To Happily Ever After or Not to Happily Ever After?
It’s a tough call. How should a fairy tale end? My
intellectual fairy tale loving side, tells me it should be a blend, the perfect
balance of happily ever after, and dark cruelty. That the rules of traditional fairy tales
should be upheld and adhered to, that at the end of Cinderella, both cinder and
her fella, should live happily, after watching her step-mother and ugly
step-sitters dance themselves to death in furnace heated iron shoes.
However, I am a child of my generation and I’ve been weaned on animated princesses singing and dancing their way into the arms of their prince’s, after which their evil step-mother’s personality flips 180º, and all live Happily Ever After.
I’ve spent many years teetering on the edge, half loving the
Disney rendered tales, and half resenting them for their over sentimentality
and vigorous editing. However, it was
only when watching their latest fairytale adaptation of Rapunzel, Tangled, that
this uneasy feeling really manifested itself. At the end of the film, the
(typically fairy tale) anti-hero Flynn is faced with the choice of living or
freeing Rapunzel from her (typically fairy tale) evil mother, by cutting off
her enchanted hair and killing its regenerative properties. I felt myself
physically moving forward in my seat with bated breath. Will he die? Have the
Disney Corporation finally worked out what fairy tales are?
Then, I looked down into the eyes of two very concerned
children, my children, and panicked. My parental mind went into protection mode
screaming; NO! They can’t possibly kill him! Please be a “Disney” ending.
I then realised there’s room for both. After all, if we
don’t know the fluffy coated, nauseating, jolly capers of commercial fairy
tales, how will we ever really appreciate the darker more authentic tales?
And just one more thing, if we were all weaned on the darker
versions, we would we go from there?
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| Disney's Little Mermaid's Happily Ever After & My Visualisation. |
Great post.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the version of The Little Mermaid when she refuses to kill the prince and dies but gains her soul. It is a much more powerful ending, but I agree with you. It's not the one I want my little kids to see.
HI MaryAnn, Your right that's a much stronger ending, and BC (before children)I vowed to only read my kids the original versions. It's funny how your perspective changes!
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