Revisionist fairytale depictions in review

Every so often, I like to round up the articles I’ve done on revisionist takes on public-domain fairytales and put them in list form.
This is the latest such roundup. The last one I did was in February 2016.

Pregnant Disney princesses (Aug. 30, 2017)

Disney princesses reimagined as abuse victims, transgender, cats, Rihanna (Aug. 29, 2017)

Actresses who have played Cinderella in movies and TV shows (July 17, 2017)

Sexy Cinderella artwork (July 16, 2017)

Disney princesses reimagined as Warhammer 40K space marines, wookies and potatoes (March 11, 2017)

Sexy Dorothy of Oz portrayals (Jan. 27, 2017)

Actresses who have played Dorothy from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (Jan. 23, 2017)

Little Red Riding Hood artwork and cosplay in review (Nov. 3, 2016)

Badass Little Red Riding Hood: Wolf slayer (Oct. 31, 2016)

Sexy Little Red Riding Hood artwork (Oct. 30, 2016)

Actresses who have portrayed Little Red Riding Hood in movies and TV shows (Oct. 26, 2016)

Actresses who have dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood in movies and TV shows (Oct. 25, 2016)

Celebrities who have dressed up as sexy Little Red Riding Hood (Oct. 24, 2016)

Sexy Little Red Riding Hood, a Halloween staple (Oct. 23, 2016)

Actresses who have played Alice from ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (June 1, 2016)

Sexy Alice in Wonderland illustrations (May 30, 2016)

Revisionist fairytale art, a retrospective (Feb. 13, 2016)

Photo: Rihanna and Disney Latina princess Elena of Avalor

Pregnant Disney princesses

New Zealand-based Hotmilk Lingerie created a photo series showing pregnant fairytale princesses to advertise its maternity lingerie.
The ad campaign by Sarah Cooper Studio featured photos by Tony Drayton. The series included depictions of at least five pregnant fairytale ladies. They included Cinderella, Rapunzel, Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White.
While many people know these characters best from movies by Walt Disney, they are in the public domain and free to use by anyone for any purpose. (See article by Lucire.)

Disney princesses reimagined as abuse victims, transgender, cats, Rihanna

I’m fascinated by pop-culture artists who take public-domain fairytale characters and put modern spins on them. Specifically, they like to reinvent and update the so-called Disney princesses.
Here are some of the latest examples I’ve seen online.

Philadelphia photographer Shannon Dermody used Disney princesses to depict harrowing societal issues like domestic abuse and drug addiction.
She presented Belle of “Beauty and the Beast” as a victim of domestic violence, Snow White as an alcoholic and Tiana as a victim of police brutality. (See Shannon Dermody Photography and article by the Daily Mail.)

An anonymous New York-based artist imagined Disney characters as transgender, such as Belle as a man. (See article by the Daily Mail and Trans Disney Instagram page.)

French artist Gilen Bousquet created a series of paintings called “Disney’s Bastards,” which featured a low-brow take on famous Disney characters from movies and TV shows, including the Little Mermaid. (See article by Laughing Squid and Disney’s Bastards website.)

A woman named Shirley likes to dress up her cats in costumes, including Disney princesses like Snow White and Elsa. (See article on Bored Panda and Daily Snoopy Instagram page.)

Finally, Vogue.com Senior Fashion News Writer Janelle Okwodu noted in an article that singer Rihanna often dresses like a real-life Disney princess. (See her article titled “10 Times Rihanna Was a Real-Life Disney Princess.”

States shouldn’t block personalized license plates

States shouldn’t waste taxpayer dollars paying workers to review and approve personalized or vanity license plates.
Politicians worry that license plates with offensive words or ideas would be seen as government endorsement of those sayings. The truth is: those words say everything about the person who buys the vanity license plate.
Governments don’t supervise bumper stickers or license plate holders, nor should they. The same should hold for license plates.
If people want to decorate their car with a vanity license plate that others don’t like, that should be their choice. Of course, they will face societal judgment and scrutiny for their decision.
This issue often becomes news when someone’s vanity license plate is recalled.
In May, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles demanded that a man send back his license plate, saying it violated state rules against plates that are profane, obscene or vulgar. His license plate reads “FTRU MPK.”
He admits he does not like President Trump, but says his plate is a play on “flunk Trump,” not the popular curse word that starts with F, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
Virginia should let people have whatever they want on a license plate, but raise the price of such a luxury. Virginia currently charges just $10 a year for personalized plates, plus a one-time plate fee of $10. That’s way too low for the extravagance. They could even auction off the more popular words to the highest bidder.

Related articles:

22 Vanity Plates That Will Make You Shake Your Head (HuffPost; Feb. 19, 2014)

State governments should cash in on vanity license plates, not censor them (Tech-media-tainment; Jan. 16, 2011)

Photo: “FTRU MPK” license plate. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Web browser makers address scourge of autoplay video and audio

Among the most annoying things on the internet today are websites with autoplay video and audio.
You go to a website or click on a weblink and a page opens with blaring audio and distracting videos. Web surfers have to mute the page or pause the video to stop the annoyance. Sometimes clicking the pause button opens the advertiser’s webpage.
Thankfully the makers of web browsers are starting to take action.
In June, Apple announced that the Safari web browser for macOS High Sierra, due out this fall, will block autoplay videos.
Also, Google is testing a feature for its Chrome browser that will allow users to block sound on a per-domain basis.
“A lot of awful things can happen on the internet, but few are as terrible as landing on a website that automatically plays videos with sound,” Android Police writer Ryan Whitwam said in a post. “Thankfully, this is something Google is addressing in a future update to Chrome.”
Your move, Firefox and Opera.

Photo: Mute setting on Google Chrome browser. (Google)

Magazine covers depict President Trump as warmonger, KKK member and mental patient

President Donald Trump has taken a lot of flak from the media for his saber-rattling comments towards North Korea and his confounding statements about the violent neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va.
What follows is a sampling of magazine covers depicting Trump since the last installment in my series on the subject on July 23.
Der Spiegel showed Trump wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood for its Aug. 19 cover to illustrate his alleged tacit support for alt-right, white supremacist groups.
The Economist showed Trump speaking into a megaphone that looks like a KKK hood for its Aug. 19-25 issue.
The New Yorker illustrated Trump blowing into a KKK sail to pilot a boat for its Aug. 28 issue.
The July issue of New Republic showed Trump as a mental patient in a straitjacket. The cover story was titled “The United States of Crazy: How Trump has turned us into a nation of crackpots and conspiracy theorists.”
The Aug. 5-11 issue of The Economist put the faces of Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. The cover line stated “It could happen.”
Newsweek put a general’s helmet on Trump for its Aug. 25 to Sept. 1 issue. The cover story was titled “Ready for … War?”
In other recent issues, Bloomberg Businessweek depicted Trump’s media influence, New Republic linked Trump to the Russian mafia, and Newsweek focused on Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Also, Newsweek called Trump “Lazy Boy” for his perceived lack of accomplishments in office.

How did Firefox get to be such a terrible web browser?

The web browser market used to be competitive. But Google’s Chrome has taken over. It seems like many software and internet companies are more interested in mobile apps than desktop web browsers today.
I used to use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer before that company basically gave up on the web browser market. IE became so crash-prone that I had to switch to another browser.
My preferred browser became Firefox because I’m a big user of bookmarks and Firefox has a better system for viewing and managing bookmarks than main alternative Google Chrome.
But Firefox, at least on Windows 7 Professional, is terrible. It locks up, becomes inoperable or crashes so frequently that I have to keep Windows Task Manager open to force close it when it’s stuck. Firefox is so awful that it crashes multiple times per day. (I’m currently using version 55.0.1.) Firefox especially doesn’t like multiple tabs being open and running any pages with video or Flash.
I now keep Google Chrome open to do important tasks online. I use Firefox mostly for viewing news. (I’ve downloaded the Opera web browser, but haven’t really started using it yet.)
I don’t have a lot of hope that Mozilla can fix its Firefox browser at this point. But fingers crossed.