Fairy Tale Fridays – Re-discovered Fairy Tales
Wow, I didn’t realize it had been a year since the last time I did one of these. I’m such a slacker 😦
This is a short one too, but I wanted to share this link before I forget: Newly re-discovered fairy tales
I’m always excited about new fairy tales. While the ‘classics’ are great, it’s important to remember that they cover a somewhat small spectrum of the world, and were compiled by people with an agenda. One of the fascinating things the article discusses is how the new collection makes obvious the gender-bias and white-washing done by the Grimms in their collection.
However, what I’d really like to start seeing more of is non-European fairy tales. And I’d like to see a Disney Princess moved based off one of them. One of my biggest disappointments with the Disney Princess movies has been their treatment of non-white characters. Why is it that every non-white character has to have a historically-based story line, instead of a fairy tale?
When they decided to do a black princess, for instance, why not celebrate a folk tale from Africa? They could have even just followed the book closer (I mean “The Princess And The Frog” by E.D. Baker, not “The Frog Prince” fairy tale), and it would have been a fairy tale type of story.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love all these movies, and I’m glad they at least *tried*. I just feel like they could have done even better. Studio Ghibli has several great examples of fairy tale stories that aren’t European, and they’re awesome! Wouldn’t it be great to see something like Princess Mononoke based on Native American mythology? How about a heroine that has to deal with Anansi?
Every culture has their own type of fairy tales, even if they don’t necessarily have “fairies” in them. Stories of myth and magic. Stories originally composed to teach morals or lessons. Legends. Folk tales. I want all of these stories to be shared and remembered.
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