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I really want someone to write a paper on what it means that we are so in love with taking our classic fairy tales and applying the "real world" to them. I've seen it in children's fiction, young adult series, and even some adult books, plus tv shows and movies. It's everywhere - taking fairy tales and making them dark (as dark as they originally were? Maybe?).
I don't think it's just run-off from Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. Something is drawing us to the fairy tales again. And the REAL fairy tales. As a society, we don't want the perfect princess stories, we want them messy. We want to know about the dark and scary things that lurk out there...thoughts???
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-01 11:22 pm (UTC)I love fairy tales, always have and I also really enjoyed Frozen. I grew up with Norwegian fairy tales full of trolls and dangers, Grimm fairy tales and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Disney has done their version of many works of Grimm and Andersen, and I prefer the original stories.
I do think Disney have made many a fairy tale too light, easy and happy-go-lucky. They are very normative and straightforward. Often fairy tales are dark in their plot as well as in mood, and that is often lost in Disney adaptions. I think this is a difference between US and Europe in many ways. Things, especially aimed at children, needs to be clean, none threatening, not too scary and with a specific moral code in the US as opposed to Europe where stories aimed at children are darker and less expected to fit into the moral codes we see in the US. The cautionary element is present in both places, but in many cases I think what they caution against differs.
I believe in their original time and place fairy tales were very much connected to the real world and spoke of social issues as well as trying to explain things that didn’t have an explanation. And they were not aimed only at children. Many of them were cautionary tales indeed, but many of them have depths and layers that go overlooked and all but disappears in adaptions.
Perhaps there is a shift in the understanding of what fairy tales truly are: stories that address social issues and not simply stories of overcoming hardship with some help from magic and with a happy ending.
And addressing something mentioned in the video regarding Norway and Sami culture. As a Norwegian (though not Sami) I sat through my whole first watch of this film pointing out everything I recognized as Sami or Norwegian, and there were quite a lot! As a person who is more familiar with Sami people and culture (and perhaps even their existence) than people in the US and elsewhere I don’t think the film was pejorative towards Sami people and culture or treated it disrespectfully. I do think a more suitable name could have been chosen for Kristoff and that he could have had a slightly different look. His clothing looked Sami but I think more people would have seen him as Sami or from a different culture and heritage than Elsa and her sister (who were dressed as Norwegians from Norse heritage) had he had darker hair (though it needs to be said that many Sami people have blond hair).
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-03 09:15 pm (UTC)I totally agree that the US tends to coddle and protect children far more than they should be (especially when it comes to TEH!SEX! Violence, not so much...). But, yes, the whole point of fairy tales were to be tales of caution. Disney usually sucks all of that out to replace it with more marketable characters (though going back to watch the original Disney features, like Snow White and Bambi...that stuff was dark compared to now! I wonder if Disney would ever make a Bambi today...).
I do think one of the reasons that "Frozen" was so embraced by critics and fans were the tiny bits of darkness in the story. Yes, it's nothing compared to the original fairy tales but it was a step in that direction and for Disney it's a huge step so I can see what we all felt so relieved that the Disney Princesses poised to take the throne were two women who were sisters and loved each other and knew how ridiculous some fairy tale tropes are.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-01 11:29 pm (UTC)Also with the increase in people going to psychotherapy and "coming out" about childhood abuse of all kinds, people are realizing that children are all to unprotected and often have their innocence and 'happy childhoods' brutally taken by poverty and/or abuse.
On a less sober note, we teens and adults are realizing our need for our dreams, nightmares and meta-tales that tell us about ourselves, our friends, family, enemies, workplaces and countries. Look at the popularity of the personified-countries "Hetalia" stories among anime and manga fans, for one, and the popularity of "adult" stories/movies such as Life of Pi. We in the West (Europe/US/Canada) are recognizing and enjoying each other's fantasy stories as the world becomes "smaller"--whether they're of Asian, African, Latin American or other origins.
My opinion as an English major, lover of stories old and new from around our planet, sometime fantasy/SF writer, and self-taught anthropology student.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-03 09:17 pm (UTC)