The conventions of Once Upon a Time and Happily Ever After have led to
fairytales being misunderstood as sappy little fables with no bearing on
modern life, which need to be either teased or mutilated to please a
contemporary audience.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/06/mirror-mirror-not-fairest-them-all
"It is generally accepted that fairytales introduce children to the dark
side of life while keeping the horror at a safe distance. Any threat
should be fantastical and impossible, and confined to an absorbing and
tangentially familiar storyline
As adults we remain affected by the lessons we have learned from
fairytales. Rather than using a narrative frame to guide us in our
movements, we bend our experiences to fit the storyline – whichever
comedy or gothic horror, or romance best suits our needs at the time.
Thus, with hindsight, we recast friends, lovers, family as the wicked
witch, the true love, the ingénue. A love affair can be beset with
disasters, coincidences, chaos and lost slippers, and if it works out it
is cast as "meant to be". If it fails, it was clearly a disaster
waiting to happen.
Our heroes switch places with our villains with
every family feud and unveiled secret. Our successes and our failures
become inevitable once they are behind us. The longer we linger, the
more complicated Once Upon a Time becomes, until we feel that we've
lived several existences and been several characters. Sometimes the
people we have been knit nicely together, other times they clunk
together uneasily like disparate charms on a bracelet. We parcel our
lives up into segments, in which the moment – this very second – is The
End."
No comments:
Post a Comment