Prince of Egypt | Imamother

singleagain

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 12:09 pm

urban gypsy wrote:

Can someone please indulge me and explain what is so problematic about this version? Any key parts that problematically deviate from the Torah version? The only part I can really remember is the courtship with Tzipora which is so so minor in the overall story to my mind...

Aaron was portrayed a bit angry and bitter to Moses.. but I think that was a story choice to show the highlight the relationship of Moses and Ramses... Which btw the way is an amazing complex relationship.

urban gypsy

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 12:14 pm

singleagain wrote:

To me that is so minor... honestly, what do we really know about the inner emotional states of all these people when they were going through all these things? Can't someone be angry and bitter and also loving and committed at the same time?

Sometimes I feel like the real gripe against these sort of projects is that by portraying these characters as real people and not cardboard cutouts we are disrespecting them somehow but I don't agree with this approach.

singleagain

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 12:17 pm

urban gypsy wrote:

I absolutely agree with you!

And I think it's BETTER to realize that ppl in Torah were just that... PEOPLE

People like you and me... Imagine that. People like you and me were the conduit God choose to do miracles... That's inspirational.

amother

cornflower

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 12:18 pm

urban gypsy wrote:

not the same thing - but I remember learning Shmot (pshat and Rashi) early in highschool and a bunch of us mumbling about 'where is the story where Moshe had to choose between the gold and the fire'.

amother

Ivory

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 12:37 pm

sequoia wrote:

THAT’s why people won’t let their kids see it?
Because Aaron was portrayed as human?

Our sources definitely say (Rashi? Medrash? Not sure where exactly) that Aharon was completely happy in his heart for Moshe. For this he was rewarded with the opportunity to wear the choshen over his heart.

Yes, they were real people. But they were on a level we cannot comprehend, and their motivations were far beyond those of people in this generation.

I also do not like Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. Everything is simplified and portrayed as if they were regular Joes from our times. The shvatim were enormous tzadikim, not just some jealous brothers. They had a real cheshbon for everything.

urban gypsy

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 12:43 pm

amother [ Ivory ] wrote:

The shvatim were enormous tzadikim, not just some jealous brothers.

Not meaning to attack you, but this approach drives me absolutely crazy. It's really nice to learn a bunch of midrashim and kabbalistic explanations, but I believe it is a perversion of pshat to say that they were "not just some jealous brothers." Obviously they were more than that, but that is absolutely what the Torah writes they were. Same goes for every instance of bad behaviour in the Torah. Judah & Tamar, Amnon & Tamar, David & Batsheva, etc etc.

trixx

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 12:52 pm

urban gypsy wrote:

1. The clothing and hairstyles are not tznius and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. Whatever they looked like, it wasn't that. Christians are better at this bc they at least draw illustrations with respect.

2. Basket going down the Nile... Dodging alligators...

3. The magician scenes - I remember being surprised when I watched it once soon after actually leading it in depth and realizing that much of that was based on Midrash. But def Hollywood-ified.

4. Txiporah, courtship as you said, that whole thing

5. The last plague, pharaoh and his son, no source for him having a son I'm pretty sure

6. As mentioned, the emotions are a pretty big part of it, it's straight up rashi which is pshat.

Look. It's a gorgeous movie. The songs are incredible. I actually saw it as a kid. I would never use it as a teaching tool bc I don't want those impressions to be retained by the kids. I think it is objectively worse than something completely fantasy or no connection to, like any other Disney movie, precisely bc it's so the lines are so blurry its so insidious.

Does that make it evil and whoever saw it needs to deprogrammed? No, but if you believe that children are impressionable, that every thing you see is absorbed and retained, as modern science is now understanding from literally day 0 of an infant, and if you think that chinuch begins before the kid goes to school and doesn't just mean putting your kid in school, then you will second guess the movies you let your kids see.

urban gypsy

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 1:09 pm

@trixx

1. I'm assuming you mean the Egyptian women? Because they Hebrew woman are absolutely dressed in long tznius robes and simple hairstyles because, hello, slaves.

2. What is wrong with that?

3. I'm sure it wasn't a big Bollywood-esque dance number, but it's a cartoon. You admit it's close to the Midrash. What is wrong with this?

4. This is the only objectionable part I can really think of, and it's so minor, like 1 short scene.

5. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. The Torah doesn't write EVERYTHING, just important parts. Not everything that is interesting to us is relevant enough to write down. How does this detail change anything?

6. I discussed my thoughts above

Maybe not use it as a teaching tool in the classroom, but I really don't see enough insidious blurry lines to forbid it. The only real objections are the courtship (I'm okay with fast forwarding) and the emotions, on which subject we will have to agree to disagree....

amother

Ivory

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 2:31 pm

urban gypsy wrote:

I never said anyone was perfect. But their actions and sins are not like ours. We can't paint these people with such a simple brush. Often they were considered to have sinned, only because they were held to extremely high standards. Yehudah and Tamar, Dovid and Batsheva, etc. are not the simple stories of temptation that they appear. Chazal even say that whoever says Dovid sinned is mistaken.

PinkFridge

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 2:58 pm

amother [ Ivory ] wrote:

No, none of these stories are simple. I'll just take Dovid Hamelech. You can't learn it without mefarshim. If Batsheva would have been eishes ish, he would have been drummed out of the corp. Yet the pasuk does talk about sin and Dovid himself got sick over it and did teshuva for it the rest of his life. The sin was the appearance of impropriety. At least that's how I learned it.

amother

Ivory

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 3:42 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

Thank you, something like that. We cannot understand it through our modern-day lens.

Personally, these secular interpretations of Torah stories really disturb me. I don't show my children movies, but I would definitely show them a basic Pixar movie before showing them a distortion of the Torah.

imorethanamother

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 6:21 pm

singleagain wrote:

I absolutely adored that aspect of the movie. After learning it all those years, and all those sedarim with numbing divrei Torah nit-picking about a single letter in a single word (as a young child, this was excruciating) realizing that the new Pharoah was raised with Moshe himself and the ramifications of their altercation was so unbelievably mind-blowing.

They knew each other! Of course!

I would have liked more, like for them to show how Moshe couldn't bear to hit the Nile or the ground to create the plague, and when you think about it, he grew up loving this land. How could it not hurt him to hurt the places he loved?

singleagain

Fri, Jun 21 2019, 6:53 pm

imorethanamother wrote:

I know right! I love all that too. It adds so much richness

And I'm sorry of all the nit-picking you sat through... It's not easy.

chanchy123

Sun, Jun 23 2019, 3:10 am

I love the movie it really brings yetziat mitzrayim to life. Using imagery and midrashim. I encourage my children to watch it erev Pesach to get them into the right frame of mind. Obviously this is not an accurate portrayal of Yetziat Mitzrayim - it would be impossible to do that. But it comes pretty close and it's a form of modern day - I'd say midrash but I know it might be understood in a heretic way so I'm going to use - limud of Yetziay Mitzarayim.
My children know that's not how Moshe or Miriam really looked or behaved it's the way the creators imagined them.