"Final Thoughts About Folk/Literary Fairytales"

When people define the word “Folktales”, it seems like an interesting subject to read about it and I would always think about a good story and so many creative imaginary characters. Based on what I read from this course, I would define the term “Folk/Literary Fairytales” as a fantasy classic tale or story that include many of the fantasized characters and the cultures of the classic tales are much different from one another and it is still being passed down from generations to generations.

In the very beginning of this course, I find folk/fairytale to be very interesting and informative. The reason I wanted to take this course is because I was interested in getting to know what was behind the true origins of the folk/fairytales. Ever since I was a child, I have read many different fairytale books that involve fantasy creatures, magic spells, illusions, dimensions, sad, and happy endings. At first, I always thought that fairytales is mostly intended for children because there are many magical creatures such as goblins, dragons, elves, gnomes, princess, fairies, witches, wizards and so much more. I had no idea there existed the original versions that is written by the original author compared to the printed versions (such as Disney).  For the first time ever, I have been informed that the fairytales I’ve known from my childhood are not nearly the same as the original classical folk/fairytales written by the original author because both the printed version and the original version had different endings & cultures and at the same time I felt that it nearly ruined my childhood.

"Bluebeard Illustrations"

This illustration is done by George Melies, it was published in 1901, and it came from a short silent film called "Barbe Bleu". It portrays Bluebeard's wife who opened up a room at the end of the hall that she's banned from looking in and she finds all the bodies of the previous wives in a bloody mess. She decided to open up that room because she couldn't control her curiosity.

"Bluebeard" was first written down by Charles Perrault who also wrote "Sleeping Beauty", "Cinderella", and "Little Red Riding Hood" and is known as the father of the modern fairy tale. But Bluebeard is remarkable for being a fairy tale without much magic; it's very much about real people. It also reads as fairly modern in some ways. It was written in the 17th century, but it's about a man who goes on a bunch of business trips and his smart, curious unsatisfied wife! Bluebeard is rich, generous and owns several beautifully furnished homes. He's also lonely and thought of as ugly (indicated by the hideous blue beard.) And he has a terrible reputation for marrying frequently and having these wives then mysteriously disappear. A young, unnamed heroine marries him anyway, with much pressure from her impoverished family. He gives her a full set of keys for exploring all the castle's innumerable treasures as he goes off on his frequent business trips, but he also gives her one small key to a room at the end of the hall that she's banned from looking in. Temptation! So, of course, she has to have a peek. She does and finds all the bodies of the previous wives in a bloody mess. A spot of blood gets on the key, and the only fantastic element of this story is that the spot won't disappear. Once Bluebeard sees the bloodied key he has to kill her, at least according to his rules.

"The Role of Food in Hansel & Gretel"

In Hansel & Gretel, the bread plays an important role of the story. It appears in many forms with several metaphoric meanings.

There exist a quote that states "Bread is basically the food of the poor. It is also seen as the most basic life sustaining food" (Matthews 1962).

The struggle to provide bread for the children illustrates the family's poverty and quest for basic survival. To me the bread symbolizes hope, survival and transformation.

"The path from the production of the grain to the bread is a path of transformation of natual product into a specifically human form of nourishment" (Dieckmann 1986).

In the story of Hansel and Gretel, the food had lead them a dangerous situation. The idea of having a house made of cake is the idea of luring the children in. When they came across a house that are made of bread, cake, sugar, and peppermint, they began eating it because it was necessary for survival and even the witch told them they can eat as much as they want but they have no idea why. That was until later, the siblings found out that the old woman happens to be a witch. The witch wanted to feed the children so she can catch them, kill them, cook them and eat them.

"Werewolf and Little Red Riding Hood"

When I read the story about Bisclavret, I was shockingly surprised about the human soul of Bisclavret and how different were the society back then. De France informed us that she remiss to omit the lay of Bisclavret, a werewolf from the old days of Brittany. She begins her tale by introducing a noble and handsome baron who is loved by all in his home realm of Brittany. De France describes the werewolf as a savage beast who "eats men, wreaks evil, does no good", "he lives lives and roams in the deep wood". While I was reading the tale, one thing I didn't expect to happen is that the half man, half wolf sadly gets rejected by his wife after he confesses to her about his wolf transformation. That's when Marie reveals the wife's true feelings - she is disgusted and no longer "wished to lie with him". To me that sounds really harsh because the wife sees him as a brutal beast, the way he disappears into the woods and she would no longer accept him for who he is. I was actually surprised about the way the King reacted to the wolf, out of many people who fear and ran away, the King is the only person who sees the humanity within the wolf. What really surprised me is that the highest level of admiration is what lead the King to bring the wolf into his kingdom and to treat him with much love and care. Let's say the wolf attacks the wife or a thief, the king would simply stand by his side and believed in him instead of judging, and clarify the misunderstanding about the wolf attacking someone. Overall, it is an interesting story that I have read.

According to the class note "The Wolf as Symbol", the wolf came "to represent the unacceptable faces of society: sexual predation in LRRH just like the way he used to bully the Three Little Pigs. The sexual connotation is kind of odd, the part where LRRH (as a teenger rather than a child) seduces the werewolf in bed (rather than escaping from the wolf) and it shows the violent inner nature of a man.

"Red's Downfall"

After reading both Grimm's and Perrault's version of Little Red Riding Hood, I have come to the conclusion both of these versions made Red responsible for her own downfall. However, Red is not entirely responsible for her own downfall because she has only been following a direct order from her mother. Red's mother should have been even more responsible for her own safety and she should have taken this opportunity to give Red guidance about talking to strangers. Since Red's mother was in charge of her daughter, she should be held responsible for her downfall. Some people kept saying that it's Red's own fault for not following her mother's directions correctly, I don't think it's 100% true.

"Interpreting Little Red Riding Hood"

I mostly prefer Susan's interpretation about women being the victims of male violence because the reading mentions about LRRH and her grandmother being equally defenseless before the wolf's strength and cunning, they are both helpless, the wolf having to swallow both females and LRRH being a parable of rape. To me, it is mostly true. Susan believes that women are the target of male violence and because they were defenseless, they have no choice but to go through a difficult disaster unless someone steps in and save their lives.

"Unhappy Ending Between Disney and the Original Fairytales"

 After reading an article about the difference between Disney's happy ending and the original stories ending, I was terrified about the fact that every endings of each stories was eerie, disturbing, terrifying, and most of them has negative contents compared to every Disney films I've seen as a kid. As an adult, it is time to step in and get to know the real truth about the endings of the original fairytale's plot line. I like the way Disney created a much better world which is why I prefer the happy endings of Disney's versions of the fairytales storyline. The reason I prefer Disney's films rather reading the original fairytale's storyline is because it is incredibly entertaining, it always puts a smile on every children's face including mine, it is something that I am mostly comfortable with. In my opinion, Disney may have alternatively made some changes to the fairytales plot and storyline but it doesn't mean he actually ruined the classic fairytales; he wanted to make the viewers pleasurable and appeal to the American society by bringing us happy endings and yet he succeeded.

"Illustrations of Little Red Riding Hood"

These are illustrations of Little Red Riding Hood that was nicely hand drawn since 03/22/11 by Julie or by the user name "juliefofisss" from deviantart.com

As I observed this illustration, it looks quite similar to the Brothers' Grimm version. This image shows Little Red Riding Hood who is not an innocent, helpless little girl who gets eaten by the big bad wolf but a little girl who took over leadership and control of the wolf. Instead, she is depicted as a girl who is empowered, strong minded character, and she was able to show the big bad wolf who's boss. This image tells me that Little Red Riding Hood shows no mercy and would not let anybody get in her way.

"Breaking the Disney Spell" by Jack Zipes

In the article “Breaking the Disney Spell”, Zipes point out that because “Disney was so obsessed with the fairytale genre and he felt drawn to fairytales because they reflected his own struggles in life” (p.343), this is what led Disney to ruin the classics by making some changes from the original fairytales. I personally don’t think that Disney has ruined the fairytales, instead I think Disney made an expansion and accessible to many different people at different ages. I disagree with Zipes’ argument because it seems to me that Disney has succeeded in making alternatives changes in order to target audiences including children and he probably didn’t want most of the children to be exposed to several contents that are quite disturbing. What Disney had in mind is that, he wanted to take the original classic fairytales and turn it into something even more beautiful, colorful, and pleasurable for the viewers in order to attract more audiences by adding a happy ending, new background scenes, creating motion pictures, and redesigning the characters because he wanted to have much better dreams rather than following the original plot of the fairytales.

Newspaper Articles

After I finished reading two articles from "The Daily Mail" and "The Huffington Post", I was very sadly disappointed due to the fact that today there are certain fairytales books (like Cinderella, Hansel & Gretel, Rapunzel, etc) that are not being read to children and that parents are choosing modern books over classic tales because they thought classic fairytales are considered to be scary. It is true that there are some classic fairytales that contains themes that are negative, too unrealistic or quite disturbing such as the kidnapping, stealing, executions, inappropriate word like 'dwarve' (quite hard to believe) but I would encourage parents to give their children the moral of the story after reading it instead of omitting books that they felt it was inappropriate for them, to wait until their children reach the age of 5 so that parents can select which fairytales are suitable for them and to gain more knowledge to help them prepare to answer any questions their children might have. By the time children get older, they want to be able to experience many other fairytales that they haven't read yet.

"Snow White and Her Natural Beauty"

Snow White is one of the greatest classical fairytale. Because of her natural born beauty, the 7 Dwarves were nicely enough to let her stay at their home and provide her food as well as protection in only under one condition, she has to maintain the house and keep everything spotless and well organized. In some other classical fairytales, men would reward women with beauty under any condition depending on the situation. There are several other women who get jealous of a woman’s beauty and they are quite similar to the evil witch. The evil witch was so jealous of Snow White’s beauty; she would simply come up with a plan to kill her and it is also the same thing as what Snow White's mother wanted to do. The prince chose Snow White for her beauty and Snow White accepted the marriage proposal without thinking about it because of the fact the he is a prince and he’s rich & powerful. She was not given any other choices for that matter, she would rather live with him and have a happy life.

"Someday My Prince Will Come"

When we discuss about gender roles, we learn about the behavioral and associational patterns towards many children and the effects they have after reading or watching their favorite classical fairytales. According to Leiberman, “Only the best known stories, those that everyone has read or heard, those that Disney has popularized, have affected masses of children in our culture (p.383-84). It is absolutely true, whenever children read or watch any fairytales whether it is from a book or video, they became brainwashed into thinking there will always be a happy ending such as perfect marriages, a kiss from a charming prince or becoming a beautiful princess. Leiberman pointed out that children are under the impression that their beauty and asset can get them exactly what they always wanted especially rewards. Leiberman stated that “Since girls are chosen for their beauty, it is easy for a child to infer that beauty leads to wealth, that being chosen means getting rich” (p.386). It is true and today this kind of behavior still happens. Today, beauty and money isn't everything at all, we all have to work really hard in order to earn a reward. A woman can be very beautiful from the outside however; most men may not know is that her attitude might unacceptable, for the things they say and how they portray themselves. This is something that we all need to be aware of. What most girls (under the age of 10) may not know is that sometimes beauty can lead to jealousy, rage, and it can also be very competitive.

"Folk Literature: An Operational Definition" by Utely

When it comes to fairytales, everything was passed out from generations to generations simply by telling a story. Utley raised a point that stories can be altered by the reader because they’ll either tell it from their point of view or how exactly did they remember it. Without any evidence, it’s impossible to tell whether the story is real or a fiction. The term Folklore has been defined as a “part of culture but not the whole of culture which includes myths, legends, tales, proverbs, riddles and the texts of ballads and other songs” (Utley 4). Folktale has been defined by Utley as a verbal art or a tale that simply let the story be passed down from one person to other people. What really surprised me about this reading is how complicated it is to find the original version of the folktale that is written by the original author. A lot of people may not know what was behind the origins of the folktales because as a child, we were first introduced the printed version of the folktales that was altered by different authors which led us to believe that each folktales includes a happily-ever-after ending. Today, the printed version of the folktales is not nearly the same as the original version and it’s hard to believe whether these folktales are fictional or non-fictional unless there exist a biography that is done by the original author. Due to a number of folktales, the quest to find the origins could be a major issue.

Introduction to Folktales & Literary Fairytales

"What image of womanhood is represented in this piece and how does that image uphold or subvert expectations regarding the female gender?"

Every week there will be a post answering this question regarding a specific reading.