What does everyone think of the significance of fairy tales today? Including advertising, anything you might over hear, names of restaurants and products.
Let me know! I'm curious to see what people think about it all! Thanks in advance! I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts and commenting.
The significance of fairy tales today
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 liquidmoon |
The significance of fairy tales today |
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Posts: 3 (06/26/08 06:11:31) |
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Dantes Heart |
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Posts: 17 (06/26/08 08:01:52) |
Are you asking about the significance of fairy stories themselves, or the significance of commercial references to them?
If the first, it's no small question. All I can really answer is that the significance of fairy tales - or of any wonder stories - is what it has always been: to make us see the world (and each other) again as if for the first time, to make us question and think about a world we've taken for granted (by seeing the familiar world we know turned upside down). Here are some relevant quotations on wonder stories from great thinkers:
As for the commercial references to fairy tales, I am guessing that companies advertising products, be they cosmetics or a fine restaurant, might be trying to associate their product with the magic of mystique that we think of in connection with fairy tales, or they may be, more directly, asking us to associate their product or our need for their product with a specific myth (for example, the myth of the prince arriving to carry the woman off to the sunset, or the myth of the knight who can fight any dragon). The logic is the same as a truck commercial in which you see a man in a Stetson hat wrestling an alligator. If the commercial is successful in selling the truck it is because it has first sold us on the idea that this truck will help us fill a role we want to have within a cultural myth of masculinity. Buy the truck because it is part of your identity as a manly man who can wrestle alligators. If you want to explore this way of using myth, you might find Roland Barthes' "Mythologies" useful. Hope this is useful. Daniel Editor, Dante's Heart |
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liquidmoon |
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Posts: 4 (06/26/08 15:27:00) |
I am asking both- where do fairy tales play a role in todays society. Most children today have not heard the original Grimm's collection or Hans Christian
Anderson tales they the only thing they have to go off of is Disney and that makes me said. Most of the disney films destroyed the original meaning or moral to
the fairy tale. Thanks for you comment though!
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AliceCEB |
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Posts: 306 (06/27/08 05:41:52) |
I don't want to come off as a contrarian, but I generally cringe at the notion that because children today have not read the original Grimm or Andersen
collections they have had deficient childhoods. Children's literature has only become richer in the last 50 years, providing more and more challenging and
imaginative texts. There's a lot of pablum out there -- I doubt we'll ever be rid of it -- but it's a lot easier to find something great to read in
the children's sections of bookstores and libraries.
That isn't to say that fairy tales don't have a place too. But I only really became interested in the older version as an adolescent/young adult, reading through Lang's Color Fairy Books, and eventually branching off into other texts as I grew older. Like myths, I saw connections that escaped me as a child, and the experience was even richer. Sure there's a place in childhood for fairy tales -- they are flourishing in picture books, middle grade readers and in YA. Heidi has gathered a fabulous index on SurLaLune. And it doesn't bother me that they do not have Grimm and Andersen's morals: they reflect our society as it is now, as they should. I think of the older tales as touchstones, or a leaping off point. The books that have been written and that are coming out now are a conversation with this tradition, incorporating and expanding what has come before. Best, Alice |
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