Here’s a post [1] summarizing the original versions of seven popular fairy tales. Some gory stuff, indeed:
What is creepier than kids, parents, evilness, sorceresses, wolves, and cannibalism? Before the stories were ripped from their horror roots, they were just right for scary, gory films. The early days of fairy tales weren’t all rosy cheeks and puckered, pouting lips; they had blood, flesh, and genuine frights.
Many of the gory elements have now been sanitized out of the original versions. Some of the gory elements of these stories remain, however. Nonetheless, we read these problematic parts to our kids as though things like killing and eating other people don’t really mean what they plainly say.
With practice, we humans have the ability to read things any way we choose. Yes, with practice, these stories about violence, death and the horrid betrayal of children by their parents can be read to children without disclaimers as though they are appropriate to read to children without heavy disclaimers.
This de facto sanitation of fairy tales reminds me of a little “joke” I sometimes play on Catholic friends. I tell them that I’ve learned that there is a church in the neighborhood that incorporates cannibalism into its ritual–that the participants are literally eating human flesh and drinking blood. I suggest that the police should be called. Most of the time, the Catholics will look concerned or grossed out, not recognizing that I am describing their own religion, the Catholic Mass.
Bring the kids on down and celebrate transubstantiational cannibalism each and every Sunday! Sanitized cannibalism. For more on Catholic cannibalism, see my earlier post, Good Friday, Good Grief! [2]
I would suggest this as the take away thought: With enough repetition, almost anything can be made to seem normal.
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