A Second Blog Post from Hester:

Greek Play Performing Style and Fairytales for Children Today

Jennifer Jareau: My mother believes that children shouldn’t be shielded from the realities of the world. I do! Isn’t that why we read them fairy tales in the first place?

Dr. Spencer Reid: No, actually most fairy tales in their original form were gruesome to the extreme. In Cinderella the stepsisters had their feet mutilated to fit in the shoe and her eyes were eventually picked out by doves. Sleeping Beauty was raped while she was unconscious by the King. Hansel and Gretel were held captive by half blind cannibal. Soldiers were instructed to cut out Snow White’s liver and lungs, so the Queen could feast upon them.

Jennifer Jareau: Thanks for that Spence!

Dr. Spencer Reid: My point is: one could argue that the sanitized versions we have today are actually counterproductive to the original purpose of fairy tales, so the children can safely confront their darkest fears.

Criminal Minds, “If the Shoe Fits”

When we talked about how Greek tragedy kept the brutal parts of the play off-stage and used a messenger to describe the action before an actor came back on the stage with the described injury, if he did not die during the brutal part, the conversation between Jennifer and Spencer in Criminal Minds kept playing in my head. Are fairytales really as beautiful as they seem?

When we read those fairytales, there are those brutal parts in the book. However, when we watch them in Disney cartoon movies, they won’t act out Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off part of their feet. Instead, we will see her stepmother holds a knife in one hand and tells her daughter: “I’m doing this for our future.” Then, in the next part, we see that mental stepsister walking out with an injured foot and tries to put the shoe on. The same acting style appears in many fairytale movies. Furthermore, we put all the sexual part as a true-love kiss for children.

For sure the fairytales were influenced by Greek theater in some ways. However, why did fairytales and Greek plays showed in front of people in this way? In my opinion, there are two reasons. First, the writers or the directors wanted to show one or two main ideas clearly in their plays, and the audiences were expecting to see those ideas when they were watching. So, do you think the people of ancient Greece never heard about the story of Oedipus or those little girls never heard about Cinderella or Snow White before they watched the show or movies?

I believe most of them did, so they should already have an expectation of what kind of information they want to see from those shows. The same for the directors, they had already known what they should point out in their show. In Oedipus, they wanted to show how choices can affect one’s life, and the inescapability of one’s fate, not how cruel a father could be to try to kill his newborn baby because of an old man’s speech. In Cinderella and Snow White, the directors, and especially the parents, want to show children that the people with ugly hearts won’t end well and a kind person will find her true love and live happily forever. Not Cinderella’s indifference while trying on a shoe with her stepsister’s blood all over it and ignoring the fact that her stepsisters were still bleeding right next to her. Or, what kind of fetish the King had in order to kiss a dead woman’s body who he never met. They need to show what they are supposed to show.

Second, they are art and for entertainment. When I studied theater art, my professor told us that Greek plays were the main entertainment for the citizens (referred to first-class adult males) although they were tragedies. Same as fairytales. The directors wanted the audiences to relax and to feel good after they watched the shows, not to have a bloody nightmare, especially since most of them are tragedies  that they would come back to again to feel better.

If you have time, I would recommend you to watch a movie called Into the Woods (2014). This is the only fairytale movie I watched that jumped out of the box, which also caused it to get lots of negative reviews, especially from those parents whose children couldn’t stop crying until they left in the middle because they saw Little Red Riding Hood roll her eyeballs at the wolf, the prince cheat on Cinderella with a woman he just met in the woods right after they got married, and Jack as a little lazy boy who was beaten by his mom, who stole the magic beans from a nice giant couple and got them killed. I was not sure what I enjoyed more, the show or the dramatic reaction of people who saw ugly things they weren’t expecting to see.

Hester’s analogy: