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Fairy tales: Evil? Yay or Nonny No?

McAvennie

McAvennie

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Mar 13, 2003
Messages
3,998
All fairy tales are evil and horrible when thunk about as an adult. Except Chicken Licken, that's a humdinger with a twist thayt trumps the Sixth Sense.

Rumplestiltskin keeps a sexy maiden tied up in his shed, dirty old man. Should definitely be on the Sex Offenders list.
As should the troll who attempts to kidnap/attack Billy Goat's Gruff. It's obscene.
Rapunzel is another whose face is probably on milk carton's everywhere, and poor old Hansel and Gretel, kidnapped, caged and destined for the fire and cannibalism!
Then there's little red riding hood, is he really a wolf or just a dirty old hairy man. Pretends to be Grandma but he has probably already 'eaten' Grandma and is now looking for his next victim.

The whole thing is repulsive if you ask me.
 
Fairy tales are deliciously evil. After all they are just morality tales to scare kids into being good......so I vote Yay and the nastier the better..........
 
I doubt if very many old and traditional tales were written for an audience
of children at all. Telling tales was something that whole social groups would
enjoy and, like germs, they were often orally transmitted.

The Grimms and others collected their stories at a time when the oral
culture was dying and urban life was beginning to erode local traditions.
They put them in writing to preserve them and for study by the newly
literate classes. With this rise in private reading, simple stories gave way
to novels for adults. So folk tales became the preserve of academics and
children, later providing much fodder for psychiatrists.

There had been old rhymes and tales expressly for kiddies but
most of the earlier ones were so morally improving that they have not survived.

If you think the Grimms are horrid, you should look up some of the Czech ones
by Erben! :eek:
 
And of course they were all tidied up for the delicate minds of todays kids, you don't get the blood in todays Cinderella.
 
I do remember vaguely hearing that fairy tales were originally aimed at adults, but over time they passed into the hands of children ...
 
There was a brilliant series of traditional european fairy tales on TV several years back - I think it was called "The Storyteller" with John Hurt as the storyteller and numerous muppet type creatures - a lot better than it sounds - I remember the stories were particularly dark...

edit...

The scripts were written by Anthony Minghella of The English Patient fame, the book is out of print and of the 9 episodes made there are only 4 available on video :(
 
That was a great series- we loved it when I was little, a real case of the timelessness of traditional stories.

If you find fairytales too distressing don't panic- take a look at the book of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories - that clears up any frightening or socially unnacceptable elements returning the stories to the good, clean, PC fun they were always supposed to be :D
 
There was an 80's movie called Freaky Fairy Tales, though it's been so long I don't recall much of it.

I can remember a teacher reading us Bluebeard when I was in primary school and it scarred the sh*t out of me.

Marie
 
The Master StoryTeller

Check out the book "No Go the Bogeymen" by Marina Warner. It is one of the best overviews of the cultural ramifications of fairy tales I have ever read!


Trace Mann
 
Just a snippet:
In late medieval times, Cinderella's slipper had been a fur one, not glass. And that was a euphemism, because (at least in the German version) the girls gave the prince their "fur slipper" to try on... The story came to us through the French, and in that language "verre" can be either glass or fur [not strictly correct, I think - "vair" is the French for a type of fur]. The Grimm brothers went for the hygienic alternative, saving parents the danger of embarrassing explanations.
Rumpelstiltskin was an interestingly sexual parable, too, a tale to programme the idea that female masturbation leads to sterility. The miller's daughter, put in the barn to "spin straw into gold", virginally sits on a little stick that becomes a little man... The denouement has the little man, when his name is finally identified, jumping in to "plug" the lady very intimately, and the assembled soldiers can't pull him out. [...] If you doubt this interpretation, enjoy the indirection; "What is his name? What is his name?" recurs in the story. What is his name? What is a stilt with a rumpled skin? The name has an equivalent derivation in many languages, too.
Click to expand...
From The Science of the Discworld II. The Globe (it's a serious book, honest!).
 
The Globe is indeed a very serious and thought-provoking book that just happens to be very funny too :)

Stories help to define who we are, and change as society changes... morality tales for adults become fairy tales for children, then become urban legends, which then become morality tales again. I find the process facinating.

Jane.
 
p.younger said:
And of course they were all tidied up for the delicate minds of todays kids, you don't get the blood in todays Cinderella.
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i don't get what you mean. can you please explain a bit for me. it sounds interesting.
 
Toffeenose said:
i don't get what you mean. can you please explain a bit for me. it sounds interesting.
Click to expand...

Well for, example, in Cinderella the wicked sisters cut off their toes in an attempt to get their feet into the slipper, and in Snow White the wicked step mother has her feet forced into red hot iron shoes and dances 'til she dies.
 
My mother refused to read me Mr Fox from Joseph
Jacobs fairytales when I was a kid because it was a gruesome serial killer story ( I just got unknowing babysitters to read it to me instead :D ) and The Hobyahs from the same source is also a hideous story of animal torture-a farmer cuts body parts off his living dog night after night as a punishment because it barks a warning at the hobya imps and the farmer doesn't see them,finally he cuts off the dogs head, wherupon the hobyas carry him off.
 
Timble said:
Well for, example, in Cinderella the wicked sisters cut off their toes in an attempt to get their feet into the slipper, and in Snow White the wicked step mother has her feet forced into red hot iron shoes and dances 'til she dies.
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is this in the brothers grimm books? i need to give 'em a read.
 
In the original sleeping beauty I believe the heroine is awakened by full sex rather than just a kiss.
 
Blueswidow said:
In the original sleeping beauty I believe the heroine is awakened by full sex rather than just a kiss.
Click to expand...
Has anyone ever seen a copy of that version, or does it really come from the overheated mind of some trick cyclist, or feminist, or other?
 
Blueswidow said:
In the original sleeping beauty I believe the heroine is awakened by full sex rather than just a kiss.
Click to expand...
that's what i call a rude awakening...

...i'll get my coat.
 
The writer Marina Walker explores many of the above ideas in her two last books, 'From the Beast to the Blonde,' and 'No Go The Bogeyman'.

I believe , in the original version of Little Red Riding Hood, that the concept of the Wolf devouring the little girl was highly sexual.

With regards to 'sanitised' versions of old tales etc. I read . on the back of a packet of childrens sweets recently , the rhyme about the old woman who lived in a shoe( the one who had so many children she didn't know what to do...)

In the original version..she beat them all soundly and sent them to bed.....

In the new one...........she KISSED them all soundly and sent them to bed..........

Fluffy yes!!!But now no longer making sense.


Certainly I can say that my own children loved grisly fairy-tales....the grislier the better.......but in the context of being in a loving family home........safe in knowing that the monsters were not going to get them. I do find the whole subject of folk-lore and fairy tales endlessly fascinating..particularly (as prev. posted......) the 'development' of such stories over a period of time.
 
Breakfast said:
I will never understand girls and shoes.
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Maybe if they buy enough shoes, they'll find the one that turns them into a princess. Or something.
 
AND WE ALL KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO JACK'S CROWN!!!!

Hi P.Younger.........Sorry I can't quote in bold......but I have only been using a computer for a month!!!!

Was v.interested in your referance to Jack's Crown...

Please explain.

I originally read,many years ago, that the story of Jack and Jill is based on an old Norse saga. In the original version,Jacob and Hulda were victims of a cruel mother , forced to fetch water from a high mountain spring.To spare them furthar suffering , the Gods took the children and placed them in the sky as constellations.
Jacks' crown is indeed his head...the second verse explaining how 'he was buttered with vinegar and brown paper apon his knob' Offensive though this may sound now!!!Knob was old english for head..........as in a Copperknob !!!Someone with red hair.
The use of vinegar and brown paper to draw out injuries is well within common memory.As a nurse in the 70's I often encountered elderly patients in casualty who were wearing such home-made poultices.Indeed my Scottish Grannie insisted my brother (he's now in his 50's!!) be treated with just such a poultice to prevent chest-infection.
I live in a small village and recently a member of the Parish Council insisted the original rhyme of Jack and Jill was based on the steep hill that leads up to the village!!!This is so not true!!I couldn't be bothered with the argument that would have followed though....so said nothing!!
If you know other details regarding this rhyme I would be most interested to hear them.I have a particular interest in Norse sage being Danish/Norwegian on my mothers side.

Thanks.
 
This looks promising...

Gilliam's next movie.


" August 2003 - Terry Gilliam's project Brothers Grimm has been shooting in Prague now for five weeks. The film began shooting on 30 June at the medieval Krivoklat Castle, outside the Czech capital. The shoot is scheduled to last 17 weeks, mostly on stages and the backlot at the Barrandov Studios. "
 
AndroMan said:
Has anyone ever seen a copy of that version, or does it really come from the overheated mind of some trick cyclist, or feminist, or other?
Click to expand...

I think most of these adult reconstructions involve correcting supposed shifts
in the earliest written versions. The fur slipper is often cited as being
as a simple mis-hearing of ver as verre. How far the Grimms et al bowdlerised sexual
content is an interesting study - it seems possible the oral story-tellers were
quite capable of cleaning up their act for their posh visitors.

The rest I suspect is reductive Freudianism. I note that Rumplestiltskin sounds
suggestive in English but skin in German is Haut and a stilt is Stelze. Rumpel
incidentally means rubbish! :p
 
In the original sleeping beauty I believe the heroine is awakened by full sex rather than just a kiss.
Click to expand...

I wonder if that's where Dennis Potter got the idea for Brimstone & Treacle from?

Marie
 
AndroMan said:
Has anyone ever seen a copy of that version, or does it really come from the overheated mind of some trick cyclist, or feminist, or other?
Click to expand...

It was quoted in a BBC programme on the Brothers Grimm but I've never seen it in print, but then I've not been looking.
 
RE. The Rumpetstiltskin explanation..................

The Scottish version of this tale is 'Whuppity Stoorie' and stoor is an old Scottish term for dust,muck,grime etc. so there seems to be a link here, both versions including rubbish,mess etc.
 
Breakfast said:
I will never understand girls and shoes.
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:D

Does anyone remember the various children's series involving terrifying eastern European animation and shadow puppetry than ran through the early 80s? They were all based on fairy tales and I remember them as being deliciously eerie and lush.

Much like the fuzzy felt Moomins, in fact... ;)
 
Iron John

Anybody remember IRON JOHN by Robert Bly? He maintained this fairy tale was an analogy of acheiving manhood. Such as finding the wild man in the woods, and stealing the key from the queen etc! It caused quite a sensation in the early 90's in the states, and led to much beating of drums and male bonding.

He actually makes some good points for the existence of Jungian archetypes in these stories. It seems to suggest they were meant to sink into the dark unconscious and guide us for life.


Fairy tales...... Good Dark Nourishment!:vampire:
 
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