"I don’t know that there’s any way to rectify what 21st century minds justly see as women taken against their will, except to remind ourselves that this is a parody of a legend that’s over two thousand years old."
That's the thing. They're NOT taken against their will in the sense that it has been established that all of the women WANT to be with the brothers, rather than with the townsmen to whom they have been promised but whom they don't love. On the other hand, they very much ARE taken against their will in that, of course, they DID NOT want to be forcibly kidnapped and removed from their town, their families and their friends, to a remote cabin in the woods. At any rate, to your point, the whole thing is a lot easier to swallow if you try to perceive it as a musical comedy based on a parody of a fable, rather than something that attempt to portray events that would ever realistically happen in real life :-) |
