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The dark origins of Disney fairy tales - Claudia Schwabe
The dark origins of Disney fairy tales - Claudia Schwabe
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0:06
An evil stepmother demands a beautiful maiden’s lungs and liver;
0:12
a girl is ripped from a wolf’s stomach;
0:15
and sisters mutilate their feet to squeeze into a solid gold slipper.
0:20
During the early 1800s,
0:22
brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm gathered these unflinchingly gory details
0:28
from stories circulating around what’s now Germany.
0:32
But as the tales amassed widespread fame, they morphed dramatically.
0:39
The Brothers Grimm were born in Hanau in the 1780s.
0:43
At the time, Germanic lands didn’t yet exist
0:45
as the unified nation-state of Germany,
0:47
but were instead divided into small, independent princedoms.
0:51
And French forces exerted significant control over the region
0:55
as a result of Napoleon's expansionist aims.
0:59
Meanwhile, European Romanticism was beginning to flourish,
1:03
accompanied by movements to preserve national languages and traditions.
1:08
In their teens, the Brothers Grimm enrolled to study law at university,
1:12
and soon became interested in how local rules and customs
1:16
were embedded in folk stories.
1:18
It wasn’t long before they began undertaking their own
1:21
Romantic-nationalist project,
1:23
soliciting all manner of German folklore,
1:25
striving, they said, “to penetrate into the wild forests of [their] ancestors.”
1:32
Their aim was to foster a unifying sense of German cultural identity.
1:37
They idolized the idea of stories from the so-called “common man,”
1:42
which they viewed as evidence of a national “unspoiled imagination”
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and “inner purity.”
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In practice, much of what they collected came from middle and upper class sources,
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and some stories had traceably transnational origins.
1:55
But the Grimms received material spanning songs, jokes, fables,
1:59
and magic fairy tales,
2:01
from books and educated young women, as well as a painter and a former soldier,
2:06
though they probably collected the most from the wife of a tailor.
2:11
They published their first volume, “Children’s and Household Tales,” in 1812.
2:17
But from the stepmother who serves her husband his own son for dinner,
2:21
to the man who murders his brother in order to marry a princess
2:25
and then gets drowned in a sack,
2:27
these stories were far from cozy.
2:30
In fact, originally, the stories were for adults,
2:33
and often dealt with difficult realities,
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like parents abandoning their children in the woods due to poverty
2:39
and weary soldiers deserting the army.
2:42
The happier turns were often escapist fantasies from harsh circumstances,
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like a princess who throws a frog she's forced to marry against a wall,
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only to reveal a dashing prince.
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The first two volumes the Brothers Grimm published
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tended to reflect the horror and strangeness of the tales
2:59
they originally collected.
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But many readers found their content disturbing, and they didn’t sell well.
3:06
However, an English version that was shorter, heavily illustrated,
3:09
and geared towards children, did.
3:12
And as their financial and family obligations grew,
3:16
the brothers began to edit more actively.
3:20
In 1825, the Brothers Grimm published a “Small Edition”
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that incorporated illustrations
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and was intended to appeal to newer, Romantic ideals of childhood
3:30
and more conservative, middle and upper class Christian sensibilities.
3:34
A gory tale of kids “playing” pig and butcher, for example,
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didn’t make the cut.
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Meanwhile, the original negligent biological mothers
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of “Snow White” and “Hansel and Gretel”
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transformed into wicked stepmothers in later editions,
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helping reinforce traditional gender roles
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framing biological mothers as virtuous, feminine, and nurturing.
3:59
And while at first Rapunzel was revealed to have been entertaining
4:02
her princely visitor when she becomes pregnant;
4:05
with revision, she simply let slip about him—
4:07
no out-of-wedlock sex implied.
4:11
The brothers also accentuated some retributive violence,
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making for more cautionary tales.
4:17
For example, the Grimms’ earliest version of Cinderella
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ends after she is whisked away in her prince’s carriage,
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while their last version concludes with birds pecking out her stepsisters’ eyes.
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Over their lifetimes, the brothers published seven editions of the tales,
4:34
which became increasingly popular as they deleted and added stories
4:38
while intensively editing them to fit more puritanical tastes
4:42
and amplifying narrative and descriptive details.
4:46
Additional adaptations by others saw the stories evolve further.
4:50
No longer would Snow White be revived by a stumbling pallbearer,
4:55
but a prince’s kiss,
4:57
and henceforth her witchy stepmother wouldn’t dance herself to death
5:00
in iron shoes on a scorching bed of coals.
5:04
In other words, they'd grow to be not quite so unconventional
5:09
or grim as their origins.
