More on Stardust

[trixtah]

stormkpr indirectly reminded me that part of the reason I don't like fairy tales in general is their often moralising tone. I don't like parables either.

The moral of Stardust, as presented in the movie, is that love is unconditional. You know, you don't make the young suitor go off and bring you back a fallen star so as to "prove" his love.

<rant on> I hate that. Of course love is fucking conditional. There are personality quirks and behaviours that make you fall in love with that person. There is the underlying sense of passion, shared goals and compatibility that makes you stay in love with that person. There is the avoidance of unrecoverable fuck-up behaviour or too-divergent paths on both sides that don't kill the love. If those aren't conditions, I don't know what are.

And yes, love does have to be proven. Not necessarily by way of showering gifts or doing X thing (like standing in a church while a strange ritual is enacted over you). But love needs to be demonstrated in such ways that the demonstrator truly feels and that the demonstratee can truly perceive. If that doesn't happen - in whatever way works for both participants - love is not sustainable.

If those feelings and willingness to enact them only go one way, then it's sure as hell not love, it's infatuation. And even that is conditional on the object of infatuation maintaining whatever it is that is so attractive - good looks, "coolness", whatever - or the infatuated person remaining in their state of mental aberration.

So, yeah, each time that particular line came up in the movie, my eyeballs went into a spasm of rolling around in my head for five minutes, so it was distracting. If they were saying, "love isn't selfish", well, ok. It wasn't framed that way, unfortunately.

Comments

[goatsfoot.livejournal.com]

hell yes. well said!

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the movie, but that part did grate; I don't *think* the book made such a big deal about Unconditional Wuv.

The other thing that grated, somewhat related, was how they treated Victoria. In the film she's just a pretty bit of fluff and Tristan's coming-of-age involves realising that and rejecting her.

In the book, she's not interested in him, and he pesters her until she eventually says "go get that star and I'll marry you" as a way of getting rid of him. When he comes back with the star, she's appalled - she still doesn't want to marry him, but she refuses to break her promise. And Tristan's coming-of-age is realising that he's being a bit of a dickhead, and releasing her from her promise.

There's not really so much difference in how things play out, but the tone is very different - "I've been an infatuated idiot and I wish you all the best" rather than "now I see through you, bimbo".

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

Haven't read the book (though it's on the shelf--Bad Tygerr! No Biscuit!) but I'm probably going to see the movie later today, in fact.

I'll keep your post in mind as I watch it.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I see what you're getting at, but the message I came away with from the movie is that love can't be _bought_, but must be _freely given_, rather than being necessarily unconditional.

(I liked this film a lot, but then I do have the Gaiman gene. The things that didn't sit right with me were the sexism and the obsession with youth and beauty, but only for the women.)

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

They use the phrase "love is unconditional" two or three times in the movie, most notably when Yvaine tells Tristan that she's in love with him while he's a mouse. I wouldn't have had a problem at all with the premise that love should be "freely given". :-)