Fairy tales
Fairy tales are recognised by sociologists and psychologists as a vital part of children’s growth and development, particularly in the context of their understanding of the adult world. And those of us who remember the pre-Disney, unsanitised versions of old fairy tales (the wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother and the woodcutter slits him open to get them out; Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off portions of their feet to fit into the glass slipper; and Hansl and Gretel push the witch into the fire rather than just running away) know that the sanitisation is a reflection of our increasingly sanitised life. Gone are the days when children had to understand that life was fraught with danger and death. Danger is greatly reduced by our urban and heavily circumscribed lives, and death is pushed into nursing homes and hospitals, where children rarely see it.
But the still-present danger of fairy tales (and other similarly simplistic stories), in my opinion, is the portrayal of the good guys as always the good guys, and the bad guys as always the bad guys. And the more sanitised the stories are, the easier it is to recognise which is which. The bad guys are instantly dislikeable (think fairytale stepmothers). Or they’re ugly (bad witches always have hooked chins and warts on their noses, right? And good ones are beautiful, naturally).
The danger of all this lies in the subtle teaching to children that they’ll always be able to tell a bad guy when they see one. That, of course, puts them at risk because they can fail to exercise prudent caution about someone they decide is a good guy. And it seems that adults suffer from the same misapprehension. How often is a clergy abuse (or incest, or child pornography) disclosure about a “respectable” person greeted with the response “but I know him and he’s not like that”. Or “he’s such a nice guy, it couldn’t possibly be true”. These adults don’t seem to realise that they are still bound by the simplistic format of fairy tales, where the good guys and the bad guys are both easy to pick, and uncompromisingly good (or bad) all through.
And while this reaction has also been touched on in my blog entry on compartmentalism (3rd May), I think it’s important to see how little it’s recognised for what it is – a reliance on one’s own personal assessment of a person based on the image they present, which may be vastly different to what they’re like underneath.
So how do you tell a good guy from a bad guy? The simple answer is, of course, that you can’t. The essence of humanity is that we’re not good all through, or bad all through. And our surface image is governed, to a good extent, by what’s acceptable in society. So the more bad we are, the more the surface image can be discrepant from our actions, and it behoves us all to recognise that. So next time you’re reading a fairy tale (aka fiction story), take a moment to check your own reactions – do you know who the bad guy is from the start? If you do, welcome to the UNreal world!
June 15th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Nice website!!
June 15th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Thanks for the compliment. Can never have too many of them
June 16th, 2008 at 1:58 am
Musing on Grooming and a change of emphasis version of Fairy Tales entitled (say) Good Guy or Bad Guy? need to go in to the “regular” part of the site. You have a section on Grooming (not read yet) maybe the Musing slots in there. While the GG or BG really needs to be read by parents who might not come to this kind of site so I don’t know what you can do about that, perhaps an advice-for-parents site but you don’t have the time.
I haven’t yet read the Power/Control bit and maybe it too needs to be shifted.
I’ve read a fair bit and not yet read a lot and I am impressed. This is my second look at the site and I will come back.
June 16th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Ah… don’t you love parents? I’m 42 and he’s still telling me what to do!
(The joy of growing up, of course, is that one can also tell one’s parents what to do.)
But you raise an interesting point, Dad: that maybe things being expressed in the blog will be precursors to being added to the site. Blogging is, at least, a way to get the thoughts in some more permanent form than in my brain, while they are still current. Maybe once every 6 months or so I’ll need to revisit all the blog entries and decide what topics should be added to the main body of the site.
In this instance, I think you’ll find the body of the grooming post is already on the website, as is the main thrust of “fairy tales” (hence the links to those sections from the blog entry). And part of the purpose of the blog is to reach people who wouldn’t be so likely to read the rest of the site, so I’m content to have things that either overlap or duplicate, or even get the message across here rather than as part of the main site (remembering that the blog *is* actually part of the main site anyway).
Incidentally, I’m pleased and proud to have impressed you
July 11th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Fairy tales, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.