Fairy Tale Roundup: The Importance of Fairy Tales, the Irony of Fairy Tales in Ads, and Zooey Deschanel's new TV Show

Goodness, February has been insane. Probably the busiest month I have had in a long time, and full of unpredictable stumbling blocks, loss, and challenges. However, I am taking a break on this penultimate day of the month to give you a small, but meaty sampling of fairy tale things:

An Introduction to Fairy Tales by The National Theatre 

Something to Read for the Train showed us this beautiful video discussing the importance of fairy tales, how they help us process things we might not otherwise be able to process. They are survival stories, for both young and old. You get different things from them at different ages. They have almost no characterization so that we can step into the role of the hero or heroine ourselves.

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Fairy Tales Sell 
Tales of Faerie muses upon the fact that even though fairy tales have more than the usual share of gore, tragedy and horror, they are used to sell products. Products that promise if you by them, they will give you  happy ending, or even products that may not have done too much research into the fairy tale they are named after. An excellent examination.

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(pic obviously not from the show)

Zooey Deschanel to Exec Produce New Animated-Workplace-Comedy On Difficulties Of Running A Fairy Tale 'Queendom'
Here is a fun bit of fluff! Once Upon a Blog has informed us that Zooey Deschanel is going to produce a TV series about an evil queen called The Queen of Everything: "The show is a modern fairytale about an evil queen who realizes that running a Queendom isn’t easy when you have no people skills and everyone hates you. But with a little help from her staff, she will try to change her ways." That is pretty much all we have for now, but it could be fun! See Once Upon a Blog

Fairy Tale and Mythology Round Up: Fairy Tales as Literary Crack, Modern Reds, the Bullied Cinderella, Mythic Assholes, Norse vs Marvel Mythology, and Christmas Fairy Tales

It looks like November is another crazy month for me, so I am a little behind in my fairy tale news. Here is a digest of the interesting things I have found so far!

1) Catherynne M. Valente Speaks on Fairy Tales at NY ComicCon
Once Upon a Blog directed our attention to the wisdom of one of my favorite authors, Catherynne M. Valente who wrote The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Lead the Revels There. At NY ComicCon this year, Ms. Valente said:

"Here's the thing about fairy tales... They are the best-edited stories of all time... boiled down, espresso-like stories that go straight to the back of your reptile brain."

I love that idea. They are like sea stones, rolled around in the surf of hundreds or thousands of years to be stripped down to the essentials, the truths span all of time.

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2) Post Victorian Little Red Riding Hood
Tales of Faerie, as ever an pillar of fairy tale scholarship, distills Jack Zipes' The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood into a blog post exploration of what Red Riding Hood symbolizes in the modern age. She discusses how it is used to underline political, ecological, and gender equality issues, as well as more traditional interpretations.

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3) Cinderella: My Favorite Bully Story

The YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) had an excellent blog post about how Cinderella is a story about bullies. The special thing about Cinderella in comparison with other bully stories is that it doesn't dwell on the bullies. The bullies are an obstacle that Cinderella must face as she takes her destiny in to her own hands. 

"The stories I like—whether on my library shelves or playing out in my own neighborhood—are the ones where our teens don’t relinquish their pens to the bullies. They get help, stop it, or endure despite the high cost. But they go on writing their own story, singing their own song, toward a happily ever after that stands separate and apart from the attacks against them."

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Jupiter and Thetis by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

4) The Biggest Assholes in Greek Mythology
 The gloriously irreverent Io9 has created yet another hilarious list, the biggest assholes in Greek mythology, and Zeus is at the top of the list. The first half of the list sticks with the known assholes, but then we get into more obscure people, like Ixion, who pushed his father-in-law onto a bed of hot coals, went insane, tried to have sex with Hera, and ended up having sex with a cloud.

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5) 8 Things Marvel got Wrong about Thor and Norse Mythology

Io9, snarky as ever, lists the many..not so much errors, but differences between the Marvel Asgard and the old Norse Asgard. It makes me want to sit by the fire on a winter night and read some eddas. I do miss the clever, tricky wanderer Odin and the mischievous Loki and the doofus Thor and my favorite nightmare creature, Fenrir.

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6) Marks and Spencers Fairy Tale Ad

Apparently Christmas = Fairy Tales at Marks and Spencers! Here is a cute ad for their store that leads you through Alice in Wonderland, Little Red, the Wizard of Oz (with a female Tin Man and Lion), Hansel and Gretel and Arabian Nights. With a special cameo from Helena Bonham Carter! Once Upon a Blog has background and commentary.

That is all for now, though I have a lot more coming up! 

Friday Fun: Fairy Tale Ads

Here is a little bit of Friday fun that I found on Tales of Faerie. Lemmonpepper99 on You Tube has compiled a playlist of fairy tale TV ads dating all the way back to the 1930s!

It is interesting to see what themes the ads pull out while trying to sell something. Little Red Riding Hood is either about sex, safety, or personal power. Cinderella is more often than not about searching for things we desire or transformation. Sleeping Beauty is strangely comedic in most, and ends up being either about sleeping peacefully or waiting for what you want. The Goldilocks ones are always about "just right." 

I think my favorites were the Little Red Adidas commercial and the Oreo commercial for their animation, the Nokia one for finding fairy tales in every day life, and the GHD and 7up commercials where our heroines take their destiny into their own hands. 

Video: Book People Unite

Sorry for the radio silence, folks! Its the end of the semester, so work and masters degree have been taking up most of my time. However, I wanted to give you this cute video today! It's part of a campaign for Reading is Fundamental, an organization devoted to making sure all children have access to books and discover the joys and value of reading. It stars some of our favorite literary characters, including Pinocchio, Three Blind Mice, Humpty Dumpty, Big Bad Wolf, Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the three bears, and the Three Pigs. And a cameo by Levar Burton. What more could you ask for!

Ads: Behind the Scenes for The Guardian's Three Little Pigs Ad

From Creativity:

"It was clear that BBH needed to tell a story to demonstrate the news cycle. But which one? "We couldn't pick a current-affairs story for fear of it dating," said David Kolbusz, creative director. "And writing a revisionist history of a historical event seemed insensitive." So they went with fairytales. BBH also created scripts for "Humpty Dumpty," "Hansel & Gretel" and "Cinderella." But Mr. Rusbridger is a big Orwell fan, so the "Animal Farm" parallel won out.

Creatives studied trailers that gave the most plot away -- "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," for example. Mr. Ledwidge also wanted the spot to feel like a trailer to a big movie, something like "The Dark Knight," for example. "I liked that the film inhabited its own parallel universe that was familiar but also allowed the viewer to embrace elements of fantasy," he said. "A mashup of old-fashioned nursery rhymes with a slightly futuristic contemporary world." Mr. Ledwidge looked at nursery-rhyme illustrations from the 1920s to the 1950s and based the costumes around those. The pig heads were cast from original molds from the Royal Ballet Co.'s production of "Beatrix Potter." The spot was filmed over two days, in two 20-hour shoots." (For Full Article and video).

This is an incredible ad. It is beautifully shot, very funny, and packs a wallop of truth. It reminds me of Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime books, which set fairy tale crimes in a police procedural context. Granted, the conceit of the pigs' villainy is not a new idea (The True Story of the Three Little Pigs), but it certainly gets it's point across. While I think this was the best tale to choose, I would love to have seen the "Humpty Dumpty," "Hansel and Gretel" and "Cinderella" versions.

The article also contains an old advertisement, demonstrating how viewing an event from three points of view can give you very different impressions as to what happened. Very smart. I am a fan of The Guardian.

Ads: The Guardian: What if the Three Little Pigs went on Trial for Murder in the 21st Century?

From Io9:

"In this clever (and fairly creepy) spot for The Guardian's open journalism initiative, the story of the Three Little Pigs is transformed into the trial of the century, complete with protesters wearing the porcine equivalent of V for Vendetta masks.

In this reality at the nexus of fairy tales and media bruhaha, we can also assume the pigs will be locked away with Struwwelpeter and the Three Billy Goats Gruff, who impinged upon a troll's right to collect tariffs. Hat tip to Precious Roy."

To see the original article: What if the Three Little Pigs went on Trial for Murder in the 21st Century?