Review of
Hans Christian Andersen Animated Classics:
The Emperor’s New Clothes, DVD
Five out of five stars
The price of pomposity and vanity can be high
This is one of
the best fairy tales of all time, for it depicts a vain man in power that is
easily manipulated as well as those that are unwilling to state truth to power.
The Emperor is a powerful and wealthy man, yet he is colossally vain and insecure.
Rather than being concerned with the state of his kingdom and the people in it,
his focus is on having the best suit of clothes in his known world.
Two men hear of
this and decide to make their fortune by pretending to create an outfit for the
Emperor that will be talked about by everyone for all time. They arrive and
through sheer bravado, convince the Emperor to have them weave the garments. As
part of their presentation, they claim that the cloth will be so exquisite that
if a person is a fool, it will be invisible to them.
Hard at work
making their nonexistent garments, the two men pretend to weave the cloth. When
people come to investigate the progress and then the supposed finished product,
none have the courage to state the obvious, that the garments don’t exist.
This situation
continues right up to the point where the Emperor “wears” them in a parade
through the heart of the city. Everyone
cheers and says nothing until a child blurts out, “But he doesn’t have anything
on.” This breaks the spell of silence and the crowd then begins to utter
similar phrases. Knowing the truth, the Emperor continues his march through the
city.
This animated
story sticks very closely to the original story, the depictions of the two
false weavers is wonderful. Their names, Flim and Flam were well chosen, the term
flimflam man is likely of Scandinavian origin. Andersen is Danish, so this is fitting.
The story is a demonstration of the power of fairy tales to accurately parody
some of the faults in human behavior.
No comments:
Post a Comment