I just happen to like apples
Oct. 18th, 2007 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offbalanceEveryone who knows me at all knows that I tend to be a purist about many things. It's only very infrequently that I feel that an adaptation surpasses the original version of anything, but it does happen, and I know that such things are out there.
HOWEVER:
I recently ran across a book that brought the flames to the sides of my face. It's a book of fairy tales, geared at girls. All the usual suspects are there, including a couple of other stories I'm not familiar with (an Indian story about a Princess who refused to marry, and a Japanese tale very similar to Thumbelina). I can't lie, I had many similar books as a child, and I enjoyed them. Hell, chances are, if there wasn't a ball gown of some variety involved, I wasn't interested in the story. (I got better). There's nothing wrong with reading fairy tales as a little kid. Some of them are really interesting, and they always set my young imagination ablaze. That's not the issue here.
While most of the stories in the book ("Twelve Dancing Princesses," "Cinderella," "Rapunzel," "Princess and the Pea," "Sleeping Beauty," "Snow White," etc) are all basically as you'd expect them to be (with rather nice artwork), whomever compiled the text for some of the others genuinely screwed the pooch.
1. Firstly, their version of "Beauty and the Beast" completely omits the part where Beauty leaves the Beast to return to her family. He just keels over in the garden one day. The point is missed - the Beast had to love Beauty enough to be willing to let her go, and Beauty had to love the Beast enough to want to return. I know I tend to judge harshly, as this is my favorite fairy tale. The people who get married at the end actually spend time getting to know one another first. They had dinner together every night for almost a year. It wasn't "Hey, you're pretty and you kiss good, let's get hitched!" Beauty loved the Beast for who he was in the end, and that had a big impact on me.
2. They include the tale of Cupid and Psyche, and gave it A HAPPY ENDING. I am so mired in the sheer wtf of this, I cannot comment further.
And finally, the one that made my head explode:
3. No doubt caving to pressure in the post-Disney landscape, whomever wrote this decided that the Little Mermaid would have a happy ending. Fine, whatever. In this one, rather than stab herself and become one of the daughters or the air, all of the mermaid's sisters come to the surface and sing to the prince about her sacrifice, and he then declares her his true love, and she's human forever.
Problem A: It doesn't ever mention her voice coming back. I have a HUGE problem with that, both actually and metaphorically.
Problem B: Where in holy hellfire did THAT ending come from??!! I mean, really.
Problem C: By changing this ending, the story completely misses what I consider the most important lesson of the story: that you shouldn't change yourself in order for someone to fall in love with you. Hell, even the Disney version managed to not leave that lesson out despite giving the story a shiny ending - Ariel had to learn the lesson, granted, but she got there. This version provides a hideous deus ex machina that totally defeats any lesson that could be learned from the original version, or the more sanitized one. This one is teaching the little girls out there to 'conform and be silent, and then a man will find you worthy."
I am completely and totally disgusted by this. If a story has an ending that might be too rough for a kid under a certain age, don't include it. I personally feel that kids should be exposed to stories that might be a little bit scary, because they often teach them important lessons. Little Red Riding Hood is a perfect example: she gets eaten by a wolf, but it's because she didn't listen to her mother about not talking to strangers. I know having to talk to your kid after you read them a story is too much work for today's dry cleaner parent, but it's much better for your kid in the long run than sanding down the edges of things that were scary or disturbing for a reason; to teach a lesson, even if it's an uncomfortable one.
HOWEVER:
I recently ran across a book that brought the flames to the sides of my face. It's a book of fairy tales, geared at girls. All the usual suspects are there, including a couple of other stories I'm not familiar with (an Indian story about a Princess who refused to marry, and a Japanese tale very similar to Thumbelina). I can't lie, I had many similar books as a child, and I enjoyed them. Hell, chances are, if there wasn't a ball gown of some variety involved, I wasn't interested in the story. (I got better). There's nothing wrong with reading fairy tales as a little kid. Some of them are really interesting, and they always set my young imagination ablaze. That's not the issue here.
While most of the stories in the book ("Twelve Dancing Princesses," "Cinderella," "Rapunzel," "Princess and the Pea," "Sleeping Beauty," "Snow White," etc) are all basically as you'd expect them to be (with rather nice artwork), whomever compiled the text for some of the others genuinely screwed the pooch.
1. Firstly, their version of "Beauty and the Beast" completely omits the part where Beauty leaves the Beast to return to her family. He just keels over in the garden one day. The point is missed - the Beast had to love Beauty enough to be willing to let her go, and Beauty had to love the Beast enough to want to return. I know I tend to judge harshly, as this is my favorite fairy tale. The people who get married at the end actually spend time getting to know one another first. They had dinner together every night for almost a year. It wasn't "Hey, you're pretty and you kiss good, let's get hitched!" Beauty loved the Beast for who he was in the end, and that had a big impact on me.
2. They include the tale of Cupid and Psyche, and gave it A HAPPY ENDING. I am so mired in the sheer wtf of this, I cannot comment further.
And finally, the one that made my head explode:
3. No doubt caving to pressure in the post-Disney landscape, whomever wrote this decided that the Little Mermaid would have a happy ending. Fine, whatever. In this one, rather than stab herself and become one of the daughters or the air, all of the mermaid's sisters come to the surface and sing to the prince about her sacrifice, and he then declares her his true love, and she's human forever.
Problem A: It doesn't ever mention her voice coming back. I have a HUGE problem with that, both actually and metaphorically.
Problem B: Where in holy hellfire did THAT ending come from??!! I mean, really.
Problem C: By changing this ending, the story completely misses what I consider the most important lesson of the story: that you shouldn't change yourself in order for someone to fall in love with you. Hell, even the Disney version managed to not leave that lesson out despite giving the story a shiny ending - Ariel had to learn the lesson, granted, but she got there. This version provides a hideous deus ex machina that totally defeats any lesson that could be learned from the original version, or the more sanitized one. This one is teaching the little girls out there to 'conform and be silent, and then a man will find you worthy."
I am completely and totally disgusted by this. If a story has an ending that might be too rough for a kid under a certain age, don't include it. I personally feel that kids should be exposed to stories that might be a little bit scary, because they often teach them important lessons. Little Red Riding Hood is a perfect example: she gets eaten by a wolf, but it's because she didn't listen to her mother about not talking to strangers. I know having to talk to your kid after you read them a story is too much work for today's dry cleaner parent, but it's much better for your kid in the long run than sanding down the edges of things that were scary or disturbing for a reason; to teach a lesson, even if it's an uncomfortable one.
