Grimm's Fairy Tales
It’s really shocking to read about the fairy tales that I
sort of have some knowledge to, from a totally different perspective. A much
more sad and gruesome perspective I might add. I honestly didn't even know
these stories existed in this form and I get why the tales were toned down for
Disney. Obviously, you wouldn't want your five year old kid hearing about how
the evil stepmother of Cinderella told her own two daughters to “…cut a bit off
[their] heel…”and to “cut off [their] big toe” just to become the next
princess. Also, portraying doves pecking people’s eyes out at Cinderella’s
wedding in a Disney movie would NOT be acceptable by American culture.
The gruesomeness continues with Rapunzel when the
prince’s eyes were poked out by thorns when he fell from the tower, when the
hunter cuts open the belly of the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood to save them,
and also when the witch queen stabbed Snow White to death with a poisoned
combed on the head. Not to mention boiling kids up in a pot and eating them in the tale of Hansel and Gretel, which reminds me of it relating back to Mid-evil witches eating dead babies. So I can see there are some parallels there. But it's very interesting how these fairy tales can have multiple "moral of the stories" and themes and how it's not clear but is open to interpretation.
It is also interesting to see that in these stories and fairy tales that have been so popular, how all of the main characters are female that act as the protagonist and how a witch is the antagonist (for the most part). Maybe this is because the authors that wrote these stories grew up in a society that viewed witches as evil creatures. Why else would they cast the witches as the "bad guys"? It's just interesting to see how all the male protagonist stories aren't so popular vs the female protagonists. Maybe it's because some of the tales don't have happy endings like Godfather Death and people like seeing a story end on a good note rather than a bad one.
I also noticed that many of the fairy tales that we read featured females in the lead rather than men. In fact, men seemed to have a minimal role in the stories. They were relegated to being the heroes that dash in towards the end. But some of the women/girls weren't completely the stereotypical helpless female - Gretel helped save Hansel when he was trapped and the bride-to-be in the Robber Bridegroom found out his nefarious side and outed him in public. It's interesting to see how different all of the fairy tales are from the popular Disney versions.
ReplyDeletet's kind of sad that Godfather Death isn't more popular (I think it was my favorite). Through stories like this I actually don't find Death to be a scary character, but rather an equalizer, so I think a story like this has one of the best lessons in The Grimm's Fairy Tales.
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