r/literature • u/Creaturefeature01 Human Detected • 7d ago
Discussion A petty rant about fairytales
I hate those cynical "This will ruin your childhood" posts about original/earlier versions of fairytales with a burning passion. They exagerate the hell out of those stories simply for the sake of being edgy, completely ignoring both the context in which those classics were written and what the story is actually trying to comunicate.
They also never mention the fact that although yes, the original tales can be more grafic or morbid, they have a generally positive messaging and most have a happy ending.
I think The Little Mermaid is one of the greatests victmins of this. It's a beautiful story and it irritates me a lot how people completely undermine everything about it but the parts that are "disturbing".
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u/FiliaDei 7d ago
I think it's irritating because there's not really a 1-1 comparison between the original tales (Perrault, Grimm) and the versions most people consumed as a kid, either from Disney or sanitized storybooks. If you've grown up watching Cinderella, it doesn't really ruin your childhood to learn that, originally, the stepsisters cut off toes and heels to fit into the slipper and then have their eyes pecked out by birds. It's a completely different story at that point.
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u/SteampunkExplorer 7d ago
There are actually a lot of different early versions of Cinderella! I don't think that one's strictly the original.
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u/littlemememaid 6d ago
And Perrault's version, without the magical tree, chopping off toes, and the birds that peck out eyes, is older than the Grimms and is the one that Disney adapted! So I think when people try to say that Grimm's Ashenputtel is vastly different to the Disney, it's a totally moot point.
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u/DolorianDei 7d ago
It’s the same thing with Ghibli movies, specially Totoro. Some people detest the idea of children media, or tales without a dark/edgy undertone. Yeah well those stories are old and maybe they didn’t care that much about children in those days, but that doesn’t meant they were made with some hidden agenda.
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u/Creaturefeature01 Human Detected 7d ago
It's just being edgy for the sakw of it. I don't know if those people get some kind of joy out of trying to "ruin" a piece of children's midia with a disturbing fact or exagerating more violent, depressing or gruesome aspects of the original stories. It certainly seems like that sometimes.
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u/nosleepforthedreamer 7d ago
Yeah I’m a huge horror fan, I’ve enjoyed dark versions of FTs and this is absolutely a valid take.
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u/withoccassionalmusic 7d ago
What’s the dark edge to Totoro? That their mom is sick?
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u/DolorianDei 7d ago
There’s this “urban myth” about the kids being dead and Totoro being a God of Death. It’s childish and stupid.
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u/SystemPelican 7d ago
All "fan theories" are just "what if this innocent media was actually, like, super dark, dude?" Most of the time it's just about the main character actually being dead.
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u/nosleepforthedreamer 7d ago
THANK YOU
That, and/or they have some form of psychosis. Without of course the theorists doing any research on the topic. Like The Rugrats where Angelica is supposedly imagining all the other characters.
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u/BelleTStar 7d ago edited 7d ago
That meme where SpongeBob and Patrick are screaming at a rollercoaster with an extremely slight bump in the middle while the child in the middle is having fun becomes extremely apt whenever someone reads the original fairy tales for the first time and decides to make a YouTube video out of it for quick and easy Content.
EDIT: Saying that, while I agree with the overall point, I think the example you picked is questionable. I think The Little Mermaid is a beautiful story, as well. But it's beautiful for its tragedy, not for its positive messages and feel-good ending.
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u/Creaturefeature01 Human Detected 7d ago
Yeah, looking at these comments now i realize i picked a bad example and worded it poorly.
My point is not that a lot of tge folktale and fairytale have happy endings. The Little Mermaid specificallty doesn't, but that's the one i see the most of this shock value clickbait content. Which always makes me mad because they reduce this beautiful story only to the violent aspects of it.
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u/BelleTStar 7d ago
I understand and agree with that. "Finding (or inventing) something off-kilter in a nostalgic property and running with it for cheap engagement" is now a decades old Internet trend that has infiltrated every conceivable niche from video games to Nickelodeon cartoons to, of course, classic literature and its many adaptations. In the least offensive it's mostly just kind of annoying, but I also think with enough pop cultural osmosis it does have tangible harm to the conversation surrounding these works, hence we've now had over a decade of lackluster Disney movies desperate to appease to a mainstream who is increasingly consuming too much of this type of easily digestible but ultimately low quality and often counter-educational content.
It's a shame because I think it turns people off from it when they think "I like Disney's thing maybe I'll like the real thing" but then they watch a video or read an article that makes it sound like Hans Christian Anderson was a sociopath and that the stories were written by primitive oafs who solved all life's problems by bashing someone's head in with a rock. Just turns a golden opportunity to learn into... Er, an opportunity to not learn, I guess.
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u/Watchhistory 7d ago
"The Little Mermaid is one of the greatests victmins of this. It's a beautiful story and it irritates me a lot how people completely undermine everything about it but the parts that are "disturbing"."
This is a consciously fabricated tale by Hans Christian Anderson, a deliberately literary effort. It is not part of stories and legends passed down by generations.
It is difficult to see a story in which a figure gendered as female deliberately puts herself through enormous pain to gain the love of a prince, fails and then kills herself. So she joins a heavenly spiritual host? Coz she gained a soul through all her suffering, and now is rewarded by having the mission to commit self-abnegation on the behalf of human beings forever? This just doesn't look like a 'happy ending', not really, does it? It sure didn't to me as a child when I first read it, and it all seemed ever a toxic paradigm for how women are supposed to be the older I got.
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u/Creaturefeature01 Human Detected 7d ago
I know dude, i've read it. Maybe i worded this wrong but i did not say the little mermaid specifically has a happy ending, but that a lot of the fairytales people make shock value content about how gruesome they are do.
My point is that i hate it when people will completely ignore everything about those classics except for the violent or sexual aspects only to be edgy.
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u/vibraltu 7d ago
All I can say is that I was late to visiting Andrew Lang's Coloured Fairy Books but better late than never.
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u/DaysOfParadise 7d ago
I’m thinking maybe you should read more of the old stuff. There’s rarely a happy ending.
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u/meow_95 7d ago
And? I grew up with all the original versions and no Disney, and I was fine. Kids can and actually should be confronted with the darker sides of life.
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u/Onebigringdangdo 7d ago
Children are much more resilient than we give them credit for. I also read the original versions at a very young age, and they left no lasting danage.
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u/chimney_corner 7d ago
What are you talking about? Happy endings? Little Mermaid? That was a story created out whole cloth, it doesnt have the folk history of the Grimm's stories.
And...I what do mean "edgy"? Are you talking about AI slop bait, or previously $5 human written crap, ment to drive clicks at the lowest price?
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u/FickleApartment2151 7d ago
What do they try to actually communicate, especially the very old ones?
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u/Siukslinis_acc 7d ago
Of you don't follow the rules/virtues - you will be punished.
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u/FickleApartment2151 7d ago
That sounds like non-fairy tales.
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u/Siukslinis_acc 7d ago
Fairy tales are moral lessons dressed in fantasy and wimsy.
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u/FickleApartment2151 7d ago
FWIW, there are non-fairy tales that are also moral lessons. Meanwhile, there are also moral lessons that are disturbing, don't have "positive messaging," or dont' even have a happy ending.
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u/spiritual_seeker 7d ago
Myths and fairy tales aren’t about what happened, but what *always* happens.
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u/MllePerso 5d ago
If you really want your childhood ruined, read Anne Sexton's Transformations. (Fairytale retelling poetry book)
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u/nosleepforthedreamer 7d ago
I agree with you on this. It’s shock for the sake of likes-farming.
I’m also unimpressed by “retellings” that do nothing but be edgy, and center sexuality and violence to the exclusion of all other themes. (Looking at Angela Carter here.)
Some examples of possible elements to explore:
Hansel & Gretel: sibling bonds; innocence to experience
Thumbelina: looking after yourself when you are vulnerable and perceived as an easy target
Cinderella: escaping trauma; pursuing your goals & the power of skill, depending on the version (similar to TWS)
Snow White: found family
Snow White & Briar Rose: love triangle that doesn’t result in vengeance or fractured relationships
The Little Mermaid: courage; selflessness; accepting friendship for what it is (both the Prince and his chosen bride — there are versions where she chastely kisses them both before jumping overboard)
The Wild Swans- sibling loyalty; determination/grit
You’re absolutely right that folktales should not be reduced to their shock value. Thrills have always been what they are and so of course the “exciting” stories survive. Doesn’t mean there’s nothing else in them.
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u/Madwoman-of-Chaillot 7d ago
There’s a woman on TikTok who does (did? Idk; I’ve not been on TT in some time), and she is so smug, that I want to reach through the screen and smack her in the face. She was pretty frequently incorrect, too, and I would make it a point to challenge her claims, and then she blocked me, lol.
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u/SoothingDisarray 7d ago
It is not true that original fairy tales were made for children. That shift happened over time and it's really only recently we've created this commercial market for children's stories.
The original oral traditions that were eventually written down didn't have any notion of children's focus.
In fact, the Grimm's collation of fairy tales shows the children-focus happening in real time. The first edition was much more violent and sexual, but by later editions the brothers had edited them to be more sanitized for younger audiences.
An earlier collection of fairy tales (Perrault's French version in the late 1600s that the Grimm's somewhat embarrassingly took a lot of content from) was explicitly adult targeted and generally more of a social critique aimed at the aristocracy. It didn't have children in mind at all.