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Author
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Comment
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sallyanncavanaugh
Unregistered User
(8/4/05 8:28 pm)
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forbidden knowledge: fairy tale/horror film connections
I'm having a bit of a problem gathering my thoughts; if anyone has any suggestions I would be grateful. I'm working on a project regarding the theme of forbidden knowledge and I'm trying to find something that links this theme to both fairy tales and horror films.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(8/4/05 10:23 pm)
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Horror connections
Well, usually in a fairy tale and a horror film, a character finds something out when they are snooping around someone elses property. In both, they soon relaize that it's too late to run, because the person who's belongings they were snooping in has already found out.
In the current remake of House of Wax, a character asks to use a person's bathroom. After he is finnished, he disides to stay and snoop around the person's house. He finds some odd things, but before he leaves, he is attacked.
Same goes for both versions of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Suspiria, and Wrong Turn.
All of these connect to the fact that your fate will be grim if you snoop in other peoples things
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(8/5/05 3:06 am)
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Re: Horror connections
Which, of course, leads straight into Perrault "Bluebeard" and the Grimm "Fitcher's Bird" variation--
Both of which were designed to be the "Don't look in the basement!" premises of their day...
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(8/5/05 8:32 am)
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Re: Horror connections
I'm reminded of H.P. Lovecraft's stuff, though I really haven't read him.
Grimm's version of "Bluebeard" is "The Robber Bridegroom".
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catja1
Registered User
(8/14/05 6:23 pm)
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Re: forbidden knowledge: fairy tale/horror film connections
"Bluebeard" is the most famous "forbidden knowledge" story, but there are a host of other, related stories.
Perrault's "Bluebeard" is the best-known, and is very much about Perrault's own instructions for women not to be curious, to obey their husbands, and so forth. Despite Bluebeard being a monster, there's all sorts of moralizing about how women shouldn't meddle in their husband's affairs -- "Ladies, you should never pry!" Maria Tatar makes a great case that Grimms' tale #3, "The Virgin Mary's Child," is in a number of ways a closer analog to Perrault's "Bluebeard" than the "Heroine Rescues her Sisters" stories ("Fitcher's Bird," "Silver Nose," etc.) usually figured to be in Bluebeard's orbit. Both "Bluebeard" and "The Virgin Mary's Child" come down heavily on the idea of forbidden knowledge -- "VMC" much more overtly, as the forbidder is the Mary herself, but "Bluebeard" adds, as I mentioned, a strong gendered component that makes the wife's seeking of knowledge a culpable offense, for which she must repent before she can be saved. Anne Williams, a scholar of the Gothic, talks extensively about "Bluebeard" as the female version of "Faust," and about the value given to women seeking knowledge (silly, curious, busybodies) vs. men seeking knowledge (noble seekers after Truth).
Of course, as you noted, the forbidden knowledge theme is all over
the place in horror; the recent film The Skeleton Key makes
very deliberate use of not only dangerous knowledge, but of the
forbidden room, and, as the title suggests, the Perraultian key.
In stories like "Fitcher's Bird," and other tales of AT Type 311 (Bluebeard is 312), the heroine(s) usually know, right off the bat, that their captor/bridegroom is a bad guy -- he's the devil or a wizard, and forcibly kidnaps each sister in succession. Because he's a known villain, the heroines' 'curiosity' isn't treated pejoratively; they're doing what they have to to defeat a villain, and the elder sisters just aren't able to outsmart him. So these stories tend to be less about "forbidden knowledge" -- they know he's bad, just not the full extent of his badness -- and more about cleverness -- how to keep him from realizing what they know.
"The Robber Bridegroom" (AT 976) and its variants are linked to AT 311/312 by the motif of the murderous husband, but there isn't really a consistent "forbidden knowledge" theme; usually, the heroine accidentally witnesses her husband digging her a grave or murdering another girl. Even if she goes to his house (as in "Mr. Fox"), she's presented as simply paying her fiancee an unexpected visit; there's rarely any indication that he has *forbidden* her to do so. And the climax of AT 976 is usually the heroine's public *recitation*, at the pre-wedding banquet, of what she saw -- interspersed, as in "Mr. Fox," with her repeated reassurances of "My darling, it was only a dream" -- rather than the discovery of his perfidy. This is similar to AT 311, where as much of the story is taken up with the heroine's clever rescue and escape as with her discovery.
Though AT 311 stories are possibly earlier than AT 312 stories, Perrault's version certainly made it into the folk tradition. Jack Zipes, in his translation of the Grimms, includes their transcription of "Blaubart," which is clearly inspired by Perrault, but also bears some literary and thematic resemblance to AT 311 stories. The Grimms wound up not including it in their later editions, because it was "too French."
Er, sorry for wandering a bit from the horror theme. "Bluebeard"
is one of my passions, and I've been working, for several years,
on a Trials and Tribulations of LRRH-style anthology of
various tellings, so I do tend to ramble. :)
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megaerairae
Registered User
(8/17/05 10:10 pm)
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Re: forbidden knowledge: fairy tale/horror film connections
There's a great foreward that actually deals with just this connection in Fitcher's Brides by Gregory Frost. Another variant on this is Nasone d'oro (Big Silver Nose) an Italian version you can find in Calvino. Also look at Stephen King's book Danse Macabre, where he points out that most of the great horror movies could be told as fairy tales, and no one would blink.
On a random note, I got in trouble for telling children at the school where I used to work a variant of Fitcher's Bird. As if a fairy tale with a moral of: when kidnapped/ensnared by a psycho killer. lie if you have to and run like hell is a bad moral. Or, as if it is any more disturbing than the whole cannibalism thing in Hansel and Gretel. I think it was just it wasn't one of the normal Disney canon type tales. It always makes it harder to ignore the disturbing...
Gah!!!! I digressed...I'm as bad as Mellville! Accept my apologies, hope this helps.
Jenna
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Heidi Anne Heiner
ezOP
(8/18/05 6:55 am)
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Re: forbidden knowledge: fairy tale/horror film connections
Terri's excellent intro to Greg's book is available on endicott-studio.com
at Bluebeard
and the Bloody Chamber.
Heidi
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janeyolen
Registered User
(8/18/05 7:21 am)
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Re: forbidden knowledge: fairy tale/horror film connections
Interesting footnote--when I was doing NOT ONE DAMSEL IN DISTRESS, I wrote to Pantheon for permission to retell Calvino's version of "Silver Nose" which I had at that point not found anywhere else. They denied permission, saying that Mr. Calvino did not allow it as his versions were always amalgams of a number of variants he had discovered.
And then I saw (after deciding to do Fitcher's Bird anyway) that Eric Kimmel had done a picturebook, COUNT SILVERNOSE for Holiday House. Always meant to ask how he got permission, or if he was able to find an earlier version and base his retelling on that.
Jane
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megaerairae
Registered User
(8/22/05 10:32 pm)
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re: Footnote
So he wouldn't let you retell a folk story that he essentially retold. That just seems wrong somehow. Where would folklore be without people to retell it?
On another note, every time I hear it in English "Silver nose"
all I can think of is Tycho Brahe, the astronomer. :) Oh, and *correction*
idiot me, it's "Nasone d'argento". (I just flaked and
put in gold for silver)
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beautifulstars
Unregistered User
(8/30/05 8:14 am)
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fairy-tale/horror
I'm not sure how related this is, but in the slow, building research that led to my thesis -- a collection of retold fairytales -- during which I discovered Carter, Donaghue, Hoffman, etc, I found that many writers who retell fairytales also have a deep, abiding interest in elements of horror -- most spectacularly, in Carter's case, an interest in Lizzie Borden. I, myself, began my interest in fairytales by organizing a high school unit plan around them, and had, a month before, organized a unit plan based on horror --fact and fiction-- with quite a large section on Borden. So, it was unnerving to later find that some of the writers by whom I was most influenced also had these specific interests, without my previous knowledge.
I think there is something in both tales of horror and fairytales which is deeply elementary-- a sort of simplicity and manner of revealing the nature of the human spirit -- which is appealing to so many audiences.
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