A study about fairy tale culture and its influence on children.
How does exploiting old time folk tales effect children today?
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Here is my dumping "ground' of information and notes on the subject.
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A short tale with a sad ending?
How does exploiting old time folk tales effect children today?
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Here is my dumping "ground' of information and notes on the subject.
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9/12/19
A short tale with a sad ending?
A never released short of The Little Matchgirl by Buena Vista studios
The girl sought to survive by selling matches, but her true happiness lies in her death. Only in her afterlife was she able to live happily by joining her beloved and comforting grandmother.
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9/19/19
"I believe that fairy tales in all their forms have such a profound meaning in our pursuit of happiness"
-Jack Zipes (Happily Ever After, Fairy Tales, Children and the Culture Industry)
The fairy tale demonstrated how to achieve "royal" status with the help of grace and good fortune.
Example: In Cinderella's story, we read how cruel her step-sisters were to her but her humble grace helped her through and was rewarded in the end.
Points
- means to distance one's self psychological from present situations to a magical realm.
-all structured similarly to promise happiness if one could properly read their plots and symbols, even when tragedy occurred. (IE. The Little Match Girl)
-regarded dangerous at first because they lacked Christian teaching.
-The fairy tale has not only been conceived and exploited to manipulate children and adults, it has also been changed to innovative ways to instill hope in its youthful and mature audiences so that no matter how bad their lives are, they can still believe that they can live happily ever after.
The question is how culture compromises our notion of the pursuit oh happiness gleaned from fairy tales.
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Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner (PDF)
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9/26/19
Complete eBook here.
The story La Storia Di Un Burattino was originally written as short stories for a children's publication Giornale Per I Bambini (Journal for Children). Thanks to Collodi's wild imagination, we have a rich commentary on what it meant to develop as a peasant boy in 19th century Italian society.
Walt Disney stopped work of the animation film because story line was too complicated and sometimes grim. He didn't embrace it whole heartedly until after he saw Yasha Frank's musical of Pinocchio in 1937. He didn't necessarily use Frank's story but was inspired to adapt it in his own way.
Pinocchio: An Examination of the Productions by Yasha Frank for the Federal Theatre Project.
Folk literature tale
More simplistic and familiar in a way that readers or listeners can easily comprehend and imagine.
Disney version
In Disney movies the story is enhanced through technology and it becomes a spectacle that sells better to viewers. The story is now not as important here as long as scenes are beautiful and give a overwhelming sensation to the viewers.
Read Articles:
Disney whitewashed the story of Pinocchio
The Impact of Pinocchio: History of Children's Literature
Pinnochio left for dead, hanging from a great old oak tree.
This is a scene where assassins leave Pinocchio hanging from a Great Oak tree, is an integral part of the "dark" aspects of the story. The woods can be perceived as a very dark place, and the scene with the great oak is one of the most crucial events for conveying how far Pinocchio has to fall before he can rise up and fulfill his goal of becoming a real boy.
Allegedly Collodi wrote this story as the ending of the series but he went on to write, ending with a happier note by fulfilling Pinocchio's wishes to become a real boy.
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10/2/2019
Puss in Boots
It is possible to approach this tale as a literary adaptation of an oral tale that may have been common in Italy.
First known adaptation is by Giovan Francesco Straparola, written between 1523 and 1540.
The tale was to be told during a formal social ritual of dancing and story telling, in the two weeks before Lent, known as Carnival in Venice.
The following paintings give us a glimpse into that world of Carnival in Venice during the 1500's. Perhaps looking at the following will give us an understanding of some of the aspects of the story.
It is a time where story telling is infused with the folly and mystery of masked people.
Royalty was still a thing and for lower social classes it would seem as the path for happily ever after.
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10/3/19
Switched gears and started looking into the origins of fairies and what evolved into later "fairy tales", most stories of which originated in western Europe, particularly the British kingdom and Nordic countries. These stories are told orally and relate to mythology and local legends. Folk tales are more primitive and closer connection to nature.
Historical development
The term fairy is sometimes used to describe any magical creature, including goblins and gnomes, while at other times, the term describes only a specific type of ethereal creature or sprite.[6] The concept of "fairy" in the narrower sense is unique to English folklore, later made diminutive in accordance with prevailing tastes of the Victorian era, as in "fairy tales" for children.
Historical origins include various traditions of Brythonic (Bretons, Welsh, Cornish), Gaelic (Irish, Scots, Manx), and Germanic peoples, and of Middle French medieval romances. Fairie was used adjectivally, meaning "enchanted" (as in fairie knight, fairie queene), but also became a generic term for various "enchanted" creatures during the Late Middle English period. Literature of the Elizabethan era conflated elves with the fairies of Romance culture, rendering these terms somewhat interchangeable.
The Victorian era and Edwardian era saw a heightened increase of interest in fairies. The Celtic Revival cast fairies as part of Ireland's cultural heritage. Carole Silvers and others suggested this fascination of English antiquarians arose from a reaction to greater industrialization and loss of older folk ways.[7]
Descriptions
Fairies are generally described as human in appearance and having magical powers. Diminutive fairies of various kinds have been reported through centuries, ranging from quite tiny to the size of a human child.[8] These small sizes could be magically assumed, rather than constant.[9] Some smaller fairies could expand their figures to imitate humans.[10] On Orkney, fairies were described as short in stature, dressed in dark grey, sometimes seen in armour.[11] In some folklore, fairies have green eyes. Some depictions of fairies show them with footwear, others as barefoot. Wings, while common in Victorian and later artworks, are rare in folklore; fairies flew by means of magic, sometimes perched on ragwort stems or the backs of birds.[12] Modern illustrations often include dragonfly or butterfly wings.[13]
Origins
Early modern fairies does not derive from a single origin; the term is a conflation of disparate elements from folk belief sources, influenced by literature and speculation. In folklore of Ireland, the mythic aes sídhe, or 'little folk', have come to a modern meaning somewhat inclusive of fairies. The Scandinavian elves also served as an influence. Folklorists and mythologists have variously depicted fairies as: the unworthy dead, the children of Eve, a kind of demon, a species independent of humans, an older race of humans, and fallen angels.[14] The folkloristic or mythological elements combine Celtic, Germanic and Greco-Roman elements. Folklorists have suggested that 'fairies' arose from various earlier beliefs, which lost currency with the advent of Christianity.[15] These disparate explanations are not necessarily incompatible, as 'fairies' may be traced to multiple sources.
(Wikipedia)
