Reality of fairy tales

[Guest]

We're not talking about personal resentment, are we Perdita?

No, and that's a too personal query, Eff. P.

 

[Guest]

I always thought Fairy Tales were supposed to be scary, at least in their original incarnations.

A cannhibalistic old witch thats eat little children? And eventually gets burned alive in her own oven?

A poisonous and murderous step-mother who hires a man to kill her own step-daughter and then poisons her herself when he fails to do so?

Oh yes, pretty scary stuff, taken in the right (or wrong) way.

Raphy, I'm with you on that. Nearly all of the classic fairy tales have an undertone of malicious intent, violence and downright nastiness.

Here's a couple more examples:

Jack and the Beanstalk: A little boy lovingly grows a plant in his back garden, the plant grows to a massive state, he climbs said plant, gets to the top and a big badarse fucker of a giant is awaiting him at the top, roaring, "Fi-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman." Jack hastily scarpers back down aforementioned beanstalk with a goose that lays golden eggs under his arm, but that's another story.

Rapunzel: A beautiful princess is held prisoner at the top of a tower, by a nasty witch.

Beauty and the Beast: A fair maiden wanders into a dark, smelly old castle, and is confronted by the ugliest beast that can be imagined. After scaring seven bales of shit out of her, they fall in love. Turns out a warty nosed witch was behind that one.

Yep, pretty scary stuff, in my opinion fairy tales were the horror genre of their day.

Speaking of which (the horror genre) I'm currently reading a book by Graham Masterton, which is based completely around the fairy tale 'The Snow Queen.' The book is called Spirit, and it's a very chilling ghost story, with a difference. The basic premise of the story is this: when we die our imaginations live on. Those imaginations then manifest themselves into new lives, or characters, and appear to the loved ones that were left behind.

In this book, 'Spirit,' a little five year old girl falls into an icy swimming pool and drowns. Her mother, father and two sisters are obviously devastated by this. Anyway, to cut a very long story very short, the little girl returns, but not as herself, as the character Gerda from The Snow Queen. That was her favourite story when she was alive. It is a very frightening book, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I thought it was great the way a modern author has taken an old fairy tale and used it to tell a contemporary horror story.

Lou

 

[raphy]

Lou/Gauche/Pops/any other of our britlits reading this..

Did you guys see the series Sky 1 did a few years ago - The 10th Kingdom.. If so, what did you think of it?

Have to confess that I only caught occasional episodes, so I can't comment on the whole thing, but the stuff I saw I did kinda like.

Raph, inquisitively...

p.s. Oh, did anyone see Sigourney Weaver in Snow White, back in the late 90s? Worth watching?

 

[gauchecritic]

I saw a couple or 3 of 'tenth kingdom' but it soon became padded and not of the original intent that I could see. Amusing for a while.

Gauche

 

[Guest]

p.s. Oh, did anyone see Sigourney Weaver in Snow White, back in the late 90s? Worth watching?

Yes, Raff, loved it, her. And Anjelica Huston as the evil stepmum in the fluff film w/Drew Barrymore, forget title.

'dita

 

[raphy]

Yes, Raff, loved it, her. And Anjelica Huston as the evil stepmum in the fluff film w/Drew Barrymore, forget title.

'dita

Dunno which one that is - but I know I had wanted to watch Snow White when it came out - Figured that making a horror movie out of that was a good thing. Glad they got it right.

 

[Guest]

Raff, just recalled, it's "Ever After", a feminist Snow White, cute and clever, but it's worth seeing for Huston. Did you see her as the grand high witch in "The Witches"? I love this woman. If I were a lezz she'd be my prime choice (oh, but then she'd have to be too, crap).

'dita

 

[destinie21]

I love this woman. If I were a lezz she'd be my prime choice (oh, but then she'd have to be too, crap).

'dita

The latter isn't necessarily true it's not impossible;e to take a straight little wife from her straight little life for a day or two.

 

[Guest]

it's not impossible;e to take a straight little wife from her straight little life for a day or two.

Ah, Dest, your subtext is alluring.

Perdita

 

[destinie21]

Ah, Dest, your subtext is alluring.

Perdita

Well thank you dita' glad you find something about me alluring
BTW I find your intelligence and your av alluring in what may be a totally different way and you're writting aint half bad either toots

 

[deliciously_naughty]

I enjoyed the 10th kingdom...I have it on dvd and it's worth the occasional look/see.

Ever After was the Cinderella story with Drew Barrymore, wasn't it?

 

[Guest]

Ever After was the Cinderella story with Drew Barrymore, wasn't it?

Yes, Dee, and I'll repeat - worth seeing for Anjelica Huston as the stepmum.

Perdita

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Most things with Anjelica Huston are worth watching. The woman is fascinating.

I'll never forget her Morticia Addams...

 

[Wantonica]

Aaaaah!!

Since noticing this thread, I've been agonizingly hunting for an old book which came to me in a box of books from an auction. To no avail, as it must be on loan like all the others I can never find. The previous owner was obviously a writer, since all the books pertained to literature and writing. In any case, it was an in-depth shredding of the classic fairy tales and their sexual connotations.

While those stories may certainly be considered scary and able to fit into the Halloween segment, they are also undermined with sexuality. I can only describe it as 'Alf". For those of you who remember the program, I could watch it with my son, and as he giggled at the jokes, there were those directed toward adults which went straight over his little head.

As a child, I picked up many of the intended vibes of fairy tales: Little Red Riding Hood being pursued by an unsavory character, Snow White befriended by doting little men, Cinderella sweetly showing her shit to the bitches; all the stories provoked various thoughts, depending on your maturity and way of thinking. Little Red was always one of my favorites, I suppose because my dad gave me his 45 of the song for my first record player... "Hey Little Red Ridin' Hood, you sure are lookin' good, you're everything that a big bad wolf could want." That artist had it all figured out!

Darn, I wonder who has my book! One of 6 or 7 people, time to start phoning.

Hugs,
Wantonica

 

[Speak]

http://www.cartoons.onlyporn.net/disney-porn/pictures/alice.jpg
I like Disney Movies.

 

[Speak]

http://www.cartoons.onlyporn.net/disney-porn/pictures/ariel&belle.jpg
Isn't a shame what they do to these beloved characters?

 

[CharleyH]

Off hand, Gauche, some time ago I read Bruno Bettleheim's The Uses of Enchantment on the meaning and importance of fairy tales for children. I think he stuck with the laundered versions and made a lot of sense explaining how ft's worked at helping children deal with common fears. Your blurb is interesting enough to cause me to read the book.

I've read mostly Mexican and Russian folk tales and could usually see a method in their madness. Will think on it more.

Purr

Another book in common - my god - who reads this shot but me? OH! Perdita.

 

[Guest]

Charley, if we lived together we could pool our libraries, sell the extra copies and drink Champagne at noon everyday. Plus, I'd tell you a special fairy tale every night. Think about it.

Perdita

 

[Speak]

San Francisco has nice winters Charley. Then again the murder rate is low in Canada.

 

[Wills]

A recent item from the Manchester Guardian

Jack and Jill

Age: Dangerously young.

Appearance: Deceptively innocent.

They're characters in a nursey rhyme. My mother used to sing it to me. It's my first memory. Endless sunny days in Sidcup: You'd better sit down.

I can hear mother's voice now.
"Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after." Delightful: You poor deluded fool. Who ever heard of climbing a hill to look for water? It was a ruse!

What were they really after?: SEX!

They were dogging, were they?: Not as far as we know. Jack was a virgin; Jill a woman of the world. "Breaking his crown" alludes to him losing his virginity. He gets up and trots home as fast as he can caper, probably racked with grief and thinking of booking into the Priory.

Doesn't he bind his head with vinegar and brown paper?: His "head" is thought to be an euthemism. The moral: boys should beware dodgy girls who suggest dubious excursions.

Who's responsible for this ridiculous revisionism?: Chris Roberts, a librarian at the University of East London, who gives psychological explanation of 24 nursery rhymes in a new book called 'Heavy Words Lightly Thrown'.

Stupid title. You're just bitter.

What else has he destroyed?: Well, Goosey Goosey Gander is about veneral disease; Oranges and Lemons is about a bride who can't wait to get her husband into bed. See Saw Marjorie Daw is about a prostitute; and as for Rub-A-Dub-Dub, Three Maids in a Tub...

Do ask (academically): "Isn't there an alternative reading in which Jack is Cardinal Wolsey and Gill (pronounced with a hard G) is Bishop Tarbes, who sought to arrange the marriage of Mary Tudor to the French King?"

Don't ask (salaciously): Since both appear to have the same mother, who whips Jill for causing Jack's disaster, wasn't in incest?"

 

[AngeloMichael]

Here's an interesting article about Nursery Rhymes and their original meanings:


Nursery rhymes with naughty themes

Parents may throw up their hands in horror but a new book says that playground ditties are drenched in sex, death and violence and prove that many 21st century concerns have been around for a long time.

 

[NoJo]

Wills, your post about Jack and Jill prompted me to dig out the notes for a television writing course my father devised and ran nearly fifty years ago.

Here's what he said in the introductory lesson, expaining conflict, the essential feature in dramatic rather than narrative writing:

The nursery rhyme "Jack and Jill" is told narratively. It is unfolded as a short story. If you were asked to dramatize it, you would need to introduce the element of conflict. If, for instance, you predicated a situation in which the hill they climbed was practically unclimbable, there would be conflict between the couple and Nature. There would be a rudimentary dramatic situation. If you further predicated that the village was in the grip of a distastrous drought and "the pail of water" was vital to its survival, you would strengthen the confict and the play.
If you added that Jack and Jill were in love and that Jill refused to allow Jack to ascend the hill alone, the conflict would be stronger still and so would your play.

The more your imagination is able to complicate the plot and to exploit the basic situation, the stronger your play becomes. You are adding to the conflict. In other words, you are thinking dramatically.

 

[NoJo]

Psychoanylists since Freud and Jung, as well as feminists, socio-political and cultural revisionists, have all analysed the shit out of fairy tales.

Carl Jung believed that many of them tapped into a universal myth that people from widely disparate cultures, which in Jun's time had only recently come into contact, seemed to share.


Frazers "The Golden Bough" is the classic book on this.

The Opie's "Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes" is the most thorough book I've seen on the history of nursery rhymes and playground games.

The Opies tell the strange story of little Besse James, who lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth 1. Little Besse's tongue was cut out after witnessing the murder of her three-year-old brother.

Brought up in a foster-home, "Dumb Besse" suddenly began to speak again after four years. The first thing she uttered was the nursery rhyme "Cock a doodle doo." After that she was brought before the justice, and with her tongueless mouth denounced Annis Dell, the Innkeeper's wife, as the murderer.

For a contemporary treatment of the Cinderella Story, see http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=52444