SAY could not be closer to my reality atm. likeee being black, lgbtq, and from georgia (the south is VERY culturally different than NY) i get so much whiplash from the casual but sometimes covert ignorance and stupidity of these rich artists girlies (just watched the bad art school experiences videos and was dyinggg at the vito acconci girl 😭😭)
In Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca at first they show you the maid’s sorrow from Rebecca’s death and how everyone loved her and can’t forget about her even her husband, Maxim, is quiet and reserved since her death and how the young new bride tries and fails to fill the space she left. The reader is made to care about Rebecca’s presence or even her absence when it was told she died in a boating accident. But the moment you learn that it was Maxim that killed her you start to learn about how machiavellian and villainy she actually was and how she made poor maxim so miserable that he just had to kill her and even the maid that loved and mourned her becomes the antagonist that burns their house down. Not a moment in the book you see Maxim as the villain or a murdered because it was actually Rebecca who was the villain and his young bride agrees and stays with him till the end because she’s nice and not like Rebecca therefore Maxim doesn’t have a reason to kill her. How very nice of him! (I’m so tired I didn’t know how to end this comment)
I thought bluebird killed the wife when he got back knowing that she lived and got a happy ending makes it sound like opening the door wasn’t such a bad idea
While it definitely was for the best it different stories have some variations that feel so icky. My first exposure to this story was the Grimm's fairytales anime (those cartoons did not hold back on the corpses thing for any of its fairytale retelling I can tell you that much). In the ending the whole mansion and his riches are burnt to the ground, and even as a kid I was like "bitch, she just went through all of that and she couldn't even keep SOMETHING, ANYTHING!" I know, I know, as the Portuguese saying goes, loose the rings and keep the fingers; but still, the story made it seem like she embracing his riches and loosing her juvenile innocence is some sort of crime. When he was the one that told her to make full use of his money! He provided a life style of unimaginable wealth that he himself made full use of, but when his wife changed due to her new circumstances we are expected to believe that is somehow morally wrong? I loved the Grimm's fairytales anime series, it had a lot of stories I hadn't heard of and some interpretations were quite nice; but the blue bears definitely left a sour taste even when I was too young to understand the full extent of the story.
really interesting video !!! bluebeard is one of the fairytales i'm lowkey obsessed with so i will definitely check out the opera ! i've seen others mention Angela Carter's version and i second that, i love that version so much because it basically rights most of the wrongs that you've talked about in this video, by making Bluebeard's upper class predatory sadistic nature much more obvious while also presenting her curiosity as natural and reasonable - especially love the ending but won't spoil it ^^^ not sure i agree with all your conclusions in the video - for instance, the argument that this can't take place in Bluebard's psyche because the new wife has agency - you could consider that these are different parts of his psyche, some of which are repressed horrors he's in denial about and some of which try to get him to act differently and he's refusing any opportunity to learn from the more feminine aspects of his psyche that would bring him truth, compassion and a need to repent (just read sth about how abusers will often forget what they've done because their brain blocks it out.) i mean i don't really like this interpretation either to be honest, because it makes it all about the guy, but yeah. another thing is this idea that because there is a bad ending, it's necessarily a punishment for the main female character and therefore more misogynistic. instead, it could be argued that the original happy answer in which she is saved by her brothers and then remarries, illustrates the idea that bluebeard really is an aberration, and that it will finish well if she trusts in the 'good men' and therefore there is no need to question patriarchy. meanwhile the unhappy tragic ending in which she is chained could represent the fact that this is a whole system that needs to be broken, that you can't just free one woman and call it a happy ending, it needs to be everyone (the class aspect appears relevant here too). the idea of the bad guy getting punished as this ultimate good ending is also questionable because it's often the way society's evils are put on one individual that needs to be purged, allowing the system to remain intact. and from what you said about the opera, it really doesn't sound like he's made out to be sympathetic. i think it's very limited to analyze every story through the lens of a simplistic morality tale, eg, what happens in this story is what the authors think should happen in real life. then again i did not watch the opera so maybe there are other arguments to call it misogynistic but i wasn't convinced by these ones. that said overall i agree with your conclusions, it's absolutely ridiculous people could go with the 'this is a story about how female curiosity is evil' moral and be taken seriously for so long, yikes ! first video of yours ive watched but i will definitely watch more
i recently watched a video on analog horror and the creator explained why they find it to be the most unsettling kind of horror; in fact i find this tale to be way more terrifying
I had no idea the '88 Duke Bluebeard's Castle was blowing up in certain spheres on tiktok! I happened to watch it back in February when I was in a ✨fairytale era ✨, including folktales/folklore and mythology. I watched probably around 20-25 fairytale-esque movies and read quite a number of stories, a few collections' worth. Bluebeard is one of my favorite tales and I find different renditions and interpretations of it to be fascinating, particularly ones in more recent decades and by women because yeah they can also be annoying and frustrating. My favorite is Angela Carter's story The Bloody Chamber, I also love Catherine Breillat's 2009 film, and I'm very interested in what Anna Biller did/does with it. She released her Bluebeard's Castle book not too long ago and it's what she's been working on for her next feature film.
@LisaFevral she's talked about it or at least mentioned it here and there since 2017. I assumed she still wants to make a film of it but now that I think about it, it is possible she just transferred that to writing only and came out with the book..... okay I just looked up if it was still in the works and apparently studios lost interest and thought it "less viable," especially after the pandemic. so I guess no film :/ . It's just the book. And it seems she's shifted her focus to a new film entitled The Faces of Horror but no info on that atm.
I went through that phase a year before too, probably because I was feeling nostalgic. I watched In The Company of Wolves (wild), The Wizard of Oz, Return to Oz, Legend, Beauty and the Beast 1946, and have The Red Shoes, Dragonslayer, and Donkeyskin on the list. What did you watch/end up enjoying? I would definitely include Anthony Dowell’s Sleeping Beauty aesthetic as a fitting ballet entry too
@@themaybeso6117 I love The Company of Wolves! Great soft look. The stories that are the source material for that are in Carter's same short story collection as The Bloody Chamber I mentioned! ooh, I didn't get to rewatching Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast but it was on my longlist, so to speak, of things to watch. I love Cocteau's style and recurring effects/motifs. I've seen a 2006 production of Sleeping Beauty. I'm assuming you're talking about the 1994 one because Dowell is specifically credited under production and plays Carabosse. Let's see... I didn't _love_ the movie but the set and costume design of Mirror Mirror (2012) was impeccable. Donkey Skin (1970) is what really kickstarted my fairytale era ✨ I had liked it enough before but it was *everything* when I decided to rewatch it at the beginning of the year. Three Wishes For Cinderella (1973), which I also increasingly liked on this rewatch, so cute and charming. The other major rewatch was The Red Shoes (1948), of which I could just have the ballet sequence playing on my tv all the time. The Feather Fairy (1985), Father Frost (1964), Prince and the Evening Star (1979), The Little Mermaid (Русалочка) (1976), How to Wake a Princess (1978), The Slipper and the Rose (1976) a musical, Cinderella (1947)- these all ranged from liking to really liking. But the top standouts for me that were first time watches were: The Little Mermaid (Malá mořská víla) (1976), The Snow Queen (1957), and actually Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1988). The Snow Queen is definitely going to be in my rotation of movies to watch every winter/Christmastime. The Little Mermaid (Malá mořská víla) is one of my new favorite films! I even increased my rating on Letterboxd a few months after logging it because of how much it has lingered in my mind. It really felt and looked like an underwater world. 🌊🌟🐚
@@BaileeWalsh Usually in ballet it’s just written in the possessive to identify a production like that but it doesn’t specify where it was or if it was a revival. Should have been more clear about that. The current Royal Ballet production of Sleeping Beauty is what they’ve been performing for a while and it’s quite expensive and based of the original, which they’ve used as a sort of point for British style and was what the opera house opened with after the war so that’s the most recorded one and I doubt it’ll be changed soon but the 1994 was very pretty imo and it’s available to watch. Thanks for getting back to me and being so thorough, definitely feeling inspired and interested and will get to several of these. I don’t have a letterboxd but I will look yours up! It’s very appreciated. Shortly after it came out my friends and I badgered my mother into renting Mirror Mirror because it looked so pretty but then she turned it off not because we were like, very young but because she couldn’t stand the acting lol
omg oh my god you guys one of "my roman empire" tales okay i can't actually finish video because talking about sexist men being sexist men makes me so very raging
The gowns of the three wives seem to reflect 3 very different time periods and cultures. Judith becomes more and more fatigued by what she discovers and it might be a simple statement, but it sounds like what a toxic relationship does to one's psyche, on both sides of the couple even, or even a metaphor for trauma/being victim to a form of violence that gets imprinted into your memory. Keeping the wives alive is as bad as killing them, he basically built his person on top of others. It also seems like the last period of Dorian Gray's life, almost as if he wants to clean his soul clear, or beauty as it stands is the only thing he misses. I would love to find people to talk about it with, because I barely scratched the surface. I don't see it as a critique against curiosity, though. At least this version.
Based in the authors that wrote many versions of the story, they wanted to say that curiosity is bad, but even in Perrault's version of the tale where he explicitly writes the "moral" at the end, I personally still don't read it as a tale about the dangers of curiosity. I think this just goes to show how their prejudice against women entirely obscures logic
@@LisaFevral yup. I feel like it's definitely an interpretation, but we can't see it due to how we perceive our place in society, this version especially.
@@LisaFevralI said I don't see it as that meaning that I have a different viewpoint from the original. It always sounded to me like "don't marry a stranger/arranged husband" LOL and that stems from my background, rather than the original work.
Wait I’ve been reading a random fairytale from Grimm’s every day and just recently read this one and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since! Had no idea there was a movie
Judith brings her "light", that's what she brings, she's innocent and nice, even after hearing the rumors, she doesn't care. Even if he's a clear red flag, she's never afraid, probably because she never thinks he would harm her and she's full of childish curiosity. To her the blood on the wall and the pool of tears were probably prove that the house was actually alive.
I first learned about this story because of Strong girl do bong soo...or was it you're all surrounded? Both shows are good. Yall should look up the real story of 12 dancing princesses. I would 100% watch that video
Beautiful video and great opera recommendation 💙 Do you know about Clarissa Pinkola Estés's "Women who run with the wolves? There's a really interesting chapter about Bluebeard's story, I recommend the whole book if you ever want to dip your toes in feminist psychoanalytic interpretations of old tales
I read the fairytale as a kid ❤. The plot was weird cause I didnt know what I should be learning frm it 😅. Then I realise it kinda shares similar plot points to the original beauty n the beast, frm the man being frown upon to marry, to the girl exploring different parts of their castle. I find it funny cause it kinda shows that this relationship senario isn't as idealic as it seems. Beauty n the beast comes frm a good lesson abt beauty, but being the odd magical optimistic one, wherelse Blue Beard is the more realistic take if this were to happen. Its actually a pretty good fairytale of women's fears for their relationships w man, oddly enough like what true crimes are today.
I highly recommend you read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (both the titular story covering the fairytale of Bluebeard and the entire collection). It offers a very fresh and feminist perspective on the original material and would do as a great addition to the conversation you already started with this video. :)
Joanna Newsom’s song “Go Long” essentially tells the tale of Bluebeard and uses it as a way to reflect on a toxic relationship she had been in. I recommend everyone check it out!
Bluebeard was a stock character folks back then would immediately have recognized (kinda like the Big Bad Wolf of today). This might help rationalize the side-eye aggressively cast at "Judith", Bluebeard's seventh wife. Audiences of the time likely viewed the entire situation through a very different lens. Wives often were the butt of jokes and japes in storybooks and stage plays. In "Bluebeard", Judith chooses for a husband a man recognizable as an outsider. Of course he's going to be a touch eccentric. His beard is blue, after all! When she was a child, Judith had lived under the shadow of her father's protection. Now, marriage would fit her with the yoke of submissive domesticity. Through the covenant of marriage, she'd be tasked with donning it voluntarily. The world at large readily would absolve the men in her life of blame when Judith stumbled. Modern readers bring with them a different set of expectations. We probably are going to anticipate a lost little girl filling the role of the faIry tale's lead character. 500 years ago, Judith's actions were judged against those of the meek and obedient wife. Instead, her actions are closer to those of Little Red Riding Hood. "Marrying well" was a major aspiration of daughters, and Judith remains focused in laying her suspicions of Bluebeard to rest.
First 7 min in Absolutely! What is up with that!?!?? When men are curious they’ll ingenious adventurers who become sagacious philosophers. But nope can’t have women looking in shit for some reason!
I'm probably the only person on earth who hadn't heard this fairy tale before. But yeah I guess the fact that the wives are still alive is better than dead... Although if they're aware of what's happening it has to be complete torture
i remember reading the grimm's version as a child, i think. he was very scary in that, and the story traumatised me. i think i remember dreaming that i was the woman character that night too lmao
I am not surprised that these ideas have been feeding the world since forever, a man can´t be bad and if he is, the fault is on the woman OF COURSE. Anyways, thanks for explaining and for your research 👏
you should read king thrushbeard its basically about a princess who refused all suitors and mocked them and one of them being crazy enough to lie, humiliate her, gaslight her and force her into poverty just because he was offended.
"There are almost no stories in the western canon of comoarable longevity or or cultural resonance that register [...] the fact that women are systematically at risk from masculine violence and s*xuality" I disagree with this. I would say there are quite a few, yet like it's later pointed out in the essay, they are often compromised, sometimes so there original intent is almost unrecognisable. Red Riding Hood for example is another story in which the villain is clearly a male agressor (although "othered" into a beast) where many retellings try to shift the blane to the female victim. Stories in which a person finds out that their spouse is in some way an "other" (demon, beast, witch, murderer etc.) exist with both male and female antagonists (although Iagree that the latter seem to be more popular) However more interesting in my opinion is that more often than not - whether protagonist or antagonist - the husband is the one to kill the woman (or at least attempt to do so). Compare Bluebeard to typical witch tales in which the husband is hailed as a hero for duking out vigilante justice against his witch wife. (A New Horse from Scary Tales to Tell in the Dark is a good template for these legends.) The most a female protagonist can do is report the case to the proper (male) authorities, as happens for instance in the Grimm Tale The Robber Bridegroom. The only exception to this are the "Maiden Killer" ballads like the Dutch Heer Halewijn or the English The Outlandish (there's that othering again!) Knight, yet even in those instances the versions in which the female protagonist prevails have steadily decreased as time went on, replaced by equivalents in which she is killed or rescued by her brothers. In modern times they have mostly fallen out of favor altogether, replaced by the "Murdered Sweetheart" subgenre of murder ballads like Ellen Smith or Omie Wise, in which the naive heroine (many variants go as far as calling Omie Wise "foollike") is without exception killed by her lover who is then executed for his crimes. Damned if you do, damned if you don't: Either you're a scheming Delilah or a foollike Omie Wise. Either way getting killed is apparently your fault.
I think I first found out about this story in some YA fairy tale reimagining where some people were cursed to live out certain fairytales depending on what birthmark they had. The main character falls in love with someone with a Bluebeard curse. I don’t remember the ending but it was played as a tragic curse because everyone was forced into their fairytale fate and had no free will. So obviously I thought it was sad but didn’t think much of it since he was FORCED to kill women. I don’t think I contemplated the original tale although I’ve listen to all the grim fairytales multiple times (they’re free records in the public domain). Unless you’re literally forced in a fairy tale to commit murder there’s no excuse for femmecide also let’s not pretend that a serial killer wouldn’t kill her anyhow.
I think you kinda missed the point, but then again, I could also be missing the point with the opera 😅 But my interpretation is: Bluebeard's story was always about the institution of marriage and how it is a danger to women, since they're the ones who lose power, freedom and money with its union (particularly in common English and French laws and customs). Bartok and Balazs were Hungarian, and they would likely be familiar with the (still extant) custom of dowry and the types of dowry given, which would color their presentation So, the opera's story would be: Bluebeard married six wives who brought him money, power and prestige (symbolised by clothes, money, armory, garden, and map of land, all common dowries for wealthy). The pool of tears is a symbol of pain in marriage, and blood staining everything is basically a shout to the audience that he killed his wives (the effigies could be the symbols of graves that he lavishly decorates and image he presents of his passed wives, as if they're still alive), and the last, seventh wife who came in with a desire to marry rich and naively thinks she'll be any different because she isn't as rich or pretty, he simply wears down and then puts her to work at maintaining his wealth In short, they also said that marriage is a scam and beware rich men who want to marry naive young girls with little money 😂
Its what people in charge tell their subordinates, what you dont know cant hurt you, ignorance is bliss, and so on. It also parallels the hostility of the Christian church towards the emergent field of scientific investigation.
When I watched Mindhunter I thought about Bluebard a lot . I think the story of Bluebard and serial killers have a lot of parallels . Serial killers are not necessarily marginals , they have a normal life and a normal family . They can even commit their crimes in THE BASEMENT and it is perfectly possible because their family do not know anything because they were forbbiden to go there and they OBEYED .
![[#2024MAMA] ROSÉ (로제), Bruno Mars - APT. | Mnet 241122 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dgGqD28J6aQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I am not surprised men want to turn the serial murderer into the good guy and the woman who stops his murder spree into the bad guy. It’s also not curiosity when you’re wondering what happened to the other women who were in your position; it’s self preservation. Which women aren’t supposed to have either. At least not when it comes to the men who own them.
Bingo!
"You guys he had to kill his previous wives because they also disobeyed him and found the corpses."
"But what about his first wife?"
"..."
She asked what the huge empty room full of slaughterhouse hooks was for, probably
i remember the story made me so angry as a kid
Adding to your point (the hypocrisy of claiming her curiousity is at fault) any time period this story is portrayed in, it was literally the wife's JOB to know and maintain every room in the house!
And the timing is crazy, I was just explaining the story of Bluebeard to a friend the other day - he hadn't heard of it and I don't have tiktok - so I'm glad I have a cool vid to share around!
So who else first learned this story as a 6/7 year old from a “CHILDREN’S” short story collection ?
i used to watch a children's cartoon series in arabic called حكايات عالمية/universal stories, and one episode they talked about this story and the plot didn't scare me as much as the animation & narrator's voice, they were terrifying
ME, it was graphic too which I still remember as to this day (decade later T^T)
@@emiil54 Ik what you are talking abtt
i still have the children’s book i read it in and it scared me for YEARS. i couldn’t even look at the first few pages i always had to skip it completely. i think i was even younger than 6. but now as an adult i have to say the illustrations are nice, tho more graphic than they should be for a children’s book
@@teasoup I still have mine too! It’s rather worn out now because it’s 20-something years old & been through more than that many house moves with me but I do still have it!
Is it just me or are there a lot of parallels between Bluebeard’s story and Guillermo Del Toro’s film ‘Crimson Peak’? The female lead marries a mysterious wealthy man and is forbidden to have the keys to the man and his sister’s house. The house’s floors are also oozing with red clay that resembles blood and the main character is haunted by several ghosts throughout the film.
it's definitely inspired by it, even if indirectly, bc Bluebeard is the og gothic horror/"romance" story
the bluebeard tale is a Rorschach test; it always reveals more about the people interpreting it.
How does one not see a serial killer playing games with their next mark, and how does one see a story about 'minding your own business, WOMAN" (as if there's any indication this fictional man wouldn't just find a different reason to off his newest wife anyway)? And it's already been asked, what did the first wife even do if there were no 'ex-wives' for her to stumble across?
Is the blue-ness of the serial killer's beard some sort of allusion to magic, or nobility and the wickedness of the ruling class, or did the original author just like the color blue? *_Why are the curtains blue?_*
-and how did he hide the smell? Magic??-
I guess the fact that at that time it smelled fowl everywhere at all times really helped
Excellent point. The same could be said about the Lolita tale.
As a kid I loved the story but hated how curiosity was framed as bad. For different reasons, I hate the saying "curiosity killed the cat" (I love cats nooo).
I think curiosity is a wonderful quality, it's the pursuit of knowledge. How about we start saying that Eve was the OG scientific mind ?
omg actually yeah, she truly was eh
I hate how curiosity is seen as bad when it’s literally intelligent
@orangestreetlamp The full saying goes. “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”
I encountered this story in one of those bedtime fairytale collections and honestly the moral I took was just "don't trust someone who is super secretive for reasons they refuse to explain". Absolutely insane that there's versions where the authors try to paint the victims of bluebeard as being the true villain like hello????? (Also, I am always going to be an Eve defender, she literally did not know that lies existed!!!)
Yeah Eve was a real one, as someone else said in the comments she was the og scientist with her scientific curiosity
@@LisaFevral stop that’s amazing omg
I stan scientist!eve and her stay-at-home husband!adam (who does anything she asks him to because he loves her so very much)
I am also an Eve defender. And nobody forced Adam to eat the apple he was aware of god’s warning too but followed his wife smh.
@@chickofmusic001 I don't blame him either though 'cause it's not like he knew what lying was either. Plus, God never warned him about Lucifer nor that he could shapeshift into/possess these animals either (not according to what I remember, at least).
It's literally like when parents get super mad at a small child for doing something wrong for the first time, they don't even know the full context of ANYTHING.
Bluebeard was always one of the most memorable pieces of western folklore to me but I never hear anyone talking about it so this video hits the spot
I had a fairytale book with the bluebeard in it, it's laughable how people saw women as the ones in the wrong. Bluebeard literally was the first one to mention the room.
literally ahahaha
I read the German/Grimm version of this story; different from the version you described. It was made cleared Bluebeard was the villain in the story.
What's the German version called ?
@@Orchidswithonions The Complete First Edition: The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
Bluebeard or Blaubart
@@zeppelin4790 thank you
This video is fantastic! I also highly recommend reading Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” as a companion piece to this video-she was commissioned to translate Charles Perrault’s fairy tales and ended up doing a Bluebeard retelling from a more empathetic, feminine perspective
I’ve read about it but haven’t read the actual book/story yet! I’ll check it out
Completely agree - Carter’s version is so good.
this was the way i was introduced to the story.. its so good
aaaaah i found a reason to nerd out
Bela Bartok is a really importen late romantic/early neoclassical composer and almost singlehandedly the reason why we have records (as in both transcriptions as well as recordings) of a huge amount of hungarian folk music. in his younger years he went around different regions in hungary (then still part of the austro-hungarian empire) and asked people to sing for him and perform their music.
his original compositions are fantastic (and largely credit the hungarian folk music he collected and saved) and he only left hungary because he had to flee from the fascist regime in the late 30s/early 40s. biggest reccomendation is his concerto for orchestra, i love it and its fantastic
also: the "tears, judith, tears" moment still cracks me and my entire musicologist friend group up to this day. we quote it at every minor inconvenience
love when ppl nerd out ehehe he definitely contributed so much in terms of actually preserving g Hungarian music!!
ALSO omg "tears, Judith, tears" is so funny I might gonna have to join you guys and use it as well ahaha (maybe I'll get bissistant to use it too, bc we watched it together and couldn't stop laughing at that part)
Oh my gawwwd. You talking about Bluebeard?!? I don't know how to explain it without making it sound weird but it's like you're scratching just the right spot in my brain with the most colourful feather. Thank you!
Ok, i'll shut up now lol.
My fave version of this story is actually the tabletop RPG Bluebeard’s Bride, it’s such a spooky “feminine horror” game
Thanks for mentioning this game!
2 days ago i watched the essay about fairytales, where philologist said that originally this stories had described a process of initiation of young people and had nothing to do with teaching kids. Clarissa Pinkola Estes also talked about woman initiation in her book Woman who run with the wolves (Bluebeard is the only chapter i remembered from it)
Honestly such a horror. I rad it through the prism of abusing relationships, saviour complex and the importance of family support in your life. Not a fancy interpretation, maybe i should read it again
I think that's a fair read. the fact that Perrault wrote a "moral
" into the story doesn't mean that we gotta read the og story that way, since it existed wayyyyyy before him
@@LisaFevral i like what you said about rooms as the symbols of what heroine wants to have! If it's what you meant (struggling in second language)
Lmaoo I guess curiosity killed more than just the cat
But satisfaction brought it back 😏
HELLO BLUEBEARD ENJOYERS
HELLO THERE
Hi!
I remember watching and being haunted by this movie as a child but have since forgotten almost all of it. The last scene was all that remained in my mind and I always thought it was some kind of fever dream. Good to know it actually exists and that I can now rewatch this movie as an adult!
You’re one of the most stylish video essayists out there 👏🏽
Thank you🥰
Now i want more video discussing folklore/fairytale. Never seen or engaged in analysis of folklore and only did it once for a class for Hansel and Gretel and Frau Holle but most analysis favours movies,tv shows, books and song rather than traditional folklore/fairytale. Quality video❤
Glad you liked it🤍🤍
the use of eve, psyche and the bluebeard’s wife at the beginning told me this would be a great video and it truly was! your explanations of topics are beautiful and wonderfully in depth, thank you for this video 🫶
Lisa, this episode was so interesting!! But to add to it, I think you'd find Clarissa Pinkola Estés' interpretation of this tale very interesting and kinda counter-complimenting to the movie version! She talks about it in her book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, which is kind of a self-help book...? Don't know if you've heard of it... I read it a few years ago, so forgive me if I can't give you precise details... but in it, Estés interprets several old tales relating them to women's intuition. She argues that as women grow up, their intuition gets restrained to a point where they can no longer count on it, and as a result, this leads them to fall victim to various traps... psychic, social, relational, and so on... and so, Estés uses the tales to "exemplify" how women can get their intuition back and return to being what they were born to naturally be: a force of nature. Again, take these words with a grain of salt, because it's been years and I only read half of the book. But I remember how much I liked her interpretation of the Bluebeard tale and how it helped me identity some of my own psychic traps and intentionally renounce them and grow.
But I really liked your point about the social demonization of curiosity. It has it's place of course... one should not be nosy after all... But curiosity is an integral part of learning and evolving... so this reveals the ridiculous fear society has of intelligent and capable women... omg... I never stopped to think about it, but it makes so much sense!! How can one abuse an intelligent and capable woman... One would have to be actually intelligent and capable too. That woman would exalt one's flaws and short comings and that is a scary thing for many to face... let alone change! I also really liked your point about homme fatales...!! I'm rambling here lol so I won't say more... But this topic is so interesting! So, so interesting!!
yeah it's really interesting how this conditioning starts so early, and is snuck into even the most extreme examples(Bluebeard literally k worded SIX of his ex wives, but the seventh' curiosity is treated as a sin/crime regardless of what is found out about him through her curiosity)
Very interesting video. You're very well spoken.
As a woman with ASPD, I'd like to say that people often misinterpret what lack of empathy really does to someone. The lack of empathy itself mainly breeds indifference. The problems start when you mix it with other emotions (for example anger without empathy makes you much more likely to hurt someone impulsively). Also you can still comprehend the severity of an action, at least on a logical level, you may not feel it or necessarily agree with it but people's reactions and behaviour show you the impact of what you did or said; this of course doesn't mean you necessarily care about how it affects others.
Essentially what I'm trying to say is that when you lack such a fundamental trait such as empathy, how you interact with the world is reduced to constantly making a choice. And a lot of these people, mainly men, simply choose whatever appeases their ego, even if they themselves know how stupid and baseless their belief or behaviour might be.
they choose their ego over the consequences?
@@MichelleSmith-gt1py pretty much
Joanna Newsom’s song Go Long is an interpolation of the Bluebeard tale. That song started my interest in consuming Blackbeard themed media.
oh, I should check it out!
I love when you TH-camrs post about obscure things they are passionate about!😊I am familiar with the Blue Beard fairytale but not the opera or this particular movie. I would love to hear your other fairy tale takes!
the intro>>>😭😭
You look so glamorous! Very nice.
WOW, you and I must have very similar social media feeds because you're on top of all the videos and trends I've been seeing throughout the years. I just saw the same video on tiktok about 2 days ago. It's definitely an alluring scene.
yeah I was hoping ppl will recognize the screenshot hehe
Bluebeard was one of my favourite fairytale as a child ( yes I was that kind of kid ) and I was always rooting for the wife like girly wasn't just blindly obedient and it saved her ?? I also liked the fact that she married Bluebeard despite his reputation
"Women who run with wolves" has an amazing analysis of this story, it literally changes everything you think you know about the classic story.
The way I saw the psyche argument was that Judith represents a human side of him struggling to break free, demanding change and truth from him for self-realization and Hegelian synthesis. But the tyrant in control (Bluebeard) is so powerful that the light-seeking part is always crushed. The tension between them is from the dominant part forbidding disobedience but some part of him resisting and then paying the price. She doesn’t ‘know’ about the castle because she’s demanding he reveal the truth AND repent.
The not knowing is a dramatized psychological performance between two halves of him: one that demands change as an outsider and one that maintains power and hegemony as the tyrant in charge.
Edit: also I think Judith’s desire class-wise makes her the petit bourgeoisie that always aligns itself more with the bourgeoisie than the proles (the finance bro sympathizing with Bezos as if he’ll become a billionaire tomorrow). Her eventual entombment shows her losing her class status and becoming the prole extracted from. It’s usually what happens with PB but they don’t learn or build alliances and keep aspiring.
what would the other wives represent though in this reading?
Also agree in the petit bourgeoisie part, bc my reading also involves the same look at the wives and a real life parallel of "proximity to male straight whiteness". Judith straight up ignores the blood, as long as she is gaining access to all the things he has, until she becomes another one of his victims
Wow I need more content about old fairy tales love this!!!
My God, I always had a memory of when I was a child I read a book with a princess entering a room with bodies, I still remember the illustration on the page to this day, but I never remembered the name of the book or the rest of the story. I know now!! It was probably Bluebeard, I don't know why anyone would give a book like that to a child, but I think I was traumatized because I remember that page so vividly. Anyway, thank you very much, your video made me unlock this thing from my childhood lol
The moral of “Bluebeard” and its variations “Fitcher’s Bird” and “The Robber Bridegroom” are as barbaric as the moral of “Sun Moon and Talia” and “Troylus and Zellandine” (I swear to you I’m not even exaggerating) where the rapist Prince/King Charming who “saves” Talia or Zellandine by coercively impregnating her in her death sleep, as result her baby sucks out the hexed flax from her fingernail, is presented as the hero instead of the villain, “He who has luck may go to bed and bliss will rain upon his head” a multitude of Greco Roman myths also showcase rape culture.
Greco-Roman tales always shock me with how pervasive assault instances are in them
i just finished reading “the outsider” from your absurdism episode (amazing video btw) and i was wanting to pick up another book! bluebeard definitely wasn’t on my tbr but let’s see after watching this muahaha~. i’m not sure what ‘performs well’ but i love these types of videos! (as someone who’s studying physics, it’s nice to take a break once in a while and indulge in something more creative hahaha~)
The og fairytale is super short so it’s more like a page of a book than a book tbh ahah but i think you might like it anyway, same with the opera film! And I’m really glad you enjoyed it🤍🤍
Oh my I love love love that you are telling this story. Bluebeard is one of the stories I’ve worked with a lot. Very interesting.
Ohhhh this was a fun and interesting analysis ❤❤
This story always frightened me, I think I read it once when I was a child and then was too scared to check it again. I remember everything and I think that what I remembered as a lesson was to keep what people around me warned me to not have : curiosity. Curiosity is what saved her.
Discovered you by your Whitch deep dive and I'm never leaving ❤❤❤❤
I LOVE this story, thanks for covering it. The implications are really striking when you take half a moment to think about any of the details in the story. Also since we're on the topic, if anyone here likes TTRPGs I'd like to recommend 'Bluebeard's Bride' - it's a horrror-themed game where you play as Bluebeard's newest wife and the concept + artwork is incredible.
Thank you for the movie rec, just watched it and it was so grotesquely beautiful, usually I find Bartók a bit too dissonant, but this was, while still dissonant to a degree, so fitting for the story and not even hard to listen to! Also I don't know what about the 80's did this to people but they had the dark, grimy fairy tale aesthethic down to a t! You're interpreation is so interesting and thought provoking, to me it felt something more like the story was about Judit thinking about mysterious bad boy with tortured past Bluebeard that she can fix him if he can just open up and than it turns out she couldn't fix him after all, to put it in meme-y terms and shortly, but there was definitely some misogynistic vibes as well, a more if Judit would just let the past be the past and not froce the issues they could have lived toghether just fine. I saw the past wives as more methaphorically still chained to him, like your past lovers as still gonna be a part of you even if it's over and as Judit learns how they made Bluebeard the man he is now, how much they gave him, made him rich, and I think it's like spiritually richer not in the literal sense, Judit feels insecure, like she can't live up to the past great loves and that somehow ends her relationship with Bluebeard... or somethin like that!! I'm just babbling, but definitely such an interesting adaptation of the fairytale and it can be interpreted so many ways, it's really fun to think about and also read and hear other people's interpretations!
Also it was very weird listening to non native speakers sing in hungarian, so now I know how italians must feel if they go to the opera somewhere abroad :"D
It’s so interesting that you could hear an accent in their pronunciation bc opera always reads like noise to me when it comes to hearing words, even in languages I understand ahaha
Once again, I find that these incredibly sexist and misogynistic stories stem from beliefs propagated by the church. I've written a few essays about hysteria, purity culture, and women's issues and the common denominator is that men had to deprive women of their power by shaming normal and biological experiences. Much of those beliefs permeate the very essence of our patriarchal society. To say that curiosity is bad, is to deprive humanity of critical thinking which is exactly what the status quo wants. Curiosity helps us find our true, authentic selves and w/o it we're only a cog in the machine.
Bingo!
this movies visuals quite remind me of “the vampire lovers” which is a adaptation of the book carmilla and also this game on the ps2 called haunting grounds which..to put it simply is about a woman finding herself in a castle with absolute Weirdos
gotta look into it hahah
Tell em Lisa
i positively screeched when i saw the notification for this. bluebeard's def one of my favourite stories and i'm so so happy you made this video!! random recommendation, but if you like darker takes on fairy tales in general, the book ''The Bloody Chamber'' by Angela Carter is amazing for that!! forever loyal to this channel
I stumbled upon info about that rewrite! I haven't read it yet, but I heard great things!
14:30 A very solid point. When you were describing the plot, it seemed to me that it's the sort of plot that you can't really gender-swap, but then I remembered that the legend and the first part of Bram Stoker's Dracula share a lot in common. Of course there is a vital difference: Bluebeard tells his wife what not to do, whereas Dracula and Harker play around each other, with Harker sneaking around and Dracula actively trying to hide the weirdness of both himself and his castle.
I've never really encountered a version that was anti- curiosity. Just versions that had the herione save herself (and often her sisters because magic) by being smart. Like putting the egg somewhere safe and then exploring, so when Bluebeard asked about her day she could safely lie.
You truly talk about so many of my favorite intersecting topics and it brings me so much joy!
🥹🥰
Excited for this video! I remember the fairy tale faintly, it wasn't one of my faves. Think mainly bc the old book the story was in, didn't have pretty drawing accompanying it, unlike some of the other tales in the same book :) Never not been a visual creature lmaoo
omg unrelated to the vid but i just started watching your podcasts religiously and as an art student at columbia uni in ny EVERYTHING YOU SAY could not be closer to my reality atm. likeee being black, lgbtq, and from georgia (the south is VERY culturally different than NY) i get so much whiplash from the casual but sometimes covert ignorance and stupidity of these rich artists girlies (just watched the bad art school experiences videos and was dyinggg at the vito acconci girl 😭😭)
oh we've got SO much to make fun of together eh ahahaha also the Vito acconci girl story... haunts us ahaha
@@LisaFevral real i will fully laugh at the artistically incoherent white boys in my classes FOR FREE. literal brainrot
In Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca at first they show you the maid’s sorrow from Rebecca’s death and how everyone loved her and can’t forget about her even her husband, Maxim, is quiet and reserved since her death and how the young new bride tries and fails to fill the space she left. The reader is made to care about Rebecca’s presence or even her absence when it was told she died in a boating accident. But the moment you learn that it was Maxim that killed her you start to learn about how machiavellian and villainy she actually was and how she made poor maxim so miserable that he just had to kill her and even the maid that loved and mourned her becomes the antagonist that burns their house down. Not a moment in the book you see Maxim as the villain or a murdered because it was actually Rebecca who was the villain and his young bride agrees and stays with him till the end because she’s nice and not like Rebecca therefore Maxim doesn’t have a reason to kill her. How very nice of him! (I’m so tired I didn’t know how to end this comment)
Also, Rebecca being ill makes it seem like killing her was ok.
I thought bluebird killed the wife when he got back knowing that she lived and got a happy ending makes it sound like opening the door wasn’t such a bad idea
it sounds like the best idea ever actually ahaha
While it definitely was for the best it different stories have some variations that feel so icky.
My first exposure to this story was the Grimm's fairytales anime (those cartoons did not hold back on the corpses thing for any of its fairytale retelling I can tell you that much).
In the ending the whole mansion and his riches are burnt to the ground, and even as a kid I was like "bitch, she just went through all of that and she couldn't even keep SOMETHING, ANYTHING!"
I know, I know, as the Portuguese saying goes, loose the rings and keep the fingers; but still, the story made it seem like she embracing his riches and loosing her juvenile innocence is some sort of crime. When he was the one that told her to make full use of his money!
He provided a life style of unimaginable wealth that he himself made full use of, but when his wife changed due to her new circumstances we are expected to believe that is somehow morally wrong?
I loved the Grimm's fairytales anime series, it had a lot of stories I hadn't heard of and some interpretations were quite nice; but the blue bears definitely left a sour taste even when I was too young to understand the full extent of the story.
Omg those set designers did kill it - the movie looks so pretty
the way they removed the walls too was so gorgeous!
Very nervously waiting on your take on "Strands of Bronze and Gold".
really interesting video !!! bluebeard is one of the fairytales i'm lowkey obsessed with so i will definitely check out the opera ! i've seen others mention Angela Carter's version and i second that, i love that version so much because it basically rights most of the wrongs that you've talked about in this video, by making Bluebeard's upper class predatory sadistic nature much more obvious while also presenting her curiosity as natural and reasonable - especially love the ending but won't spoil it ^^^
not sure i agree with all your conclusions in the video - for instance, the argument that this can't take place in Bluebard's psyche because the new wife has agency - you could consider that these are different parts of his psyche, some of which are repressed horrors he's in denial about and some of which try to get him to act differently and he's refusing any opportunity to learn from the more feminine aspects of his psyche that would bring him truth, compassion and a need to repent (just read sth about how abusers will often forget what they've done because their brain blocks it out.) i mean i don't really like this interpretation either to be honest, because it makes it all about the guy, but yeah. another thing is this idea that because there is a bad ending, it's necessarily a punishment for the main female character and therefore more misogynistic. instead, it could be argued that the original happy answer in which she is saved by her brothers and then remarries, illustrates the idea that bluebeard really is an aberration, and that it will finish well if she trusts in the 'good men' and therefore there is no need to question patriarchy. meanwhile the unhappy tragic ending in which she is chained could represent the fact that this is a whole system that needs to be broken, that you can't just free one woman and call it a happy ending, it needs to be everyone (the class aspect appears relevant here too). the idea of the bad guy getting punished as this ultimate good ending is also questionable because it's often the way society's evils are put on one individual that needs to be purged, allowing the system to remain intact. and from what you said about the opera, it really doesn't sound like he's made out to be sympathetic. i think it's very limited to analyze every story through the lens of a simplistic morality tale, eg, what happens in this story is what the authors think should happen in real life. then again i did not watch the opera so maybe there are other arguments to call it misogynistic but i wasn't convinced by these ones.
that said overall i agree with your conclusions, it's absolutely ridiculous people could go with the 'this is a story about how female curiosity is evil' moral and be taken seriously for so long, yikes ! first video of yours ive watched but i will definitely watch more
I always interpreted as be careful who you marry, or like, dont marry someone with a bad vibe even if theyre rich af
That’s what I always thought too, but the og writers had other ideas
Lisa you are soooo funny, I love listening to your media analysis 😭
You pronounced the 2 Béla's names sooo perfectly, should start learning Hungarian haha
omg idk why I got so excited that I pronounced it right ahaha I should
Just finished this!! Loved this deeper dive into this story and its adaptations!!!
🙂↕️ glad you liked it🥰
Such an interesting topic and great analysis!! Fantastic video girl, as always 💖💝💖💝💖
thank you🥰🥰
Love the video, and also just want to say the LEWK is perfection!
Thank you so much! 🥰
i recently watched a video on analog horror and the creator explained why they find it to be the most unsettling kind of horror; in fact i find this tale to be way more terrifying
I had no idea the '88 Duke Bluebeard's Castle was blowing up in certain spheres on tiktok! I happened to watch it back in February when I was in a ✨fairytale era ✨, including folktales/folklore and mythology. I watched probably around 20-25 fairytale-esque movies and read quite a number of stories, a few collections' worth. Bluebeard is one of my favorite tales and I find different renditions and interpretations of it to be fascinating, particularly ones in more recent decades and by women because yeah they can also be annoying and frustrating. My favorite is Angela Carter's story The Bloody Chamber, I also love Catherine Breillat's 2009 film, and I'm very interested in what Anna Biller did/does with it. She released her Bluebeard's Castle book not too long ago and it's what she's been working on for her next feature film.
oh? Anna Biller is going to make a Bluebeard adaptation movie?
@LisaFevral she's talked about it or at least mentioned it here and there since 2017. I assumed she still wants to make a film of it but now that I think about it, it is possible she just transferred that to writing only and came out with the book..... okay I just looked up if it was still in the works and apparently studios lost interest and thought it "less viable," especially after the pandemic. so I guess no film :/ . It's just the book. And it seems she's shifted her focus to a new film entitled The Faces of Horror but no info on that atm.
I went through that phase a year before too, probably because I was feeling nostalgic. I watched In The Company of Wolves (wild), The Wizard of Oz, Return to Oz, Legend, Beauty and the Beast 1946, and have The Red Shoes, Dragonslayer, and Donkeyskin on the list. What did you watch/end up enjoying? I would definitely include Anthony Dowell’s Sleeping Beauty aesthetic as a fitting ballet entry too
@@themaybeso6117 I love The Company of Wolves! Great soft look. The stories that are the source material for that are in Carter's same short story collection as The Bloody Chamber I mentioned! ooh, I didn't get to rewatching Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast but it was on my longlist, so to speak, of things to watch. I love Cocteau's style and recurring effects/motifs. I've seen a 2006 production of Sleeping Beauty. I'm assuming you're talking about the 1994 one because Dowell is specifically credited under production and plays Carabosse.
Let's see... I didn't _love_ the movie but the set and costume design of Mirror Mirror (2012) was impeccable. Donkey Skin (1970) is what really kickstarted my fairytale era ✨ I had liked it enough before but it was *everything* when I decided to rewatch it at the beginning of the year. Three Wishes For Cinderella (1973), which I also increasingly liked on this rewatch, so cute and charming. The other major rewatch was The Red Shoes (1948), of which I could just have the ballet sequence playing on my tv all the time. The Feather Fairy (1985), Father Frost (1964), Prince and the Evening Star (1979), The Little Mermaid (Русалочка) (1976), How to Wake a Princess (1978), The Slipper and the Rose (1976) a musical, Cinderella (1947)- these all ranged from liking to really liking. But the top standouts for me that were first time watches were: The Little Mermaid (Malá mořská víla) (1976), The Snow Queen (1957), and actually Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1988). The Snow Queen is definitely going to be in my rotation of movies to watch every winter/Christmastime. The Little Mermaid (Malá mořská víla) is one of my new favorite films! I even increased my rating on Letterboxd a few months after logging it because of how much it has lingered in my mind. It really felt and looked like an underwater world. 🌊🌟🐚
@@BaileeWalsh Usually in ballet it’s just written in the possessive to identify a production like that but it doesn’t specify where it was or if it was a revival. Should have been more clear about that. The current Royal Ballet production of Sleeping Beauty is what they’ve been performing for a while and it’s quite expensive and based of the original, which they’ve used as a sort of point for British style and was what the opera house opened with after the war so that’s the most recorded one and I doubt it’ll be changed soon but the 1994 was very pretty imo and it’s available to watch.
Thanks for getting back to me and being so thorough, definitely feeling inspired and interested and will get to several of these. I don’t have a letterboxd but I will look yours up! It’s very appreciated.
Shortly after it came out my friends and I badgered my mother into renting Mirror Mirror because it looked so pretty but then she turned it off not because we were like, very young but because she couldn’t stand the acting lol
@LisaFevral you should more fiary tale analysis videos!! Greta work!!
thank you! I'll do more!
omg oh my god you guys one of "my roman empire" tales
okay i can't actually finish video because talking about sexist men being sexist men makes me so very raging
true, but in the og fairytale he dies so🥰
The gowns of the three wives seem to reflect 3 very different time periods and cultures. Judith becomes more and more fatigued by what she discovers and it might be a simple statement, but it sounds like what a toxic relationship does to one's psyche, on both sides of the couple even, or even a metaphor for trauma/being victim to a form of violence that gets imprinted into your memory. Keeping the wives alive is as bad as killing them, he basically built his person on top of others. It also seems like the last period of Dorian Gray's life, almost as if he wants to clean his soul clear, or beauty as it stands is the only thing he misses. I would love to find people to talk about it with, because I barely scratched the surface. I don't see it as a critique against curiosity, though. At least this version.
Based in the authors that wrote many versions of the story, they wanted to say that curiosity is bad, but even in Perrault's version of the tale where he explicitly writes the "moral" at the end, I personally still don't read it as a tale about the dangers of curiosity. I think this just goes to show how their prejudice against women entirely obscures logic
@@LisaFevral yup. I feel like it's definitely an interpretation, but we can't see it due to how we perceive our place in society, this version especially.
@@LisaFevralI said I don't see it as that meaning that I have a different viewpoint from the original. It always sounded to me like "don't marry a stranger/arranged husband" LOL and that stems from my background, rather than the original work.
yeah I've always seen it as a horror story about a dangerous man and how you have to be careful
love this video
Wait I’ve been reading a random fairytale from Grimm’s every day and just recently read this one and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since! Had no idea there was a movie
There are multiple actually! This tale has a ton of adaptations
Judith brings her "light", that's what she brings, she's innocent and nice, even after hearing the rumors, she doesn't care. Even if he's a clear red flag, she's never afraid, probably because she never thinks he would harm her and she's full of childish curiosity. To her the blood on the wall and the pool of tears were probably prove that the house was actually alive.
*Le Serrafim's song plays in my head*
You should look into Debussy's opera Pelleas et Melisande. The vibes are similar and there's a lot of hidden themes in it.
I first learned about this story because of Strong girl do bong soo...or was it you're all surrounded?
Both shows are good.
Yall should look up the real story of 12 dancing princesses. I would 100% watch that video
Beautiful video and great opera recommendation 💙 Do you know about Clarissa Pinkola Estés's "Women who run with the wolves? There's a really interesting chapter about Bluebeard's story, I recommend the whole book if you ever want to dip your toes in feminist psychoanalytic interpretations of old tales
I've heard from ppl in the comments about it but I haven't read it myself!
I read the fairytale as a kid ❤. The plot was weird cause I didnt know what I should be learning frm it 😅. Then I realise it kinda shares similar plot points to the original beauty n the beast, frm the man being frown upon to marry, to the girl exploring different parts of their castle.
I find it funny cause it kinda shows that this relationship senario isn't as idealic as it seems.
Beauty n the beast comes frm a good lesson abt beauty, but being the odd magical optimistic one, wherelse Blue Beard is the more realistic take if this were to happen.
Its actually a pretty good fairytale of women's fears for their relationships w man, oddly enough like what true crimes are today.
I highly recommend you read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (both the titular story covering the fairytale of Bluebeard and the entire collection). It offers a very fresh and feminist perspective on the original material and would do as a great addition to the conversation you already started with this video. :)
get well soon!
aw frick i gotta catch up on your other film analysis lol great video ❤️❤️
thank you, glad you liked it!!🙂↕️🙂↕️
Joanna Newsom’s song “Go Long” essentially tells the tale of Bluebeard and uses it as a way to reflect on a toxic relationship she had been in. I recommend everyone check it out!
Bluebeard in real life would parallel Henry VIII, except he would be called redbeard lol
Bluebeard was a stock character folks back then would immediately have recognized (kinda like the Big Bad Wolf of today). This might help rationalize the side-eye aggressively cast at "Judith", Bluebeard's seventh wife.
Audiences of the time likely viewed the entire situation through a very different lens. Wives often were the butt of jokes and japes in storybooks and stage plays.
In "Bluebeard", Judith chooses for a husband a man recognizable as an outsider. Of course he's going to be a touch eccentric. His beard is blue, after all! When she was a child, Judith had lived under the shadow of her father's protection. Now, marriage would fit her with the yoke of submissive domesticity. Through the covenant of marriage, she'd be tasked with donning it voluntarily. The world at large readily would absolve the men in her life of blame when Judith stumbled.
Modern readers bring with them a different set of expectations. We probably are going to anticipate a lost little girl filling the role of the faIry tale's lead character.
500 years ago, Judith's actions were judged against those of the meek and obedient wife. Instead, her actions are closer to those of Little Red Riding Hood. "Marrying well" was a major aspiration of daughters, and Judith remains focused in laying her suspicions of Bluebeard to rest.
First 7 min in
Absolutely! What is up with that!?!??
When men are curious they’ll ingenious adventurers who become sagacious philosophers. But nope can’t have women looking in shit for some reason!
I'm probably the only person on earth who hadn't heard this fairy tale before. But yeah I guess the fact that the wives are still alive is better than dead... Although if they're aware of what's happening it has to be complete torture
yeah that's why saying it's better might not be correct haha who knows
i remember reading the grimm's version as a child, i think. he was very scary in that, and the story traumatised me. i think i remember dreaming that i was the woman character that night too lmao
Great video
Glad you enjoyed it🥰
AND THE WOMAN IS THE ONE TO BLAME ?!
THE MISOGYNY MA GAWD 😩😭!
I know, the audacity to write that as the “moral of the tale” is crazy
I am not surprised that these ideas have been feeding the world since forever, a man can´t be bad and if he is, the fault is on the woman OF COURSE. Anyways, thanks for explaining and for your research 👏
So I took the VIA character strengths test and my number one strength is curiosity 😳 so id be dead for sure.
Yeah how dare you be curious ahaha
you should read king thrushbeard its basically about a princess who refused all suitors and mocked them and one of them being crazy enough to lie, humiliate her, gaslight her and force her into poverty just because he was offended.
"There are almost no stories in the western canon of comoarable longevity or or cultural resonance that register [...] the fact that women are systematically at risk from masculine violence and s*xuality"
I disagree with this. I would say there are quite a few, yet like it's later pointed out in the essay, they are often compromised, sometimes so there original intent is almost unrecognisable.
Red Riding Hood for example is another story in which the villain is clearly a male agressor (although "othered" into a beast) where many retellings try to shift the blane to the female victim.
Stories in which a person finds out that their spouse is in some way an "other" (demon, beast, witch, murderer etc.) exist with both male and female antagonists (although Iagree that the latter seem to be more popular) However more interesting in my opinion is that more often than not - whether protagonist or antagonist - the husband is the one to kill the woman (or at least attempt to do so). Compare Bluebeard to typical witch tales in which the husband is hailed as a hero for duking out vigilante justice against his witch wife. (A New Horse from Scary Tales to Tell in the Dark is a good template for these legends.) The most a female protagonist can do is report the case to the proper (male) authorities, as happens for instance in the Grimm Tale The Robber Bridegroom.
The only exception to this are the "Maiden Killer" ballads like the Dutch Heer Halewijn or the English The Outlandish (there's that othering again!) Knight, yet even in those instances the versions in which the female protagonist prevails have steadily decreased as time went on, replaced by equivalents in which she is killed or rescued by her brothers. In modern times they have mostly fallen out of favor altogether, replaced by the "Murdered Sweetheart" subgenre of murder ballads like Ellen Smith or Omie Wise, in which the naive heroine (many variants go as far as calling Omie Wise "foollike") is without exception killed by her lover who is then executed for his crimes.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't: Either you're a scheming Delilah or a foollike Omie Wise. Either way getting killed is apparently your fault.
Love this video❤ now I know why as a child I always hated this story... or at least the sexist version they read to me...
I think I first found out about this story in some YA fairy tale reimagining where some people were cursed to live out certain fairytales depending on what birthmark they had. The main character falls in love with someone with a Bluebeard curse. I don’t remember the ending but it was played as a tragic curse because everyone was forced into their fairytale fate and had no free will. So obviously I thought it was sad but didn’t think much of it since he was FORCED to kill women. I don’t think I contemplated the original tale although I’ve listen to all the grim fairytales multiple times (they’re free records in the public domain). Unless you’re literally forced in a fairy tale to commit murder there’s no excuse for femmecide also let’s not pretend that a serial killer wouldn’t kill her anyhow.
Ikr ahahh not them trying to say that if she wouldn’t have opened the door he would k word her ahaha
I think you kinda missed the point, but then again, I could also be missing the point with the opera 😅
But my interpretation is: Bluebeard's story was always about the institution of marriage and how it is a danger to women, since they're the ones who lose power, freedom and money with its union (particularly in common English and French laws and customs). Bartok and Balazs were Hungarian, and they would likely be familiar with the (still extant) custom of dowry and the types of dowry given, which would color their presentation
So, the opera's story would be: Bluebeard married six wives who brought him money, power and prestige (symbolised by clothes, money, armory, garden, and map of land, all common dowries for wealthy). The pool of tears is a symbol of pain in marriage, and blood staining everything is basically a shout to the audience that he killed his wives (the effigies could be the symbols of graves that he lavishly decorates and image he presents of his passed wives, as if they're still alive), and the last, seventh wife who came in with a desire to marry rich and naively thinks she'll be any different because she isn't as rich or pretty, he simply wears down and then puts her to work at maintaining his wealth
In short, they also said that marriage is a scam and beware rich men who want to marry naive young girls with little money 😂
Isn’t that literally the reading I provided at the end?
Also, in the Bartok version he married 4 women including Judith, not 7
omg not Hungary being represented in Lisa's video!*.*
Béla and Balázs are both Hungarian names:D
Please do a recommendation or your favourite movies, book and other media..
omg ur eyes and lips sparkle occasionally !!
YESSS Bartók
Its what people in charge tell their subordinates, what you dont know cant hurt you, ignorance is bliss, and so on. It also parallels the hostility of the Christian church towards the emergent field of scientific investigation.
When I watched Mindhunter I thought about Bluebard a lot . I think the story of Bluebard and serial killers have a lot of parallels . Serial killers are not necessarily marginals , they have a normal life and a normal family . They can even commit their crimes in THE BASEMENT and it is perfectly possible because their family do not know anything because they were forbbiden to go there and they OBEYED .
There was a case like this in Austria where a girl was kept prisoner in her basement by her father.
👏👏👏👏👏👏❤❤