This is a rather unprofessional bit that I would normally edit before I really published, but I'm too lazy. (Like the "Three Sluggards") Please understand that I know full well that these are undeveloped thoughts with a good many holes-- like a fine Swiss Cheese. Were I to write a paper with these ideas, they'd be much more bettererly presented. . . . Yeah. And understand that I pretty much just typed up a handwritten note that I wrote in order to vent one day when I was crabby because people were dissing fairy tales. Snobs. "Snobs don't eat fishsticks," as my sister said as a toddler. Okay, enough of that. Moving on.
Fairy tales are not meant to be real. You need a faith to believe in and listen to them. Like icons and medieval art-- they weren't realistic because they weren't supposed to be only-realistic-based-on-the-empirical-world. You need to figure it out.
Also, they don't all have happy endings. The values of fairy and folk tales vs. modern stuff, like all those wretched teen movies. I tell you, I got real sick of all the movies being about nothing but "being yourself"; you should not focus of being yourself via doing whatever you darn well please; there is duty to be considered. You should be yourself, but the best version of yourself.
Consequences of how you act: not the YOLO mentality. Fairy tales emphasize that what we do now will have consequences for later. Like Andersen's Little Mermaid. Heh. Not exactly like the Disney movie. (I think this idea might be thanks to Maria Tatar's cool book The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales. Or else one of my friends. . . Or else another commentary. . Ack, I can't remember.)
Morphing into modern ideas of fairy tales, AKA, chick flicks. I guess that's why people think of fairy tales as a girly thing: they only think of the probably French princessy ones. There are lots and lots of "manly" fairy tales. (The Brave Little Tailor, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Boy Who Did Not Know Fear, et aliud.) In fact, most fairy tales don't even have legit fairies, do they?
As to the reading of fairy tales-- esp. as adults--, people need to stop thinking about what's practical, because even "frivolous" things are important. Like the dude in Enchanted.
Read Germanic myths and saint stories looking for roots of fairy tales (like St. Denis' head with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). Also, with Apples-- the Iliad, Guinevere, St. Dorothea, Adam and Eve, and Snow White.
I would absolutely LOVE if I could somehow spend lots of time on the different versions of the stories over time (meaning I can rant on modern fairy tale movies-- like Snow White and the Huntsman) and in different countries. That would be fun.
Later touch on industrious women vs. lazy men. Very, very weird thing that seems to reoccur. Maria Tatar makes mention of it, but not a whole lot. An older form of feminism? Doesn't sound likely, but in a way. I guess that makes the Grimm brothers hipsters? Heroines before they were cool............? Of course, this isn't always the case, only some of the time. And I need to read more. Of course, these are womanly heroines. They don't run around in men's clothes and swing swords around and outman the men. Gosh, I hate that about so many modern movies. There's a difference between a strong, no-nonsense woman and a downright obnoxious one. Oi, this all is starting to sound like confusing gibberish that is probably offending people in a hundred different ways, and I'm too half asleep to properly argue with brains and dignity and civility, so here I'll stop rambling for today. Need that book to come in. . . The Library should just drive over to my house and hand over the books I need. And give me wine and chocolate and flowers, too. That would be nice.
And here's a picture, because I'm like Gaston. I like pictures.
ISN'T IT ADORABLE?! Sorry. This is a hedgehog from "Latin Bestiary," roughly 1320.
Hedgehogs + illuminated ye olde manuscript = pure awesome.
