To Happily Ever After or Not to Happily Ever After?

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?

Disney's Little Mermaid's Happily Ever After & My Visualisation.

Beware of the Coffee Shop #2: Novel Plotting

September 2012 a very Grimm Month indeed: With the publication of Philip Pullmans Grimm re-writes and the After Grimm: Fairy Tales and Story Telling Conference…

Oh yes it looks like September 2012 is going to be rather Grimm indeed. December 2012 marks the bicentenary of the first publication of the Brothers Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmärchen [Children’s and Household Tales] and September is the month that's set to start the celebrations.

On the 6^th September sees the publication of the long awaited and much anticipated  Philip Pullman rewrites of Grimm tales. Pullman has re-written 50 of his favourite tales  including classic and then lesser known works like Han My Hedgehog and  Three Snake Leaves (one of my favourite too!) Pullman stresses the book is not just for children but for adults too like the original tales.



 

Vengeance; Vanity

Han My Hedgehog and Bird's Revenge

The 6^th till the 8^th of September sees the After Grimm: Fairy Tales and Story Telling Conference, at the Kingston University London run in conjunction with The Sussex Centre for Folklore Fairy Tales and Fantasy (The University of Chichester).

The conference will look at things Grimm and the influence Grimm’s tales have had on culture and society. The Key note speakers include Donald Haase, Neil Philip, Marina Warner, Jack Zipes. 

So roll on September let hope for that it’ll be gloriously Grimm!