A blog that explores the dark and twisting world of fairy tales, the history, psychology, symbolic interpretations, literary analysis, adaptations, and pop culture incarnations.
Get Genrefied: Fairy Tale Re-tellings Stacked, an amazing librarian-run book blog, provides us with an amazingly comprehensive list of YA fairy tale adaptations broken down by fairy tale, including old favorites and many I had not heard of!
NPR directed our attention to a new adaptation of Snow White that is coming out, about a girl in New England in the 1950s: "Reading the fairy tale, the way that it's so explicit that Snow White's beauty is tied into the whiteness of her skin, there seemed a very clear connection to me with the '50s and '60s in America when there was very much a debate over the rights of a human being based on the color of their skin."
Io9 told us the story of a child who used to talk but developed regressive autism, unable to talk and almost unreachable, until he came across a certain scene in The Little Mermaid involving the loss of a voice. Read the entire article in the New York Times for the whole story.
Tales of Faerie performs a wonderful analysis of the various versions and adaptations of Beauty and the Beast, specifically regarding Beauty's relationship to her sisters. I didn't realize how very Lear it is!
“I am an explorer,' she whispered, 'setting courageously off into the wild unknown.' It was not a daydream she'd ever had before, but she felt the familiar comfort of her imagination wrapping around her. She was an archeologist, a scientist, a treasure hunter. She was a master of land and sea. 'My life is an adventure.' she said, growing confident as she opened her eyes again. 'I will not be shackled to this satellite anymore.'
Thorne tilted his head to one side. He waited for three heartbeats before sliding one hand down into hers. 'I have no idea what you're talking about,' he said. 'But we'll go with it.”
Beginning where Scarlet left off, Cinder, Thorne, Scarlet and Wolf are on their ship (voiced by Iko, their droid compatriot) trying to think of a plan to overthrow the Lunar Queen, stop her from marrying Prince Kai and taking over the world. It is not a B movie, I swear. On a satellite circling earth, we find Cress, a long-haired Lunar shell (non-magical Lunar), who has spent her life working for the Queen, hacking their security feeds, monitoring their transmissions, and hiding Lunar movements. In all that time of solitude, she has fallen in love with earth, and more specifically with the dashing and suave Captain Thorne whom she knows is hiding a heart of gold under his selfish exterior. She teams up with our heroes, but when Thorne attempts to rescue her from her lonely outpost, Cress' guardian, the Lunar Thaumaturge finds them, and sends the satellite hurling to earth. In the process, Thorne is blinded (the witch throws the prince from the tower, he lands in thorns and his eyes are gouged out). Cress, newly shorn, and a blind Thorne must find their way across the desert, join Cinder and stop the royal wedding.
To see what I though (Hint: I loved it sooooo much) see my review on Palimpsest!
“A boy got a splinter in his eye, and his heart turned cold. Only two people noticed. One was a witch, and she took him for her own. The other was his best friend. And she went after him in ill-considered shoes, brave and completely unprepared.”
Hazel has moved from a more progressive, creative school to a traditional school in a new neighborhood. She feels so out of place. All the things she enjoyed about learning are discouraged. Her only touchstone is her best friend Jack. They let their imaginations run wild, inventing stories and playing baseball as superheros who are not allowed to use their powers. However, one day, Jack gets something in his eye, and he is completely different. He is mean to Hazel and doesn't care about what they used to care about. And then he disappears. Everyone thinks he went to visit his aunt, but Hazel knows something is wrong. She knows he was stolen by the Snow Queen. She must embark on a mission, facing wolves, witches, and ice, to save her best friend... who might not want to be saved.
“She had a hundred reasons: because Bear had carved a statue of her in the center of the topiary garden, because she could always make him laugh, because he'd let her return to the station, because he won at chess and lost at hockey, because he ran as fast as he could to polar bear births, because he had seal breath even as a human, because his hands were soft, because he was her Bear. "Because I want my husband back," Cassie said.”
Cassie has lived her whole life in her family's arctic research station. Her world is ice and science and tagging polar bears and survival. Her grandmother had told her fairy tales about her mother, the adopted daughter of the North Wind, who was supposed to marry the Polar Bear King but married a mortal instead. The North Wind was so angry that he threw the mother into the land of the trolls, never to be seen again. When Cassie grew up, she realized these were just stories to make her feel better about her mother's death. That is, until the Polar Bear King comes to claim Cassie as his wife. After agreeing to rescue her mother, Bear whisks Cassie away to his ice castle at the North Pole. She and Bear slowly and deeply fall in love, but when Cassie betrays Bear and he is torn from her side, she must brave the frozen wasteland to find him again.
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!
"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.
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."
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.
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.
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!
A Tale Dark and Grimm, by Adam Gidwitz, is one of my favorite fairy tale adaptations of all time. Click here to read my review of it. Click here to read Adam Gidwitz's defense of dark fairy tales.
Now, it is going to be a movie with one of my favorite film artists at the helm, Henry Selick of Coraline and Nightmare Before Christmas.
If you watch the trailer you will see how well the story lends itself to Selick's style.
OUAB has more details about the movie and what the book is about, so check her out.
"As I jump out the window, I glance over my shoulder. The window frames a face with smooth skin and hollow cheeks -- a boy on the brink of manhood. He peels his lips back and growls, and I stare into his brown eyes. For a moment it is like looking into a mirror and I almost say his name. Until I realize his eyes are wild and feral, like an animal's...As I sprint across the empty schoolyard, past the silent, rusted playground, I dare a look over my shoulder. My brother is hobbling toward the fence, his angle hanging at an odd angle to his leg. His eyes meet mine and he holds a hand up to me, a plea to come back. A sob tears at my chest, but I look away and keep running."
Fiona wakes up in her bedroom. Everything is covered in dust. The world around her is lifeless, and there is a tattoo on her right hand. She is 4 years older than she was when she fell asleep. She steps into a world divided, where those bearing the tattoo must live outside the wall because they are infected with a deadly disease that could turn them at any moment into mindless beastly killing machines. Those within the wall are safe, but at what cost? When Fiona is captured by the militia, she is marked as a Level Ten, the deadliest of all the infected. Yet, she feels normal. As flashes of memories come back to her, she and her former classmate Bowen, now a hardened militia man, must discover her secret before it is too late.
To see what I thought of this Sleeping Beauty adaptation, go to my other blog: Palimpsest!
“A sickening howl stopped her, sucking the air out of her lungs.
The night's chatter silenced, even the loitering city rats pausing to listen.
Scarlet had heard wild wolves before, prowling the countryside in search of easy prey on the farms.
But never had a wolf's howl send a chill down her spine like that.”
This second book in the Lunar Chronicles follows a delivery girl named Scarlet whose grandmother has been missing for two weeks. The police have given up, but she tenaciously searches for clues. When she meets a young, handsome, ambiguously affiliated street fighter, Wolf, who might hold the key to her grandmother's disappearance, they embark on a journey that might save her grandmother, or doom Scarlet to the same fate. In the mean time, Cinder (protagonist of the last book), is breaking out of prison with the charming, but rather self absorbed Captain Thorne. And poor Prince Kai is left to deal with the evil Lunar Queen alone.
To see what I thought of it, check out my other blog, Palimpsest! (HINT: I thought it was awesome.)
Oh, it makes me so sad that I don't have time for anything more than Fairy Tale Roundups right now! I am in the middle of rehearsing two plays, working my 9-5 and taking two classes for my master's degree, one of which requires me to read two (boo) YA books (yay) a week. I have many interesting ideas in the pipe, I just have to have the time to develop them and write them. In the mean time, I will point you in the direction of the genius of my fairy tale blogging colleagues:
Once Upon a Blog continues to be a never-ending font of awesome:
A New Journey into Fairy Tale Films from Fandor
Gypsy has discovered an online fairy tale film collection. Discerningly curated, the collection includes a 1902 Jack and the Beanstalk, Betty Boop's Poor Cinderella, the erotic film Cinderella 2000, a stop motion Pied Piper of Hamlin, a Korean Hansel and Gretel, and Sita Sings the Blues. I know what I will be doing when I have more time!
The Snow Queen Cometh
Last, but certainly not least, Gypsy informs us that Frozen, the Disney movie looooooosely based on the Snow Queen, is nigh. She goes into a wonderful analysis of why it could be good, and why it could be bad. I am certainly not heartened by the character portraits. I am interested in the whole 'the Snow Queen is her sister" angle! And Disney's first female director....wha? Isn't it the 2000s? It seems like this should have happened before now. And the talking snowman.... Didn't we learn from Hunchback that you don't need to have the talking inanimate objects to make a good movie?
P.S. Oh god. The trailer is horrible. It is trying to be Ice Age, I guess? We don't get to see any of the characters that actually look interesting, and it tells us nothing about the story:
NPR's Ted Radio Hour: Framing the Story
While this is not strictly about fairy tales, NPR's Ted Radio Hour is amazing. This one has several Ted talkers exploring what a story is, how to tell a story, and what is important for a story. Andrew Stanton (the main writer for Pixar), discusses what makes a good story. Tracy Chevalier (writer of Girl with the Pearl Earring) tells how she finds a story in an image. Chip Kidd (book cover creator - Jurassic Park and others) talks about how book covers tell their own story. Chimamanda Adichie (Nigerian author) elegantly examines the dangers of s single story (hearing one story about a place or a person and thinking it is the whole picture (my favorite!)
First Look at Christophe Gans' Beauty & the Beast: "I'll Eat You Up I Love You So" Once Upon a Blog gives us a first glimpse of the crazy sounding Christophe Gans' Beauty and the Beast. This is the one with Vincent Cassel, not the Disney one with Emma Watson. The image and costumes look traditional, and not very revolutionary, but Gans promises to "surprise the audience by creating a completely new visual universe never experienced before and produce images of an unparalleled quality." It is adapted from the original novella written by Madame de Villeneuve in 1740, rather than the children's version published in 1760. While many novel adaptations have used the novella as inspiration (Beauty by Robin McKinley), apparently this is the first time it has been adapted for the screen. Check out the link for some insightful thoughts from Gypsy.
Of Keys & Bluebeards
Gypsy of Once Upon a Blog reflects on a blog post from by fantasy writer and fairy tale lecturer Theodora Goss, "On Bluebeard" on how men and women will often perceive situations differently. What men may perceive as an easy conversation, women may perceive as a potential threat. Gypsy examines the post in the larger cultural context, and then looks at the situation through the lens of fairy tales:
"Girls and women are taught from an early age to be cautious: "Stay on the path", "Don't talk to strangers" and, unfortunately, this is still the smart thing to do. "Wolves" are bad enough. "Bluebeards" (and Mr. Fox characters) are downright terrifying."
Not all women may feel this way, but in our current cultural climate, I would not blame them if they did. Walking home late at night, I have often looked at the man following me from the metro as a potential threat, even if he looks like a nice guy. You never want to be wrong. It is unfortunate that fear has made women adopt a "Better Safe than Sorry" stance. Even more unfortunate that Bluebeard and Little Red Riding Hood are still very relevant today.
EDIT: Heidi at SurLaLune has added to the conversation and provided several Bluebeard resources for further reading.
Scheherazade: From Storytelling 'Slave' To 'First Feminist'
To end this on a positive note, here is an NPR interview with Hanan al-Shaykh who has written a new adaptation of One Thousand and One Nights, in which Scheherazade outwits her own Bluebeard figure, the king. The stories she chose to adapt involve women using their wits to survive.
Upcoming Fairy Tale Fiction
SurLaLune is frikkin amazing and has kindly created two Listmania lists of the 55 (count them, 55!) new fairy tale fiction books coming out this year, including Rump: The True Story of Rumplestiltskin, Stung (a post apocalyptic Sleeping Beauty), Cold Spell(a modern retelling of Snow Queen), and The Grimm Conclusion (the new Adam Gidwitz book!) Apparently the biggest upcoming trend is Snow Queen, which gives me a happy. She will continue to add to the lists as more books come out, so keep an eye on it!
The Biggest Reasons Why Fairies are Evil
Io9 debunks the myth that fairies are benevolent creatures by looking at their fairly awful track record of stealing and selling souls, drowning people, kidnapping the womens and marrying them or making them serve as nurses for their children, the famous "seduce and destroy" maneuver, stealing babies and murdering children, disproportionate revenge, and enslavement. Don't forget to leave your fairy milk out as tribute, or you will be in a world of trouble.
OUAT Trivia
A new tumlbr has emerged called OUAT Trivias with 100 fun facts about the show and fairy tales related to the show. It hasn't been updated in a bit, but I highly encourage looking at the trivia they have. Some are a bit obvious and some are a stretch, but others are interesting, like:
#91 "The book that Ruby gives Belle in "Tiny," The Mysterious Island, is the same book Mary Margaret Blanchard reads in "7:15am," a reference to Lost."
#67 "In the scene at Lake Nostos were Lancelot is on bended knee, he utters the words "God in his mercy, lend her grace," which is a direct reference to the Tennyson poem, Lady of Shallott. In the poem, the Lady of Shallott is cursed after trying to look at Lancelot directly, and dies as a result. Lancelot sees her dead body floating down a river, and says these words not knowing that he caused her death."
#62 "Regina calls her horse by the name Rocinate, which is the name of Don Quixote's horse."
One of them tells of the other "missing people" on the post-curse-breaking notice board, including Pierre Abelard (a medieval philosopher), and characters from Midsummer! Pretty fun stuff!
I am unsure now whether or not to do a final few episodes of OUAT review. Is it too late now? Have I missed the interest boat? Let me know.
Catching up in the fairy tale world, here are several highlights from the blogosphere!
1) Robb Stark is cast as Prince Charming in the Kenneth Branagh/ Cate Blanchett Cinderella
Intreguing. Very promicing that he is much more than just a pretty face. And Cate Blanchett as the stepmother is phenominal. Kenny directing? Not sure. There are few films he has directed recently that I have been thrilled with. Sure, Much Ado, Henry V and Midwinter's Tale are amazing! But after that, his movies seem to tip from passionate realism into melodrama. Love's Labor's Lost was charming and had some excellent moments, but a bit ridiculous, and Thor was interesting, but certainly not all that it could have been. Hopefully he will do what he does best: keep the camera rolling and let the amazing actors loose to do their thing.
Don't forget, this was the Cinderella Mark Romanek (dir. Never Let Me Go) was going to direct before his concept was deemed too dark for Disney. Let's hope Ken doesn't swing in the opposite direction. Or at least sticks to his artistic guns and does not pander to Disney execs.
2) Snow White and Rose Red by Kelly Vivanco
Kelly Vivanco, one of my favorite artists, has written and illustrated an adaptation of one of the strangest and most interesting fairy tales, Snow White and Rose Red. She has a way of capturing a question in a painting. You are always compelled to ask "Why?" There is a fox in a top hat. Why? There is a girl sitting in a field with flowers, but she doesn't look happy. Why? Click here for more of her beautiful work.
3) Tales of Faerie has recently come out with two excellent posts. The first one, When Grimms' Fairy Tales Came to England, is about how the English, nostalgic for "authentic" old traditions and values in the throws of the industrial revolution, took the Grimm's fairy tales and adapted them for 19th century England, cleaning up the morals, making them appropriate for children, and emphasizing the often false idea that the tales were collected from folksy German peasants.
The second, Werewolves and Little Red Riding Hood, is an exploration of the relationship between werewolf legends and Little Red Riding Hood tales. She draws connections between tales of werewolf trials in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries and the folktales of the little child accosted by the wolf in the same towns a century or two later. She examines common elements of those tales and extrapolates on their meaning, free from any morals or edits Perrault may have imposed.
4) Lastly, we finally have a trailer for Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, and you know what? It looks pretty good!
It begins by embracing the darker traditions of the Alice in Wonderland story that have sprung up in popular culture and analysis, exploring the idea of Alice's madness. I love that it is taking a darker route. I am a bit confused by the genie, and how that fits into Wonderland, and the CGI looks mostly pretty sub-par as I feared, but overall, I'm excited!
Wow, guys. I have been in a black hole of putting up a play (come see The Pirate Laureate of Port Town if you are in the DC area!) We have finally opened, and now I can catch up on all the fairy tale news and ephemera that has been cropping up lately!
Hansel & Gretel Is the Platonic Form of “So Bad It’s Good”
Io9 thinks Hansel and Gretel: Witchhunters is silly and fun! "If you're looking for a serious reinterpretation of the Hansel and Gretel story, this movie isn't going to cut it. Even the "dark" bits where the siblings try to figure out why their father left them alone in the woods are plain ridiculous. But if you want to laugh your ass off and see some witchslapping, it's the perfect thing. Gemma Arterton as Gretel is particularly adept at chewing the scenery in the most awesome way possible. What I'm saying is that you should turn your brain off and mainline some fairytale this weekend." I have yet to see it, but I must admit, I love the idea that Hansel now has diabetes from the witch candy and needs insulin shots. Honestly, I will see it for the fairy tale ass-kicking alone!
10 of the Most Bizarre Fairy Tale Adaptations
Flavorwire gave us a facinating list of strange fairy tale adaptations: Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente (set in the Wild West, and written by an amazing writer!), I Was A Rat!, Philip Pullman (about Cinderella's rat footman who didn't get turned back at midnight), The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: A Novel of War and Survival, Louise Murphy (Hansel and Gretel set in WWII), and more! Most of them seem pretty mainstream to avid fairy tale adaptation fans (like Anne Sexton's Transformations, and The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter), but as widely read as those are, yeah, they are weird.
Adorable Gender-Swapped Fairy Tale Princes by Yudi Chen
Flavorwire, yet again, gave us this beautiful series of gender-swapped fairy tale art: a long-bearded Rapunzel, a merman saving an Inuit princess from drowning, a beastly beauty, a king jealous of his stepson, and several others that display a fresh look at fairy tales with surprisingly unforced tenderness.
Meryl Streep is a huge Witch in the Into the Woods movie
WHAT? Amazing. She is simply in talks for the role, and this is by no means final, but Meryl Streep would play a fantastic witch in the Into the Woods movie. While I am still nervous about Disney doing my absolute favorite musical of all time, this seems to be a step in the right direction.
"I pad over and put out a paw. "Pleased to meet you, madam." She blushes, the varicose veins in her cheeks swelling with blood. Instead of taking my paw to shake, however, she turns it over as if it's a piece of bruised fruit in a market. "Hmmm..." She pores over my palm, nodding like a fortune-teller. Her spectacles slide comically down the bridge of her nose, and when she looks up at me, her face is full of mock astonishment. "Oh, my! What big teeth you have!" She giggles and kicks her slippered feet."
Henry Whelp is the son of the wolf who killed Little Red Riding Hood. This has been the defining characteristic of his existence. He is currently in St. Remus juvenile detention facility for dropping a brick onto a moving truck (a Nimbus truck like the one that killed his mother). When a sudden death reveals some lost letters from his father, Henry must break out and discover the truth of his father's crime at any cost....
Recently, the fairy tale blogosphere has been abuzz with a recent article by Adam Gidwitz, the author of A Tale Dark and Grimm and now In a Glass Grimmly. It is in response to the constant complaint that fairy tales are too scary for children, a favorite point of contention for me. He is enthusiastically in favor of reading original fairy tales to children and draws from personal experience:
While adults wring their hands over whether children should be exposed to the real Grimm, young people themselves have no such ambivalence. In my visits to schools I have witnessed the introduction of Grimm tales to thousands of children—elementary students in urban London, middle schoolers in rural Texas, high school students in suburban Baltimore—and the reaction is always the same: enthusiasm that borders on ecstasy.
Which is, I admit, a little strange. Grimm fairy tales are 200 years old. They do not feature guns or robots, they do not involve cliques or internet slang, they do not mention LeBron James or the WWE. They are not televised or computerized. They are the most primitive form of entertainment still in existence. How do they bewitch an auditorium full of tweens and adolescents? Why, contrary to adults’ expectations and apprehensions, are fairy tales so perfectly appropriate for these children?
He discusses how children LOVE violence and gore:
The children I meet literally cannot believe that Cinderella’s step-sisters dismember themselves to get the slipper to fit. And they really cannot believe that adults have been peddling the sweet, anodyne version of the story all this time, when there was another version that was so much cooler.
He talks about how fairy tale violence is much more digestible than real violence:
The explanation, I think—and this is the second reason that the real fairy tales are uniquely appropriate for children—is that the tales are not at all realistic. I once taught a six-year-old girl who suffered from insomnia. Her affliction was cured when we discovered that her mother let the girl watch the eleven o’clock news. This first grader could not sleep because she was watching accounts of fires, assaults, and deaths right before bedtime. But she loved Grimm fairy tales. For fairy tales signal clearly to children—through simple, matter of fact descriptions of unearthly events and keystone phrases like “Once upon a time”—that the land of the fairy tale is decidedly not the external world.
Lastly, he spoke about my absolute favorite reason why fairy tales are so important to read to children, complete with violence and gore:
The land of the fairy tale is not the external world. It is, rather, the internal one. The real Grimm fairy tale takes a child’s deepest desires and most complex fears, and it reifies them, physicalizes them, turns them into a narrative. The narrative does not belittle those fears, nor does it simplify them. But it does represent those complex fears and deep desires in a form that is digestible by the child’s mind. Sometimes I refer to this as turning tears into blood. Allow me to illustrate what I mean.
I often share the Grimm tale “Faithful Johannes” with groups of students. In this tale, a father decapitates his two children to save the life of his faithful old servant Johannes. This done, the old servant places the children’s heads back on, and they leap and frolic and play as if nothing at all has happened. After sharing this tale, I typically ask kids, “How would you feel if your parents cut off your head to save an old friend of theirs? Imagine, of course, that you came back to life—but they didn't know that you would. How would you really feel?”
What amazes me about kids’ responses to this question is that, not only are their answers always the same, from Los Angeles to London and everywhere in between, their answers almost always come in the same order. Maybe it has to do with the order in which I call on children. I usually call on a serious looking girl first. Her answer is almost always, “I would feel betrayed.” Next, I call on another girl. “I would feel angry.” Then, I call on a boy who looks like he’s going to jerk his arm out of its socket, he’s raising his hand so strenuously. “I would cut off their heads, and then I would shoot them with a machine gun, and then I would…” I let him indulge in his patricidal fantasy for a few more sentences, and then I say, “So you would want revenge?” And he says, “Yeah, revenge.” And then, usually fifth or sixth, a boy or a girl will say, “I would feel like maybe my parents didn't love me enough.” Which silences the room. Finally, I say, “I hope none of you have ever experienced any of those feelings. But I know I have. And maybe some of you have, too.” And the kids nod their heads and stare.
“Faithful Johannes” takes a host of amorphous, ambiguous, and uncomfortable feelings and puts them into terms that children know intimately—the terms of physical pain.
This is the exact approach that Gidwitz takes when he writes his books. A Tale Dark and Grimm (see my review) begins with "Faithful Johannes," and then follows the path of the betrayed children until they find some peace. While the tone of the story is glib and gory, he packs it full of visceral emotional lessons and experiences.
He drives it home by discussing how children put themselves in the mind of every character. The fairy tale characters are consciously empty vessels into which we pour ourselves:
In most fairy tales, the great wide world takes the form of a forest. Bruno Bettelheim, the great psychoanalytic interpreter of fairy tales, explains, “Since ancient times the near-impenetrable forest in which we get lost has symbolized the dark, hidden, near-impenetrable world of our unconscious.” Forests are where our fears turn into wolves, our desires into candy houses, where our fathers turn us loose to fend for ourselves, where the emotional problems we face at home are physicalized, externalized, and ultimately conquered. Where tears are transformed into blood.
This physicalization of emotion is so powerful for children because every child has fallen and bruised himself. Every child has felt hungry, even if only in our well-fed, First World way. Every child has had a cut that has bled. And so every child knows that the bruise stops hurting, the food does eventually come, the blood clots, scabs over, heals. When a child reads about emotional pain—betrayal and loneliness and anger at parents—in terms of blood, he comes to understand that those pains too will heal, that salty tears also dry.
He quotes G.K. Chesterton who states something rather comforting about fairy tales, and rather depressing about realism:
G. K. Chesterton, in defending fairy tales from Victorian do-gooders, explained, “Folklore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is—what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is—what will a madman do with a dull world?” Children are indeed healthy men in a fantastic world. From their perspective, they are the only ones who make any sense, and everyone else, adults in particular, are shadowy incomprehensibles. (I tend to agree with children on this point.)
In the end, he advises us to trust our children. They know what is good for them and what is not. If a book is too scary or too much for them, they will put it down. If a book is good for them, as many sleepy parents will attest, they will demand it again and again.
This article is probably the most concise and well-stated argument for scary fairy tales that I have ever read. It sums up my feelings on the matter perfectly!
SurLaLune turned my attention to the fact that Phillip Pullman's version of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales has come out! Check out the really beautiful book trailer!:
From the sounds of it, Pullman has really added some twinkle to the language of the stories. While still maintaining their fairy tale structure and rhythm, he has added tiny details that give you a sharper view of the story and appeal to your senses. The Telegraph states that the stories "have a swift yet stately sense of movement, the storytelling stripped down to the very basics. They manage to be gripping, even if their structure has a hypnotic regularity." However, Pullman has added "sprinklings of wit."
I'm interrupting my apparently rampent bitterness at fairy tales in pop culture today (my last few posts are really kinda cynical!), to bring you something that makes my heart go "weeeee!" It goes "weeee!" for two reasons: 1) it is an infographic, and I loves me some infographics and 2) it is about Joseph Campbell and the stages of the hero's journey. I am a huuuuge sucker for Joseph Campbell and his Hero's Journey and his Masks of God and his "Follow your Bliss" and his wise life lessons based on myth and fairy tales.
If you are unfamiliar with Joseph Campbell, or are a huge fan and would love to see a documentary about his ideas, here is the trailer for Finding Joe (which I have yet to see, but looks awesome!):
This is a little bit old news, and already reported on by Once Upon a Blog (see her post for a letter from JGL), but since it is so exciting, and one of my very favorite stories, I wanted to post about it too!
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, of awesome things fame, has collaborated with artists and writers to create a book called Little Red Riding Hood Redux. It is the first issue in his new quarterly publication thehitREcorderly. It looks dark and delicious, funny and sexy! And it includes cut outs! It is the perfect mix of two of my favorite things: fairy tales and awesome silly and fun artistic collaboration.
You can subscribe to the hitREcorderly or just buy the single issue of Little Red here. I did!
Oh my goodness, I am so behind. Thanks for sticking with the blog, even when I am MIA!
As many of you know, Maurice Sendek, beloved children's author responsible for such wonderful books as Where the Wild Things Are, Outside Over There, and In the Night Kitchen, died recently. Everyone has been doing touching retrospectives of the man, and one theme that jumped out at me was something we have addressed about scary fairy tales: children are capable of more than we give them credit for. Children need to be told the truth. Children need to address scary concepts, because childhood is frightening. It is a time of scary changes, where everything is new and uncertain. They know bad things are happening, but no one will explain it to them. Sendek didn't pull punches in his books, and addressed issues that sometimes made parents squeamish.
Amanda Katz, in in the NPR article Who's Afraid of Sendek's Stories? Adults, Mostly, discusses her personal experience with Outside Over There, and how it's dark material gave narrative form to concepts she already experienced:
"In 1981, when Outside Over There was published, I was an older sister to a round-cheeked 1-year-old boy who looked not unlike Ida's baby sister: big eyes, silky blond hair. Little wonder that I was fascinated by these stories of girls working out their loyalty to siblings in a bewildering world. The duty to watch a baby, perhaps too much for a child who would rather play her horn, or read; the sense of dark forces brooding at the edge of the picture, like the incomprehensible adult tensions and constraints that float over the head of every child (those goblins are present from the very first page); the terrifying feeling of making a mistake, but also the hope that even a grievous error was one you yourself could remedy; even Sendak's surreal illustrations of goblins melting into water or Ida twisting in the sky: All of this made intuitive sense to me. It was a vision of the world that was not only comforting, by the end of the book, but somehow illustrative — of how to be responsible, of how to be brave, of how to live surrounded by the incomprehensible.
When I look at this book now, I feel that same haunting familiarity — and I also see why adults who did not grow up with it might suppose it a bizarre and even slightly creepy choice for children. A child abducted when you fail to watch, an impostor baby that melts in your arms, an absent father and a seemingly depressed mother, goblins, infant brides, children tumbling out of the house into midnight thunderstorms: Is this what you'd buy for your kid? ... Is this really what children want? For me, the answer was yes....
Sendak himself — who told Stephen Colbert in an interview this January that he did not write for children but simply wrote — somehow escaped our sentimental notions about the need to protect kids from the loss and peculiarity of life. In his books, children learn about things that are orderly — alligators all around and doing dishes, or the niceness of sipping chicken soup in January when slipping on the sliding ice. But he also shows them disorderly worlds beyond their own, ones full of goblins and wild things, that they can visit and still go home. Meanwhile, he reminds adults — even those of us who were once those young and fascinated readers, but who are grown now — to trust our children, who may in the end be less fearful of climbing outside than we are to watch them do it." (my emphasis)
Maria Konnikova, in the Scientific American article The Power of “Once upon a Time”: A Story to Tame The Wild Things, analysed the idea of the "once upon a time" in fairy tales as a way of distancing the reader from the story, so they can look at difficult situations safely. She then uses Sendek's books as examples of how stories let us live out our fears and anxieties safely so that we can be more prepared for them in the real world:
"[I]n a broader sense, I would argue that modern psychology has borne Sendak’s view of openness out repeatedly, in the development of cognitive behavioral therapies and the recognition that fantasy, play, the realm of the imaginary are just the right place to deal with “basic anxiety.” That in writing things down, talking them through, constructing distancing scenarios, we become better able to handle our fears and our anxieties, to deal with the problems of our everyday existence. For, Sendak didn’t just offer the darkness. He showed how Max and all his other creations could see past it and overcome the anxieties that were unavoidable in life. “His narrative is almost always about a child in danger whose best defense is imagination,” notes Cynthia Zarin notes in her 2006 New Yorker profile."
"There’s darkness and violence and complexity throughout Sendak, just as there is throughout the fairy tales of Grimm and Andersen, just as there is in life. Sendak’s work allows children to come to terms with their fears and nightmares. The Wild Things can be tamed, turned into big teddy bears, no longer frightening monsters of the id.
It’s hardly an accident, then, that Sendak’s major works so often take the form of quests. The story opens in the “real” world, but the heroes or heroines soon journey into a strange fantasy realm populated by bizarre creatures; there they perform a daring act of courage and eventually return to where they began. Such tales clearly image aspects of “growing up.” But they are always initially unsettling."
"'Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist,' Chesterton wrote. 'They already know that. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.'
Fear is integral to our childhoods. Everyone else is bigger, and much of each day is new. We fall, and bleed. There are ferocious dogs, and strange noises in the dark, and nightmares, and the contempt of other kids, and the screaming of angry adults.
And there is the news, on television and around the kitchen table, that a whole bunch of people in office buildings in New York City died, that a family was shot by its daddy, that there's a war on. Children know they aren't entirely safe.
That's why it's better to give a child a book full of fears to be faced than one that pretends there's nothing to be afraid of."
Johnathan Cott, in his fantastic Rolling Stone article Maurice Sendek, King of All the Wild Things, examines fairy tales and Sendek's work, and quotes Sendek's acceptance speech for the 1964 Caldecott Medal for Where The Wild Things Are:
"[There are] games children must conjure up to combat an awful fact of childhood: the fact of their vulnerability to fear, anger, hate, frustration – all the emotions that are an ordinary part of their lives and that they can perceive only as ungovernable and dangerous forces. To master these forces, children turn to fantasy: that imagined world where disturbing emotional situations are solved to their satisfaction. Through fantasy, Max, the hero of my book, discharges his anger against his mother, and returns to the real world sleepy, hungry and at peace with himself.
Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences.
That is obvious. But what is just as obvious – and what is too often overlooked – is the fact that from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, that fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, that they continually cope with frustration as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.
It is my involvement with this inescapable fact of childhood – the awful vulnerability of children and their struggle to make themselves King of All Wild Things – that gives my work whatever truth and passion it may have."
"Sendak railed against what he perceived to be an insidiously overprotective parent culture. The evidence does suggest we adults sometimes take our good-natured desire to protect children from unpleasantness to perverse depths. I see it in the phenomenon of 'helicopter parenting,' for instance—the misguided attempt to thwart all potential pitfalls through hovering omnipresence. We seek to foil internal darkness, too, by plying young people with antidepressants and anxiety medication. And we're highly sensitive about showing children any sort of 'challenging' material, even in cases when censorship verges on absurd. The new documentary Bully, which depicts the brutal realities of life in the hallway and playground, was initially deemed "too violent" for children, the very audience it portrays, and attempts to reach."
He also frames the conversation in fairy tale terms:
"Psychologists, child specialists, and literary critics alike argue that stories allow children to tame threatening feelings that might otherwise overwhelm them. In The Uses of Enchantment, child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim suggests that fairy tales help children externalize, and ultimately diffuse, their deepest anxieties. 'The child must somehow distance himself from the content of his unconsciousness and see it as something external to him [if he is] to gain any sort of mastery over it,' Bettelheim writes. This is why so many fairy tales take place in the deep and mysterious woods--it is the realm of the subconscious, where the wandering child-mind can encounter its fears and wants in reified form, then neutralize them.
Bettelheim offers the folktale classic 'Little Red Riding Hood' as one example. 'The kindly grandmother undergoes a sudden replacement by the rapacious wolf which threatens to destroy the child.' It's a terrifying transformation—unrealistic and, some might say, unnecessarily scary. 'But when viewed in terms of a child's way of experiencing,' Betteheim asks, 'is it really any more scary than the sudden transformation of his own kindly grandma into a figure who...humiliates him for a pants-wetting incident?' In other words, the wolf and grandmother are two sides of the same person, the physical embodient of a parent's bewildering duality. The fable helps the child reckon with the sudden, confounding changes that scare her."
I leave you with this conversation between Maurice Sendek and Stephen Colbert:
With all this talk about kickass princesses, the princes are feeling somewhat neglected. Even ordinary princesses who do nothing heroic have the story named after them, rather than the prince (See my opinion on Passive and Dumb Heroines).
Enter author Christipher Healy, who has written a book about those neglected princes, The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom. I will leave the book details to other bloggers, but in a recent interview on the blog Stories are Good Medicine, Healy described the way he created his fairy tale characters by digging deep into the original stories to glean what sort of person would make those choices:
Question: Christopher, your book has four main protagonists – Frederic, Gustav, Liam and Duncan — all former Prince Charmings (er, I mean, Princes Charming. As your character Duncan would remind me, the noun is made plural, not the adjective). Where did you come up with their off-kilter personalities? And tell us the truth – which one is closest to your own?
Christopher: Well, the original fairy tales don’t give us much to go on, but it was still important to me that my princes’ personalities made sense with what little we do know of these guys already. I asked myself, for instance: What do we know about Cinderella’s prince? He can dance. He’s sophisticated. And he’s got noble ladies swooning over him. But beyond that, we don’t know much. So I took what Charles Perrault gave me, and got creative with the rest. From that starting point, it’s not too much of a stretch to think that Prince Frederic is probably not very outdoorsy, perhaps a little too focused on his fashion choices, and (to put it mildly) not the most daring guy in the world.
I did the same for all the princes. Rapunzel’s prince wants to rescue her, but never thinks to get a ladder — so Gustav is the kind of guy who rushes into things without thinking. Sleeping Beauty’s prince actually rescues an entire kingdom in his story, and gets major kudos for it — so Liam bases his entire identity on heroics and has a bit of an ego about it. Snow White’s prince gets lucky by wandering through the forest and stumbling upon a bewitched princess to kiss — so Duncan is a carefree oddball who spends a lot of time walking the woods by himself, just waiting to see where life takes him next...
Question: Your book plays with the princess stereotype as well. How did you decide on your princess’ personalities?
Christopher: While I did work to make sure that my princesses were different from previous depictions of those same characters (especially their film incarnations), I crafted their personalities the same way I did the princes. I built them out of the original stories. Cinderella worked hard labor for years, so she’s tough and strong. Rapunzel has the power to heal people with her tears (in the original tale), so here she’s got a bit of a savior complex. Sleeping Beauty was hidden away and catered to for her whole childhood, and has thus ended up somewhat spoiled.
And Snow White, just like her prince, spends a lot of time wandering the forest and chatting with wildlife, so as it turns out, she’s actually a good match for Duncan.
But those were just starting points for the princesses. The ladies come into the spotlight a whole lot more in Book II, and the further changes you’ll see there should come across as a natural evolution for the characters. (Full interview)
I love this method of finding character! So many people complain that fairy tale characters in their original form are too flat and uninteresting, and that is often the case. We never get to see what they are feeling, or what they are thinking, just what they do. But I think its a great game to extrapolate what sort of person they are from the actions that they take.
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