CASD 1717 – Fall 2024
In this video, created as a promotional accompaniment to Oxford University Press’s Fairy Tale: A Very Short Introduction, its author, the scholar Marina Warner gives an overview of what she sees as constituting a fairy tale.
Are any of these points at odds with your experience with fairy tales? Was anything something you hadn’t considered before?
I didn’t disagree with any of her points, but what I hadn’t considered before was her point on how media, such as movies, made fairytales as big as they are. I know that fairytales have been told orally and through books for such a long time. Still, I didn’t realize personally that all my introductions to fairytales have also been through movies and not books. So, she’s correct that platforms like Disney have made fairytales much more demanding, and we can also argue that it’s not only for children anymore. Anyone at any age can enjoy fairytales.
Her point about darkness being a role in fairytales such as death and cruel characters and evil is something that I never really noticed was a pattern in fairytale stories. I think knowing this fact I will be able to notice it more often moving forward.
I like the points she made on how movies such as Disney became such a huge role in spreading these fairytales around. Also the patterns between the characters in fairytale stories.
One thing I had not considered before is dark places of fairy tales such as death, danger, fear. Fairy tales in my childhood were like good stories, but I never thought about the deep meanings of fairy tales.
Something I genuinely haven’t considered while reading and watching fairytales was her point towards what we read and view now is a variation of something from the past. Fairytales such as Beauty and the Beast could possibly be a variation from the myth of Cupid and Psych, and while reading the myth, I was in shock of how much it related to this “newer” version of that beloved fairytale story. This in particular is not something I have considered while watching “newer” versions of fairytales, and this reminds me of how tunes within a song is in similar retrospect of variations of something from the past, as newer songs have similar tunes and beats of popular hits from “older” songs from the past.
One of the things that I didn’t consider was the tragic events that fairytales had. I usually thought they were all good and happy endings but once you get the deeper meaning you start to find out that there’s more to it .
While fairy tales often depict fantastical worlds with happy endings, they also contain darker undercurrents that can be unsettling. Many fairytales include violence and death. Fairytales have a dark side to it, as a child I didn’t really notice.
The idea of how fairy tales have been reinvented in so many contemporary media, including advertising and art, in addition to literature and films, is one that I had not before given much thought to. It demonstrates how fairy tales have shaped cultural narratives across time, often in unexpected ways. Warner’s focus on the fairy tales’ power dynamics and identity, which are sometimes hidden in their more straightforward adaptations. I hadn’t given it much thought before, but these stories may express complex concepts about power and social responsibilities.
I agreed with all of the points she made about fairy tales. One thing she mentioned that I hadn’t considered before is the shared language of symbols and images (such as a poisoned red apple) of fairy tales. I thought about fairy tales as magical stories but never considered there are also symbols and images that tell us we are in fairytale territory.
I agree with Marina Warner that not only books, but film also plays a huge part in fairytale and she also gave an example of how the Disney’s Snow White film from 1937 was one of the most watched films.
Something that I hadn’t considered about fairytales is the symbolism within them. All the ways the characters are punished and the things that they have to do often symbolize something that relates to our real human world. It is interesting to see how these fantasies pull experiences from the real world.
I agree with all of her points but one in particular I never really considered was the one about dark themes in the fairy tales. Like someone dying or something evil is going on. I never really saw them as a dark theme that some people might go back to and cope with something that might have happened in their lives.
I understand her points about the fairy tales in a different way. When you are reading a fairy tale you can visualize in your head just by looking at the pictures and while you are reading the book. You putting yourself into the fairy tale.
Something that I haven’t really realized about fairy tales before is how film has influenced fairytales. As a child, I always thought fairytales was more of something read or told, but movies and media indeed play a big part in fairytales. Another aspect that I had missed as a child was that fairytales don’t always have a happy ending. There is also often a lot of deeper meaning in the stories and symbolism. In addition, there is a dark part of fairytales such as, death, violence, and a pattern of evil characters that I’ve never really paid much attention to.
I never really noticed how fairytales are primarily targeted at young children and how media plays such a big part in that. A lot of fairytales on Disney originated from stories that had adults as a targeted audience but now these stories are being told in an animated way to keep young children engaged through upbeat songs, even the “villains” or bad characters throughout movies aren’t perceived in as scary of a way for children as it used to be for adults.
I didn’t disagree with her but I did think about how dark fairytales really are before Disney makes them kid-friendly. Thinking of that always reminds me how sophisticated the language was in old kids books, and how themes were heavier (not necessarily tragic or evil like ones older than that). How language shifted can also show us how themes shifted to be more accessible and appropriate. There is a lot of death in Disney movies, which I think is okay because older kids can definitely handle bigger ideas than some adults believe they can.
I don’t really disagree with her but the fact that sometimes when she said that there is a hero of a sort rescuing someone I would say that is partly true but you have to think about the fact that in some fairy tales not everyone get saved by a prince. Also you have to think about how all fairytales have a really dark ending or twist to the tale but big companies like Disney created it for a cute ending for children
I always had an idea that fairytales were happy endings. Cinderella, beauty and the beast and much more are stories I grew up with. I always noticed the happy endings. Sure throughout the storyline there were some evil characters and things that happened but they always ended good. Not that I didn’t know but I guess I never thought about there being other versions to the fairytales. To explore deeper meanings to the fairytales and see other possible endings.
All of the points that she mentions i was able to connect to the fairy tales i’ve read. There was many points she’s made that i didn’t take into consideration while reading these stories because i was younger and mostly believed everything i read.
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