Fairy Tales vs Disney
So this is what prompted my post idea. I think people forget to read their actual fairy tales before going into a retelling and their knowledge is based on what Disney taught them. Then again, maybe not. Like I said I heard about this comment secondhand, so I don't know what the rants would've been about. But I've read a lot of the original fairy tales. I mean come on Beauty marries her COUSIN!! Disney was right to change things there! And yes, way back when marrying your cousin was probably normal and just dandy. Now, it's a little different! Especially since I remember playing a lot with my cousins growing up.
I feel like I always go back to the Grimm brothers for my fairy tale examples. They wrote a lot! And quite a few were Disney-ified. Cinderella, Snow White...the leading princesses! But have people really read them? They are not at all what Disney made them to be! Stepsisters cutting off parts of their foot and bleeding from the shoe whole Prince Charming is oblivious, Snow White's prince being so enamored with her corpse that he pleads for the dwarfs to give her to him and then her coffin gets dropped and the apple she choked to death on pops out of her throat. Though not Grimm, but still beloved fairy tales, we have Sleeping Beauty who was sleeping for 100 years before her Prince came along. And I think she just woke up, I can't recall if there was a kiss. The Little Mermaid didn't even get her prince. She was supposed to kill him so she could return to being a mermaid, but she didn't.
Grimm wrote these fairy tales for adults to enjoy. They were not kid friendly. There's one that Disney never touched that involved a king who was going to marry his daughter after his wife passed because her beauty was the only one who matched his wife's! So yeah, Disney makes their changes so that these fairy tales can be enjoyed by children.
And then when our authors of today come along and write a fairy tale retelling I feel like there can be a lot of backlash from readers. And it sometimes comes down to an author changing everything they loved about the certain tale. But I always wonder, which version of the tale are you upset that the author changed? The fairy tale itself? Or the Disney-ified one? Because let's face it, Disney movies are another retelling! I mean that's why we get drawn to their fairy tale movies in the first place, because they remind us of other stories. Nowadays they might be making a few of their own! I mean they totally rewrote The Snow Queen! Though they initially were going to make Elsa a villain in the early drafts, just think...we almost didn't have "Let it Go!".
And I'm not saying readers aren't allowed to have their own opinions about why they might dislike a certain book. I'm just saying, let's make sure we're stating the right reasons for disliking a certain book. If you dislike a retelling of Peter Pan, say it's because it deviated so far from the Disney movie you loved as a child. Don't say fairy tale if you've never actually read the original fairy tale.
Always remember that a generous portion of the Disney movies we, myself included, all love are retellings of fairy tales from long ago! I for one, don't mind some of the changes. Like the fact that Belle marries a prince and not her princely cousin!
