Fairy Tale Roundup: Cinderella Movie, Snow White and Rose Red, English Censorship, Werewolves vs. Little Red, and the OUAT Wonderland Trailer

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!

Radio: NPR's On Being with Maria Tatar

While I often post about radio interviews with fairy tale experts, few of them come close to this NPR interview with Maria Tatar. In the NPR series, On Being, which explores the big questions in human life, Tatar explores the world of fairy tales with Krista Tippet, an excellent and incredibly knowledgeable interviewer. They discuss the origins of fairy tales, the structure of fairy tales, fairy tales in popular culture, and fairy tales and children, all topics we have heard before, but they bring an immediacy and relatability to the discussion, bringing everything back to the big ideas we explore in our lives. (Click Here to Listen)

They discuss the idea of "Once Upon a Time," and how that phrase gives us permission to explore, to do things you would be afraid to do, to question things you wouldn't normally question because you are in a new and theoretical place.

They explore the "operatic beauty and monstrous terror" and the promise of "Happily Ever After" that combine to create fairy tales. The "Happy Ever After" is important, because it promises that there will be a way out. This, Tatar says, is why we can read them to children. No matter how dark it gets, there will be a happy ending.

Maria expounds upon her idea that fairy tales are not sacred texts. They are part of the "great cauldron of story." There is no original version, and each generation and culture changes the tale to speak to what they value and fear.

She states that there are no morals to fairy tales. The morality is highly ambiguous. However, there is wisdom to be gained from the tales. They discuss big ideas: sexuality and innocence, poverty and wealth, action and inaction, etc. She laughs that, in our modern cultures, we adapt the fairy tales so that we befriend the monsters, rather than defeating them. Fairy tales allow us to explore our values and ideas in a safe place.

She reflects on the fact that fairy tale themes are everywhere, in reality TV, Sex and the City as well as the fairy tale themed tv shows. Fairy Tale tropes are so entrenched in our culture, so primal, that they pop up in almost all of our stories. She feels that, in this time of great transition, we need the ancient wisdom of old stories to guide us, make us feel rooted.

She also discusses the very personal power of fairy tales to help you face your inner and outer demons. They are full of mysteries and puzzles that fascinate our brain that we use to help us figure out the world.

She tells of how she asks her students what books from childhood they brought to college. Most of the students don't remember the exact plot of the stories very well, but they always have a nugget of story that they cling to, something they strongly related to, a talisman they carry with them into this new place.

Finally, they talk about children, and how the liminal moment of bed time is a perfect meeting of generations, where those carring the nostalgia of fairy tales meet those who are hearing them for the first time. It is a co-storytelling, a time for asking questions and exploring what ifs, and what the story means for the world, and if it means anything at all.

It is an excellent interview, well-crafted and personal, bringing out the intimate and human nature of fairy tales.

And it ends with a clip from Game of Thrones, which is a mark of excellence in my book.

Movies: No Dark Cinderella and Maybe Witch Hunters is Awesome?

Photo by Dark Cherry on DeviantArt/ Official Movie Poster

The Cate Blanchett/ Mark Romanek Cinderella is a Bust
Gah! Just when we thought we might have a top-notch dark fairy tale coming down the studio pipe, Disney has decided that Mark Romanek's Cinderella is too dark for Disney. Click the link to hear Io9 rant and rave and echo my anger at this development. Fingers-crossed that some other studio has the gumption to snatch that project up. Disney doesn't need another regular Cinderella, or another modern twee Cinderella. Disney should have had the balls to delve. </rant>

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters Might Not Suck?
In other news, it turns out that Witch Hunters may not be so bad afterall? The new redband trailer has a tongue in cheek flavor to it:



My fellow blogger Drown My Books will probably disagree with me, but Jeremy Renner still has yet to earn a "I will see anything he is in" card from me. Gemma Arterton, on the other hand, from her performance in St. Trinians, I can definitely get behind. Something to Read for the Train (Cate, who is in fact a girl) weighs in with some really thoughtful remarks about the nature of fairy tales to reflect the values of the times, and how, while many had moral lessons, they were meant as entertainment. She also treats us to my favorite version of Little Red Riding Hood to illustrate her point.

I have a feeling it's gonna be an awesomely terrible action romp, with the cool fighting moves and awesome slow mo and dead-pan badass one-liners (I admit it! The "we'd do this shit for free" line in the trailer hooked me.) And I'm kind of ok with that. (Though, my fairy tale racism argument still stands!)

End of the Year Roundup: Cinderella Movie, Cinderella in the News, and Maria Warner on The Brothers Grimm

Chadwick Tyler's photo of Imogen Morris Clarke

Well, well, ladies and gentlemen. I have kind of dropped the ball for the end of the year! And I am ok with that. Rather than focusing on trying to get every little bit of fairy tale news that comes down the pike, this year, I am going to focus on the things that really spark my interest, that I really feel passionate about. This will mean that my posts are fewer and farther between, but it will also mean that I will be able to devote some quality time to the posts I decide to write.

Here, however, is a digest of some other news items we missed in the mean time:

Cate Blanchett to play Evil Stepmother in New Cinderella Movie
While, yes, I still feel that we need a greater diversity of fairy tale movies, I love me some Cate Blanchett. Here's hoping that her endorsement of the movie means it has a good script. The director is Mark Romanek who directed One Hour Photo and Never Let Me Go, so here's hoping he does it as awesome as those!

We Are the Folk, Volume II: Cinderella in the Closet and Blood in the Shoe
Something to Read for the Train examines two more news stories that smack of fairy tales in modern life, and not in a happy ending kind of way. She explores schadenfreude in a way that shed new light on the idea for me (the comfort not only that we are not getting shat upon by life like those guys over there, but that we are not the crazy ones so we will be ok). She also delves into a horrible case of child abuse as a parallel to Cinderella, insisting that the marriage and the slipper do not a Cinderella story make; it is about a girl who rises from the ashes of abuse. She goes on to discuss why we shouldn't shy away from the scary or the gory in fairy tales (a favorite tune of mine): "What I would claim is that a child who hasn’t been sheltered from fairy tales is going to have a little bit more in her mental arsenal when the shit hits the fan, if only because they might have just that much more faith that all will turn out well, and that help, in whatever form, is on the way."

Maria Warner's 10-Part BBC Broadcast about Fairy Tales
While I have not listened to all of them, the topics look fascinating! She traces the ancient origins, discusses those who contributed to the tales, examines the fate of the tales in the hands of Nazis, delves into the psychology of the tales, the history of their censorship, and the future of the tales. All topics we here at The Dark Forest love to talk about!

That is all for now. For anyone who wants to know, yes I did love Once Upon a Time's midseason finale. They know how to do a finale. I do think that Mulan and Aurora should get together, and damnit Regina is awesome and deserves to be happy, but from what I have seen of the clips from "The Cricket Game," this is not going to happen any time soon. Here's Io9's recap/review.

Interview: Fairy Tale Darwinism

The Huffington Post recently did a live hangout with Jack Zipes (preeminent fairy tale scholor), Tim Manley (fellow fairy tale blogger of Fairy Tales for 20 Somethings, and teacher/ writer), Donald Hasse (Editor of Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies), and Susan Kim (Writer and Filmmaker). They discuss the evolution of fairy tales, how fairy tales are a reflection of the culture, and what makes a fairy tale stand the test of time. And Jack Zipes goes off on how the original fairy tales are not good for children. You know how I feel about that. Though Adam Gidwitz says it better. 

He does also touch upon something we have discussed before, how modern interpretations have a faux-feminism, saying that all you have to do to empower women is have them swing a sword around. (See The Empowerment of Snow White). Should women have to "become masculine" to have power. Is wielding a sword (or fighting in general) masculine? Personally, I think if you have a weak female character whose only empowerment is having a sword, then yes, it is a sham. However, if the character herself is strong, no matter what she does, sword or knitting, she will be empowered. Any thoughts, viewers at home?

While the discussion is a bit all over the place, and it seems like the moderator wanted to tackle a bit too much for such a small time slot, it is an excellent interview! It is so great to see such different perspectives on fairy tales together in one (virtual) room. I just wish there was more time for them to argue.

Article: "In Defense of Real Fairy Tales"

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!

Article: Are Fairy Tales Too Scary for Children?

(From Culch.ie) 

Due to the recent popularity of fairy tales, there has been a growing discussion about how appropriate fairy tales are for children.

From the Telegraph:

"The survey of 2,000 adults was commissioned to mark the launch of the hit US drama GRIMM, which starts tonight at 9pm on Watch, and sees six gritty episodes based on traditional fairytales.

The poll found a quarter of parents polled wouldn't consider reading a fairytale to their child until they had reached the age of five, as they prompt too many awkward questions from their offspring...

... Steve Hornsey, General Manager, Watch, said: ''Bedtime stories are supposed to soothe children and send them off to sleep soundly.

''But as we see in GRIMM, fairytales can be dark and dramatic tales so it's understandable that parents worry about reading them to young children.''

''As adults we can see the innocence in fairytales, but a five year old with an over active imagination could take things too literally."

"TOP TEN FAIRYTALES NO LONGER READ TO CHILDREN
1. Hansel and Gretel - Details two kids abandoned in the forest and likely to scare young children
2. Jack and the Beanstalk - Deemed too 'unrealistic'.
3. Gingerbread Man - Would be uncomfortable explaining gingerbread man gets eaten by a fox
4. Little Red Riding Hood - Deemed unsuitable by parents who have to explain a young girl's grandmother has been eaten by a wolf.
5. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - the term dwarves was found to be inappropriate
6. Cinderella - Story about a young girl doing all the housework was outdated.
7.Rapunzel - Parents were worried about the focus on a young girl being kidnapped.
8.Rumplestiltskin - Wouldn't be happy reading about executions and kidnapping
9.Goldilocks and the Three Bears - Sends the wrong messages about stealing
10.Queen Bee - Inappropriate as the story has a character called Simpleton" (Full Article)

From Slate:

"Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia this summer argued that California shouldn’t be permitted to ban the sale of violent video games to kids because the games were no more violent than fairy tales. But his words could just as easily be an argument against the old folk tales—not against selling them, but certainly against treating them as bedtime fare for little ones. “Hansel and Gretel (children!) kill their captor by baking her in an oven,” Scalia wrote. He’s not the only one who feels that way. “I'm 51,” writes one parent at the Huffington Post. “I remember my parents telling me many of these fairy tales at bedtime and it scared the bejeebus out of me." A commenter at the New York Times writes, "They were creepy when I was a kid, and now seem creepy and inappropriate as an adult.”

There’s a tendency to jump to the conclusion that because modern parents are squeamish about violence in fiction we must be wussy and overprotective. But is it also wussy that we don’t spank anymore, or tell our children that they’re wicked? We don’t look at violence in the same way as we used to; it is not a threat for bad behavior, nor is it God’s punishment for sin. I’m sometimes troubled by reading even the most modernized versions of fairy tales to my daughter, who is  2½. It’s not that Walt Disney didn’t do his best to excise the violence from these creaky folk tales; fairy tale scholar Jack David Zipes has called him “that twentieth-century sanitation man.” But the lessons these cleansed tales impart are not ones I wish to teach, even if they are canonical to Western culture. Little Red Riding Hood is to blame merely for being curious and veering off her path to pick flowers. Beauty leads to happily-ever-afters. We have a Cinderella book, a gift from a friend, and when I read it to my daughter, I try to soften the wickedness of the evil stepsisters and stepmother. I omit the worst things they say— “a simple washer girl like you is no fit for royal company!”—and I make it so Cinderella doesn’t cry. Still, there’s no way around the basic premise that passivity and tears are rewarded. (I’m convinced Cinderella syndrome is why not enough of us ask for raises; we’re waiting for our bosses to notice how great we are. And I’m not the only one who believes Disney princesses aren’t the best role models for little girls.)

If altering fairy tales seems like politically correct white-washing, I would counter that it is the tradition of these folk tales to be changed by the era they’re in." (Original Article)

While I do think that some children are not ready for the unsanitized versions of fairy tales, I think it is something every parent should decide for themselves. I do not think that fairy tales should be removed from their experience all together. The parents are free to edit and embellish as they choose. I think it might be a bit too far to completely remove the cruelty of the villains, or to make it so the characters do not cry (as the Slate article hints). There are plenty of strong female options out there, either in different cultural versions of the same story (like in several of these versions of Little Red Riding Hood where she saves herself) or modern retellings of the story.

I heartily agree with C.S. Lewis, who defended fairy tales in his essay "Three Ways of Writing for Children" (found in Desiring God):

"Objection 3: Fairy tales will frighten children.

Lewis: We must carefully define what we mean by “frighten.” If we mean that we must not instill “disabling, pathological fears” in children, well and good. The trouble is that we often don’t know what will trigger such phobias in children (Lewis notes that his own night-terrors as a child centered on insects, something which he received from the real world and not from fairy tales).

But in making this objection, some mean that “we must try to keep out of [the child’s] mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil.” But we are born into a world like that, and hiding it from children actually handicaps them. “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. . . Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book” (39-40).

Indeed, Lewis argues that exposing children to the second type of fear can help them to overcome the first type of debilitating phobia. “I think it is possible that by confining your child to blameless stories of child life in which nothing at all alarming ever happens, you would fail to banish the terrors and would succeed in banishing all that can ennoble them or make them endurable. For in the fairy tales, side by side with the terrible figures, we find the immemorial comforters and protectors, the radiant ones. . . It would be nice if no little boy in bed, hearing, or thinking he hears a sound, were ever at all frightened. But if he is going to be frightened, I think it better that he should think of giants and dragons than merely of burglars. And I think St. George, or any bright champion in armour, is a better comfort than the idea of the police.” (Full article)

What do you think?