Why Adapt Fairy Tales?
In order to answer this question, let us first explore why we tell fairy tales in the first place.
Why do we tell fairy tales?
Why do we tell fairy tales?
- Children’s primitive fears:
- Many fairy tales write about the children’s primitive fears. Think about Red Riding Hood being sent to walk alone through the dangerous woods, or Cinderella, who is unloved, emotionally and physically abused. Goldilocks does something naughty and nearly gets eaten by bears, and Hansel and Gretel are victims of attempted infanticide in a time of famine. By reading these fairy tales, children's primitive fears become "true" in their mind. However, the characters in the story overcome these dangerous situations, which helps the children overcome those fears.
- Allows children to experience and learn:
- According to a child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, children have the tendency to understand how things work through fairy tales rather than adults trying to reason with them. In his paper The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, he explains how children "trust what the fairy story tells, because its world view accords with his own.” In other words, fairy tales speak the children's language. By doing so, these stories allow children to experience many dangers and risks that exist in our world without having to experience it personally. Fairy tales thus reveal how the world works and allow the children to learn ethical and moral expectations through a very natural process.
- Provides role models:
- These characters in the fairy tales provide role models for the children. How many of you remember your parents saying something like "don't walk away alone, you don't want to end up being like red riding hood!" or "don't eat anything strangers give you, they might be poisoned like that apple Snow White ate!"? What we call common sense now are probably mostly learned through various fairy tales our parents told us. The characters in the story tell us what we should and should not do. Also, according to Nancy Mellon in Storytelling with Children, the "opposing characters in stories help children to experience their own
inner conflicts. . . Conflict ends with an increase of love and power to
the protagaonists who willingly and courteously do what must be done.
This fundamental plot gives a blueprint on very deep levels for the
awakening soul life of every child."
Now having these things in mind, we can ask the next question: why do we
adapt fairy tales? I'm pretty sure all of you remember the day we
covered the reasons why we adapt in one of our class (Here is the link
to Erika's blog which talks about this: "Motivations" the why behind adaptation). There were 4 major reasons: economic lure, legal restraints, cultural capital, and personal and political motives. Are there any other reasons in adapting fairy tales?
why do we adapt fairy tales?
why do we adapt fairy tales?
- Author's desires:
- The author wants to re-explore fairy tales themselves as they are interested in the various mysteries such as the hidden messages and metaphors. They also have the desire to add in details to help illustrate their own vision of the story and perhaps change the outcome of the story. An award-winning author Shannon Hale described this desire in an interview about her novel Rapunzel's Revenge: "With Rapunzel's Revenge, my motivation was in part a complete frustration and annoyance with the original tale. So... she just say in the tower? And waited? And when the prince kept coming back to visit, he couldn't just bring a rope to get her out? I felt like I wanted to reclaim that story and give Rapunzel another chance." In the interview, a director of the most recent adaptation of the Little Red Riding Hood, Red Riding Hood (2011), Catherine Hardwicke also talks about these desires.
- Updating the setting:
- Another reason why fairy tales get adapted is to update the setting to a much more modern situation. What are the chances of parents sending their children alone to their grandmother's through the wood nowadays? A good example of such updating is "Pretty Salma" by Niki Daly. This is an African adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood which takes place in a market place in modern day Ghana. In addition to this, slight changes can result from the current social problems we face today which may be different from the time original story was created. "Little Red Riding Hood" by Charles Perrault and Angela Carter's "The
Company of Wolves" would be the perfect examples in this case.
Written before the feminist movement, Perrault's view of a young innocent child. Carter's main character, on the other hand, being a female is clever, strong, and an in-depth thinker. This demonstrates how this story was created during the times of women's movement when women began to step out into the society by enter work place,etc.
- Slight changes depending on target audience:
- Fairy tales can be adapted in various ways depending on the target audience. For example, most of the fairy tales we tell children are rather simplified from the very original version of the story and are made to end with situations where everything goes right - a typical "and they lived happily- ever- after" endings. On the other hand, fairy tales adapted for a more mature audience tends to be told in a much more darker and more horrific way. Good example of this can be The Company of Wolves, based on Angela Carter's retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.
