Folk Tale Secret Stash: The Ebony Horse.

Ah, The Arabian Nights!  The book that showed the people of Europe that dusky-skinned people had fairy tales too (this may sound unfair to Europeans, but let’s be honest.  We’ve all thought it). 

 

 However, what do most people know about The Arabian Nights aka 1001 Nights?  Well, they know there’s Aladdin and Ali Baba and genies and a guy named Sinbad who had seven voyages (some of which were made into movies by special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen).  Also, something with a magic carpet.  Not sure which story it is, but there is definitely a magic carpet in there somewhere (no, seriously, I don’t know which story it is.  Someone leave me a link if you have it).  The truth is that 1001 Nights is an anonymous collection of stories that have existed in some form since at least some time in the tenth century, maybe earlier.  It has been translated by any number of scholars and authors, one of the most famous translations being by Richard F. Burton. The whole thing is tied together by the story of a woman named Scheherazade who tells these stories to her husband the king in order to forestall her own execution.  Along the way, characters in the stories would sometimes stop and make points by telling other stories to other characters (it’s sort of story-ception).  How long is 1001 Nights?  Well, my abridged version is two rather thick paperback volumes.  I thought that was pretty long.  Well, according to other sources, the full collection of 1001 Nights is sixteen volumes long!  Now, the question is: were the Arabian Nights folk tales?  Short answer: maybe.  I’ve been looking through Robert Irwin’s The Arabian Nights: A Companion and find that since the book is so old and anonymous it’s really hard to pin down where these stories come from.  However, many scholars seem to think these stories have a folk root, so we’ll treat it as such.

Anyway, it seems to me that it’s a darn shame that a book 16 volumes long should best be remembered for three stories, so I’m here to shed a spotlight on another.  I give you “The Ebony Horse”.

The story starts with a king of Persia.  This king was good and kind and loved science and mathematics.  Also, he had three beautiful daughters.  One day, three inventors came to him and offered him gifts.  One offered him a golden statue of a little man that could strike enemies dead by blowing on a trumpet.  The second offered the king a basin with a golden statue of a peacock and 24 chicks that would peck the head of a different chick on every hour.  The last offered him a horse made of ebony wood that could carry a man anywhere he wanted through the air.   The king was so amazed by these gifts that he gave the inventors anything they wanted.  What they wanted was to marry the king’s three daughters.

The youngest daughter was less than pleased with this.

Apparently, the inventor of the ebony horse was something like a hundred years old and not much to look at.  So, the princess complains to her big brother who then goes off to have a few words with his father and her erstwhile suitor.  Now, the king tries to explain how a way cool flying horse is a worthwhile reason to marry his daughter off to an elderly man.  The prince actually does seem to like the horse and gets on it, but can’t make it fly.  So, the inventor is called for.  The inventor isn’t happy that the prince is opposed to him marrying a hot, young princess and then tells the prince to push a button so that soon the prince and the horse are flying through the stratosphere.  The king is now the one who is not pleased and has the inventor whipped and tossed in jail.

This isn’t the end of the prince, though.  He figures out the controls and has his own adventure.  He falls in love with a sleeping princess (shades of “Sleeping Beauty”), nearly gets killed by an entire army, essentially makes a royal kidnapping and once again runs afoul of the villainous old inventor.  It’s actually a pretty long tale and should be read so that you can get the full version.  I’ll put a link right HERE.

I like this story because I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with the various magical gadgets and items in fairy tales.  For once, the gadget is the result of invention rather than sorcery.  Also, you must admit that a flying wooden carousel horse is pretty unique.  It’s no magic carpet, but not everything can be a flying carpet.

Pertinent Fairy Tale Questions.

A week or two ago I was watching PBS Idea Channel.  What’s Idea Channel?  Well, it’s a YouTube show where the host, Mike Rugnetta, analyzes popular culture from all sorts of different intellectual angles.  Anyway, Rugnetta suggested an interesting concept: the reason that people went so absolutely ga-ga over Disney's Frozen was because it was a critique of fairy tales.  The idea is that Frozen deconstructs the fairy tale by having all the parts of a fairy tale (princess, animal sidekicks, handsome prince, witch/magically-empowered queen, act of true love, etc.) and presents them in ways that would be traditionally perceived as “out-of-place”.

Now, I find this argument a bit flawed.  If it’s true, then it means that fairy tales have been critiquing themselves for a couple of centuries now.  Take my favorite fairy tale from Grimm, “How Six Men Got On in the World”, for example.  The heroes are essentially a group of conmen.  The king and princess are both evil.  Also, magic stems not from some fairy or witch but five men who each have one specific magic power.  That’s not all, though.  Throughout my reading, I’ve encountered more than my share of princesses who were petty and spiteful and princes who were neither good nor charming.  The truth is that what Frozen seems to critique is our popular conception of the fairy tale.  Essentially, it overturns all the stereotypes we expect to see in Disney movies (actually, one of my own criticisms of Frozen is that it simply tries too hard to do this to the extent that the story doesn’t feel organic but instead feels like a story strung onto a series of deconstructed elements).  The truth is that many of the things that people think are in the “fairy tale rule book” aren’t necessarily there.  If my high school teachers and college  professors are to be believed, the only hard and fast rule is that the good guys win despite having to endure a number of difficult trials and that bad guys get punished for having put the hero or heroine through said trials.  Even these “rules” are suspect.  Some fairy tales don’t have villains, just difficult situations (“Beauty and the Beast”, for example).  Anyway, this is why I can’t really call Frozen or Shrek anything counter to a regular fairy tale.  No one ever said an ogre can’t be a hero or that a handsome prince can’t be a villain.

Now, I’m going to try to do like Idea Channel and ask a lot of questions for this post.  This is in contrast to too many of my opinion pieces which, unfortunately sometimes just change into angry rants (sometimes, it’s hard for a fairy tale geek to avoid the perilous claws of “nerd rage”).

So, here’s the question: Why, as a culture, do we grab hold of these popular tropes?

Why do we see these specific popular conceptions as quintessentially “fairy tale”?  Why are princes and princesses good and witches and monsters bad?  Why does love save the day? 

It would be easy to blame this on Disney and other media types, but maybe there’s more to it.  After all, big businesses like Disney often just give the public what it wants.

The reverence for princes and princesses is an interesting one.  It seems to stem back to the days of old systems of rule when there were not only royals but also nobility and landed gentry.  Royalty is about as high as you can go.  Now, naturally, no one’s going to believe that royalty are always good people.  There have been enough rebellions and uprisings in history to refute that.  However, fairy tales often carry the notion of attaining royalty.  Cinderella, for example, becomes a princess by marrying a prince.  For the peasant class, the idea of becoming as well-off as royalty has a certain appeal compared to the hardscrabble life they’re used to.  From there, it all seems to fall into place like dominoes.  If becoming royalty is good, then royals themselves must be good.  It all seems rather pro-authority, as compared to something like “How Six Men Got On in the World”.  However, you should also wonder “Why not kings and queens?”  I’ve read stories where full-fledged kings were the protagonists, but they rarely seem to make it into the world of well-known fairy tales.  Princes and princesses are royalty, but they’re not the people in charge yet.  The titles do suggest youth, to an extent.  However, they also suggest status without added responsibility.  They’re rich and powerful and should be respected, but they are not yet “chained to the throne” in terms of responsibility.  They’ll become kings and queens someday, but that’s after the story ends.

So maybe, in our common conception of fairy tales, regard for princes and princesses stems from some kind of desire for youth, wealth and status but without the added burden of responsibility.

As for witches and monsters, they are “the other”.  Traditionally, the unfamiliar is something to be cautious of.  They also rarely fit into Judeo-Christian belief except as some kind of demon or evil creature.  These creatures and people are probably depicted as ugly because it’s a way of making their badness obvious, like they wear their evil on their face.  And yet, fairies are generally depicted as “good”.  Also, I should note that I know of at least one story wear the protagonist learns sorcery, which is pretty close to being a witch.

It’s that “true love’s kiss” bit that really stumps me.  I really want to blame this one on Disney.  However, then there’s “The Frog Prince”.  Most people think there’s a spell-breaking kiss in “The Frog Prince” but there isn’t.  Disney didn’t make The Princess and the Frog until well after that misconception took root.

Anyway, I’m just spit-balling these ideas.  I really don’t know the answers.  If anyone else has any ideas about why people have latched onto certain fairy tale tropes or stereotypes, please post in the comments.  And if you’d like to watch more of PBS’s Idea Channel, check out their YouTube channel right HERE.

On Robin Williams.

 

 

Okay, so this one might be tough to write.

 

I know I've done my fair share of poking fun at Disney and how they influence our view of fairy tales.  However, for everyone out there, even old-school written page fairy tale geeks like me, there is that one Disney animated movie.  The one that you ate up like candy when your were a kid.  The one you remember going to see in theaters no matter how long ago it was.  The one where your parents thought you might end up wearing out the VHS tape.  For some folks I know, it was Beauty and the Beast.  For my sister, it was The Little Mermaid.  For me, it will always be Aladdin.  I loved that movie.  I loved the songs.  I loved the animation.  I loved how clever Aladdin was.  I loved how feisty Jasmine was.  And I really, really loved that hilarious Genie.  Looking back now, I know that the Disney movie wasn't that much like the original tale from the Arabian Nights.  But I still loved that movie.

 

Now I go into my Twitter feed and find out that the man who voiced that big, blue, lovable, hilarious Genie has died.  Not only that but from suicide that may have been brought on by depression.

 

Dammit.  Just dammit.

 

Sorry, I usually don't get so upset when celebrities die, but this is kind of a big one for me.  It's up there with when I was a kid and Jim Henson died.  (I seem to be drawn to celebrities who do lots of funny voices.  It may explain why I do so many voices in my storytelling).

 

Aladdin wasn't Williams's only foray into the world of fairy tale and children's literature characters, either.  He played the Frog Prince on an episode of Shelly Duvall's Fairy Tale Theatre and was a grown-up Peter Pan in Hook.

 

It is such an awful shame that the world has lost such a terrific actor and comedian to suicide.  Depression is a very serious mental disorder, but there is help for those who seek it out.  It may not have been able to help Robin Williams, but there are many that it can help.

 

[sigh]

 

To echo one of Aladdin's last lines in the movie, "Bye Genie, we're gonna miss you."

Four Color Fairy Tales: Brick Fairy Tales.

            [singing] Everything is awesome.  Everything is cool when you’re part of a team . . . . [stops singing]

Oh, hey!  You might not hear from me for a little while.  But I thought I’d try to give you one of my soon-to-be-classic review columns before I go (classic-ness based on personal tastes.  Not my fault if someone disagrees).  So, I’m going to give you my review of this:

Now, before I go any further, who knows what a fumetti book is?  I see one, maybe two hands in the back.  Well, in Italian it means “little puffs of smoke” as a reference to the way thought bubbles look.  It’s an Italian word for comic books.  Here in the United States though, we use the word to describe a comic book that uses photos instead of drawings.  Brick Fairy Tales is essentially a fumetti book.

What the creators of this book (John McCann, Monica Sweeney and Becky Thomas) have essentially done is recreated and retold thirteen fairy tales by our old pals the Brothers Grimm

Completely out of Lego bricks.

You have to admire all the work they put into this.  The introduction makes this abundantly clear.  I quote: “Each tale is told in its original form and remains unabridged, and each of the photographs has been crafted with special dedication to the humor, gore and peculiarities of the folklore itself.”

Whew.  I’m getting tired just thinking about it.

Now, while the work and attention to detail are admirable, I find it hard to reward their choice of stories.  At least, I find it hard until the end of the book.  The first eight stories are ones I’ve heard over and over.  I won’t list them. You could probably guess which ones they are.  Anyway, other than being portrayed in Lego form, they’re not really that different from what you’d expect.  It’s once you get to story number nine, “Clever Hans” that things got interesting for me.  I thought they did a very funny “Clever Hans” and “Sweet Porridge” and admirable takes on “Godfather Death” and “King Thrushbeard”.  Their “Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces” was so-so.

Looking through the book, I find it amusing to see what great lengths they went to in order to get pieces and figures to build these stories.  You can tell they had to raid a number of different Lego sets to get what they wanted, including Lord of the Rings and Star Wars sets.  Priests are often clearly wearing Jedi robes and their Devil from “Godfather Death” is obviously Darth Maul with a bigger set of horns.

Lego is a brand that is respected by both kids and geeks everywhere, much like the Brothers Grimm are.  It’s nice to see someone put so much work to bring the two together.  Especially since Lego proper has gotten into the fairy tale business but with a license you could probably expect.  Am I going to say this is a must-read.  Not really.  If you know the stories of “Cinderella”, “Snow White”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, etc by Grimm, then the stories won’t offer you too much.  However, it’s still an altogether admirable piece of work and if it’s the kind of thing you like (fumetti or Lego or popular fairy tales) then go ahead and give it a read.

Now if only I could get this song out of my head . . . [singing] Everything is awesome when we’re living our dream . . .

First movie stills from Disney's "Into the Woods".

As many of you know, Disney's string of fairy tale reimaginings is set to continue with an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods.  There was some controversy recently about supposed changes made to the story in order to make it more family-friendly.  These supposed changes were also supposedly refuted by Sondheim who had mentioned their possible existence in passing previously.

Anyways, over at the website Den of Geek, they apparently have the first stills from the movie up.  You can see them by clicking HERE.  There's apparently also a trailer out there somewhere.  I tried to access it on Den of Geek's page, but was informed that the video was "private" and was not allowed to see it.  I'll keep looking, though.

Update: I found the trailer: Into the Woods trailer.

Any thoughts about Disney, Sondheim, Into the Woods and these movie stills, make yourself heard in the comments below.

On Internet Lists and Ruined Childhoods.

Okay, internet, I think it’s time to stop it.  No really, just stop.  Enough with the lists already!

Maybe I should start at the beginning.  I was surfing along the internet when I found this on the comedy website Dorkly: “The Real Stories Behind 9 Disney Movies”.  You know the drill, they list 9 movies and their literary and folk tale counterparts and write a little piece on the differences between the two.  All in the interest in somehow getting a couple of laughs (I’ll get back to that point later).  No big deal, right?  Well, it’s not the only one.  Listverse had a list like this.  Buzzfeed (king of internet lists and countdowns) had a couple.  Cracked (the website of Mad Magazine’s edgier spinoff) had a couple of them as well.  Huffington Post had one with a particularly memorable title: “The Real Stories Behind These Disney Movies will Ruin Your Childhood”.  This seems to be just the tip of the iceberg.  I mean, take a look at my Google search results (click HERE).

So, I get the idea.  People are more aware of the Disney versions of these stories, so people write articles on the internet pointing out the differences.  Now, I’m no fan of Disney and the “Hollywood fairy tale machine”.  I’m also all for getting the original tales some more exposure.  However, I’m not sure these lists are helping.

Every one of these internet lists I read has a tendency towards sensationalism.  The problem with sensationalism is that it can drive people away too.  An outsider may come in thinking “Gee, it’s a good thing Disney came along and fixed these stories” (I’ve encountered that attitude elsewhere online before).  These articles all trade on the notion that something sweet and precious from your childhood was based on something awful and violent and terrible.  However, the original fairy tales are not awful.  They’re fantastic!  I mean, sure, there’s violence in many of them.  However, there’s also violence in the real world.  I don’t want to say that children have to learn to live with violence, because that would be stupid.  If there’s violence in your life, you have every right to try and get away from it and no one should try to hurt a child.  However, children should also know that violence does exist in the world.  Many of these early stories weren’t concocted expressly for children, anyway.  They were created for everybody with children just being part of that greater audience.  Now some of these stories were written for children, like the tales of Hans Christian Anderson and Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi.  With these cases, it could go one of two ways.  In one case, they may stem from a time when children weren’t quite as sheltered as they are now.  The truth is that childhood as we know it didn’t always exist like it does now.  For a long time, children were mostly treated as little adults.  In agrarian communities when whole families lived in one room houses, work was often dangerous and wakes were held in the home, it was hard to shield the little darlings from things like sex, injury and death.  It was a change that only really came about with the process of industrialization.  The notion of adolescence as a transition period between childhood and adulthood really didn’t exist either.  The other possibility is that, well, they figured kids could take it.  I mean, children aren’t as fragile as some people seem to think they are.

They leave out all sorts of great stuff, too.  Take, for instance, when these lists write about Pinocchio.  Do they ever mention that despite the darker bits, the original Pinocchio is actually quite funny.  I’ve been telling the story of Pinocchio in installments at storytelling guild meetings for months now and I’ve gotten laughs every time.  Of course, my delivery might help.  However, there is a humor to all of Pinocchio’s trials and tribulations.  Many of them are so over-the-top and ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh.  They also neglect to mention that the characters are more complex and interesting in Collodi’s version.  Geppetto is more of a hothead and originally created Pinocchio to make money, but also tries his best to do right by him.  Pinocchio is equal parts mischievous, selfish and innocent and really does love his father despite being drawn to trouble.  It all reflects a more real and complicated view of family where people are flawed and expectations aren’t always met.  Instead, it’s always just “Oh no, he killed the cricket” (so much trouble over squishing a bug).  Many of these lists get their facts wrong as well.  I don’t know how many I’ve seen that refer to the Grimms’ version of “Cinderella” as the original.  The truth is that Charles Perrault’s version “Cendrillon”, which is very much like the Disney adaptation, predates the Grimms’ “Aschenputtel” by about two hundred years.

Now, you’re probably thinking that I shouldn’t be getting so up and arms over something that’s being posted on comedy websites.  Here’s the thing: these lists aren’t really funny either.  Oh, they’re trying to be.  Most of them have a sort of jokey, wise-cracking tone.  But they don’t really have any laugh-out-loud lines or anything.  So, that kind of just makes it worse.

I don’t know.  I’d just like to see more on the internet about how terrific the old stories are instead of how awful they are.  That’s more or less what blogs like this one are for, though.  Maybe I’m overreacting.  After all, Soman Chainani (author of The School for Good and Evil) posted a similar list on Buzzfeed.  If someone who's so clearly a fairy tale fan can do it, maybe it's not so bad.  I’d like to hear your thoughts.  Post in the comments below on any impressions about the internet, old fairy tales and “ruined childhoods”.

Folk Tale Secret Stash: The Golden Twig.

Some may argue about it.  Some may deny it.  However, it’s a simple fact.  The fairy tale as we understand it now, was invented by the French.  Specifically, we owe it to the writers of the French salons of the Seventeenth Century.  Now, some could say that the fairy tale existed in folklore for centuries before that.  It is true that the “salonistas” did draw on folklore.  However, their stories would also be drawn into folklore to the point that the folk and literary feed on each other to the point that it’s hard to separate the two (I don’t know if this tale has a literary counterpart, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it did).  So, it is past time that I focus on a French fairy tale.  Some of the most notable French fairy tale writers include Madame D’Aulnoy, Charles Perrault and Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont.  This tale, however, comes from a different place.  This is one of the tales collected by one Henri Pourrat.  Pourrat was an anthropologist and writer who spent much of his life collecting the folk tales of the Auvergne region of France.  Now, not only does this tale come from a classic fairy tale location, it also touches on a classic fairy tale theme: ugliness.

Now, the story starts out with a king’s son.  This isn’t your typical handsome Prince Charming type, though.  You see, this prince was born kind of . . . ill-made.  Okay, I’ll just say it.  He was ugly.  Heck, he was deformed.  He had a hunched back and a twisted neck.

It was because of this that people called him Crickneck.  His case was supposedly so hopeless that even his uncle, who was a magician, couldn’t fix it.  The only thing he could do is give Prince Crickneck a magical golden twig that could cut through evil enchantments (Hey, at least it was something).

Now, the time came for the prince to marry.  The king, who’d been kind of volatile since his less-than-handsome son was born, decided to marry him off to a king’s daughter who was similarly afflicted with poor looks.  People called this princess Bootface.  Well, Crickneck didn’t like this idea.  He told his father, in no uncertain terms, that he would rather die than marry Princess Bootface.  Of course, he also did this over dinner with poor Princess Bootface right at the table.  This didn’t go over well.  The king got angry and ordered his son locked in the tower for the night.

Well, the tower was old, run-down and dusty.  However, the prince has the run of it to himself.  He explores the tower until he finds a room hidden behind a tapestry.  There, a woman lies as if asleep, covered in cobwebs.  He touches her with his golden twig and she wakes up.  She explains that she was a fairy who was cursed by an evil fairy.  Now, to reward him, she uses her magic to straighten out the parts of him that are crooked and make him conventionally handsome.  She renames him Peerless and sends him off to some distant place to live the happy life of a shepherd.

Next morning, the king decides that his son has been grounded long enough and goes to release him.  Surprise, surprise, they can’t find him.  They do, however, find two sets of footprints.  One belonging to Crickneck and a woman’s footprints.  The king arrives at the only logical conclusion: Princess Bootface broke into the tower and killed Crickneck and then disposed of the body to avenge her pride!  Anyway, she gets locked in the tower as punishment.

Now, Bootface is of a similar mindset as Crickneck.  She explores that tower top to bottom until she finds a drawer with a severed hand locked inside.  When she pulls it out, she gets attacked by a one-legged eagle that snatches it away.  The eagle turns into a sorcerer.  He explains that he was cursed by an evil fairy (a lot of that going around).  He then transforms her into a beautiful girl who he dubs Radiant.  Then he sends Radiant off to live as a shepherdess in some distant place very close to where a young man named Peerless is also herding sheep.

Now, this is where things start to really get interesting.  This is also where I usually give you a link and tell you to read the whole story for yourself.  However, I just can’t.  Apparently, this one isn’t online.  I can’t find it anywhere.  What I can do is give you a link to an entry for the book in Worldcat, the world’s largest library catalog (the link is right HERE).  I can then suggest that you check your local library system.  If you can’t find it locally, well, interlibrary loan is a wonderful thing.

Really, there are a lot of good stories in this book, so you should check it out.