Emma Mustich interviews Jack Zipes on the recent turn to the dark side of fairy tales. I’m not so sure that Disney film lack the dark side to which she refers, although the Disney Cinderella is no match for the Grimms’ version, with blood dripping from the stepsisters’ shoes and eyes pecked out by doves. Remember Ursula, the Sea Witch, and her battle with Eric? And the transformation scene in Snow White, down in the cellar with the skulls and ravens? Emma Mustich writes:
These stories have entertained and comforted, spooked and delighted audiences for countless generations. Many who are alive today find Disney’s adaptations of these tales — from “Cinderella” to “The Little Mermaid” — familiar; children reared on the animation giant’s brightly-colored, upbeat and music-saturated films may view the glut of live-action fairy tale film adaptations headed our way — three new “Snow Whites,” two “Sleeping Beauties,” a “Beauty and the Beast” and a “Little Mermaid,” among others — with a curious sort of caution.
A number of these films (which are in various stages of planning and production) have been pitched as “dark” retellings of familiar tales. At this year’s Comic-Con, Charlize Theron likened her “Evil Queen” character in “Snow White and the Huntsman” to a “serial killer” (not a total departure for Theron); the new “Little Mermaid” is based on Carolyn Turgeon’s novel “Mermaid,” which Booklist reviewed using words and phrases like “dark,” “foreboding,” “heartache,” “misery,” “constant pain,” “catastrophic consequences,” “brooding,” “tragic” and “not exactly a cozy bedtime story.”
Does this “dark turn” in fairy-tale filmmaking represent a return to older, more forbidding versions of stories Disney gussied up for 20th-century kids? Or are these new movies simply cogs in the wheel of folk tale re-telling?
Here’s the link to the interview, and you will discover that Jack Zipes is no fan of Disney.
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movie…
I think you could say that a main difference between the older, “darker” versions and the more modern “Disneyfied” or innocent portrayals of fairy tales has to do with the protagonist’s, or young person’s, awareness. In older versions of “Snow White” the child knows she’s persecuted by her stepmother/mother and is motivated by it. In the movie she has no suspicion of danger when suddenly given new clothes and sent outside, seems in shock when told of the danger. Modern versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” show her as the naive child who can’t see the real wolf, whereas in older versions she came to see not only him, but what he wanted-performing a strip tease in order to stall him. Later tellings of “Bluebeard” show wives foolish enough to be overcome by simple curiosity whereas “The Magician’s Bird” shows women who know something is wrong and try to find it, with the last one succeeding in fixing it, in part.
It could certainly be argued that this return to “darkness” centers on the increasing hardship of convincing audiences that a worthy protagonist could be so unaware of the problems surrounding them, whereas for a time these younger characters were given a profound ability to miss the downside of life until the last second. As such, then I think it could also be said that it is a return to more authentic tellings.