Of Grimm Realities and the Irony of Fairy Tales

Today, 20th December 2012 marks the 200th anniversary of  the publication of the first volume of fairy tales by the Grimm brothers- Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Undoubtedly, their fairy tales, along with those of Andersen's, Perrault's, and many others more contemporary to my childhood (Enid Blyton?) have shaped the way I relate to literature, and to the world as a whole.

Fairy tales are usually the first stories of gore and violence that a child hears/ reads. For some strange, unfathomable reason, they are considered appropriate to be consumed by even 3-4 year olds. Just like any movie made in animation is deemed fit for juvenile viewing. As an example here, I could mention Madagascar. The plot is suitable enough, give or take a few stereotypes that pepper the narrative. It is in the specifics that I get my hackles up. How could a movie deemed suitable for children - and believe me, 3-4 year olds are taken to these movies by their misguided doting parents - have steamy scenes like the one with Moto Moto the Hippo and Gloria? It's beyond ridiculous.

Anyway, I digress. I was speaking of fairy tales, and Grimms' tales in particular. Their tales are a 'collection of tales' - collected from folklore and cautionary tales that reflected the unsavoury medieval European life. They are therefore, more replete with sexual undertones, gender/ class stereotypes and violence than the Andersen ones. This also underscores the fact that the Grimm brothers were more of curators of local folklore - a lot of what we know of medieval Europe is certainly thanks to people like them - than creators of stories for children. The tales were the then equivalents of the 'bogeyman' stories (again misguided) people tell children to keep them in line. Certainly not what I would classify as 'fairy-tales' as the very name conjures up a benevolent image.

This Wikipedia article says it all: 

The first volumes were much criticized because, although they were called "Children's Tales", they were not regarded as suitable for children, both for the scholarly information included and the subject matter. Many changes through the editions – such as turning the wicked mother of the first edition in Snow White and Hansel and Gretel (shown in original Grimm stories as Hansel and Grethel) to a stepmother, were probably made with an eye to such suitability. They removed sexual references—such as Rapunzel's innocently asking why her dress was getting tight around her belly, and thus naïvely revealing her pregnancy and the prince's visits to her stepmother—but, in many respects, violence, particularly when punishing villains, was increased.

Disney adaptations of these tales are another story altogether. They have not only sanitized these stories, they have 'Barbified' them beyond tolerance - the exact opposite of what the above quote states. Violence has been toned down to almost saccharine- sweetness levels, with characters losing their grey shades, becoming more polarised, and a big dollop of sexualisation added. Unfortunately, they, too, have been gobbled up by children and parents alike. 

So, speaking of Grimm realities, today's Google Doodle is a tribute to the 200th anniversary. Do check it out. The artwork and wordless storytelling is phenomenal.

Their most famous tale- that of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.

Coming at a time when crimes against women are escalating - it seems like a fairy tale no more. It is a very real horror story. Being enacted day by day in different parts of the country. The world even. It is the ordinariness of the settings in which these horrors take place that is so menacing. A simple walk down the street to the neighbourhood grocer's could become fraught with frightening nuances.

How do we explain these things to children? Maybe the Grimms' Fairy Tales do not seem a bad option anymore.

Book Review: The Joy of Fairy Tales

pic courtesy amazon.co.uk

The Joy of Fairy Tales
Compiled and edited by Gill Davies
Published by Worth Press Ltd.
Ages 8+

Imagine a book that has one mesmerised as soon as one picks it up. Makes one forget that one is not a child anymore. One that makes you want to just sit with it and read and read and read. The moment I picked this book up at the bookstore, I knew I could not let it go.

Wanting to read a bit before buying, I scanned a few pages and came upon this poem-

Moonlight Magic

In the fairy woods when the moonlight glows
The animals twirl, each up on their toes;
Fox fiddles a merry and magical tune
As the animals dance in the light of the moon.
All around they skip, like the pixies do,
Dreaming of wishes bound to come true
Bear bounces and laughs, the hares leap high,
Till stars grow dim and the dawn is nigh...
Then home they go, paws dimpling grass
Like dewdrops gleam like bubbles of glass.

-Anon.

I was enchanted. This was lovely! It felt like the other side of Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are". So much similar, yet so much dissimilar. The light to its dark. The day to its night. Even if this was something that happened by moonlight. We had to have this book. It was a collectible.

Appealing to children and adults alike, the book is a smorgasbord of fairy tales from all over the world, with snippets of trivia in the margins - European, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, African, Australian, Russian, Aborigine...you name it.

There are tales as old as the Arabian nights, tales re-told from mythology and folklore. There are tales as new as those from J.K.Rowling's Tales of Beedle the Bard.

There are tantalising excerpts from magical books like The Wizard of Oz, Gulliver's Travels, Lewis Caroll's Alice books, E. Nesbit's The Phoenix and the Carpet, Kipling's Just So Stories, The Princess and the Goblin, even Shakespeare.

We also have the usual suspects like Hans Christian Anderson, the Grimm brothers, Charles Perrault, and Andrew Lang. As also magical poetry by the likes of Edward Lear, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Shakespeare, and that tantalising poet - Anonymous, and many more.

Think that is a long list? Just the contents of this 766 page book runs into 16 pages. We also have an extensive bibliography for those interested in more reading, short biographies of all the authors and illustrators (the illustrations alone are worth picking up the book for- each tale comes with the original illustrations it was first published with) featured.

For those interested in the evolution of the fairytale, there is a detailed timeline of fairytales and folktales through history, from all continents - right from the ancient Sumerian epic tale of Gilgamesh c. 2000 BCE to Harry Potter. As also links from that modern magic wand- the internet.

As the editor says in an afterword: "So here is a book to treasure...through its pages the reader can discover how ancient folk tales and legends developed, changed and spread - and how in their re-telling they became the familiar stories we know today." Not just another anthology.

This, as Choxbox would put it, are fairy tales at their best, before Disney meddled with them. Maybe that's just our opinion, of course, with most people knowing their fairy tales only through the Disney looking-glass. Then that's their loss, IMO.

A and I have been dipping into it at all through the vacation. Perfect for bed-time reading.

Do check out this lovely trailer of the movie Fairy Tale :A true story based on an actual incident from Cottingley that took place in 1917. Two girls happened to take photographs that were said to be of fairies. There was quite a bit of interest generated, that brought even big names like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini to investigate. It remained an unsolved puzzle for many years, until the girls, now in their sixties, admitted that it had been a prank that had gone out of hand  and many claim it is evidence of the existence of fairies. I don't know what to think, but the movie seems lively. Completely non-Disney! Do click to watch. Would love to get my hands on it.



Crossposted at Saffrontree.

Book review: Cinderella Ate my Daughter

I would like to thank Utbtkids for introducing me to this wonderful book.

Consider this. A cousin, who is a parent to three girls aged 12, 8 and 3, has always picked up girlie stuff for her daughters. Pink, frilly dresses, tutus, barbies, disney/barbie toys, dresses, fashion accessories, all the latest disney/barbie movies/dolls' houses, barbie add-ons, barbie UNO cards(??), decor in all shades of pink- baby pink, magenta, fuschia, crimson, carmine, cerise, rose...you name it. Even hot pink cakes for every birthday. Bratz stuff, shiny lip gloss and nail polish (for these age groups??) - such pride on the mother's face when she recounts her children's obsession with dressing up and hair-dressing! I am often chided for not getting all the pinky-pink stuff for my daughter, that I should lighten up and let 'a girl be a girl'! She is welcome to have her opinion, of course! Not for me, though.

Things are made more difficult by the burgeoning in-your-face hard-sell of all things pink. Or rather all things stereotypical. Parents, beware. The people to decide what your kid plays with, how s/he plays, how s/he dresses are not you, but commercial establishments who have invested big money in the business of deciding this for you. So much so, that sometimes there isn't any choice in the matter.

In her book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Peggy Orenstein (see blogroll on the right side for her wonderful blog) discusses this wide-scale commercialisation of gender stereotypes, the messages it passes on to the hapless, impressionable children, (of both gender) the long-reaching effects of this stereotyping, and the way this industry is fed by the hopes and aspirations of every parent who buys into it.

Pic courtesy flipkart

Cinderella Ate My Daughter
dispatches from the front lines of the new girlie-girl culture
Written by Peggy Orenstein
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers

Gender stereotyping is not a new thing. It has not begun with the culture of all things girlie. It is as old as civilisation- maybe even from before civilisation. Gender stereotyping has its roots in biology. A woman can give birth to and suckle her baby, a man cannot. So the woman stayed at home to take care of the baby, ensuring the propogation of humans, while the man ensured survival in terms of providing for food and protection.

However, what began as a matter of convenience and an equitable division of labour that worked wonderfully well for the survival of humans, has evolved slowly but surely into something that denies human beings their most fundamental right- of being humans. The world gets divided into the masculine and the feminine, each strait-jacketed into our notions of what is right or wrong for each.

In an out-and-out patriarchial society like ours, this has always featured big. We already have a million ways to perpetuate gender stereotypes. We do not need another way to achieve the same.

Good girls don't do this, they don't do that- so many social restrictions based on gender- Oh, yes, there are these for boys, too. They don't have it easier. Real boys don't cry, real boys cannot play with dolls...I could go on. Resulting in aggression as the only acceptable emotion for them to show- crippling them emotionally!

Paradoxically, the girlie culture has its roots in the feminist movement. Barbie, in fact, was introduced in 1959 as a symbol of feminist aspirations(throwing off the shackles of domesticity), and was then targeted towards teenagers. Soon, though, Barbie, (astronaut, scientist, doctor, etc. in her initial avatars) and her successors were no longer a sign of empowerment- there was a definate element of sexualisation coming in. Girls who played with them were getting younger and younger and more impressionable by the day- of course putting the dolls off the radar for the original older age groups. Making it that much more difficult to contain and deflect the subliminal messages that were being sent to these children.

A short-sighted view of the princess/barbie culture provides a vision of empowerment. After all, our kids think it is so 'cool' to emulate the way Barbie dresses. So 'cool' to know about the latest in celebrity activities. Hannah Montana becomes a goddess. Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus,...the latest pop icon become role models. Not yet 3-yr-olds aspire to be like these idols. Ordinariness, simplicity is seen as totally 'uncool.' After all, who wants to be an old-fashioned so-and-so? So stereotypical!

Commercialisation, of course, demands that where there is a demand, there has to be a supply- so that profit can be made. After all, that is how it works in a capitalist set-up. Crass comercialisation takes it a step further, and feeds on the social weaknesses that come disguised as another step in empowerment.

'The pursuit of physical perfection was recast as a source - often the source - of young women's "empowerment." Rather than freedom from traditional constraints, then, girls now were free to "choose" them. Yet the line between "get to" and "have to" blurs awfully fast. Even as new and professional opportunities unfurl before (the girls), so does the path that encourages them to equate identity with image, self-expression with appearance, feminity with performance, pleasure with pleasing, and sexuality with sexualisation.'

... by the time they are teenagers, the girls (quoting a study by Deborah Tolman, a Professor of human sexuality studies at the City University of New York) respond to questions about how their bodies feel - questions about sexuality or desire - by talking about how their bodies look. They say something like, "I felt like I looked good." Orenstein says, "My fear for my daughter, then, is not that she will someday act in a sexual way; it is that she will learn to act sexually against her own self-interest."  Something seen in victims of low self-esteem, and not a sign of empowerment.

Sounds eerily like something the manusmriti has advocated for the female half of the population long long ago, doesn't it? We have plenty of our own misplaced ideas and beliefs to correct without complicating things in this way, thank you very much!

So what's with the pink and blue? Let us consider here a discussion on children's fashions in the past few hundred years.

Disclaimer: The next two paragraphs have much to do only with patterns of fashion in the western world. India has a very different story - a veritable study in ethnology ... but that is a subject for an entirely different post. Suffice here to say that the pink v/s blue debate with all its history has made an entry to our country quite recently - though making waves enough to start worrying.

In the west, children of both genders wore only white, at the most, shades of grey, up to 6-7 years of age, for a very practical reason: soiled clothes could be cleaned only by boiling them, and coloureds were a waste. The styles were also similar, much like dresses, with boys' clothes buttoned up in the front and the girls' buttoned up behind. When pastels came in, both genders wore all colours. Around the time of WW1, pink was actually associated with boys, as it was considered a watered down version of red, a colour associated with strength and bravery.

Yet, today, all things feminine are associated with the colour pink - a belief that we have to thank Nazi Germany for. Just like they made it compulsary for Jews to put on a yellow Star of David to distinguish them, they issued pink stars to those men that they believed were homosexual - these too were part of the reprehensible Final Solution. This gave pink a 'non-masculine' tag, and was equated with all things feminine. This, of course, has been exploited by marketing divisions of companies like Disney and Mattel to widen the divide and create a market for girl things and boy things. Not just toys and clothes, but every b****y thing!

Magenta, an extraspectral colour
pic courtesy biotele.com

Let me put one thing straight. I have nothing against pink, and I think it is a beautiful colour. I have no problems using something pink, on the stipulation that it does not have the associations I have spoken of. Same goes for orange, grey, turquoise, white, green, blue, red, black, yellow, violet, and any other hue of the rainbow. Speaking of rainbows, pink is not even a colour from the spectrum- there is no wavelength that translates to pink. It is a trick played by our brain, that interprets a mixture of the wavelengths for red and violet as magenta, a deep shade of pink. Experimentally, this can be created by superimposing two different spectrums created by two prisms. Try it. Go ahead- click on this link to read the complete explanation. It's fascinating!

I would just like to mention a couple of things from the book at the end.

Cinderella's story as we know it is the one popularised by Charles Perrault. He, in turn, based it on a tale from the Grimm Brothers' collection of folktales and fairy tales. The tale of Aschenputtel, a fiesty girl who does not wait around for any fairy godmother or the prince to rescue her- complete with gory bits, now sanitised for our consumption to the point where we have a good and beautiful but wimpy heroine.

Peggy Orenstein also dedicates the last chapter to do-able remedies against the unstoppable and unavoidable onslaught of the girlie culture. And keeping in mind the natural rebelliousness of the fast-growing but impressionale children whose lives can get impacted.

A story written by A, with illustrations by Artnavy's 6-yr old. For Children's Day.

A, my 10 yr old, has always been big on books and stories. Like all kids, she is also extremely curious about everything around her. This, coupled with a hyperactive imagination, has spawned quite a few stories. She has been writing since she was just 4-5 yrs, the early efforts being not much than a few lines, sometimes with improbable plots, and unintelligible logic. As her mother, I love all her stories. Lately, they have begun to take a much better form.

Here's one that she wrote a few months back, and I'm very proud to share it with all of you as part of this Children's Day celebrations. The illustrations are by a SaffronTree kid, the extremely talented artist Anushka, Artnavy's six-year-old., who just sat down with her colours and drew them as soon as she read the story.

I chose this story because it fits in well with our Five Elements theme that we had for CROCUS just gone by. Obviously, the story has been influenced by Rudyard Kipling's 'Just So Stories.'  As also by the fairy tale 'Henny Penny' and all the fantasy fiction that A loves.

So here goes!

THE RAINBOW BIRD

Long long ago, when there was hardly anything on earth, a little shoot emerged from the ground. It had only a single green leaf. It was the first life form seen in the Thra-Thago desert. The sun realised that there was no one to care for the new shoot.

"Who will help me give it food?" he asked.
"Not us," said the stars.
"Not I," said the moon.
"Then who will help me?"
"Do it yourself," came the reply.

The sun was now alone, for the stars and moon had left.

So, the sun sent one of his ray-messengers to search for someone else who might help. At last, after a couple of weeks, the ray came back with some clouds from above the faraway sea of Brimbleting.

The sun shone down on the shoot and the clouds sprayed water on it. They did this everyday.

The plant grew rapidly. One day, they noticed something. A flower, with seven petals, each a different colour. After a few days, the petals withered and fell off. Inside, they found a minute and colourful fruit.

Another couple of weeks passed. Then came the special day. The fruit popped open. Something came out. It was a small bird with the same colours as the flower.

As it flew, it arched over the sun and clouds, and left behind it a stream of colours. This was the first rainbow.

Every time the sun and clouds are out together, the clouds spraying water, the rainbow bird makes another rainbow. Just like it had, long, long ago.

Story copyright held by A. Crossposted at Saffrontree.

The thousand nights and one night

Pic courtesy janpienkowski.com

THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND ONE NIGHT
Retold by David Walser
Illustrated by Jan Pienkowski
Published by Puffin books
Ages 8+

What happens when a book of timeless tales is created when an inveterate traveller who is also a master storyteller collaborates with a gifted illustrator brought up on a steady diet of those very stories? A masterpiece like our book here.

The book has the expected link of stories. Beginning with the tale of the Sultan who wows to make a new woman a queen every day, only to kill her in the morning, as revenge for being betrayed by his first wife. Enter Shahrazade, the clever woman who can weave a web of stories, leaving it tantalisingly unfinished in the morning. She does this for a thousand and one nights. Until finally, having fallen in love with her, he abandons his wicked resolve.

So it is, in a way, a love story. But every tale she tells is full of a thrilling adventure, taking us to many parts of the world along the way, telling us of fantastical creatures and unbelievable happenings.

The book keeps us enchanted throughout, like the Sultan was, and A could not leave the book till it was finished. She had been put off by the inevitable violence of these tales when we had tried some other books previously. Walser, however, has faithfully brought the tales to life without scaring. As also brought to us the fact that these stories have originated at different places in the world, and not in Arabia alone.

The illustrations!!! I could have picked this book up just for those, even if the story wasn't so enchanting. Vibrant colours- shades of red, orange and yellow in the background, with the actual figures in black silhouette, adding to the sense of drama. The double-spreads at the beginning of each tale are particularly overpowering.

A recommended book for anyone wanting to discover the magic of the Arabian nights.

Crossposted at Saffrontree.

PANNA

Last year I visited the Strand book sale in July, and picked up an autobiography by Kamala Das. It was an interesting read, the story of a strong woman with a mind of her own. So when I recently saw this book, I was intrigued, as I did not know that she wrote for children too. This is her first book in English for children. It was published after her death on 31st May 2009. Yesterday was her first death anniversary. A tribute to this great writer who has written in Malayalam and English.

PANNA
Written by Kamala Das.
Cover and Illustrations by Puja Ahuja.
A Puffin original published by Penguin Books Ltd.
Ages: 8+

Cover image: Courtesy Penguin Books India.

Panna is a very beautiful girl who lives in a fishing village in India with her brother Moti. They are orphans and have only one another. The villagers think she is like a princess.

Moti went fishing everyday with the other fishermen, and Panna waited on the beach for him. Everyday he would return with his catch and sell it, and get lovely things for his sister.

One day, she waited for him like everyday. All the others came back, but there was no sign of Moti. She waited till it was night, and tired out, fell asleep on the beach. "The tide came alive. It hit the shore like a hissing serpent..." The waves came up the beach, stronger every time, and pulled the sleeping Panna into the sea. This part of the story is almost like the passing of Panna into the other world, a metaphor for Death.

In the tale, here begins an adventure. Panna finds herself in a strange land under the sea where there was a moving green sky, pearl-studded lanes, fish-ladies in their coral houses and oystermen who spewed pearls every time they laughed. She enters the Fish-King's palace, where both he and the Fish-Queen are asleep on their thrones. They wake up to the jingle of her anklets.When asked Panna says that someone brought her there while she was asleep. "I want to go home." But the Fish-King does not want her to. She would stay there forever, at the bottom of the sea.

The conversation between the three is very funny, and has a irreverence about it reminiscent of a mixture of the 'Queen of Hearts' and the 'Mad Hatter' from "Alice in Wonderland." One almost expects one of them to shout: "Off with her head!"

When the king falls asleep, the queen takes Panna to her 'bed-chamber'. On the way, she sees a great black monster howling, chained down. On asking, the queen tells her that it is the wind, who creates a lot of mischief, and sinks boats. Rambling around the sea-world, Panna forgets all about Moti.

But Moti has reached the sea-shore by now, and is searching for Panna. The tide is out and the waves gentle. There is no sign of Panna. Moti runs around, looking for her, wading out into the sea, calling her name. The Fish-King hears him calling out, and does not want Panna to hear. He wants Panna to stay in the sea and not leave. So he casts a magic spell on the water. This illuminates the water around Moti and he is changed into an eagle. A black eagle with yellow eyes. The eagle flies over and around the waves, searching for any sign of Panna.

In the morning the fishermen came out of their huts and saw the huge bird flying in circles over the sea.
"An eagle. Perhaps we will be lucky today," they said.
Every day, even today, the black eagle flies in circles over the sea calling out for the little girl who went down to the sea world.

A beautifully written fairy tale of the love of a brother for his little sister, and his continuing search for her. In the time honoured tradition of Indian legends and folk-tales, this is a story from the coasts of Kerala. Written by one of Kerala's greatest women poets, Kamala Das.

This is what Ruskin Bond has to say about the book on its cover page. "A famous poet gives us a lovely story of fairy-tale magic set along the sea coast near her home in Kerala. Just right for reading aloud to your children, or starting them off as readers in their own right. Kids will love the Fish King and the Fish Queen, and little Panna will steal your heart . . . "

The illustrations by Puja Ahuja are in the Madhubani style and add to the unreal and lyrical quality of the tale. The story itself reminds one of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid" with its sad ending. Even A agreed that it did, after I read her the story in the original. Not the popcorn version of Disney movies.

Picture of Black Eagle: Courtesy Wikipedia.

Crossposted at Saffrontree.