As yet another entry in the West’s attempts to figure out how China fits into our movies, be it as a replacement archenemy to fill the void left behind by the Soviet Union or as a land ripe for saving by dashing Westerners played by Christian Bale, I’ve been curious about the slow development of Snow and the Seven. The project’s been under discussion since 2002, and it’s (obviously) a retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, a historical drama about an Englishwoman who discovers her Hong Kong-based stepmother (duh) means her all sorts of unpleasantness and flees to mainland China and takes up with a band of seven warriors. Now, apparently, one of Toy Story 3‘s writers is working on the script.

I was not wildly impressed by Toy Story 3‘s gender politics, even while thinking it was one of the better movies I saw in 2010. The treatment of Barbie and Ken was certainly of a piece with the fact that the toys have some origins in their making, but they were still sort of troubling, especially the treatment of Ken as either gay or insufficiently masculine. So I’m sort of curious to see what happens with this story. Snow is supposed to learn a few tricks of her own. Will this be a cliche story of girl-learns-things-from-dudely mentors? Another instance of Westerners becoming better at martial arts than the crafts’ originators? Or the movie I suspect a lot of us have been waiting for since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? That movie’s originality was so refreshing, I tend to think of it as a more emotionally engaged Inception. And the rage between the female characters was just beautifully done:

I’d really like to see Snow White and her grandmother actually have it out.

This Wonder Woman show? It sounds…not good you guys. Really, not good. Can we agree to a universal moratorium on the use of the phrase “you go girl” in scripts, at minimum? Nobody says this! It’s awkward phrasing! It’s kind of weirdly condescending, implying that women can’t really figure out how to be powerful without encouragement. And it’s bizarrely lazy shorthand for sass. Getting rid of the phrase doesn’t make me feel better, exactly the prospects for a Wonder Woman who spends a lot of time rockin’ out to the radio and pining over a dude. But it would be good for womanity in general.

Ah, the problems of happily ever after. What happens when you’re done unwrapping toasters with royal seals on them? What happens when the prince cheats on you with the baker’s wife? Hereville, Barry Deutsch’s totally charming and exceedingly Jewish fairy tale about an eleven-year-old’s quest to win her sword solves that problem rather neatly. The heroine is entirely too young for happily ever after. And the story’s really only the first part of a question.

Essentially, Mirka is a dissatisfied Orthodox girl. It’s not so much that she particularly has trouble with Judaism, or even with the expectation that she’ll get married at some point. It’s just that she’s too smart and argumentative for those to be the only things in her life. And the book doesn’t bother to pretend that she’s alone. Mirka’s stepmother Fruma is much the same way, except she’s of an age where she’s found an effective and satisfying compromise. I’d hate to think the book will be confined to the Jewish community, or even to certain segments of it, because it felt to me like training for reading The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, and it’s really a wonderful story totally irrespective of your religious affiliation, age, or gender, as long as you like smart fairy tales.

In addition to Mirka’s age, the book ends with her having won her sword, but without setting her immediately on the road to use it. In fact, I think it’s equally possible that Deutsch could write a very good sequel or not write a sequel at all. Mirka’s a fun character to spend time with, and I wouldn’t object to more of it. But I also appreciate the ambiguity about whether she has future adventures. In this fallen world, is it enough to know that the world is more than it appears, and that you have the ability to triumph both among what you know and what you don’t? Do you have to keep on doing it? At some point, maybe it’s enough to be certain that you have the spark of the heroic in you, enough to keep you warm.