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The Daily Signal
Our Modern
World’s Inability to Understand Fairy Tales
Katrina Trinko
October 19, 2018
It’s not fair.
This refrain—so quick to be invoked by young children, who seem to
develop a thirst for justice very young indeed—may seem like a curious
place to begin in defense of fairy tales. But let me explain.
But to backtrack a little further first—well, the latest salvo against
fairy tales comes from two Hollywood actresses, Kristen Bell (“Frozen,”
“The Good Place”) and Keira Knightley (“Pirates of the Caribbean,”
roughly 10,000 period dramas).
Kristen Bell Worries the Disney Princesses Are Teaching Her Daughters
Bad Lessons
Bell told Parents magazine that when she watches fairy tale movies with
her young daughters, she make remarks such as, “”Don’t you think that
it’s weird that the prince kisses Snow White without her permission?
Because you cannot kiss someone if they’re sleeping!”
Knightley takes it one step further, telling talk show host Ellen
DeGeneres she has banned her toddler daughter from watching films like
“Little Mermaid” and “Cinderella.”
Why? Well, on “Cinderella”: “Because, you know, she waits around for a
rich guy to rescue her. Don’t! Rescue yourself, obviously.” And on
“Little Mermaid”: “The songs are great, but do not give your voice up
for a man. Hello?!”
I’m reminded of journalist Salena Zito’s invocation to take President
Donald Trump’s more colorful remarks seriously—but not literally.
Searching my own childhood memories, I’m hard-pressed to recall any
sense of thinking that kissing sleeping people was great, waiting for a
man to rescue me wise, or giving up my voice a valid life
choice—despite my repeat viewings of these Disney films.
Just like I knew “Aladdin” wasn’t proof that I could hop on a carpet
and fly or “101 Dalmations” a realistic take on the interior
intellectual life of the high-strung Dalmation next door, I seem to
recall that the worlds of Snow White and Ariel and Cinderella—worlds
complete with half-people living underwater, dwarves in forests, and
pumpkins molded into carriages—were hardly the stuff that provided
practical rules of living for my gravity-bound, sadly unmagical world.
And yet these tales did provide valuable lessons.
It is tough to be a little child. Everything is new; you have no
experience to fall back on. You are learning, being stretched
constantly, and you are encountering—for the first time!—the bitter
realities of the world.
You don’t have to possess an evil stepmother or wicked stepsisters—any
selfish child on the playground who grabs your toy and isn’t caught
will suffice—to understand that not everyone plays by the rules, or
that the good are not always rewarded.
You don’t need to prick a spinning wheel or eat an apple to begin to
awaken to the knowledge that you can be hurt by evil, and even engage
in it. You don’t need to lose your voice to realize that forays into
bigger, wider worlds beyond your parents’ arms and the comforting nooks
of your home can shake you into a quiet stupor as you struggle to
comprehend.
But maybe, as you toddle into preschool and watch Brittany tell the
teacher she had the doll first and realize that the second serving of
the candy your mom told you not to eat any more of gave you a
stomachache—maybe you might need something else.
You might need to remember when all seemed lost, a fairy godmother
whisked in and helped Cinderella. You might need to recall that Snow
White was saved because she was loved, was rescued because someone else
cared. And maybe as you eye Brittany, triumphantly playing with the
doll you had grabbed right at the beginning of recess, you will
remember how under the warmth and kindness of Belle, the Beast was able
to become an OK guy.
As my mom told us: Life isn’t fair.
That’s one of those tough realities fairy tales grapple with, along
with death and suffering. And then, too, there are beautiful realities
whose mysteries they gently probe: the fact that love can change a
person, that sometimes we’re helped unexpectedly, that our thirst for
justice will be rewarded in the end.
These are not concepts that lend themselves to being told of, or
probed, outside fiction. They must be experienced, not defined or
explained.
After all, how does a child really learn what love is—by learning the
dictionary definition or seeing the look on his mom’s face when he
comes in the bedroom, terrified by a nightmare? But fairy tales, like
the best stories, enlarge our world, take us to places and sentiments
where perhaps our own relationships cannot yet bring us.
“It is the business of fiction to embody mystery through manners,”
wrote American novelist Flannery O’Connor, and while that’s quite a
burden to place on movies known for chattering mice and singing
teapots, they manage to do so.
The world of fiction, particularly children’s fiction, is jammed with
make-believe—Peter Pan flying; Harry Potter casting magic spells; Lucy,
Edmund, Peter, and Susan entering a world through a wardrobe; and yes,
Snow White and Sleeping Beauty being rescued with a kiss.
Often those flights of fancy—absurd when taken literally—enlarge our
imagination so we can grasp something we could not comprehend,
highlight to us a truth hidden among the humdrum of our own world.
At the end of the day, you can face down evil without a single spell;
you can encounter the vividness of your life’s calling without creeping
amid the discarded coats festering in a wardrobe.
And plus, as any toddler who’s tearfully presented a boo-boo to Mom
knows, sometimes a kiss can save.
In our world—so focused on science and data, on math and the
measurable—it’s easy to look only at the literal in fairy tales. But
depriving our children of the beautiful mysteries they introduce would
only ultimately impoverish us, and make us less human.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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