C-File #50: On Into the Woods, a Vitalize! C-File
September 27, 2002
(Or “On How to Get Little Red Riding Hood to Stop Talking”)
For those of you who don’t know what “Into the Woods” is, it is a musical written by the illustrious über-rhymer Stephen Sondheim featuring the grisly deaths of all your favorite fairy tale characters. Sources say Sondheim intended this to be a “more happy and upbeat musical than usual.” I am happy to announce that, as a result of the extremely irritating nature of many of your favorite fairy tale characters, their grisly deaths are, indeed, “more happy and upbeat than usual.”
For those of you who don’t know what “Vitalize!” is, it is a special plug-in, akin to Macromedia Flash, that allows me to post video games to the internet that you can play in your Internet Explorer browser (or your Netscape/Mozilla/Opera browser if you’re one of those weirdo non-comformists).
What do these two seemingly unrelated things have in common? Obviously, “Into the Woods to Stomp Some Singers!” a Vitalize! game engineered with Clickteam’s Multimedia Fusion, accessible at the end of this C-File. The idea of the game is fairly simple – you play the role of the giant, who spends the vast majority of Act II stepping on your favorite fairy tale characters, such as Rapunzel.
I suppose it has often occurred to young children that many of the supposedly benign fairy tales evil adults expose them to are actually morally questionable. It certainly occurred to Stephen Sondheim. I mean, come on, why should Jack be treated like the good guy when he quite clearly stole all this guy’s stuff and murdered him after his daring escape? So what if the giant threatened to bake his bones into bread? Perhaps Englishmen are simply so tasty that one can not be blamed for wishing to grind them into flour and employ them in the production of delicious treats! In fact, Jack ought to be flattered that the giant wished to consume him! What if Jack had been a Frenchman? He might have just been tossed down the garbage disposal right then and there!
These are the questions that “Into the Woods” asks. Unfortunately, it also attempts to provide an answer. The message is sung loud and clear in one of the final songs. “Beaten? Tired? Depressed? Unsure of your place in the moral universe at large?” Sondheim asks, implicitly. “Never fear! You are not alone!”
Oh, that’s great, Sondheim, people are often saying. I’m not the only one totally miserable and lost in an existential abyss. More misery for everyone. Yay. (People are often more sarcastic than is good for them.)
This is why Lloyd Webber musicals are infinitely superior to Sondheim musicals. While Sondheim is asking “deep questions” and answering them with preposterous platitudes, Lloyd Webber is asking questions like, “Do you like to watch people jump around in spray-painted cat suits?” and answering them with “Well, too bad!”
You see, Andrew Lloyd Webber makes no pretense about dealing with “deep questions.” That makes him superior, in my own opinion. Also his music isn’t so dad gum annoying.
Anyway, I decided that Into the Woods shouldn’t be entirely about existential angst and weak attempts at humor. Sure, everything gets depressing from the point of view of the people getting smushed into piles of goo. But from the point of view of the person doing the stepping, things are so much fun that you just have to italicize everything you type! Thus, I decided to allow you to play Into the Woods as the giant, stepping and crushing, with your only object being to destroy as much as possible and, most important, to have fun at the expense of innocent people’s lives.
So, on that pleasant note, I invite you to click the link below and see what Vitalize! production I have made for you.
(WARNING: If you don’t prefer to witness scenes of poorly pixelated squashed fairy tale characters, you probably should just pass. But, if like most people, you simply LOVE witnessing poorly pixelated squashed fairy tale characters, you should click.)
By the way, as of today, the present high score is held by Taylor Williams at 1117. If you can beat him, post your score on the message board and you will get a special invisible prize.