Fairy tales are a convenient
blindfold we created to hide from the true face of humanity from our children. The
original tales were written by the brothers Grimm and their tales were as grim
as their names, if not more. These tales were then re-forged, for something
more fitting for a time long past. The question then becomes are they relevant
in this day and age? Should they not go back to their originals, the ones that
spoke of the truth of the world, instead of letting others hide behind the
innocent façade we created, or is it alright to let children discover the lie
that we wove for them in the first place?
Fairy tales were originally
written for adults, so why is it that we have altered and adjusted them to suit
our needs – to show our children a ‘hope’ that is unreal? If for example, we
were to talk about the brothers Grimm, their stories always made you question
what the real truth was – animals can’t talk, so we eliminated that. Then comes
punishment and torture, people abandoning one another, mothers jealous of their
children, so on and so forth… this part was probably the most realistic part in
the entire tale. Blood and gore, did we not build human civilization on that?
On the other hand, I have to
agree that we’re building ourselves up as a ‘prim and proper’ society, but wasn’t
there a time when we were truly barbaric? These tales, the best example being
red riding hood, tend to touch on those ‘primitive’ or ‘barbaric’ emotions.
The actual story as written by
the brothers Grimm stated that red riding hood upon being enticed by the wolf
to play in the forest surrounding her path loses track of time and ends up
hurrying to her grandmother’s place towards the evening. Upon reaching there,
she is asked to partake in meat and wine by her grandmother and discovers that
she ate her own grandmother’s flesh by a cat that lived in her grandmother’s
house. Red riding hood is then asked to take off her clothes and get in bed
with her old grandmother. It is only then that Red riding hood realizes that
the wolf she met in the woods earlier was pretending to be her grandmother and
so she asks to go to pee. The wolf senses a ruse and so ties a rope around red
riding hood’s ankle and only then lets her go. Upon not returning for some
time, the wolf calls out to red riding hood and on receiving no answer, goes
outside, only to find that the rope was cut. He then chases after red riding hood,
but luckily she managed to reach home before the wolf could catch up to her and
so the story ends on a somewhat bitter sweet note.
I suppose and perhaps that is
the reason why we swept these terrifyingly grim stories under the carpet. So
why do we hide this barbaric nature from our children? Why do we make them grow
up believing that someone will come save them in their time of need? Is it
because we do not wish to show them the horrors previous generations lived
through?
Whatever the case may be is it
not wrong to pull the wool over their eyes and make them believe in something
that will never come for them, that society is as simple as it seems in fairy
tales, that there is always a happy ending? In reality, we are aware of what
people are like. If fairy tales are what they first read and learn from, should
it not make a beginning to help them understand the world better?
Another point I would like to
make, is that the characters presented in these tales have little or no detail
– there is no background to help relate to or understand them. Is it not odd?
It is true, that unless you talk to a person you may never begin to understand
them, so why is it that the fairy tales we altered do this? Are we teaching our
children to only look at a person’s face value? However, in the original tales,
the characters were given some amount of development considering that they were
short stories. Then again, when you look at each of the characters more
closely, you find that they have only given hints as to the darker aspects of
the character and as far as I’ve found, they never label the character as being
‘bad’ or ‘evil’ outright.
This leads me to a similar yet
different point – stereotypes. The characters in current fairy tales tend to
lean on stereotypes, as though presenting that the world is all black and white
and that there are no gray areas. Is that not strange?
In the world we live in, we
are clearly aware that there is no such thing as ‘just’ black or ‘just’ white.
Very often, we tend to deal with the ‘gray areas’ on a daily basis. Is that why
we enjoy oversimplifying the horrifyingly graphic tales that were written by
the brothers Grimm because we are afraid or reluctant to face or understand
what people might have had to go through, because we had enough and didn’t want
anything to do with realism or could it be that we want neat and tidy endings,
simple enough for children to understand? Again I ask you, is it alright to let
them go blindly into the world, believing in such fantasies?
Why is it then that we
continue to cultivate this ‘false’ or ‘misleading’ hope that states that things
simply fall into place and that you do not need to work hard or persevere for
it? In all the fairy tales that were written recently, we find that things tend
to ‘happen’. Cinderella’s fairy god mother gives her clothes. Snow White’s
prince saves her. Prince charming always appears on time. The character tends
to move in one direction yes, but is it not odd and absurd how things take
place? It seems as though all their fights are being fought by an external
force for them and that all they have to do, is wait.
Real life is never that
‘lucky’ and ‘fortunate’ or ‘kind’. If we need something or want something, we
have to go out there and get it ourselves. So why is it that we’re reading
stories to our children, making them believe or rather giving them the hope
that they don’t have to do anything and that things will fall into place for
them at all times?
All in all, I have to say that
while fairy tales make good bases for stories, one wonders if we should keep
the fairy tales that we’ve edited. Would it not be better to read the original
instead of a fake, if only to get children to understand the real world better?
