Fairy Tales 2010

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Disney and the Grimms: Did they have the same intentions?

What amazes me after reading the Aarne & Thompson and Propp articles in Maria Tatar's The Classic Fairy Tales, are the amount of variations one tale can have. All the tale types, all the sub-categories, the 40,000 motifs classified by Aarne; it makes the history of the fairy tale seem so much larger and infinite. As Propp mentioned in his article Folklore and Literature, "folklore should be likened not to literature but to language, which is invented by no one and which has neither an author nor authors. It arises everywhere and changes in a regular way, independently of people's will..." which gives the fairy tale a sense of timelessness (179).

In Propp's second essay, he says that the sequence of the tale, while several elements may have changed, or are left out, is always the same. I think this can be seen in the readings assigned focusing on the transformations of brothers to birds. In "The Twelve Brothers," the brothers run away to save themselves from being killed after the birth of their sister. The sister finds her long lost brothers, who welcome her with open arms. When the sister plucks 12 lilies her brothers turn into Ravens. An old woman tells her she must make a sacrifice to save her brothers. The king finds her, falls in love with her beauty, she is about to burn at the stake, when the seven years of silence are up and her brothers return to their human form and rescue her. The same pattern appears in "The Seven Ravens" and "The Six Swans," (which is one of my favorite fairy tales of all time.)
Even if the method of how the brothers turn into a bird varies, or even if the bird varies (between ravens and swans), the sequence of the story remains the same. What I think is important to notice is that one does not tire of these different versions--it is very interesting to note the variations in each tale, and wonder why it was changed.

In Zipe's article "What Makes a Repulsive Frog so Appealing," he looks at why humans are so attracted to certain fairy tales, and it is because the tales "become second nature to us...they reveal important factors about our mind, memes and human behavior" (3). Through the make-believe world of the fairy tale, our own world is enhanced, and this is why these tales are so timeless. Why some tales have flourished while others have not is due to the fact that "the power of the tale depends on the human agent's receptivity" (7). And this brings us to the connection between Grimm and Disney, which reflects Zipes' last article, "Breaking the Disney Spell." In that essay, Zipes tears Disney to shreds, leaving me disillusioned about the "magic" of Disney. Those are the movies I grew up on, and now Zipes is telling me it was all about speaking through the animator, (Disney), to change the tales to fit the social structure of the time, that he "violated" the original tales? However, I am going to compare these two quotes from both of Zipes' essays to show that the Grimm Brothers and Disney were not so different after all.

From "Breaking the Disney Spell": "The purpose of the early animated films was to make audiences awestruck and to celebrate the magical talents of the animator as demigod" (342).

From "What Makes....So Appealing?": "The brothers Grimm evidently brought together all the characters, motifs, and the topic of mating in such an efficient and aesthetically pleasing manner that from this written version the tale stuck in the minds of many people" (14).

One of the many repeated themes in all of these essays is the difference between the literary and the oral tradition, and how the tales changed once written down. Didn't the Grimms alter the tales to fit their audience, so that they were efficient and aesthetically pleasing? Basically, they did the same thing Disney does years later in twentieth century America with film--they change the story by creating their own personal additions so as to affect a greater audience. Even though the tales are written down, by no means are they fixated to remain in that "tale type." The tale types continue to be altered, as is seen in the new movie "The Frog Princess." The retellings of fairy/folk tales will retain the same sequence, but they continue to affect the human psyche, and we are attracted to the many variations over and over again because we believe them to be telling a story we recognize as our own.

2 comments:

  1. Clara, I think you make a great point of some of the inconsistencies in Zipes' argument when you look to both of his articles. Disney, in all its variations, actually does an excellent job in continuing an "oral tradition". Tales are meant to be adjusted by will of the orator to suit his values, cultural perpective, and needs.

    Disney's changes to different literary tales makes the literary less sacred and returns the tale to its original art form - something that can be played with, something that there is not just one version of. While Disney tends to implant a love story and uphold conservative, patriarchal values, these cultural shifts should be expected 100 years after the initial written version appeared. I think Zipes main issue is that Disney has become the only version many people know of and so fairy tales become reduced to solely the Disney telling without the history of how the tales evolved.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This absolutely makes sense to me! If these stories ultimately cannot be attributed to any one as they have been passed on through generations of oral tradition, how can one say that those who chose to write the tales down (thus not only alteingr their details and motifs but in fact changing the entire artform and its effects on the "perceiver," which is arguably the most important aspect of the tale)are the ones in fact creating some sort of original, correct form of a work. In some respects, I actually throught Zipes' article 'Breaking the Disney Spell' made an argument for Disney restoring certain key qualities Zipes discusses as lost once the tale is transcribed. Disney brought the story back to larger audiences, producing something that brought communities together and was accessible to the masses. I would therefore not consider Disney a manipulator, at least in no way was he more of one than the Brothers Grimm.

    ReplyDelete