On Fairy Tales: Archive and Shadow Library

“Attention … fairy tale … things …” – Shrek (2001).

Fairy Tales are often our first introduction to literature, even if no one ever reads us any. There are very few ‘cartoon universes’ that do not have their version of Red Riding Hood, or Cinderella, or Hansel and Gretel, or Goldilocks and the Three Bears (which, remember, is a ‘literary fairy tale’, written by Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate of England in the early 19^th Century).

There are some blurry lines between ‘Fairy Tales’ and ‘Folk Tales’, and anthologies are not always too picky about the classification. Even Grimm’s Fairy Tales (or Household Tales, as they were originally known) verged on the literary fairy tale, considering how much the Brothers Grimm revised them for publication. The stories of Hans Christian Anderson are so old they’ve become almost traditional and are often coupled with those of the Grimms. People are sometimes very careless, lumping in Nursery Rhymes, Mythology, Legends, Folk Tales, and children’s books like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz under the title of Fairy Tales.

Though editors have often ‘bowdlerized’ the older tales, taking out violent or scary elements that they feel are too intense for modern children, there is also a trend growing not only to rewrite the tales but to almost stand them on their heads. Villains are portrayed as not so bad (they have their reasons), and the heroes as not so good, if not downright … villainous. These seem to be aimed at an older audience, more used to the moral ambiguities of life, or even wishing to justify their own questionable actions. While being first and primarily entertaining adventures, fairy tales are deposits of folk wisdom, training wheels for action and morality. If an old witch is going to eat you and your brother for supper, it might be justifiable to push her into the oven. Being nice to unfortunate strangers, even at your own cost, might bring unexpected benefits in the future. The meek and lowly and loyal will be rewarded if they hang onto their virtue.

I was started on this train of thought about fairy tales when an episode of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller came up in my Youtube feed, and that also reminded me of Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre. Here are links to the first episode of each series, which will lead to complete playlists for both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDCOoJSeEc4&list=PLanMgRaDfhFaSDQm4oeOPuwMyHdJiwGAx The Storyteller

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s7NQs1j9c4&list=PL0iJzH8-bQLlEu361pA_U158R_gEOPSig Faerie Tale Theatre