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Comment
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angelskytalk21com
Unregistered User
(10/1/04 6:08 am)
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Monoculture, exploitation and possibly survival...
Dear All,
I wrote a couple of months back about my final year dissertation on the effects commercialism has on fairytales. I was requesting you all keep your eyes peeled for any adverts using the theme of Fairytales, every reply i had i chased up and have had some great results including useful contact with Professor Jack Zipes and some very interesting Aid Campaign Ads (thank you, you know who you are and yes they did help). Thank you all so much!
Fairytales are falling into a monoculture, where as they used to vary depending on where they were told and who was telling them they are now becoming one. Every child now grows up knowing a branded character not an imaginary one, read a child snow white and they see see the pale skinned beauty in Disney not their own invention. Children are watching tv, playing around on the internet and going to the cinema etc more now than ever befor and this is only on the increase. So many adverts use the fairytale theme, and so many films such as Shrek address the traditional fairytale, they just give it a modern touch. So please give your thoughts on whether you feel this commercialism is killing the traditional fairytale, or, on the other hand, keeping them alive?
Also to keep this updated I ask you all to scribble me a thread if you see any more ads.
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Black Sheep
Registered User
(10/1/04 8:46 am)
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Hmm...
As I was growing up my parents told me nursery rhymes, folktales and fairy stories. My mother sang me folk songs. I read picture books then novels, folklore, myths, legends and poetry. We went to pantomimes at our local theatre. I saw old tales and retellings on television and heard them on the radio. I still participate in all these modes of transmission as a teller, singer, reader, watcher, and listener, because I choose to do so. My friends and their children benefit from my participation in these cultural activities as I benefit from my community in my turn. Nothing has significantly changed this cultural pattern since I was a child and I don't believe that human beings will ever voluntarily forgo sharing tales with each other.
Professional artists and performers have always been employed by those people who can afford them to create, recreate and share tales but this has never interfered with amateurs participating in precisely the same cultural activities for their own pleasure and the pleasure of their communities.
I'm bored with those academics who bemoan the supposed loss of traditional cultural activities while they sit in their ivory towers and fail to participate in passing on the cultural traditions which they've spent considerable time and effort studying (study which, in my culture, is paid for by our community). These days most academic disciplines are brave enough to admit that true objectivity isn't possible for humans so even that's not an excuse for ivory tower syndrome any more.
When I was a kid I hated Cinderella but I loved Cap o' Rushes and my opinion has never changed. Three cheers for my mother and our cultural diversity(s).
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(10/2/04 3:12 am)
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cultural traditions
What makes you think we academics don't participate in cultural traditions?
The whole "ivory tower" argument--I don't think it works any more, by and large. It may have done thirty years ago when jobs were plentiful and paid well, but as a grad student I'm up to my ears in debt and I wish I could get a little bit of that ivory tower immunity.
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