Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel- Page 2
Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
#25re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 3:41pm
I don't know - I could be completely wrong - it could just be that as I saw Bernadette in the role, I was looking for a little homoeroticism... 
Have I ever shown you my Shattered Dreams box? It's in my Disappointment Closet. - Marge Simpson
Eponinez.Rain
Chorus Member Joined: 12/3/04
#26re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 3:43pmI could see that. I don't think Sondheim originally intended it to be that way, but I think its a valid interpretation.
But now we have come almost to the end. One last step. And then, when I take power, they will be pulled down and ground into dirt for what they did to you. And what they did in so contemptuously underestimating me.
GovernorSlaton
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/14/04
#27re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 3:46pm
Ah, Our Little World. Love it.
I don't think that was the intention, but I could see that.
#28re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 3:46pm
It's possible that he intended it.
But the most obvious and interesting sexual metaphor in Into the Woods is that of Jack and the 'Beanstalk'
"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
robbiej
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/20/03
#29re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 3:50pm
Really? I always thought it was:
CP: If it were not for the thicket
RP: A thicket's no trick
Is It think?
CP: It's the thickest.
RP: The quickest is pick it apart with a stick.
CP: Yes but even one prick...
It's my thing about blood.
RP: Well it's sick.
CP: It's not sicker than your thing with dwarves.
RP: Dwarves?
CP: Dwarves!
RP: Dwarves are very upsetting.
TRIM THAT BUSH, SLEEPING BEAUTY!
"I'm so looking forward to a time when all the Reagan Democrats are dead."
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/31/69
#30re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 4:00pm
I never thought of this whole homoerotic relationship between the Witch and Rapunzel, but I watched Into the Woods twice today in two music classes (i brought it in)... and now that it's being discussed it does dawn on me that this is a very strong interpretation.
I honestly don't think Sondheim and Lapine meant for that to be a motif or anything, but there is a lot in the show that supports this argument.
misterchoi
Stand-by Joined: 9/5/04
#31re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 4:21pm
and the beanstalk?
I always thought there was much more of a relationship between Jack and the Giantess.
Which might be true, as there are so many parallels between the characters.
Jack betrays Giantess/ Rapunzel betrays Witch
dunno.
All SO valid.
"Yesterday is done. See the pretty countryside. Merrily we roll along, roll along- catching at dreams."- Merrily we roll along
"The living was the prize, the ending's not the story."- Elegies, a song cycle
iluvtheatertrash
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/9/04
#32re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 4:30pm
I think there's a lot of homoerotic signals in Sondheim's work.
COMPANY: Why won't Bobby marry? Why is no GIRL ever good enough?
But most of all: INTO THE WOODS: Why is the Baker cursed? Why can't have he a child?
*shrug* Just my two cents.
"I know now that theatre saved my life." - Susan Stroman
robbiej
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/20/03
#33re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 4:30pm
Aw come on, Mister!
Jack follows his stalk to the big-titted woman.
Don't even get me started on little Red:
"But he drew me close and he swallowed me down"
FILTH!
"I'm so looking forward to a time when all the Reagan Democrats are dead."
GovernorSlaton
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/14/04
#34re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 4:37pmI really don't buy the Bobby is gay theory. It sort of takes away from what the Company (and the character) is about.
misterchoi
Stand-by Joined: 9/5/04
#35re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 4:38pmguess I misworded. I agree with you one hundred percent robbie j. I was just referring to priest in that I thought the beanstalk had nothing to do with it.
"Yesterday is done. See the pretty countryside. Merrily we roll along, roll along- catching at dreams."- Merrily we roll along
"The living was the prize, the ending's not the story."- Elegies, a song cycle
robbiej
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/20/03
#36re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 4:41pm
Honey.
The stalk has EVERYTHING to do with it.
Sorry...putting away my inner Kim Catrall!
As for Bobby is gay, I completely agree. I don't think it's necessary. But, according to the script available for purchase, it's not so much a theory anymore.
"I'm so looking forward to a time when all the Reagan Democrats are dead."
#37re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 5:01pm
Well, to put it frankly:
Beanstalk=Penis
Growing Beanstalk=Erect Penis
Bettelheim examines this very deeply.
Here is one of the more controversial topics he gets at:
"On some level, climbing up the beanstalk symbolizes not only the 'magic' power of the phallus to rise, but also a boy's feelings connected with masturbation. The child who masturbates fears that if he is found out, he will suffer terrible punishment, as symbolized by the ogre's doing away with him if he should discover what Jack is up to. But the child also feels as if he is, in masturbating, "stealing" some of his parent's powers. the child who, on an unconcious level, understands this meaning of the story derives reassurance that his masturbation anxieities are invalid. His 'phallic' excursion into the world of the grown-up giant-ogres, far from leading to his destruction, gains him advantage he is able to enjoy permanently.
"The fairy tale represents in images what goes on in the unconcious or preconcious of the child: how his awkening sexuality seems like a miracle that happens in the darkness of the night, or in his dream. Climbing up the beanstalk, and what it symbolizes, creates the anxiety that at the end of this experince he will be destroyed for his daring. The child fears that his desire to become sexually acive amounts to stealing parental powers and prerogatives, and that therefore this can be done only on the sly, when the adults are unable to see what goes on."
Light stuff this ain't.
Of course, Bettelheim's theories rely on the collective-unconscience, which is controversial in of itself.
"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
Updated On: 12/22/04 at 05:01 PM
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
#38re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 5:04pm
You're free to do
Whatever pleases you
Exploring things you'd never dare
'Cause you don't care
Indeed. Afterall, Sondheim did base Into the Woods on Bettelheim's studies.
"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
Updated On: 12/22/04 at 05:04 PM
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
misterchoi
Stand-by Joined: 9/5/04
#39re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 5:34pm
I didn't disagree with the fact that Jack had a sexual relationship with the giantess, which is what take that quote as. I just felt that the beanstalk had nothing to do with it. and of course i got that you meant the beanstalk as penis. I know Into the Woods isn't light stuff. It is perhaps his darkest show, along with Sweeny Todd. Passion is up there too.
But, obviously, your take on the beanstalk is more valid than my believing it has nothing to do with it. 
Priest is awesome, and Bettelheim is awesome and creepy.
"Yesterday is done. See the pretty countryside. Merrily we roll along, roll along- catching at dreams."- Merrily we roll along
"The living was the prize, the ending's not the story."- Elegies, a song cycle
#40re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 5:38pm
That's really interesting, Priest. Maybe I'll pick that book up for summer reading.
Back to the Witch and Rapunzel -- I think "Stay With Me" (especially the way it was originally staged) has the strongest homoerotic undercurrents:
What have I been to you?
What would you have me be?
Handsome like a Prince?
Ah, but I am old.
I am ugly.
I embarrass you.
A mother (even a possessive one) is less likely to banish her child out into a desert with two children than a lover scorned, who develops a much more volatile love-hate dynamic than a mother would.
BlueWizard's blog: The Rambling Corner
HEDWIG: "The road is my home. In reflecting upon the people whom I have come upon in my travels, I cannot help but think of the people who have come upon me."
Updated On: 12/22/04 at 05:38 PM
#41re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 5:52pm
Yes, misterchoi, Bettelheim is indeed creepy at times, but quite perceptive.
Perhaps the creepiest point he makes is this:
"The story [Little Red Riding Hood] on this level deals with the daughter's unconscious wish to be seduced by her father, the wolf. with the reactivation in puberty of early oedipal longings, the girl's wish for her father, her inclination to seduce him, and her desire to be seduced by him, also become reactivated. then the girl feels she deserves to punished terribly by the mother"
He goes on at length and makes very interesting and creepy sexual parallels in LRRH.
Mother said straight ahead...
But I do not beleive Bettelheim makes any big allusions to homosexuality being present in these stories.
Although it has been a while since I've really read the book, so I could very well be mistaken.
"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
#42re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 6:47pm
This is very interesting.
I have always thought that Jack and the Giantess had something going on: him and her breasts.
But I never thought about W&R.
David walked into the valley
With a stone clutched in his hand
He was only a boy
But he knew someone must take a stand
There will always be a valley
Always mountains one must scale
There will always be perilous waters
Which someone must sail
-Into the Fire
Scarlet Pimpernel
#43re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 6:50pmI think it is less about Jack being intimate with the Giantess and more about Jack being intimate with Jack.
"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
#44re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 7:27pmPriest-I thought that too.
David walked into the valley
With a stone clutched in his hand
He was only a boy
But he knew someone must take a stand
There will always be a valley
Always mountains one must scale
There will always be perilous waters
Which someone must sail
-Into the Fire
Scarlet Pimpernel
#45re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 7:32pm
Into the Woods is a show with a lot of subtle sexual inuendos. The wolf had a penis in the original, and listen to Little Red's song taking it out of the plot - it is completely sexual. "And he showed me things, many beautiful things..."
Although I don't see the witch and Rapunzel that way, it wouldn't surprise me.
"Do you know what pledge time is, Andrew"? said the PBS Executive.
"Yes", Lloyd Webber replied. "My 50th birthday special must be one program that gets done a lot."
"No", mused the man from PBS heedlessy. "Not so much. Our Stephen Sondheim Carnegie Hall concert. That's a big one."
Spoons, forks and knives seemed suddenly to suspend their motion in horror, all around the table.
Updated On: 12/22/04 at 07:32 PM
#46re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 7:33pm
Of course, Bettelheim's funniest point, one which he delves into great detail about, it the "penis envy" of young girl's and how they feel, subconciously, that all people used to have them and that they somehow misbehaved and were castrated.
And he uses the "slipper" in Cinderella to illustarte this point.
"[Cinderella] selects [the Prince] because he appreciates her in her 'dirty' sexual aspects, lovingly accepts her vagina in the form of the slipper, and approves of her desire for a penis, symbolized by her tiny foot fitting within the slipper-vagina"
His words. Not mine.
"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
CurtainUp
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/9/04
#47re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 7:47pm
Interesting idea, Blue, but I don't really see it.
However, it is totally THERE for LRRH. Not just sexual, but a physical, emotional and mental loss of innocence. (Scary is exciting...) - as is discovering sexuality. SHE strayed from the path and learned she could not be sheltered forever, she lost her innocence.
Interesting about Jack. I never saw it but now I totally can!
GOD THIS SHOW IS SO RICH! I LOVE IT!
Rosencrantz: "Be happy - if you're not even HAPPY what's so good about surviving? We'll be all right. I suppose we just go on."
- from Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
CurtainUp
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/9/04
#48re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 7:47pmwhoops, double post! Sorry!
Rosencrantz: "Be happy - if you're not even HAPPY what's so good about surviving? We'll be all right. I suppose we just go on."
- from Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Updated On: 12/22/04 at 07:47 PM
kjklo
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/29/03
#49re: Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel
Posted: 12/22/04 at 8:00pmKeep in mind that Bettelheim was an extremely doctrinaire old-school Freudian whose work and theories on autism have since been thoroughly discredited. For what it's worth, back in the fifties and sixties he misdiagnosed many children as autistic and stuck them in a private school that he was running in Chicago where he claimed his methods were successful in helping to "cure" them. Decades later, many of these children (now adults) came forward with vivid descriptions of his brutality and abuse. Additionally, he's now suspected of having fabricated his claim that he was a personal student and colleague of Freud's in the thirties. Bettelheim ended his life by committing suicide. I would exercise extreme skepticism while reading any of his many books.
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