To Enchant and Instruct: The Use of Conceptual Metaphor and Counter-stereotypical Exemplars in Michel Ocelot's Azur & Asmar

Abstract

In Azur & Asmar, French animator Michel Ocelot tells the story of Azur, the son of a medieval French nobleman. When he comes of age, Azur travels to North Africa, the birthplace of his Muslim wet nurse and nanny, in hopes of rescuing the djinn fairy, the heroine of the fairy stories his nanny had told him as a child. This analysis shows how Ocelot's film activates and disrupts commonly held personal and cultural understandings of Islamic culture and provides viewers with counter-stereotypes that may have lasting effects on children's conscious and unconscious use of cultural schema.

Michel Ocelot's animated film Azur & Asmar (2006) tells the story of Azur, the son of a medieval French nobleman, who is raised by Jénane, his Muslim wet nurse and nanny. Azur grows up regarding Jénane as his mother and her biological son, Asmar, as his brother; thus he is heartbroken when his jealous father kicks them out, on the pretext that Azur has become too old for a nanny. When he comes of age, Azur decides to travel to North Africa, Jénane's birthplace, in hopes of rescuing the djinn fairy, the heroine of the fairy stories she had told him as a child. In doing so, he is reunited with her and becomes first Asmar's rival and then his partner in the quest to rescue and marry the djinn fairy.

If you have not heard of this film or its director, it is most likely because unlike the films of his French colleague Sylvain Chomet, creator of The Triplets of Belleville (2003) and The Illusionist (2010), Ocelot's folk- and fairy-tale-inspired films, Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998), Azur & Asmar (2006),¹ Princes and Princesses (2000), and Tales of the Night (2012), did not receive wide release in the United States. In part, this is because Ocelot's most acclaimed films, Kirikou and the Sorceress and its sequels, which are set in precolonial West Africa, depict native village women with their breasts uncovered, and Azur & Asmar opens with a depiction of Jénane breastfeeding both boys. Although these films were screened in many countries in Europe, South America, and Asia where breast-feeding in public is more normative, US theater owners were concerned that their audiences might consider any female nudity to be inappropriate in films meant for children.²

A second factor that may have contributed to the inability of Azur & Asmar to find an audience in the United States was a dip in the popularity of fairy-tale-themed animated films among audiences and producers around the time of its release. Though Azur & Asmar was the second US release by the respected film distribution company GKIDS, which went on to popularize such acclaimed international animated films as Sita Sings the Blues (2008), The Secret of Kells (2009), and Up on Poppy Hill (2011),³ the films released by Disney and Pixar during this period, Chicken Little (2005), Cars (2006), and Ratatouille (2007), did not create the sort of coattail to which an independent, foreign animated fairy tale film could easily attach itself. In fact, the juggernaut of Disney/Pixar fairy tale films would not make a resurgence in theaters until the release of The Princess and the Frog (2009), which would be followed by Tangled (2010), Brave (2012), and Frozen (2013)-alas, too late for Azur & Asmar.

The above factors might explain why Ocelot is not a household name in the United States as he is in France, but they fail to account for the curious lack of scholarship devoted to his work by scholars of animation, film, folklore, and children's media in the US, given the quality of Ocelot's work and his reputation worldwide. To name just a few, his accolades include the French Legion of Honor, multiple international film awards, and lifetime achievement awards from international animation festivals in Buenos Aires, Zagreb, Turin, and Bratislava. In addition, he served as president of the International Animated Film Association from 1994 to 2000. Despite these distinctions, only three in-depth analyses of Ocelot's films exist in American peer-reviewed journals and critical anthologies: Richard Neupert's "Kirikou and the Animated Figure/Body," in Studies in French Cinema (2008); Fotini Apostolou's "Cultural Translations: Transcending Boundaries in Michel Ocelot's Animated Film Azur et Asmar," in Communication, Politics and Culture (2009); and Nina Tucci's nuanced Jungian analysis, "A Multi-faceted Experience of the Other in Michel Ocelot's Fairytale, Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest," in Constructing Identities: The Interaction of National, Gender and Racial Borders (2013), edited by Antonio Medina-Rivera and Lee Wilberschied. The critical anthology Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity (2010), edited by Pauline Greenhill and Sidney Eve Matrix, does not mention Ocelot at all.

Jack Zipes, the eminent fairy tale scholar, has attempted to correct this oversight. In The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films (2011), he includes a short overview and commentary on Ocelot's films (109-12) and mentions his work, alongside that of such auteurs as Hayao Miyazaki, Guillermo Del Toro, Tim Burton, and Tarsem Singh, as offering an alternative to Disney fairy tale films (17). Zipes argues that the Disney productions "operate according to the 'laws' of the spectacle. They impose a vision of life, the better life, on viewers that deludes audiences into believing that power can and should be entrusted only to those members of elite groups fit to administer society" (23).

Zipes's co-edited critical anthology Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney: International Perspectives (2015) likewise includes short analyses of Kirikou and the Sorceress by Jessica Tiffin and Azur & Asmar by Anne E. Duggan. However, outside of Zipes's efforts, the overall lack of scholarly attention to Ocelot and his work is particularly disheartening because these films are not adaptations of existing fairy tales, but original stories that incorporate motifs and tropes from many literary and artistic sources and feature cultural settings, such as North and West Africa, that are not typically represented in children's animated or live-action film. Furthermore, Ocelot's films succeed in disrupting many of the repressive schemas and scripts associated with the portrayal of gender, age, culture, and religion in media targeting children.

In The Enchanted Screen, Zipes makes a strong case for the importance of studying fairy tale films within the context of the historical and cultural development of folklore, and for Ocelot's importance within this tradition:

Fairy tales are perhaps the most vital staple in filmmaking, for we learn to communicate with them at a very early age. They are at the source of human cognition. If we were to study the sources of the narratives in thousands of films throughout the world, we would find that they are predicated on the narrative structure and patterns of different kinds of fairy tales. It is part of human nature that we appropriate and expropriate them, that we adapt and translate them, that we remake all that has been remade. We rely on cultural patterns of different kinds to know the world. I believe that, deep down, every filmmaker who decides to create fairy-tale films wants to be like Michel Ocelot and to make the tales [with] his guts, heart, and everything else.

(14)

Zipes states that fairy tales have been used down through the ages, and in many different contexts, to "communicate important information" and that metaphor played a "highly significant" role in passing on this knowledge (17). It is upon the efficacy of metaphor as a communication tool and the flexibility of fairy tale narrative structures, which Zipes asserts provide "cultural patterns of different kinds to know the world," that I base my cognitive analysis of Ocelot's film Azur & Asmar.

My analysis focuses on how Azur & Asmar both activates and disrupts commonly held personal and cultural understandings of Islam and Islamic culture while it seeks to build bridges that promote not just tolerance but also love and appreciation for cultures different from one's own. I argue that our interpretation of situations in narratives, as well as in real life, depends on where we focus our attention. Drawing on the concepts of parable, script, schema, and conceptual metaphor utilized by Mark Turner in The Literary Mind (1996), Zoltán Kövecses in Language, Mind, and Culture (2006), and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By (1980) and Philosophy in the Flesh (1999), and combining these concepts with recent scholarship in the cognition of film, I also argue that the tension between what is shown on-screen and how the dialogue conveys different characters' attitudes toward Islamic culture provides viewers with practice in appraising how what is before us differs from what we are told or from what we expect to see. In addition, I provide character analyses that demonstrate how Ocelot disrupts many of the repressive schemas and scripts associated with portrayals of gender, age, culture, and religion in his creation of protagonists who provide vivid counter-stereotypes. These characters include Jénane, Azur's nanny, who bridges both cultures in her thinking and rises in station to the level of a wealthy merchant after Azur's father dismisses her; the Princess Chamsous Sabah, who, though still a child, has big ideas about reforming her kingdom; and the djinn fairy, who uses the stories told about her captivity to attract suitors and test their worthiness.

As Turner notes in The Literary Mind, his landmark text in cognitive literary theory, in The Thousand and One Nights Shahrazad cures King Shahriyar of his misogyny not through lecturing him about crimes against women but by telling him stories-or, to use Turner's term, parables-that open his mind and heal his heart (4).⁴ Ocelot uses the same strategies in Azur & Asmar: he enchants audiences by presenting them with a quest to save a fairy princess, and in the end provides them with a parable about the intermixing of cultures and the empowerment of women that speaks to children as well as to adults. Ocelot states:

My trick is that I'm not creating my films for children. I make them for human beings just like me. . . . For kids it's all right if [they] don't understand. . . . They might not understand my films but they see that I'm taking them seriously. The film registers and will help them later. They will understand later. The job of kids is to learn.

("Animation")⁵

In the long biography that he includes on his official Web site, Ocelot further argues: "Children don't need to understand every single word (they are used to that), but on the other hand they need to be showered with information that they will store up for later on. There is no time to lose, just 18 years to absorb 5000 years of civilisation!" This repository of cultural knowledge to which Ocelot alludes is the source for the "cognitive frames" that Kövecses defines as "representations of an area of human experience. . . . [that] constitute a large part of our knowledge about the world. . . . [and] capture our prototypes for conceptual categories" (78).

Kövecses argues that cognitive frames are the building blocks of culture and that what we conceive of as "culture" is actually "a set of shared understandings embodied in cultural/cognitive models" belonging to a group of people (78). Cognitive frames draw on a number of schemas or networks of ideas associated with a particular concept (77). As a result, cognitive frames and schemas often determine the perspective from which we view a situation and what we focus on when we analyze that situation. Because cognitive frames are "schematizations of experience," they are linked to the creation, identification, and use of "prototypes" or best exemplars of a category or concept that help us to analyze our experience of the world (68). The utilization of cognitive frames and prototypes for structuring knowledge begins when we are infants and continues throughout our lives. Cognitive psychologists study prototypes by setting up experiments that test subjects' reaction time when asked to categorize concepts, determine whether a thing is a member of a particular category ("a robin is a bird"), and provide examples of or concepts associated with a certain category ("fruit"). The results of these tests measure cultural agreement on the direct rating of exemplars in a particular category. For example, apples are considered prototypical fruit in the United States, based on subjects' reactions, while dates are considered prototypical in Tunisia (Kövecses 24-25).

Cognitive frames often initiate and govern scripts or series of actions that help us successfully navigate situations in order to meet our goals. In Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction (2002), Peter Stockwell describes three distinct categories of scripts: situational scripts that we use to navigate primarily social interactions (such as how to behave in a restaurant); instrumental scripts that help us to perform certain tasks correctly and efficiently (such as how to load a dishwasher); and personal scripts that are idiosyncratic and are based on our preferences (such as our habitual morning routines) (77). Prototypes, scripts, and schemas can help us to navigate the world successfully because they are blueprints that can be augmented, revised, discarded, and replaced as our experience of the world changes (Stockwell 79).

Given their importance in our lives, it should not surprise us that the scripts and schemas that we use to navigate the real world are the ones we use to make sense of the fictional worlds of novels and films (Carroll and Seeley 66-67). This is because our minds create mental models based on the auditory and visual cues given to us by the film, in much the same way that we synthesize perceptual data in order to create mental models of the world in which we live (Oatley 269-70). Recent experiments using fMRIs show that the areas of the brain activated when processing perceptual data are also activated when modeling simulated environments cued by reading a novel or viewing a film (Zacks 42-43). Our minds are so attuned to focusing on the salient details we need to understand each other and our environment that we require very few perceptual cues within narratives in order to activate a wide range of cognitive processes (Carroll and Seeley 59). Brian Boyd argues in On the Origin of Stories (2009) that our brains have evolved in order to process art in this way because the creation and interpretation of narratives provide "a social and individual system for engendering creativity, for producing options not confined by the here and now or the immediate and given" (86-87); in turn, such systems provide a "supernormal stimulus" to engage in high-level cognitive processes that hone our mental capacity in an evolutionarily advantageous way (94).

Lakoff and Johnson were the first scholars to draw attention to how conceptual metaphors, grounded in our embodied experience of the world, govern our thought process, our understanding of our own experience, our use of figurative and ordinary language, and ultimately the vast maps of knowledge that we call upon to navigate our world. These conceptual metaphors derive their power from the ways in which they link separate schemas so that knowledge of one domain can enrich the understanding of another (Metaphors 244). When cognitive theorists reference conceptual metaphors, they do so using all capital letters to signify that they are not referencing a single denotive understanding of a word, but the web of cultural references and personal associations linked to that particular word that are activated in the mind of the individual who encounters the metaphor. For instance, if I say the word "tree," you might think of a tree associated with your region, the logo for an insurance firm, a genealogical representation of your family, the biblical Tree of Life, or the tree that you climbed in your backyard as a child. Therefore, one of the benefits of a cognitive critique that utilizes conceptual metaphor is how it opens up the interpretative space to affirm individuals' unique responses to a narrative while also perceiving these responses as grounded in a particular cultural and historical context. It also provides a way to discuss the implicit and explicit meaning of a text in an ethically aware manner. Because scripts, schemas, and conceptual metaphors are embedded within the tropes that writers, artists, and filmmakers unconsciously use to create their narratives, implicitly structuring the reading or viewing experience in a way that is not normally analyzed during the initial encounter, it is important to note how and when they are employed and to what effect, especially in regard to the privileging or marginalizing of particular groups.

Much-needed public and scholarly attention was brought to the lack of diversity in children's books by Ellen Oh and Malindo Lo, who decried the all-white list of presenters at the 2014 BookCon (Kirch) and went on to found We Need Diverse Books, an organization advocating the publication of children's books representing diverse experiences and promoting the books of diverse children's authors and illustrators ("FAQ"). Likewise, cognitive theory has been increasingly used as a critical tool to examine the scripts and schemas that structure narratives for children and young adults, precisely because such readers are still formulating and revising their conceptualizations of themselves, their relationships with others, and their views of how the world works and thus use literature to test, refine, reinforce, and create new schemas. For instance, as Marek Oziewicz argues, a script and schema analysis of justice scripts used in a narrative can "guid[e] our attention to the competition among scripts for legitimacy in the story, illuminat[e] what characters are motivated by what script-and with what consequences-as well as [shed] light on how different justice scripts project the achievement of justice" (76). This investigation, in turn, can initiate a conversation about whether these scripts ultimately enrich or limit readers' understanding of themselves and others.

Most perceptions, judgments, and actions linked to negative stereotypes are outside of conscious awareness and often contradict the individual's stated beliefs. Thus they are hard for the individual to recognize and even harder to change. In a study led by Calvin Lai and designed to test the effectiveness of seventeen different interventions meant to reduce implicit racial bias in adults, only eight showed effectiveness in a short-term reduction of implicit bias ("Preferences: I" 1766). Of these eight interventions, the most effective was exposure to vivid scenarios contradicting implicitly held beliefs about the othered group (1780). However, in a follow-up study on the long-term effects of such interventions, Lai and his co-researchers found that none succeeded in altering implicit racial preference for more than a few days ("Preferences: II" 1014). In their discussion of the results, they note that the interventions that they tested might have needed to be of longer duration and more intensive to be successful, but they also suggest that adulthood may simply be too late for such interventions to change bias: "Interventions on children could be more effective because implicit preferences are more sensitive to experiences at younger ages" (1013). As these results seem to indicate, and to reprise Ocelot himself, "There is no time to lose!"

In Azur & Asmar, Azur's father models the cruelty of those whose limited schemas govern their interactions with others, while Azur and Asmar model those who remain open to experience and revise the schemas that they use to understand themselves and others. Ocelot uses several key conceptual metaphors to structure the narrative and help viewers understand and identify with Azur and Asmar as they undertake their quests. Whereas the beginning of the film evokes the conceptual metaphor CULTURAL DIFFERENCE IS SIBLING RIVALRY, by the end of the film this metaphor has been transformed by brotherly love and acceptance. The rivalry, in effect, is part of the maturation process by which each sibling discovers who he is in relation to the other. But before that can happen, each must learn that PREJUDICE IS BLINDNESS and PREJUDICE IS A BURDEN. Trees, which provide safe havens at several points in the film, set boundaries that limit the extent of the rivalry by reminding the siblings of their interdependence by evoking the conceptual metaphors HUMANITY IS A FAMILY and FAMILY IS A TREE. Conceptual metaphor analysis is particularly useful in a film context because it focuses attention on the specific image or interaction in which this meaning is grounded, thus activating the myriad associations within the viewer's mind while also performing a reading consistent with New Critical analysis.

In the opening scene, Jénane breastfeeds Azur, puts him down when Asmar starts crying, and then begins nursing Asmar while humming a lullaby for both. The boys' cribs are identical and placed symmetrically on either side of her. She introduces both boys to viewers by teaching them to respond to their names: Azur's French name derives from his brilliant blue eyes; Asmar's Arabic name reflects the beauty of his light-brown skin. In the next scene, both boys are older and are sitting on her lap. Jénane teaches Azur to say "nanny" and then turns to Asmar to teach him "mama." Asmar, instead, calls her "nanny." At this point, Azur chimes in and calls Jénane "mama," which makes her laugh. Asmar looks at Azur in surprise and calls Jénane "mama," too, as if to stake his claim to primacy in her affection. Thus their brotherhood-and the sibling rivalry that characterizes it-is established.

The symmetry in the childhood sequence reinforces the equality of the two boys. When Jénane sings to Azur of the quest for the djinn fairy, Asmar comes to listen and sing along, so that both boys are nestled on either side of her and complete the song in unison, telling of how "together" the djinn fairy and her rescuer "will live in happiness." After she tucks them into their pallets on the floor, two fairies come to bless the boys and continue the lullaby about the djinn fairy, one singing in Arabic and the other in French, as they weave above and around both boys. As the Arabic-speaking fairy settles near Asmar's head and the French-speaking fairy settles near Azur's, each foretells that the boy to whom he sings will grow strong and handsome and will rescue the djinn fairy and that "both shall live in happiness." The scene is gentle, and the attitude of the fairies to both boys is tender, but young viewers might wonder how both Azur and Asmar can attain happiness if they are rivals, initiating the conceptual metaphor CULTURAL DIFFERENCE IS SIBLING RIVALRY.

When Azur's father grows suspicious of Jénane's influence, he insists that his son be moved to a separate room. Asmar clearly misses Azur, who in turn falls asleep crying after the separation. When the boys meet outside the following day and take shelter under a cartwheel, which suggests the eternal nature of the dynamics of their relationship, they argue about who is more handsome and whose country is best. While Azur insists that Asmar is French because he was born in France, Asmar insists that he is not, and the boys get into a fistfight and end up rolling in a mud puddle. When Azur's father finds them, both are so covered in mud that he cannot tell them apart, and Azur must indicate who he is. The brown mud as a conceptual metaphor provides concrete substantiation of the nobleman's belief that his son has been besmirched by his contact with Islamic culture. It also suggests that although he is white, French, and nominally Christian, Azur now identifies with Jénane and Asmar and their culture and religion more readily than with his own. The resulting tension becomes evident when Azur's father is even more incensed after hearing his son murmur, "Inshallah" ("God willing") in response to his insistence that the boy make him proud by learning "dancing, fencing, riding, and Latin." Thus the more Azur's father attempts to draw distinctions between the two boys, the more obvious their similarities become to young viewers.

In subsequent scenes, Asmar watches surreptitiously so that he, too, can learn the scripts valued by the French nobility. The window from which Asmar watches Azur's first clumsy attempts at dancing and the wall from which he peers down at Azur's inability to control his horse become liminal spaces between the worlds of privilege and of disenfranchisement. The height from which Asmar observes Azur and the relative freedom from adult control that he enjoys while learning the same skills-albeit at a distance-invert the power differential that would otherwise exist between the son of a nobleman and the son of a servant. The audience recognizes that at the same time that Asmar is unfairly excluded from the education that should be the right of any child, Azur is subjugated by his father's will and therefore does not experience his childhood as one of privilege. Following Barrie Thorne's landmark 1987 article "Re-visioning Women and Social Change: Where Are the Children?," which brought attention to how adult dominance of children resembles the oppression of individuals othered by gender or race, we may see that in their different ways, both boys are victims of a patriarchal, autocratic, and xenophobic society (Thorne 96). Their equality and individual intrinsic worth are denied by Azur's father, who exemplifies dominance and oppression in the film, and it is he who disrupts the sibling schema that might otherwise be promoted in the boys' relationship. Since the viewer is not given access to any setting within France other than the nobleman's estate, France as a whole is metaphorically reduced to a castle that evokes two conceptual metaphors: A PALACE IS A PRISON for those who, like Azur, are inside it, and A PALACE IS A FORTRESS, designed to keep others outside of it, as it does Asmar.

It can be assumed from the need of a wet nurse that Azur's mother had died giving birth to him, and since Jénane is referred to as a widow later in the film, we can assume that after her husband's death she had to find a way to support herself and her son. However, nothing is revealed about the identity of Asmar's father, how Jénane came to be in France, or how she became Azur's wet nurse. Within the family schema initiated by Jénane and reinforced by the boys' love for her and the absence of Asmar's father, the French nobleman takes on the role of the cold, remote father figure for both boys. Asmar is continually rejected and demeaned, while Azur reluctantly becomes the favored son who bears the full weight of his father's expectations.

As the tension between the boys escalates, they become more aware of these familial dynamics. In one confrontation, Azur reminds Asmar that he has no father, to which Asmar retorts that Azur has no mother. When Azur claims Jénane as his mother, asserting that he is her favorite, and Asmar hotly denies it, the sibling rivalry in their relationship is laid bare. It is significant that this argument about family, in which both boys move smoothly between Arabic and French, occurs in the lush and leafy bower of the tree that Asmar had climbed in order to watch Azur at his lessons. The tree, with its strength, sturdiness, and comfort, softens the animosity within the scene by activating the conceptual metaphor FAMILY IS A TREE. It enfolds them in its branches just as Jénane encircled them both with her arms as babies. For all that they deny it, the boys are brothers, sharing a mother who nurtures them both. In the following scenes, the love that characterizes the sibling relationship is demonstrated by Asmar when he throws grapes up to a hungry and grateful Azur, who has been sent to bed without supper.

The situation comes to a crisis, however, when Azur's father finds the boys rolling in dung after arguing about which of them will rescue the djinn fairy. Like the mud, the dung provides a sly commentary, humorously drawing attention to the boys' empty boasts while also marking a low point in their relationship. Utterly disgusted, Azur's father decides that Asmar is not a fit companion for his son. Stating that Azur is now too old to have a nanny, he sends him away to live with a tutor and kicks Jénane and Asmar out into the street, causing a traumatic disruption of the family schema that has been initiated by Jénane's love and nurturing of both boys. Young viewers experience both the trauma of the separation and the feeling of loss at the destruction of the family schema that, if the father had embraced it, could have nurtured all of them. Ocelot, however, uses this sense of loss to prime the joy evoked by the CULTURAL ACCEPTANCE IS MARRIAGE metaphor activated at the film's end.

Azur does not know what becomes of Jénane and Asmar after they are forced to leave his father's estate, but he hears reports of their having been eaten by wolves and thus believes them to be dead. Having never forgotten Jénane's stories of the djinn fairy, Azur, when he comes of age, begins his quest, embarking on a journey to her homeland in North Africa. Here Ocelot clearly disrupts the expectations of viewers whose prototypical fairy tales are derived from Disney films: at a point in the sea journey sequence when a Disney hero would break into song, declaring his hopes and dreams of finding love and adventure, a wave knocks Azur into the sea. The next scene finds him washed up on a strange shore, penniless and alone.⁶

The following sequence provides a rude awakening that perfectly exemplifies the shattering of an idealized schema. When he regains consciousness, Azur finds the landscape ugly and foreboding, nothing like he imagined it to be when listening to Jénane's stories. The first people he encounters are lepers who are frightened by his blue eyes, which are considered an ill omen in this society. This is all the more harrowing for Azur because his blue eyes, perceived as angelic in a European context, are now demonized, and thus he himself is demonized. Now the victim of prejudice and the vilified other in a strange land, Azur decides to close his eyes and pretend to be blind, both to shut out the country that has disappointed his expectations and to protect himself from the judgment of others. However, in doing so, he cuts himself off from new experiences. Thus he perfectly enacts the conceptual metaphor PREJUDICE IS BLINDNESS, which correlates with the confirmation bias that often prevents individuals from revising their existing stereotypes in real-life encounters with those whom they have othered.

Ocelot further develops and extends his examination of prejudice through the introduction of Crapoux, a cynical Frenchman who has been searching for the djinn fairy for twenty years without success. Upon encountering Azur, the initially self-serving Crapoux⁷ offers to be his "eyes" and act as his guide, insisting that the young man carry him. In order to gain Azur's trust, the Frenchman misrepresents his stature (he is small), his eyesight (he wears thick glasses), and his ability to speak the language (his Arabic is even worse than that of Azur, who has forgotten most of what he learned as a child). Because his eyes are closed, Azur does trust Crapoux, though viewers know that everything Crapoux has said is false. This primes the audience for the following sequence, in which Azur walks through a beautiful forest of palm trees with Crapoux on his shoulders as the latter drones on about how ugly the flora and fauna are and how much he prefers the landscape of France. Because his eyes are closed, Azur is not aware of the contrast between what Crapoux describes and the beauty that surrounds him; the audience sees the truth, however, and thus this sequence is a cognitive and aesthetic tour de force. Not only does it reinforce the conceptual metaphor PREJUDICE IS BLINDNESS, it also adds another, PREJUDICE IS A BURDEN. Furthermore, viewers not only see how Azur is misled but are also given the opportunity to refute the received wisdom for which Crapoux is the mouthpiece and to make a judgment based on what they themselves see depicted. The film thus primes young viewers to engage in precisely the critical process that would help them to make informed judgments and to refresh and revise cultural schemas outside of the theatrical experience.⁸

It is particularly poignant that the lush landscape to which Azur closes his eyes is a forest of palm trees. Whether Azur is conscious of it or not, his quest is more about recovering his lost connection with Jénane and Asmar than it is about rescuing and marrying the djinn fairy. The exotic-seeming palm trees subtly evoke the FAMILY IS A TREE conceptual metaphor in this new context at precisely the moment in his journey when Azur feels orphaned and alone in the homeland of his foster mother. Because he has his eyes closed, he cannot experience the beauty of the landscape, which contrasts so markedly with the place where he came ashore. There is indeed vibrancy, beauty, and refuge in this land, as well as hope that all is not lost and that the family schema can be reactivated, but Azur will never experience them if he never opens his eyes. Moreover, viewers are aware that if he continues to listen to Crapoux and comes to despise the land, the people, and their culture, he will be committing an implicit betrayal of Jénane and Asmar and will lose his best chance of finding them again.

When they reach a beautiful city with a vibrant marketplace, Crapoux continues his litany of insults in regard to everything that they encounter. Azur is not as naïve as he seems, though. He reveals that he has had his suspicions about Crapoux from the beginning and knows that the Frenchman is not being entirely honest with him. However, still frightened by the reaction to the color of his eyes, Azur continues to pretend that he is blind and therefore misses Asmar as the latter rides past, just as he earlier missed the trees that evoke the family schema. Later in the same sequence, Azur's blind stumblings get him into trouble with the merchants whose goods he continually knocks over. Ocelot was insistent that the Arabic used in the marketplace sequence and in other scenes not be subtitled in the French version of the film, so that viewers could experience the beauty of the language while also coming to understand the difficulty that a language barrier imposes on immigrants (Ocelot, "Background").⁹ Viewers indeed feel for Azur, who does not wish to cause harm but nevertheless wreaks havoc because he can't see where he's going-and Crapoux is of no help. Thus the market scene poignantly represents the damage and hurt that prejudice can unintentionally cause when it blinds us to the offense our words and actions cause.

The film takes a dramatic turn when Azur hears Jénane's voice near the marketplace and follows it to her home. Azur discovers that she and Asmar are not only alive and well but thriving. Jénane is now a rich and powerful merchant, and Asmar is a member of the royal Horse Guards. In direct opposition to his father's cruel dismissal, Jénane welcomes Azur, not as a penniless beggar seeking alms but as a son, once again activating the FAMILY schema. She refuses to condone the xenophobic superstitions concerning blue eyes and is furious with a servant girl who cries out in horror when she sees Azur. Outraged, Jénane shouts, "I know two countries, two tongues, two religions, and so what others know, I know twice over," intimating that she has seen through the petty prejudices of both countries and can appreciate what is beautiful and remarkable in each. In fact, it is Azur's blue eyes, when he finally opens them, that cause Jénane to recognize him, changed as he is.¹⁰ When she hears why he has come, she agrees to fund both his and Asmar's quests to find, rescue, and marry the djinn fairy, even though she believes that only one of her "sons" can succeed.

The activation of the FAMILY and QUEST schemas also reactivates the CULTURAL DIFFERENCE IS SIBLING RIVALRY conceptual metaphor that structures the film. Asmar is not nearly as happy to see Azur as his mother is. While Jénane speaks to Asmar in French in this scene in order to include Azur, he insists on replying in Arabic in order to exclude Azur and reinforce his own superiority. Asmar's unwillingness to engage with Azur and his animosity when he does so establish that he associates the latter with his father's cruelty toward both Asmar and his mother. Consequently, he regards Azur as an interloper who does not have a right to Jénane's love and should not have the opportunity to engage in the quest to rescue the djinn fairy. Here, viewers can perceive Asmar as battling cultural appropriation of the kind engaged in by adventurers, such as Crapoux, who come to his country only to search for the djinn fairy. At this point Asmar cannot differentiate between Crapoux and his former foster brother, nor does he wish to. The friction between the young men, however, does not deter Jénane from her equal treatment of them.

Before embarking on the quest to free the djinn fairy, Azur seeks out the Jewish scholar Yadoa and the Princess Chamsous Sabah for advice. The theme of religious tolerance is primed for American viewers who have access to subtitles when Crapoux and Azur pass a mosque in which children are chanting in Arabic, "There is no hatred in religion." This message is reinforced when Azur eventually finds Yadoa, whose name means "to know" in Hebrew, and discovers that Yadoa, like himself, was born in France but has fled on account of anti-Semitism, finding sanctuary in the land of Princess Chamsous Sabah (whose name means "Morning Sun" in Arabic). Thus, even before they meet the princess, viewers are disposed to think of her as a wise and merciful ruler who advocates religious tolerance and freedom.

To Azur's-and viewers'-surprise, the princess is revealed to be a very young girl, who inherited the throne after all her male relatives died fighting to attain it. She reigns because her aptitude was underestimated due to her gender and her youth, a position that she relishes because she intends to grow powerful and implement reforms before her enemies think to attack her. The young princess is vivacious, witty, playful, and wise. She provides Azur with the same magical items that she gave Asmar, hoping that one of them will rescue the djinn fairy. The princess requests, however, a favor in return for the magical items: Azur's help in escaping the palace for the night so that she can experience life as it is really lived outside its walls. This plot point activates the PALACE IS A PRISON conceptual metaphor that was earlier evoked in relation to Azur's father's estate. Thus it is fitting that when he agrees to escort the princess on her excursion outside the palace, Azur takes on the role of protective older brother abdicated by her own relatives. Not only does this clandestine nighttime adventure provide Princess Chamous Sabah with the taste of freedom that she longs for, it also demonstrates to the viewer that Azur is not an interloper but someone who wishes to engage with the culture and cultivate personal relationships within it. In this scene, he initiates the SIBLING schema without the RIVALRY and extends it to incorporate a little sister whom he cherishes for her intrinsic qualities, not her royal status.

Before returning to the palace, Azur and Princess Chamous Sabah climb a tree together, reminiscent of the scene in which Azur and Asmar converse in the tree as boys, not only reinforcing the sibling script but also evoking the same conceptual metaphors, HUMANITY IS A FAMILY and FAMILY IS A TREE. The serenity of this scene suggests that after his travails, Azur has found a refuge in the place that struck him as so alien upon his arrival. The tree itself symbolizes growth, stability, interdependence, safety, renewal, and the idea that the world's cultures exist as separate branches of the same tree, rooted in universal values, implying that if this tree is allowed to flourish, mutual respect and peaceful coexistence are the fruit that it will bear. This message is reinforced by the skyline, seen silhouetted in the distance, which indicates the presence of a mosque, a synagogue, and a church situated cozily side by side. Struck by the beauty of the cosmopolitan city spread before them, Azur responds, "I was wise to open my eyes." No longer burdened by prejudice, he is finally seeing clearly. Likewise, viewers are given a glimpse of what might be achieved if they, too, "open their eyes."

Shortly after this, Azur and Asmar embark on the quest to rescue the djinn fairy. Azur has found two of the keys necessary to complete the quest, but Asmar has the final key, so it is unclear which of the two young men will ultimately succeed. Unlike the French cultural space, which rejects and demeans Asmar, and the Islamic cultural space, which Azur finds so difficult to navigate, the young men are on an equal footing within the magical space of the quest. Thus it is here that the love inherent in the sibling schema, heretofore subsumed by the rivalry that also characterizes it, can finally be expressed by each of the young men when the space proves treacherous to them both. Asmar warns Azur of an impending attack by unprincipled rivals; when he is wounded, Azur refuses to abandon him, even when Asmar insists that he do so, and they continue the quest together. On the last part of the journey, Asmar is so weak that Azur must carry him on his back. This image of cross-cultural brotherly love contrasts markedly with the image of the willfully blind Azur carrying Crapoux that so strongly evoked the PREJUDICE IS BLINDNESS and PREJUDICE IS A BURDEN conceptual metaphors earlier in the film. Azur places his own safety and his completion of the quest at risk to care for his brother, continuing on as much to find help for Asmar as to rescue the djinn fairy. Azur and Asmar ultimately succeed in the quest, but only by assisting each other.

When they pass through the final obstacle and reach the hall in which the djinn fairy is supposedly imprisoned, she reveals that she could have lifted the enchantment at any time but chose to do so only when suitors worthy of her succeeded in the quest. After summoning a djinn doctor to magically heal Asmar's wounds at Azur's request, the djinn fairy faces a quandary: she must decide which of these two noble and virtuous young men she should marry. Neither Asmar nor Azur proves helpful, because they each both insist that the other is more noble-a humorous inversion of their immature spats as boys. Jénane, the Princess Chamsous Sabah, Yadoa, and Crapoux are all brought in by the djinn fairy to help her deliberate, but none offers a feasible solution. Finally, the djinn fairy summons her French cousin for advice. When the French fairy suggests that becoming better acquainted might help them to reach a decision, the Princess Chamsous Sabah proposes a dance. Initially, Azur and Asmar are paired off with the young women of their respective birth cultures, but as the configurations of the dance change, it is Asmar and the French fairy and Azur and the djinn fairy who fall in love.

By evoking the conceptual metaphor CULTURAL ACCEPTANCE IS MARRIAGE, Ocelot implies that cultural hybridity is initiated by an attraction to and appreciation of the other that develops into a mutual commitment, eventually evolving into a partnership based on equality and respect that ultimately creates a true melding of cultures. Likewise, the conceptual metaphor CULTURAL DIFFERENCE IS SIBLING RIVALRY has been transformed by brotherly love and acceptance. The dance unites all of the characters in the film except Azur's father, whose isolation is a consequence of his oppressive ideologies. LIFE IS A DANCE becomes a prototype for inclusion rather than exclusion, as it was portrayed earlier in the film when Azur was given dance lessons that Asmar could only watch. Even the cynical Crapoux finds new cause for hope in the dance and the cross-cultural pairings, opining, "Yes, it's the answer for a harmonious future." Viewers are left with the possibility that the Princess Chamsous Sabah's vision of a future in which "young men [will] no longer kill each other, and princesses [will] no longer be locked up in palaces" might indeed come to pass.¹¹

It is important to note that this denouement comes about with no loss of empowerment of the strong women portrayed in the film. Jénane, who is widowed, remains a fierce and loving mother to both of her sons and a successful and powerful merchant in her own right. The Princess Chamsous Sabah promises to be a visionary ruler, and at no point in the story is it implied by her or by anyone else that she will need to marry in order to consolidate her power. The djinn fairy and the French fairy voice their romantic preferences before Azur and Asmar voice their own; thus it is the women who choose their partners and the men who affirm their choice.¹² The love and appreciation of diverse cultures depicted in the film, combined with the portrayal of female empowerment, resonate all the more deeply with viewers because they profoundly reinforce each other while repudiating oppressive schemas that "other" individuals because of their gender, age, culture, or religion.

It is clear from statements that Ocelot has made in interviews that he is attempting both to entertain and to educate his audience. For instance, he has claimed, "I like fantasy and my language is the fairytale. I can do anything with fairytales. I want two things: One is to tell . . . important things, things I believe in. The other is to enchant . . . to give . . . pleasure, to offer . . . beauty. With fairytales I can have the message AND the pleasure" (qtd. in Tucci 89). Ocelot is a master of his medium, and much of the enchantment is due to the cognitive and affective techniques that he uses to transport his viewers into the fairy tale world that he has created. The film was crafted as a blend of three different animation styles: the backgrounds are two-dimensional; the characters' bodies are in 3D (Ocelot, "Animation"), though their clothing is flat; their hands and faces and the jewelry that they wear are hyper-realistic (Andrews). This innovative approach provides a unique viewing experience. Every scene evokes wonder through the finely detailed rendering of the background, the luminescent surfaces of the images, and the beauty of the saturated color, while the many close-ups of Azur, Asmar, and Jénane ensure that viewers track and often co-experience their emotions.

Kaitlin Brunick and James E. Cutting note that children's animated films created during the period 1985-2008 feature highly saturated colors with high luminescence that reflect children's tastes (133), but that the films tend to favor adults' preference for blue and green hues rather than the yellows and reds that attract children (134). It is interesting to note that in depicting his heroes Ocelot uses both schemas equally, portraying Azur in blue and white and Asmar in red and yellow, while changing his palette for the landscape to prime the emotions of the viewer. As he explains,

I tend to always have a dominant color. It was green in Northern Europe for the childhood. It was dark and unpleasant for the landing of Azur, where everything goes wrong. Then it becomes more and more beautiful and colorful. The extreme being the market scene. Then I chose a golden dominant for the house of Jénane and all hues of blue for the palace of the fairy. I took away all colors for the palace of the princess, because it is actually a prison.

("Azur & Asmar")

The scarlet lion and the Saimourh bird (or roc), the most fantastical beasts in Azur & Asmar, pointedly merge all of these colors and thus dominate every scene in which they are featured.

Ocelot based his settings on landscapes along the Andalusian and southern Mediterranean coasts and in North Africa, particularly Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, which he visited in preparation for making the film. He researched the architecture, flora, and fauna, removing the prickly pears that he had originally sketched after discovering that they were not native to the area (Ocelot, "Background"). He drew inspiration from both Renaissance art and Persian miniatures when creating the film, choosing fifteenth-century French and sixteenth-century Persian fashion for Azur's and Asmar's clothing and traditional North African jewelry and clothing for the women depicted in the marketplace (Andrews). Foremost in Ocelot's mind was to create images of places that children would be inspired to visit and to provide them with the gift of hearing multiple languages (Ocelot, "Background"), thus enriching and widening their cultural schemas.

Furthermore, by foregrounding the problem of cultural appropriation by depicting the mercenary actions of the foreigners who want to claim the djinn fairy and her riches for themselves, as well as poignantly portraying Asmar's ambivalence about sharing his mother, his culture, and his personal quest with Azur, Ocelot hopes to engage his audience in a fruitful discussion of what respectful cultural engagement requires. In many ways, Ocelot, the son of French missionaries who was born in France but spent his childhood in Guinea, seems to align himself with Azur, who must be humbled and othered before he can engage fully with Islamic culture, reunite with his foster mother and brother, and begin his quest.¹³

Although the film was released a decade before television screens became filled with images of Syrian refugees desperately seeking asylum in France and elsewhere, Ocelot has spoken of the social discord over immigration already evident in France while he was making the film, drawing a marked contrast between the violence that erupted in Paris and the coming together of many people from diverse social and cultural backgrounds to create the film ("Animation"). He asserts that he meant the film to be political. In an interview with Michael Guillén, he explains, "This story is in the here and now. Although a fairy tale, it is about the conflict between two countries, two cultures. Now there is a Western bloc and a Muslim bloc, rich people and poor people, and I wanted to talk about that" ("Animation"); speaking on the same subject to Jérémie Noyer, he adds, "In this story, I put together persons who are all different. I tried to gather several differences: rich/poor, male/female, Christians/Muslims, north/south and old/young" ("Azur & Asmar").

Azur & Asmar was not distributed in North Africa or in the Middle East. Ocelot believes that there is much in the film that would not accord with conservative Muslim dictates (Andrews). One of the benefits of wider scholarly attention to Azur & Asmar would be the creation of a dialogue that could incorporate a more inclusive cultural analysis of the film, which was well received at festival screenings across Europe and honored with standing ovations at Cannes. However, Apostolou, who has done the most thus far to contextualize the reception of Azur & Asmar, states that some critics felt that despite his intent, Ocelot was engaging in cultural appropriation; by not giving equal screen time to Asmar, he was privileging Azur and therefore making him the "Self" with whom the audience should identify (100). Apostolou does not dispute that Azur gets more screen time than Asmar does, but she contends that this does not automatically privilege him. She argues that the "Self" that Azur represents is one that is othered and excluded through the latter half of the film. Although both Asmar and Azur exist as border-crossers with hybrid, liminal identities, Azur's identity and sense of belonging are more tenuous because, due to Jénane's nurturance, his heart lies in a culture that others him, while Asmar, despite his youth in France, can take hold of his cultural and linguistic inheritance upon returning to North Africa (106). Over the course of her critique, Apostolou gives due credence to the dangers of cultural appropriation and the problems inherent in translating a foreign culture for a new audience, but she emphasizes the necessity of having artists, writers, and filmmakers such as Ocelot build bridges of understanding between cultures (111).

Fairy tale films, as we know, often constitute children's first exposure to fairy tale narratives, and therefore become prototypes for their understanding of the genre and of narrative in general. Children's animated films are of interest to scholars of children's literature because they are informed by children's literary conventions and can influence them in turn. Just as we must heed the call for diversity in children's books, we must do the same for children's media. Azur & Asmar accomplishes this by disrupting schemas and scripts associated with oppressive portrayals of gender, age, culture, and religion in many mainstream literary and cinematic fairy tales. Analyzing Ocelot's cognitive and affective structuring of viewers' experience allows us to evaluate and appreciate Azur & Asmar as a work of art. However, I would not have us stop there. By recommending and sharing Azur & Asmar and other counter-stereotypical films with students,¹⁴ friends, and family, I believe that we, in a small but significant way, can fight implicit and explicit prejudice and intolerance. Increased scholarly attention and general viewership of Azur & Asmar can only strengthen its chances of becoming a prototype for how to create fairy tales, both literary and cinematic, that enrich our cultural schemas, reinforce commonalities, and help us to appreciate personal and cultural differences.

Sarah B. Mohler

Sarah B. Mohler is the chair of the interdisciplinary child studies minor program at Truman State University, where she teaches world literature, film, and cognitive literary theory as an assistant professor in the English Department.

Notes

1. Within this article, I refer to the film as Azur & Asmar, in deference to the preference that Ocelot indicates on his official Web site ("Long Biography"), though the subtitle "The Princes' Quest" was added by British and American distributors when the film was released in theaters in those countries and was later used to market the DVD. Fotini Apostolou deems the addition of the subtitle to be a marketing ploy to draw in audiences expecting a typical fairy tale arc (97). She believes that the subtitle also distracts attention from the similar sounds but distinct cultural origins of the protagonists' names, which indicate that the film will explore cultural difference and equality (97). Nina Tucci, in contrast, argues for the appropriateness of "The Princes' Quest" as a subtitle, since it evokes the nobility of soul that the djinn fairy states is her reason for referring to Azur and Asmar as "princes" (104). I would add that the subtitle is a fitting one because it alludes to the shared nature of the quest and implies that neither Azur nor Asmar could have completed it without help from the other, which clearly disrupts the schema that the hero must rely on himself alone. However, like Apostolou, I find it regrettable that the subtitle suppresses the original title, which conjoins the names of the protagonists and thus emphasizes their equality.

Apostolou also takes issue with the American film poster, which depicts Azur and Asmar traveling in opposite directions on horseback, whereas the French poster portrays Azur astride the scarlet lion while Asmar takes to the air on the back of the Saimourh bird (roc) with both heading in the same direction (97-98), confirming the unity of their purpose. One could argue, however, that in the American poster Asmar is headed to the left (suggesting a westward trajectory), while Azur is headed to the right (suggesting an eastward trajectory), which reinforces the cross-cultural hybridity that the film advocates.

2. Richard Neupert comments that Kirikou's nudity and the village women's uncovered breasts were factors in Kirikou and the Sorceress not being distributed widely in Great Britain and the United States (43). Similarly, Jack Zipes laments that though the scene in which Jénane breastfeeds Azur and Asmar is a "beautiful, tender scene of solace and love," it was regarded by some distributors only in terms of nudity (112).

3. Sita Sings the Blues is a retelling of the Ramayana by the US artist Nina Paley, featuring an Indian cast; The Secret of Kells, a French-Belgian-Irish fantasy set in early medieval Ireland, recounts the origins of the Book of Kells; and in Up on Poppy Hill, a Japanese comic adaptation, a group of high school students in early-1960s Yokohama save their clubhouse from demolition.

4. Turner conceives of parable not in the strictly religious sense, but as any story whose meaning, derived through narrative imagining, can be projected outside of the text from which it originates (5).

5. Ocelot takes an even stronger stance in another interview: "I've always been conscious of the ability of children to follow serious subjects, to guess at the meaning of unknown elements or to store up things that are incomprehensible to them now in order to understand them at a later time. If you make a film in which a child understands everything, you're making a bad film, and you're doing a bad thing: you're not helping the child to grow" (qtd. in Asch).

6. Tucci notes the Jungian archetypes evoked in this scene and views Azur's forced baptism in the feminine waters as necessary for the breaking apart of his "deeply ingrained, patriarchal values that excluded the feminine and the Other" (96).

7. Crapoux is portrayed in a much more sympathetic way as the film progresses. Like Azur, he is revealed to have blue eyes under his goggles, and thus is also a victim of the superstition that considers blue eyes an ill omen. Despite his initial exploitation of Azur, Crapoux is depicted as developing a sincere fondness for him, and ultimately wins viewers' compassion when he tells Jénane, "I'm no longer on the road that leads to the djinn fairy. Azur is. He is the very flame itself. But I can help him, passing on to him what I have learned during my long quest. My life won't be a failure if Azur succeeds." It is Crapoux who leads Azur to the fiery and scented keys necessary to rescue the djinn fairy. Azur remains loyal to Crapoux, even after his reunion with Jénane makes his dependence on the other man unnecessary. In gratitude for Crapoux's companionship during the first dismal days of his acculturation and in recognition of the impetus he provided for finding the keys, Azur asks Jénane to extend her protection to him, for which Crapoux is demonstrably grateful. He insists on accompanying Azur on his quest to rescue the djinn fairy and proves his worth as an able squire.

8. Unlike me, Tucci sees Azur's decision to close his eyes as almost wholly beneficial: "Dropping the lids over the blue eyes slowly begins to inhibit the learned vision of his culture to make space for new ways of seeing" (97). She notes that it is when he no longer trusts in his sight that Azur is able to find the fiery key by touch and the scented key by smell, and he later recognizes Jénane by her voice when he hears it in the crowded market (100). Apostolou agrees: "The loss of his eyesight and his identity lead Azur to a new life experience, that of a blind foreign beggar that will enlighten him and help him open up to a new land" (106).

9. Ocelot believes that American distributors ruined the film by providing subtitles for both the French and the Arabic dialogue ("Animation"). I would argue that for non-Arabic speakers, hearing the Arabic dialogue maintains the sense of a linguistic barrier while reading the subtitles provides an indication of the cultural understanding that can be attained by learning a foreign tongue. The film provides a good example of this. When Crapoux and Azur first approach the gates of Jénane's city, they hear a young woman singing in Arabic. Azur asks Crapoux to translate, but Crapoux puts him off with another insult to Islamic culture, most likely because he does not know enough Arabic to translate the lyrics. However, because the Arabic in the scene is subtitled in the American release of the film, viewers know, unlike Crapoux and Azur, what the young woman is singing: "Oh, those precious eyes! Let's sing to them." Thus viewers realize that there is a deep irony in the scene: Azur's difficulty in speaking and understanding Arabic is as much an impediment to true cultural engagement as his refusal to open his eyes.

10. When Jénane opens the symbolically blue door of her home to speak to Azur, he is covered in spices due to his mishaps in the marketplace, reminiscent of the mud and dung that covered him earlier in the film. She does not recognize the young man before her, and at first does not believe that this could be her long-lost Azur. She protests that he neither looks nor sounds like the little boy she had left behind in France. When she argues that the Azur she knew was not blind, Azur opens his eyes for the first time since closing them. It is a sign that he is now open to new experiences, just as he was as a boy.

11. Apostolou takes a more pessimistic view of this ending. She notes that Crapoux, the Princess Shamsous Sabah, Yadoa, Jénane, Azur, and Asmar are all misfits, marginalized due to race, gender, or mixed cultural background: "What is it, other than a Utopia, the ou-topos/non-place that can accommodate those who do not fit, those who are dis/placed in place. Can the real world of the film accommodate Azur and Asmar? The answer is no!" (112). I hope that she is wrong.

12. Duggan describes Ocelot's treatment of gender as not as "progressive" as that of his fellow French animator Jeane-François Laguionie, stating that Ocelot's films "often concern active heroes who save damsels in distress" (77). This generalization does a disservice to Ocelot and to Azur & Asmar's feminist themes and portrayals, given that the djinn fairy's imprisonment is a ruse created in order to test her suitors and that Princess Shamsous Sabah and Jénane are portrayed as independent, wealthy, and powerful women.

13. Contributors to Zipes's anthology Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney take differing stances on the question of cultural appropriation. Tiffin argues that while Ocelot grew up in Africa, he is still a French filmmaker who embodies the Western gaze and whose use of African folklore, particularly in Kirikou and the Sorceress, is "external, entitled, judgmental-not just a creative experimentation morphing forms of the fairy tale, but also a correction" (225-26). In contrast, Duggan praises Kirikou and the Sorceress, Azur & Asmar, and Princes and Princesses for challenging racial and ethnic prejudice and celebrates their merging of fairy tale tropes from a variety of cultures (77-78).

14. Educators can find lesson plans, activities, and other background material for classroom use of the film at the UK-based Film Education Web site: <http://www.filmeducation.org/princesquest/background.html>.

References

Andrews, Nigel. "Fabulist of Filmmaking." Financial Times, 22 Oct. 2006. <ft.com/content/d28dbff6-6065-11db-a716-0000779e2340#axzz3X9l0ZXWq>.

Apostolou, Fotini. "Cultural Translations: Transcending Boundaries in Michel Ocelot's Animated Film Azur et Asmar." Communication, Politics and Culture 42.1 (2009): 96-117.

Asch, Mark. "Animated with Ocelot: Kirikou and the Sorceress." Fandor KeyFrame. 27 June 2014. <www.fandor.com/keyframe/kirikou-and-the-sorceress>. (Note: This site is no longer active.)

Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest. Dir. Michel Ocelot. Weinstein Company, 2009. DVD.

Boyd, Brian. On the Origin of Stories. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2009.

Brunick, Kaitlin L., and James E. Cutting. "Coloring the Animated World: Exploring Human Color Perception and Preference through the Animated Film." Cognitive Media Theory. Ed. Ted Nannicelli and Paul Taberham. New York: Routledge, 2014. 124-38.

Carroll, Noël, and William P. Seeley. "Cognitivism, Psychology, and Neuroscience: Movies as Attentional Engines." Shinamura, 53-75.

Duggan, Anne E. "The Fairy-Tale Film in France: Postwar Reimaginings." Zipes, Greenhill, and Magnus-Johnston, 64-79.

"FAQ." We Need Diverse Books.org. <weneeddiversebooks.org/faq/>.

Kirch, Claire. "BookCon Controversy Begets Diversity Social Media Campaign." Publishers Weekly, 1 May 2014. <www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/62094-diversity-social-media-campaign-goes-viral.html>.

Kövecses, Zoltán. Language, Mind, and Culture: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.

Lai, Calvin K., et al. "Reducing Implicit Racial Preferences: I. A Comparative Investigation of 17 Interventions." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143.4 (2014): 1765-85.

---. "Reducing Implicit Racial Preferences: II. Intervention Effectiveness Across Time." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 145.8 (2016): 1001-16.

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. 1980. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003.

---. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic, 1999.

"Long Biography." Michel Ocelot. <www.michelocelot.fr/#bio-long>.

Neupert, Richard. "Kirikou and the Animated Figure/Body." Studies in French Cinema 8.1 (2008): 41-56.

Oatley, Keith. "How Cues on the Screen Prompt Emotions in the Mind." Shimamura, 269-84.

Ocelot, Michel. "Animation: Azur & Asmar-A Few Questions for Michel Ocelot." Interview by Michael Guillén. Screenanarchy, 9 Mar. 2009. <screenanarchy.com/2009/03/animation-azur-asmara-few-questions-for-michel-ocelot.html>.

---. "Azur & Asmar: Michel Ocelot's Quest for Tolerance." Interview by Jérémie Noyer. Animated Views, 17 Mar. 2009. <animatedviews.com/2009/azur-asmar-michel-ocelots-quest-for-tolerance/>.

---. "Background-Interview with the Film's Director, Michel Ocelot." Film Education. <filmeducation.org/princesquest/background.html>.

Oziewicz, Marek C. Justice in Young Adult Speculative Fiction: A Cognitive Reading. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Shimamura, Arthur P., ed. Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013.

Stockwell, Peter. Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Thorne, Barrie. "Re-Visioning Women and Social Change: Where Are the Children?" Gender and Society 1.1 (1987): 85-109.

Tiffin, Jessica. "Stick Becoming Crocodile: African Fairy-Tale Film." Zipes, Greenhill, and Magnus-Johnston, 222-32.

Tucci, Nina. "A Multi-faceted Experience of the Other in Michel Ocelot's Fairytale, Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest." Constructing Identities: The Interaction of National, Gender and Racial Borders. Ed. Antonio Medina-Rivera and Lee Wilberschied. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2013. 89-113.

Turner, Mark. The Literary Mind. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Zacks, Jeffrey M. Flicker: Your Brain on Movies. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.

Zipes, Jack. The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Zipes, Jack, Pauline Greenhill, and Kendra Magnus-Johnston, eds. Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney: International Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2015.