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Author
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Comment
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Sarcastic
Unregistered User
(4/20/05 9:50 am)
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why some tales get 'fractured more'?
I've been reading up all the different alternative fairy tales, and seen some cartoon/TV shows with twists on them (like Rocky & Bullwinkle's Fractured Fairy Tale Segment).
Why do you think some Fairy Tales (like Cindy, or Little Red?) Get rewritten and tweaked with more often then others? Besides popularity of it.
As so far, in order of what I've seen of who gets lampooned the most:
~Grimm (Hanzel & Gretel, and Little Red most pop.)
~Perrault (Cinderella and Beauty & Beast)
~Stories whose author I don't know (3 little pigs, 3 bears)
~Some Arabian Nights (Aladdin, and Ali Baba & Forty Thieves most often)
The only Hans Christen Anderson Story I seen lampooned/rewritten is The Ugly Duckling, even his Little Mermaid doesn't seem to get redone as often as the other fairy tales.
Any theories as to why?
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LostBoyTootles
Registered User
(4/20/05 10:16 am)
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Re:
Well, Beauty and the Beast isn't Perrault and The Little Mermaid seems to be getting increasingly more popular in the "retelling" world. But I understand what you're asking. I always thought that Cinderella was most often retold because it allowed for so many plot twists, descriptions, and explanations - Why was the stepmother wicked? Did Cinderella's mother have any tie with the fairy godmother or maybe the stepmother? Why exactly did the shoe fit only Cinderella and no one else? And so on and so forth. I think Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, and other tales also have these gaps that authors like to flesh out. Some tales don't have so much room to move - Brother and Sister or The Snow Queen or even The Little Mermaid for instance.
Edited by: LostBoyTootles at: 4/20/05 10:17 am
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Sarcastic
Unregistered User
(4/20/05 11:17 am)
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oops!
Didn't realize Perrault didn't do Beauty & Beast.
That might be one reason, another seem to be a sort of dissatisification with some of the details.
I do remember seeing a Claymation verison of H&G in which the parents and childern actually got lost in the woods, and the which (Who evidently lived in a Gingerbread Manor) would run between two turrents mimicking the voices or either the childern or the parents to get them even more lost.
That's the only verison I've seen where the parents are actually good.
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Richard
Parks
Registered User
(4/20/05 2:31 pm)
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Re: oops!
I don't know the real reason (if there is one) and can only speak personally, but the thing that would make me hesitate on a retelling of HCA is the fact that his stories, while they have much in common with fairy-tales, are really HIS stories for the most part. Stories like Cinderella, though given the full form we know it by now only in the last few hundred years, are more directly derived in turn from older tales and in a sense belong to all of us. That makes them fair game in a way that a Hans Christian Anderson tale is not.
Also my 2 cents.
http://dm.net/~richard-parks |
Elizabeth
Genco
Registered User
(4/21/05 9:00 pm)
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Re: why some tales get 'fractured more'?
That brings a larger question to my mind, actually. Maybe it's been discussed here before (it probably has). And that is, why are some fairy tales more well-known and often-told than others? Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales is several hundred pages (likewise with HCA), and yet some have hung on in popular culture and some have faded into obscurity. I wonder why that is. What makes the popular tales popular?
[The same question could be asked about ballads, now that I think about it. Most of what makes up Child's vol. 3 are the gazillion Robin Hood ballads that nobody sings any more...]
Just pondering; don't mind me...
---
What's that fiddle player in the subway thinking
about?
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Sarcastic
Unregistered User
(4/22/05 10:34 am)
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perhaps...
I know some tales are no longer told due to racism/anti-semeticism,
like the Jew in the Thornbush and some sections of the Canterbury Tales are not told often due to that fact.
Others like the armless maiden tales are today too violent and 'too Vulgar', and can't really be edited without wrecking the story.. hmm....
It's kind of interesting now that you brought up the point.
Like 1001 Arabian Nights, only a handful of the stories: Aladdin (which seem to metamorphized from Chinese to Arabic in most modern tellings), Ali Baba & Forty Thieves, and Sinbad the Sailor are the only ones that can be called up right off the top of most peoples heads, though I think most people wouldn't the speifics of Sinbad the Sailor (the movies have zip to do with the actual stories).
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Elizabeth
Genco
Registered User
(4/22/05 2:09 pm)
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Re: perhaps...
I totally can't remember the plot of Sinbad the Sailor.
The racism thing totally makes sense. There are a couple of ballads
that suffer from the same problem, the most notable (that I can
think of) being Child
155.
Steeleye Span do a stunning verion of that one, though I never did understand why they chose to cover it. They took all the racist lines out of it, but the ballad's history looms large nonetheless.
As for "too violent" and "too vulger" -- goodness, it's 2005! Certainly plenty of all that around. Though I can see how that would lead to a farming out over time.
---
What's that fiddle player in the subway thinking
about?
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cwfaerie
Registered User
(4/22/05 5:42 pm)
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Re: perhaps...
Actually I was having a very similar discussion in my Freshman comp class this morning. I have assigned them an interpretative essay on "Donkey Skin." When ever I assign fairy tales, I try to pick ones that aren't very popular in hopes that I'm exposing my students to something new.
My students came to the conclusion that "Donkey Skin" is very much like "Cinderella" and "Snow White" but the difference is that Donkey Skin has more realistic problems. Incest is an issue that real kids face and wicked stepmothers and evil queens are not (although jealousy is a "real" problem). They thought that since the impetus of the story was not so fictionalized to be obviously unlike their lives, that it made it harder to get lost in the story and enter into that fictionalized universe.
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Erica
Carlson
Registered User
(4/23/05 9:39 am)
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Citation?
Hey, could you give me the title and author, &/or source of the interpretive essay? I'd be most grateful.
Best,
Erica
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cwfaerie
Registered User
(4/23/05 10:57 am)
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Re: Citation?
Erica,
I meant that I assigned my students to write an interpretive essay about Donkey Skin. Sorry I wasn't clear (you'd think as a composition teacher I would be better at catching these things - oh well).
My students are working with the fairy tale only, but I did point them to Heidi's wonderful list of references under the Donkeyskin Bibliography if they wanted to do more reading.
Christy (a.k.a. cwfaerie)
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Erica
Carlson
Registered User
(4/23/05 11:36 am)
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Re: Thanks
Thanks. I have to write a short paper for my storytelling class (possibly the last paper I write for class credit!) and just wanted to make sure I haven't missed anything especially influential or insightful.
Best,
Erica
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