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How Grimm's Fairy Tales Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
0:05
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Nol. He's back. He's
0:16
Speaker 1: actually sitting in for this one. And that makes this
0:20
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Yeah, we left a trail of
0:22
Speaker 1: breadcrumbs or pebbles, depending on what part of the episode.
0:27
Speaker 1: That's right, we're talking about that's that's my favorite one.
0:30
Speaker 1: Now that in the Juniper Tree or my favorite and
0:34
Speaker 1: the juniper tree. Yeah, and we should say this is
0:37
Speaker 1: a two parter um. You should have already previously listened
0:41
Speaker 1: to one. We probably should have put this one out
0:44
Speaker 1: first and then done the other one. Hey, but whatever,
0:47
Speaker 1: what evs we we just think this is a nice
0:50
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed these two. Actually, I think if you
0:52
Speaker 1: can make the case that we did it in the
0:54
Speaker 1: right or because now people have thought about fairy tales
0:58
Speaker 1: and have jailed and bathed in them for like the
1:01
Speaker 1: last day or so, and now they're ready to understand
1:03
Speaker 1: what's been haunting them. But where did they come from? Right?
1:06
Speaker 1: What's the deal? And we're going to tell you what's
1:09
Speaker 1: the deal? This is I really did enjoy these O.
1:11
Speaker 1: This kind of reignited my kind of brought up a
1:14
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. Oh yeah, did you find yourself weeping?
1:17
Speaker 1: Not weeping, just kind of like remembering childhood? And I
1:20
Speaker 1: don't know, I enjoyed it. I guess I didn't read
1:23
Speaker 1: that many fairy tales. It reminded me that fairy tales
1:26
Speaker 1: are No, they're not awful, they're just very um dark, Yes,
1:32
Speaker 1: but I appreciate that part. I think it's more just
1:35
Speaker 1: the have you ever have you ever seen a picture
1:40
Speaker 1: of a human being without a face. Uh yeah, I
1:45
Speaker 1: think that's kind of how I think of fairy tales.
1:49
Speaker 1: They're they're blank, they're anonymous, they're um flat. I think
1:53
Speaker 1: it's that I've actually run into that term a lot
1:55
Speaker 1: in researching for this episode. There's certainly not a lot
1:57
Speaker 1: of character development and oh and that's part of like
2:01
Speaker 1: their charm, their lure. But it's also like, you know,
2:04
Speaker 1: that's the memory I formed of them is like, um,
2:07
Speaker 1: I'm used to characters or psychologist is lacking as well,
2:10
Speaker 1: like people do stuff for almost no apparent reason whatsoever,
2:14
Speaker 1: and a lot of it's horrible stuff. Um. And that's
2:18
Speaker 1: actually kind of set the stage for fairy tales to
2:21
Speaker 1: be told and retold and retold and interpreted and analyzed.
2:25
Speaker 1: And um, I think that's what makes them so enduring
2:29
Speaker 1: is that they are there's there's there're so minimalists that
2:33
Speaker 1: they just survive because humans will change an update and
2:38
Speaker 1: we'll go from wearing bell bottoms and macromay vest to
2:42
Speaker 1: wearing like silver jump suits, which are in right now. Um,
2:46
Speaker 1: But ultimately we're still like very similar to what we were,
2:49
Speaker 1: you know, sixty years ago. And I think fairy tales
2:53
Speaker 1: um reflect that well said. And also I can say
2:59
Speaker 1: that because from what I understand, despite the fact that
3:01
Speaker 1: there is serious study of fairy tales, no one really
3:07
Speaker 1: has any definitive say over what they are. Like trying
3:10
Speaker 1: to define what a fairy tale is, chuck, Um, It's
3:13
Speaker 1: a story usually encompassing like a moral or ethical uh, lesson,
3:19
Speaker 1: but fantastical elements. Sure, okay, uh that often had dark
3:27
Speaker 1: undertones or overtones. That's actually a pretty great definition, but
3:31
Speaker 1: it does raise some questions. It's like, what is the
3:33
Speaker 1: difference between a fairy tale and a fable, or a
3:35
Speaker 1: fairy tale and a nursery rhyme? You know, what's the
3:39
Speaker 1: what is it specifically about fairy tales, and I think
3:42
Speaker 1: it's all I think they're all very similar and it's
3:44
Speaker 1: all part of folklore. So if you listened, I think
3:47
Speaker 1: in February this year, we did one on folklore, so
3:50
Speaker 1: it ties in heavily with that. Um. And also we
3:54
Speaker 1: didn't I don't know why we just defined fairy tale
3:56
Speaker 1: because we never defined what vocal fry was. Apparently I
4:00
Speaker 1: feel like we did. Yeah, we got some complaints like
4:03
Speaker 1: you never said what it was, but we demonstrated it
4:06
Speaker 1: over and over. Yeah, and we said it's like a flat,
4:09
Speaker 1: creaky way of speaking. Yeah. I don't know. I feel
4:13
Speaker 1: like we got the point across. Um. Okay, So fairy
4:17
Speaker 1: tales specifically, when you think of fairy tales, you you
4:21
Speaker 1: might think of Disney, but if you give it a
4:23
Speaker 1: little more thought, you're probably going to come up with, um,
4:27
Speaker 1: the Brothers Krim, Yeah, Matt Damon and um Heath ledger
4:32
Speaker 1: R yeah for real, uh yeah, Jacob and Wilhelm Graham
4:36
Speaker 1: uh and of course there Well, let's just go ahead
4:40
Speaker 1: and say there's a couple of types of fairy tales.
4:42
Speaker 1: There's the there's the oral tale. Yeah, the oral tale,
4:47
Speaker 1: which is and and the grand Brothers kind of exists
4:49
Speaker 1: between the two worlds. But one is the oral world,
4:52
Speaker 1: which we talked about in folklore, the age old tradition
4:56
Speaker 1: of passing stories down um via mouth parts, over and
5:01
Speaker 1: over and over, changing them, adding some spice, just like
5:04
Speaker 1: telling a joke or a ghost story or something like that,
5:06
Speaker 1: right exactly, um. And fairy tales specifically, as far as
5:10
Speaker 1: they went with oral tales are typically associated with women
5:13
Speaker 1: and typically associated with women, um, undertaking domestic chores. That
5:19
Speaker 1: that's typically where they were passed down. Um. And so
5:23
Speaker 1: you've got the oral tale and well, which makes sense.
5:25
Speaker 1: Though when I read this, I was like, why are
5:28
Speaker 1: there so many fairy tales to have women at the
5:30
Speaker 1: loom or spinning stuff, because apparently that's where they were told.
5:34
Speaker 1: It makes sense. Yeah, it's like, hey, I'm I'm bored
5:37
Speaker 1: out of my mind here spending the straw into gold.
5:41
Speaker 1: Let me eat some peyote and make up a story
5:43
Speaker 1: and you sit there and listen. Um. There's also the
5:46
Speaker 1: literary fairy tale, which appears to be there's a handful
5:51
Speaker 1: of people like Charles Perrault or challer Piero right um.
5:56
Speaker 1: And then there's also Hans Christian Anderson very famously, and
6:00
Speaker 1: these people are are reputed as having created, you know,
6:04
Speaker 1: many fairy tales, and those are called literary fairy like
6:07
Speaker 1: they were original authors and made these upright. That's apparently
6:12
Speaker 1: a total like misattribution. Like for example, Little Red riding Hood, right,
6:18
Speaker 1: is a great example that's typically attributed to Charles Parrault
6:23
Speaker 1: in the I think the seventeenth or sixteenth century. Charles
6:28
Speaker 1: Charles Parralt his ancestor um and Charles Pearl. He was
6:33
Speaker 1: very famous, as famous as Hans Christian Anderson was um
6:37
Speaker 1: for for writing down fairy tales and the collections and
6:40
Speaker 1: just being delightful, right, and he was great and at
6:43
Speaker 1: the end of every one of his there was a
6:44
Speaker 1: moral to the story. Um. But the people tend to
6:49
Speaker 1: think that either if he didn't come up with it,
6:51
Speaker 1: it was originated right before then. But we found an article,
6:55
Speaker 1: um that was from it covered a two thousand nine
6:58
Speaker 1: study carried out cultural anthropologists who basically went to some
7:02
Speaker 1: biologists and said, hey, do you guys know how you
7:04
Speaker 1: trace um species and create the tree of life the
7:09
Speaker 1: taxonomy of biology? Can you do that with Little Red
7:13
Speaker 1: Riding Hood? And they said, man, you are one crazy
7:16
Speaker 1: lady or one whacked out hepcat actually may have been
7:20
Speaker 1: a man, doctor Jamie Trani. It was a man and
7:23
Speaker 1: still is probably. I mean it's only been six years.
7:26
Speaker 1: You never know. Um. So Dr Tarrani went to some
7:29
Speaker 1: biologists and figured out how to apply the same methods
7:33
Speaker 1: to this story Little Red Riding Hood, and he found
7:36
Speaker 1: that not only was it not just like a few
7:39
Speaker 1: years older than Pearl's version, it was as as as
7:42
Speaker 1: much as years old. Basically, yeah, they found variations in
7:47
Speaker 1: China and Iran and the Middle East. Um, they found
7:51
Speaker 1: some unit for the asp stables another person, they said,
7:56
Speaker 1: they found some of those from sixth century BC. So
8:00
Speaker 1: basically what they're saying is maybe nobody made these up. Well,
8:04
Speaker 1: someone at some point did, at least as far as
8:06
Speaker 1: Little Red Riding Hood goes. That there's some common ancestor
8:10
Speaker 1: that predates years before the present, and um it was.
8:14
Speaker 1: It's a very widespread tale. Um. Not only did Dr
8:18
Speaker 1: Tehranni um trace the lineage back to six BC, UM
8:24
Speaker 1: he found that you could take these tales all around
8:27
Speaker 1: the world and lump them into groups, just a few,
8:30
Speaker 1: a handful of groups, and that UM places as desparate
8:34
Speaker 1: as Iran and Nigeria and Europe all were in the
8:38
Speaker 1: same group, whereas like Japan and Burma and China were
8:42
Speaker 1: in their own group. But they all kind of bear
8:46
Speaker 1: this resemblance where there is a lion or tiger or
8:50
Speaker 1: a wolf who was posing as something else in order
8:53
Speaker 1: to get the drop on someone else. Yeah, and it's
8:57
Speaker 1: sometimes usually a little girl, but I think in Iran
8:59
Speaker 1: it was a boy. So details change again simple folklore,
9:04
Speaker 1: I think, but the structure, the skeleton of the story
9:08
Speaker 1: is still very much the same, traceable back years. So
9:11
Speaker 1: that that kind of answers the question that I don't
9:14
Speaker 1: know if we raised or not yet who owns or who? Who?
9:18
Speaker 1: Who came up with fairy tales? But humans did. That's
9:22
Speaker 1: the best answer you could possibly come up with. These
9:24
Speaker 1: humans came up with it and over the over the years,
9:27
Speaker 1: like you said, people in bellyship, people add people subtract um,
9:30
Speaker 1: and the Grimm brothers did exactly that same thing. All right,
9:34
Speaker 1: let's let's talk a little bit about these these grim bros.
9:38
Speaker 1: Um Jacob and Wilhelm did already say that they were
9:41
Speaker 1: born in Yakub in Part one, which I appreciated yea
9:46
Speaker 1: and wille Helm Jacob or Yakub was born in seventy five,
9:51
Speaker 1: home just a year later, and they were they were
9:54
Speaker 1: kind of rich kids. Their dad was a lawyer and
9:57
Speaker 1: they had some money. Uh. Their original house if you
10:00
Speaker 1: look at it, it's funny. It looks like I mean,
10:01
Speaker 1: it's a total Bavarian like gingerbread house. And Um, they
10:06
Speaker 1: grew up in Germany and when they were ten years old,
10:08
Speaker 1: their dad died of pneumonia. Uh, and all of a
10:11
Speaker 1: sudden they didn't have the kind of dough that they
10:13
Speaker 1: were used to having. They did was not good and
10:17
Speaker 1: in a little scary. I don't get the sense that
10:18
Speaker 1: they were like dirt poor or anything, because they still
10:21
Speaker 1: had some relatives that had some cash well. Plus also,
10:23
Speaker 1: I mean they made it all the way through law
10:25
Speaker 1: school in honor of their father, So I mean that
10:28
Speaker 1: wasn't free even back then. Yeah. There, I think their
10:31
Speaker 1: aunt paid for school. Uh. They graduated each graduate at
10:36
Speaker 1: the top of their class, and I guess what would
10:38
Speaker 1: be considered high school. And then their auntie paid for
10:40
Speaker 1: law school. And it wasn't long after law school that
10:44
Speaker 1: they got into the UM. It was about to say
10:47
Speaker 1: writing that they did right. But the editors for sure,
10:50
Speaker 1: collecting and editing and writing business. They were what's called philologists.
10:56
Speaker 1: Curating is the word I met um. And they were
10:58
Speaker 1: also they consider of themselves and were considered linguists as well.
11:02
Speaker 1: And by the way, they were Hessians, which means that
11:04
Speaker 1: they were um from the same place as the headless
11:07
Speaker 1: horseman from a sleepy hollow legend. He was a Hessian mercenary.
11:12
Speaker 1: That yeah, Um. So anyway, they they came. They graduated
11:17
Speaker 1: from law school during this period called German romanticism um,
11:21
Speaker 1: which was basically this idea that before years before, in
11:26
Speaker 1: the in the midsts of history, the Germanic people were
11:30
Speaker 1: very interesting. They had a very good grasp on things,
11:35
Speaker 1: and a lot of this was passed down through oral
11:39
Speaker 1: folk folklore and um. That this stuff was disappearing thanks
11:43
Speaker 1: to industrialization. So you get the idea that there's a
11:45
Speaker 1: little bit of nervousness at least among the intellectual um
11:50
Speaker 1: people of Germany at the time, that this cultural history
11:54
Speaker 1: was drying up very quickly, and there was a movement
11:57
Speaker 1: to collect this oral knowledge before it disappeared. And that's
12:01
Speaker 1: what um, that's what the Grimm brothers were doing when
12:04
Speaker 1: they set about collecting these stories, although they weren't very
12:08
Speaker 1: honest about it at least at first. Yeah, it was, um,
12:11
Speaker 1: we know them now is as just simply the grim
12:15
Speaker 1: Brothers fairy tales. But the original collection was called um
12:19
Speaker 1: Nursery and Household Tales or die kenda went house minchen
12:26
Speaker 1: and german Man. You're German? Is it's coming back? And
12:30
Speaker 1: there are eighty six stories originally in the collection. And
12:33
Speaker 1: by the way, big shout to the article from the
12:35
Speaker 1: New Yorker Once Upon a Time A Lord of the
12:38
Speaker 1: fairy Tale by Joan uh at Casella. Yes, very nice.
12:43
Speaker 1: I think that's it. Yeah, she wrote a great article. Um,
12:46
Speaker 1: and that's the largely the basis of our podcast. By
12:49
Speaker 1: the way, that's right, so thanks for that. But um,
12:51
Speaker 1: eighty six original stories. And like you said, originally they
12:56
Speaker 1: in the in the forward, in the introduction they were like,
12:59
Speaker 1: this is a this is all German all the time,
13:02
Speaker 1: basically word for word. We went around to the peasantry
13:06
Speaker 1: and collected this um these marks was it marching or marking?
13:12
Speaker 1: Uh for what the tales German for tales the marching
13:16
Speaker 1: or marken house myrchin merchant. So they went around to
13:21
Speaker 1: the Vulk the peasantry and collected the merchant from them. Yeah,
13:26
Speaker 1: it didn't change a word specifically. They said they had
13:29
Speaker 1: a primary source, a woman named Dorothea VMan, and she
13:35
Speaker 1: was a peasant and a village near them. Um. But
13:38
Speaker 1: it turns out and that all of this again was folklore,
13:41
Speaker 1: which I can't fault them too much because that was
13:43
Speaker 1: their business. No, but they jumped it up to be
13:45
Speaker 1: a little more folks tho than it was. Well, they
13:47
Speaker 1: both basically lied in there in the introduction in their
13:51
Speaker 1: first um, the first edition, which was published in two
13:54
Speaker 1: volumes in eighteen twelve and eighteen fifteen. Right, and so
13:57
Speaker 1: this nursery and household tales became known as rooms fairy tales.
14:01
Speaker 1: And at first it was definitely um a much more
14:06
Speaker 1: of an intellectual pursuit. There are lots of footnotes. They
14:09
Speaker 1: tried to make it seem like they were just collecting
14:12
Speaker 1: and preserving this German folk knowledge and all that. But
14:15
Speaker 1: it turns out that they they did have that primary
14:18
Speaker 1: source and that woman, but she was pretty far from
14:20
Speaker 1: a peasant. Apparently she was the wife of a tailor,
14:23
Speaker 1: which was part of the merchant class, not the peasant class,
14:26
Speaker 1: and she was just one source. They relied on friends
14:28
Speaker 1: and family and relatives and other collections of fairy folk
14:32
Speaker 1: folk tales and fairy tales that they just lifted. Um.
14:35
Speaker 1: And we're not suggesting there were thieves. This was a
14:37
Speaker 1: common thing to do. It was. But again they bald
14:40
Speaker 1: faced ly lied in there in the in the introduction
14:43
Speaker 1: in preface, which is funny, but it's um. Yeah, they were.
14:46
Speaker 1: They were they were trying to adopt an aura for
14:49
Speaker 1: their project that they wanted it to have that it
14:53
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily have. Well, yeah, and I don't think we
14:55
Speaker 1: mentioned the source wasn't even a German descent. She was
14:59
Speaker 1: a French. You cannot. Yeah, So they even kind of
15:02
Speaker 1: trump that up right, which means that a lot of
15:04
Speaker 1: the stuff that, like Red Riding cap Um, is a
15:08
Speaker 1: rip off of Charles Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood or
15:12
Speaker 1: an adaptation whatever you want to call it. But again,
15:15
Speaker 1: this is in the midst of this German romanticism, where
15:18
Speaker 1: German culture was trying to be promoted and um uh,
15:22
Speaker 1: celebrated and preserved. Um. So all of this stuff was
15:26
Speaker 1: very much painted as German, even though not necessarily any
15:32
Speaker 1: of it was German. In origin, but it was far
15:34
Speaker 1: more ancient than even the French that they were lifting
15:36
Speaker 1: it from. That's right. Um, all right, here, let's take
15:39
Speaker 1: a little break and let's come back and let's talk
15:41
Speaker 1: a little bit more about these grand brothers and we're
16:07
Speaker 1: back and Chuck. Before we get back to it, I
16:09
Speaker 1: want to shout out to guest producer Noel, who is
16:13
Speaker 1: responsible for the fairy tale themed jingle that this episode
16:16
Speaker 1: in the first one too. Yeah, we asked and he
16:18
Speaker 1: was like, too easy, I'll do with my eyes closed
16:21
Speaker 1: while I'm asleep. He did with an alligator chasing me.
16:24
Speaker 1: That's right, So thanks Noel. It's awesome. All right. These
16:28
Speaker 1: are grand brothers. Uh. They were. They were tight. They
16:30
Speaker 1: were really really close with each other. They were they
16:32
Speaker 1: worked really close with each other. They were buddies from
16:35
Speaker 1: what I can tell. Uh, And apparently for most of
16:38
Speaker 1: their career they worked at desks facing each other. That
16:41
Speaker 1: classic writing partner than we are now, Yes, even though
16:46
Speaker 1: it's one desk, right and we only sit here to record. Yeah,
16:51
Speaker 1: I guess there is some similarity here there. Sure we're
16:55
Speaker 1: making magic and they were too. I think that's the similarity, right, Sure,
17:00
Speaker 1: yakop was it was a difficult introvert in Willehelm was
17:03
Speaker 1: pretty laid back. Wilhelm would eventually get married because he
17:07
Speaker 1: was more outgoing and had four kids, whereas Yakop stayed
17:11
Speaker 1: a bachelor his whole life. Um, and they were tight.
17:15
Speaker 1: They worked as librarians together for a lot of their career. Uh.
17:18
Speaker 1: And like you said, they were uh philologists. It is
17:24
Speaker 1: um like they worked on most things, I think eight
17:26
Speaker 1: things together. Yakop wrote twenty one books on his own,
17:29
Speaker 1: bill Holm fourteen. And they were I mean, one of
17:32
Speaker 1: them wrote a book on grammar. One of them wrote
17:34
Speaker 1: like a history book. They were smart dude. They were
17:36
Speaker 1: smart dudes. Um. But their their life's work, aside from
17:40
Speaker 1: the fairy tales, ended up being they seemed to be
17:43
Speaker 1: sort of obsessed with making a German dictionary complete, like
17:49
Speaker 1: writing a dictionary. Yeah, they've made it to f I
17:52
Speaker 1: believe before they died. Yeah, and then some some other
17:54
Speaker 1: people came along and said we're going to carry on
17:56
Speaker 1: this work and finish and it was completed. But it
17:58
Speaker 1: was a massive project. Yeah, I mean, like for decades
18:01
Speaker 1: they worked up just to get through f right and
18:03
Speaker 1: I think, um who died first, I believe Wilhelm, the
18:08
Speaker 1: younger one, died first and Jacob carried the dictionary on
18:12
Speaker 1: for four more years even after his death. But um
18:16
Speaker 1: Yacob said, Okay, I'm done with the fairy Tales. I'm
18:19
Speaker 1: gonna move on to other stuff. And Wilhelm actually edited
18:22
Speaker 1: that thing for forty five years. It went through seven
18:26
Speaker 1: editions of the Fairytale Thing, Yes, the Nursery and Household Tales,
18:30
Speaker 1: the Grim fairy Tales, Scary it went, I'm sorry, I switched.
18:34
Speaker 1: Um it went from uh, it went from yeah, I
18:37
Speaker 1: guess eighteen twelve to yeah. Eighteen fifty seven was when
18:42
Speaker 1: he released the last edition, and they were very different
18:45
Speaker 1: books by the time the first edition in the last
18:48
Speaker 1: edition came out, and even between the first and second editions,
18:51
Speaker 1: they were tremendously different books. Because Um, the Grimm brothers
18:55
Speaker 1: decided that their book wasn't selling like they thought it
18:58
Speaker 1: would e G. Hot k Yeah, if you listen to
19:01
Speaker 1: the previous episode, it was originally much darker and aimed
19:04
Speaker 1: at adults and was poorly reviewed and didn't sell well. Right,
19:09
Speaker 1: and for grammarians listening by e G. I'm an example
19:12
Speaker 1: not that is I would have said I E had
19:14
Speaker 1: I meant that. But um, they they decided that if
19:17
Speaker 1: they could just kind of alter their book just a
19:19
Speaker 1: tiny bit, it would sell a lot better. So they
19:24
Speaker 1: went through and took out all the sex, basically. Yeah,
19:28
Speaker 1: and tradition of modern Americans take out the sex, pump
19:32
Speaker 1: up the violence, right, But these are like early nineteenth
19:35
Speaker 1: century Germans doing this, and I guess it's that that
19:39
Speaker 1: same thing. Um, And here, Chuck, I have a question,
19:44
Speaker 1: and it's a rhetorical question, but so you know how
19:47
Speaker 1: nursery rhymes are just fairy tales are just weird. They're
19:50
Speaker 1: very weird. There's a lot of random things that just
19:54
Speaker 1: seem really out of talking eggs that break and right,
19:57
Speaker 1: but also like really horrific violence for children's story and
20:01
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah, I think that this is the point
20:04
Speaker 1: where that weirdness sets in because they went through and
20:08
Speaker 1: they took the same tales and they altered them just
20:10
Speaker 1: slightly for children. But it went from these are adults
20:15
Speaker 1: or these are stories for adults meant to be told
20:17
Speaker 1: from one adults to another, not for kids, to let's
20:21
Speaker 1: adapt these for kids. And um, in that adaptation, that
20:26
Speaker 1: weirdness set in that's still there today. Yeah, I think
20:30
Speaker 1: that's when it happened. That wasn't even a rhetorical question.
20:32
Speaker 1: That was just a statement, thank you you're putting it
20:36
Speaker 1: out there. Had I ended an up speak, though, I
20:39
Speaker 1: could have made the case that it was rhetorical. Uh So,
20:42
Speaker 1: in this and then the very next edition out of
20:44
Speaker 1: the seven, they went ahead and after the bad sales
20:48
Speaker 1: and stuff, and like I said, they sanitized it and
20:51
Speaker 1: geared it too kids, but they also dropped that stuff
20:53
Speaker 1: from the intro. All the lies in the intro were like,
20:57
Speaker 1: I guess, why why do we even do that? Yeah?
20:59
Speaker 1: You know, of course, sorry everybody. That was just dumb
21:02
Speaker 1: on our parts. It was Wilhelm yaco Is likes like
21:06
Speaker 1: no yucom and it just goes back and forth for
21:09
Speaker 1: like eight pages. Uh So, in the previous podcast we
21:12
Speaker 1: mentioned Rupunzel. How that was, um, how Rapunzel. Basically the
21:18
Speaker 1: lady in question got pregnant after having sex. Yeah, so
21:23
Speaker 1: they would they would, uh, they would whitewash that kind
21:26
Speaker 1: of stuff. They would sanitize the sexier parts. Right, They
21:29
Speaker 1: just took out the fact that she got pregnant and
21:31
Speaker 1: didn't mention what the prince and she were doing, right,
21:34
Speaker 1: They just left it up to the parents to imagine
21:36
Speaker 1: and the kids to just be dummies and not know
21:38
Speaker 1: what they were talking about. Right, But like we said
21:41
Speaker 1: to the violent stayed um and in some cases even
21:44
Speaker 1: got worse, like when Um Hansel and Well, the violence
21:49
Speaker 1: got worse, but they also did sanitize it a little bit,
21:52
Speaker 1: just to make it a little more palatable, like in
21:54
Speaker 1: Hansel and gretel Uh. In the previous show, we mentioned
21:58
Speaker 1: that Um it was it was a stepmother, an evil stepmother,
22:02
Speaker 1: which we'll we'll talk about later as a recurring motif
22:05
Speaker 1: UM that took the children out in the woods to
22:07
Speaker 1: abandon them, and the original version it was both a
22:10
Speaker 1: real mother and a real father, And they were like,
22:12
Speaker 1: all right, you know that's really bad, so let's at
22:15
Speaker 1: least make it an evil stepmother that the dad tries
22:18
Speaker 1: to battle and say no, don't do this, right, but
22:21
Speaker 1: eventually gives into, gives into and the kids are still
22:23
Speaker 1: taking out in the woods to die, but it's just
22:26
Speaker 1: a little bit more like, Okay, well it's not the
22:29
Speaker 1: real parents because that's just horrific. So the violence is
22:32
Speaker 1: still there, but they've taken away a little bit of
22:34
Speaker 1: the psychological terror by replacing the mother slightly with a stepmother. UM,
22:40
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think that that's a I guess that
22:44
Speaker 1: is something of a cleansing process as far as editing goes.
22:48
Speaker 1: But the violence is still in there, and it seems
22:50
Speaker 1: very weird, especially today when you look back at this
22:53
Speaker 1: and think like they were reading this to kids. But
22:55
Speaker 1: there's a very smart woman named A s byatt who's
22:59
Speaker 1: children's off herself but also an expert on children's books,
23:02
Speaker 1: and she wrote the introduction to a UM collection I
23:08
Speaker 1: think actually the an addition of the Grimm's Fairy Tales
23:13
Speaker 1: by Maria Tatar, who's a basically the foremost expert on
23:17
Speaker 1: fairy tales working today. Yeah, that's Zip's not around anymore.
23:22
Speaker 1: He's retired because that guy, He's still available for comment
23:25
Speaker 1: for sure, but Tatar seems to be the She's taken
23:29
Speaker 1: up the mantle from him and uh in this edition.
23:32
Speaker 1: A s By writes in the introduction of it that, yes,
23:35
Speaker 1: this violence seems weird, but if you step back and
23:38
Speaker 1: think of it as uh seventeenth and eighteenth century Tom
23:42
Speaker 1: and Jerry cartoons, it becomes way more understandable and at
23:47
Speaker 1: the same time way more acceptable as well. Like, think
23:51
Speaker 1: about all the horrible things that Jerry did to Tom,
23:55
Speaker 1: and what you're looking at is the same exact stuff
23:58
Speaker 1: in a fairy tale, So it's not quite as odd
24:01
Speaker 1: as you would think. Yeah, And as far as the
24:03
Speaker 1: historical motif or the motif of the evil step mom,
24:07
Speaker 1: there's a historical realism there that um, someone else pointed
24:10
Speaker 1: out that at the time, you know, women died in
24:15
Speaker 1: childbirth a lot, and so oftentimes there was a widow
24:19
Speaker 1: or a widower left with kids that they would bring
24:23
Speaker 1: in a stepmother and resources could be scared. So you'll
24:27
Speaker 1: see this recurring motif over and over, this evil stepmother
24:30
Speaker 1: who basically is competing for both the affections and food
24:35
Speaker 1: of their little children that they inherited that they don't like.
24:39
Speaker 1: So that's why you see it pop up over and
24:40
Speaker 1: over and over, because that's kind of what happens sometimes. Yeah,
24:43
Speaker 1: And that's the sociohistorical interpretation of fairy tales, which is
24:47
Speaker 1: um basically takes fairy tales largely on their face. I mean, like,
24:51
Speaker 1: if you have a talking egg or something like that,
24:53
Speaker 1: you're not going to be like well, obviously in the
24:55
Speaker 1: twelfth century, eggs talked, but there were a lot of
24:58
Speaker 1: there's a lot of context in background that um that
25:02
Speaker 1: I think people imbue with a lot more fancifulness than
25:06
Speaker 1: need be. For example, like the the presence of wicked
25:10
Speaker 1: step mothers throughout or in the case of Hansel and
25:13
Speaker 1: gretel um a child abandonment like if you look back
25:17
Speaker 1: at the fourteenth century, during famines and plagues, I think
25:20
Speaker 1: it was the Black Death in particularly just leveled Europe.
25:23
Speaker 1: A lot of people abandoned their children because they just
25:26
Speaker 1: couldn't feed them any longer. So this wasn't like so
25:30
Speaker 1: outlandish that it only belongs in fairy tale, and it
25:33
Speaker 1: might have been like a fairly approachable theme that people
25:37
Speaker 1: talked about to kind of hash out the feelings of
25:40
Speaker 1: collective societal guilt at the fact that child abandonment was rampant.
25:45
Speaker 1: You know, it's I think the sociohistorical interpretation is probably
25:49
Speaker 1: my favorite. Can we talked about the juniper tree real quick?
25:52
Speaker 1: I love this one. So, like we said, in fairy tales,
25:57
Speaker 1: there's there's incests, there's cannibalism, there's murder, there's torture, there's
26:03
Speaker 1: buried alive. There are all kinds of things that happen
26:06
Speaker 1: in the junifer tree. Maybe well, I don't know, maybe
26:09
Speaker 1: the worst one of them all. So in this case,
26:11
Speaker 1: we have an evil stepmother, of course, who hates her stepchild,
26:14
Speaker 1: who was a boy. So she comes home and says, hey,
26:17
Speaker 1: you want an apple, and the boy says, sure, let
26:20
Speaker 1: me lean in there and get one, and she it's
26:23
Speaker 1: a trunk, and she slams the trunk down and cuts
26:25
Speaker 1: his head off. And that's just the beginning. So she's like,
26:29
Speaker 1: all right, probably not a wise move. Let me put
26:33
Speaker 1: the kid in a chair. Let me stick this head
26:35
Speaker 1: back on his neck and wrap a scarf around it,
26:39
Speaker 1: and just here, open his eyes here, and put a
26:42
Speaker 1: little smile on his face. And then her real daughter
26:46
Speaker 1: comes in, not a stepdaughter, her favorite, real daughter. And
26:49
Speaker 1: it's like, he looks all weird. Why is he just
26:51
Speaker 1: sitting there like adult? She says, I don't know, go
26:54
Speaker 1: slap him and and bring him around a bit. Boxes
26:57
Speaker 1: the ear, I think, is what she So she boxes
27:00
Speaker 1: his ear. His head falls off. And by the way,
27:03
Speaker 1: the little girl, which makes it even more horrific what
27:05
Speaker 1: you're about to say, loved the little boy though it
27:08
Speaker 1: was a stepbrother, even though in the mom's eyes they
27:10
Speaker 1: were rivals. For these scarce resources. A little girl loves
27:13
Speaker 1: a little boy, so go ahead. So she knocks his
27:15
Speaker 1: head off, and the mom's like, you knocked your brother's
27:18
Speaker 1: head off, But you know what, We're gonna just keep
27:21
Speaker 1: this quiet between us and you won't get in any trouble.
27:24
Speaker 1: Let's just cook him into a stew and feed him
27:26
Speaker 1: to your father or step And the little girls like
27:30
Speaker 1: beside herself with like guilt and shame and horror at
27:33
Speaker 1: the fact that she or the thought that she killed
27:36
Speaker 1: her beloved stepbrother, but she goes along with it because
27:40
Speaker 1: this is what her mom is saying. And the father
27:43
Speaker 1: comes home and he eats the stew and actually it's
27:45
Speaker 1: black pudding. Yeah, I'm not sure what that is. But um,
27:49
Speaker 1: the father eats it and he's like this is all
27:51
Speaker 1: for men, a little misogyny and greed on the end,
27:55
Speaker 1: because he's like, no one else in this family is
27:57
Speaker 1: going to eat this, yeah but me. It's pretty nuts.
28:00
Speaker 1: And in the end, the little the little girl takes
28:04
Speaker 1: the boy's bones and buries him by the juniper tree,
28:06
Speaker 1: and he's reborn as a bird and ends up killing
28:09
Speaker 1: the wicked stepmother um, and then comes back to life
28:12
Speaker 1: as the boy so it all works out in the
28:13
Speaker 1: end for the boy. But it's pretty nuts as far
28:16
Speaker 1: as like these stories go, Like that has it all?
28:20
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about how children played butcher
28:23
Speaker 1: with each other? Yes, this one's very short, and we
28:27
Speaker 1: should point out many of these are very short, like
28:30
Speaker 1: Little Red Riding Hood was only four pages long. I
28:33
Speaker 1: think Rapunzel was only two or three. But that also,
28:36
Speaker 1: in and of itself, was the work of the Grim brothers.
28:38
Speaker 1: They would embellish this stuff tremendously and often double it
28:42
Speaker 1: and double it from a few paragraphs to a couple
28:45
Speaker 1: of pages. So still short. And by the way, if
28:47
Speaker 1: you want to read a really neat analysis of the
28:50
Speaker 1: juniper tree, read Ernest Parkins analysis on word words and edgeways. Yeah, yeah,
28:57
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. He finds at out of neat symbolism
29:01
Speaker 1: in it. All right, here's how children played butcher with
29:04
Speaker 1: each other. It's a great title. A man once slaughtered
29:07
Speaker 1: a pig while his children were looking on. When they
29:09
Speaker 1: started playing in the afternoon, one child said to the other,
29:12
Speaker 1: you beat the little pig, and I'll be the butcher.
29:14
Speaker 1: Whereupon he took an open blade and thrust it into
29:16
Speaker 1: his brother's neck. Their mother, who was upstairs in a
29:19
Speaker 1: room bathing the youngest child in a tub, heard the
29:21
Speaker 1: cries of her other child, quickly ran downstairs, and when
29:24
Speaker 1: she saw what had happened, drew the knife out of
29:26
Speaker 1: the child's neck and in a rage, thrust it into
29:28
Speaker 1: the heart of the child who had been the butcher.
29:30
Speaker 1: Then she rushed back to the house to see what
29:32
Speaker 1: her other child was doing in the tub, but in
29:34
Speaker 1: the meantime it had drowned in the bath. The woman
29:37
Speaker 1: was so horrified that she fell into a state of
29:40
Speaker 1: utter despair, refused to be consoled by the servants, and
29:42
Speaker 1: hanged herself. When her husband returned home from the fields
29:45
Speaker 1: and saw this, he was so distraught that he died
29:47
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter the end. That's like the episode of Dragnet
29:51
Speaker 1: where they have a pop party and the parents forget
29:54
Speaker 1: their child is in the bath and it drowned. Was
29:56
Speaker 1: that on Dragnet? Wow? So you know, of course I'm laughing,
30:00
Speaker 1: because I mean, you can't take that seriously, right if
30:04
Speaker 1: you watch Dragnet you can well no, I mean that
30:06
Speaker 1: story it's just so over the top and weird and
30:08
Speaker 1: violent and dark and stuff just happens like again, there's
30:14
Speaker 1: almost no psychology to these things. People just do stuff
30:17
Speaker 1: well supposedly. Uh. I think Wilhelm Grim said specifically about
30:22
Speaker 1: that one, like No, the clear lesson here is it's like,
30:25
Speaker 1: don't play with knives and things, which is and that's
30:28
Speaker 1: a good point, and I don't know if we've even
30:30
Speaker 1: said that, Like the the predominant theory for why these
30:34
Speaker 1: things even exist is um, as far as being taught
30:39
Speaker 1: to children goes, they are lessons their tails and how
30:42
Speaker 1: to grow up, how to avoid strangers, stay away from knives,
30:46
Speaker 1: stay away from I guess, which is like don't eat
30:49
Speaker 1: houses made of gingerbread, just good life lessons that kind
30:51
Speaker 1: of stuff. They're sexual predators out there, yeah, which we'll
30:54
Speaker 1: talk about, but let's take another break. You're ready for it, yes, okay,
31:20
Speaker 1: So Chuck you um, you said that there are sexual
31:24
Speaker 1: predators out there and they're little red riding hood in particular,
31:27
Speaker 1: Like if you read it, especially if you read the
31:29
Speaker 1: Grim version and not the Charles Barrault version, it's um
31:32
Speaker 1: like everything comes out great in the end, she saved. Um,
31:37
Speaker 1: you can read between the lines a little bit and
31:40
Speaker 1: that's the key. Though, Like these these fairy tales even
31:43
Speaker 1: after they became sanitized through seven editions, even after they
31:46
Speaker 1: became disneyfied um, there's still this underlying thread, the theme,
31:51
Speaker 1: the central theme, the message look out for sexual predators,
31:54
Speaker 1: don't cut your brother's head off with a knife like that.
31:57
Speaker 1: They can't be expunge and the story still remain the same.
32:02
Speaker 1: It's it's so woven into the fabric of them, and
32:05
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things that makes them interesting.
32:07
Speaker 1: But alternately, something else I ran across, and I think
32:10
Speaker 1: that a s buy it Um article was the idea
32:16
Speaker 1: that they don't have any designs on you. They're not
32:20
Speaker 1: trying to teach you a lesson necessarily in and of themselves.
32:23
Speaker 1: They just are what they are. Maybe the person telling
32:26
Speaker 1: you that fairy tale wants you to learn that lesson.
32:29
Speaker 1: The fairy tale in and of itself couldn't care less
32:31
Speaker 1: whether you you learned that lesson or not. It's just
32:34
Speaker 1: here's a snapshot of what happened in twelve seventeen to
32:37
Speaker 1: this little boy who played with knives with his brother.
32:40
Speaker 1: Will learn it or don't, we don't care. Yeah, but
32:43
Speaker 1: that's uh. What was Zip's first name? Jack? Jack? Zip's
32:48
Speaker 1: he was may still be here he said, he's retired now, Yeah,
32:51
Speaker 1: he's He worked at the University of Minnesota. Is a
32:53
Speaker 1: comparative literature professor and German professor go Golden Gophers. Yeah,
32:59
Speaker 1: uh uh. And he for many many years was the
33:02
Speaker 1: pre eminent fairy tale dude. He was where you would go.
33:06
Speaker 1: He turns up all over the place in his research.
33:08
Speaker 1: But he said, though, um that there usually is like
33:12
Speaker 1: a come upance, Like he says, whoever is a tyrant
33:15
Speaker 1: at which an evil brother or mother who wants her
33:18
Speaker 1: own daughter dead, they will always be punished. There will
33:20
Speaker 1: always be justice. And usually the characters that are of
33:25
Speaker 1: humble origins go on to have like great success, like
33:28
Speaker 1: the you know, the uh, poor maiden marries the prince
33:33
Speaker 1: in the end in most cases it's true, but not always.
33:36
Speaker 1: Or the king who wants to have an incestuous relationship
33:39
Speaker 1: with his daughter ends up getting killed or something like that. Yeah.
33:43
Speaker 1: In that case, I believe what was his wife was
33:46
Speaker 1: dying and he said, I will only remarry if I
33:49
Speaker 1: can find someone as beautiful as you, and turns out
33:52
Speaker 1: that's my daughter. What was that one called, like many
33:56
Speaker 1: or something like it was called the creep King. Yeah,
33:59
Speaker 1: but that's a recurring theme. Actually it's a very ancient one.
34:02
Speaker 1: It falls under the Cinderella story um which apparently so
34:06
Speaker 1: there's a I don't know if we mentioned it or not,
34:08
Speaker 1: but there's a folklore cataloging device like cataloging convention. And
34:14
Speaker 1: I think Cinderella stories, which is the persecuted heroin is
34:19
Speaker 1: uh number five ten A yeah, for real, it's the
34:24
Speaker 1: Arne Thompson Uther classification five ten A persecuted heroin Cinderella
34:29
Speaker 1: stories the Uther pen dragon, and that's another. Cinderella is
34:33
Speaker 1: another one, like there was one woman in particular who
34:36
Speaker 1: collected three eighty five different versions of the Cinderella story
34:39
Speaker 1: from around the world, and I think they've identified as
34:41
Speaker 1: many as fifteen. So Cinderella is another very very ancient
34:45
Speaker 1: one as well. And the one that you recounted about
34:48
Speaker 1: the king you wants to Mary's daughter, that particular one
34:50
Speaker 1: from Greece. Yeah, I think that was called all Kinds
34:53
Speaker 1: of Fur. It's all hyphenated, like that's her name or something.
34:56
Speaker 1: I think it's um. So we're talking talk about like
35:00
Speaker 1: sanitizing it and um Joan a Casella comes to the
35:05
Speaker 1: Grimm's defense like saying you can't really fault these guys
35:08
Speaker 1: for for changing this stuff, because again, it doesn't really
35:12
Speaker 1: belong to anybody. They belong to the ages, and the
35:14
Speaker 1: Grimms just put their stamp on it. Um. And then also,
35:17
Speaker 1: you know, uh, if you if you just take an
35:21
Speaker 1: oral tradition and faithfully write it down, it's going to
35:24
Speaker 1: be virtually unreadable. So they definitely stylized that. They added
35:29
Speaker 1: some more pros, and they made it a lot more memorable,
35:31
Speaker 1: and it became a beloved book. It's a Unesco book
35:35
Speaker 1: Memory of the World, I think collection, so like it's
35:39
Speaker 1: a it's a very well beloved book. But some people say,
35:43
Speaker 1: you know, if why should the Grimms be the only
35:46
Speaker 1: ones to be able to change fairy tales? Why why
35:49
Speaker 1: does it have to end with them? Maybe it's time
35:52
Speaker 1: to rewrite them some Well, isn't that what uh tartar
35:57
Speaker 1: zips that's his position. No, no no, no, but I thought
35:59
Speaker 1: the one in who uh name? What isn't that what
36:04
Speaker 1: she's done? Didn't she release a new version? In two
36:06
Speaker 1: thousand five, she released an annotated version, but she didn't
36:09
Speaker 1: rewrite them. What SIPs is saying is like, here's the
36:12
Speaker 1: basic story, go rewrite it as your own and um,
36:15
Speaker 1: there's been some feminist collections that that are rewritten stories. Yeah,
36:19
Speaker 1: like why is every girl defenseless and needs a man
36:23
Speaker 1: to rescue her from poverty or danger? Right, And that's
36:26
Speaker 1: a feminist interpretation of a lot of um, the fairy tales,
36:30
Speaker 1: some people say, if you look a little further, like, yes,
36:34
Speaker 1: all the ones that Disney picked and all the most
36:35
Speaker 1: popular ones are very much patriarch patriarchally slanted to where
36:40
Speaker 1: it is a damvel in distress as a prince that
36:42
Speaker 1: has to come help her and she's helpless until he
36:44
Speaker 1: comes along and then whatever. Um, But if you look
36:48
Speaker 1: a little further, there are some very there are other
36:51
Speaker 1: ones where they're resourceful heroines. And think of Hansel and Gretel.
36:56
Speaker 1: Gretel tricks the witch and kills her all by herself
36:59
Speaker 1: without the help of Hansel, who's being fattened up by himself. Right, Yeah,
37:04
Speaker 1: And I'm sure Disney, Walt Disney himself was just like, man,
37:06
Speaker 1: they love this stuff, like of course I'm gonna they're
37:09
Speaker 1: eating it up. Yeah, but there, but there. You can
37:12
Speaker 1: also look at Hollywood two is a means of taking
37:15
Speaker 1: these classic fairy tales and rewriting the Grim versions like, Um,
37:20
Speaker 1: there's a huge I don't want to call it a movement,
37:24
Speaker 1: but there's there's like a trend, I guess, trend to
37:27
Speaker 1: to taking these things that were disneyfied versions of the
37:30
Speaker 1: stories and restoring them back even even to their pre
37:35
Speaker 1: grim darker roots, just making them dark again roots there
37:39
Speaker 1: grimmar pre grim roots. Yeah. Um, have you ever seen
37:43
Speaker 1: Freeway with Reese Witherspoon? Oh? Yeah, that was a little
37:46
Speaker 1: red writing a little red riding hood. And if you're
37:48
Speaker 1: a feminist, I guarantee you appreciate that version a little
37:51
Speaker 1: Red riding Hood because she takes no guff and comes
37:54
Speaker 1: out on top and at no points for yeah, and
37:57
Speaker 1: Brooks shields as his wife, and she like it's crazy.
38:01
Speaker 1: It's a neat, neat movie. But that's a good example
38:05
Speaker 1: of a rewriting of a classic fairy tale. Like, no,
38:08
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to end with the Grims totally. Uh.
38:10
Speaker 1: In The Company of Wolves, wasn't that a that was
38:13
Speaker 1: a rewrite of or redo of a little writing her
38:16
Speaker 1: two a little more of a horror though, right? I
38:18
Speaker 1: think so? I didn't see it. I didn't either. I
38:20
Speaker 1: think that was Neil Jordan's right, crying game, Yeah, like
38:23
Speaker 1: one of his early movies. So um, we have to
38:28
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the Nazis here, because the
38:31
Speaker 1: Nazis were big on co opting things for their own purposes. Uh.
38:35
Speaker 1: And one of the things that co opted were Grim's
38:37
Speaker 1: fairy tales. And since World War Two there's been a
38:40
Speaker 1: big I don't know about big again, maybe it was
38:43
Speaker 1: such a trend, but there were folks who said that,
38:46
Speaker 1: you know, when you look at these, they're talking about
38:49
Speaker 1: German nationalism and discipline and violence and obedient and order
38:54
Speaker 1: and obedience. And I think the grand brothers were like, yeah,
38:58
Speaker 1: it's totally nationalism. We were all about Germany. But but
39:02
Speaker 1: we died like decades before Hitler was even born. Yeah, Like,
39:05
Speaker 1: I don't think they would have appreciated that it was
39:07
Speaker 1: co opted by the Nazis, and Hitler saying like, put
39:09
Speaker 1: these in schools, this is awesome, Like read this stuff,
39:12
Speaker 1: put them in boy scout rooms everywhere, that's funny. So um,
39:17
Speaker 1: the Allies came in and occupied Germany and one of
39:20
Speaker 1: the things they said was like, you guys can't teach
39:23
Speaker 1: this Grim book anymore. And bandit and a lot of
39:25
Speaker 1: towns around Germany became very political because it was very
39:28
Speaker 1: much associated with the Third Reich. And one of the
39:30
Speaker 1: reasons why is because the Third Reich said, go teach
39:32
Speaker 1: this to young German kids, to make sure that they
39:35
Speaker 1: know they're German and that they will triumph over the
39:38
Speaker 1: Allied Wolf because they're all little red riding hood that's right,
39:41
Speaker 1: little Nazi kids, that's right. So um, again, people make
39:46
Speaker 1: the case like, you can't really hang that on the
39:49
Speaker 1: Grim brothers. They didn't foresee Nazism and this this German
39:53
Speaker 1: nationalism in and of itself isn't necessarily inherently evil, and
39:57
Speaker 1: if you put it in the context of German romanticism,
40:00
Speaker 1: most countries in Europe were undergoing nationalist fever, you know.
40:05
Speaker 1: So um. There was some anti semitism though, and some
40:07
Speaker 1: of the tales, yeah, and that can't be gotten around either. Yeah.
40:10
Speaker 1: One was called The Jew and the Brambles, where the
40:13
Speaker 1: protagonists torments a Jewish person by dancing, making him dance
40:18
Speaker 1: on the thicket of thorns, uh, calls him a dirty dog.
40:22
Speaker 1: And then there's I mean, there's various I think said
40:26
Speaker 1: three basically of the two hundred tales had Jewish characters,
40:30
Speaker 1: and they were never like favorable. Yeah, the other two
40:33
Speaker 1: um referenced the Jewish stereotype of being stingy with money
40:37
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, the good bargain. And a
40:39
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, well, let's just expunge those
40:41
Speaker 1: two um, and some people have from their collections. I
40:45
Speaker 1: think that's the other thing too, is you can if
40:48
Speaker 1: the Grim's kind of set a precedent for you can
40:51
Speaker 1: take these tales and cleanse them if you want, or
40:55
Speaker 1: do whatever you want to them, like there they belong
40:57
Speaker 1: to the ages. Well, and that's then comes in the
41:01
Speaker 1: people who posit whether or not it's that's good for
41:04
Speaker 1: Should we sanitize that? Should we not? Uh? W h Alden,
41:07
Speaker 1: I love this. He described the people who sanitize him
41:11
Speaker 1: as the Society for the Scientific Diet, the Association of
41:14
Speaker 1: Positive Parents, positivist parents, the League for the Promotion of
41:19
Speaker 1: Worthwhile Leisure, or the cooperative Camp of Prudent Progressives. Man.
41:24
Speaker 1: That is so w ah Todden. He couldn't just leave
41:27
Speaker 1: it at one description. H So he clearly wasn't in
41:30
Speaker 1: favor of it. Some people think, uh it's good for us.
41:34
Speaker 1: Um A man name uh Bruno Bettelheim in a name
41:39
Speaker 1: Bruno Bedelheim. Yeah, totally is it sounds like a bond
41:42
Speaker 1: villain or something. A book called The Uses of Enchantment,
41:47
Speaker 1: and he was very Freudian in nature that he basically
41:51
Speaker 1: says that we all, all these kids have these unconscious
41:55
Speaker 1: desires and these books help, uh what like these repressed
42:00
Speaker 1: desires come out, help them deal with them. Yeah. Well
42:02
Speaker 1: it helps children, yeah, deal with their repressed desires. Like
42:05
Speaker 1: the example of the UM. So we talked about the
42:08
Speaker 1: sociohistorical interpretation of the presence of wicked stepmothers. Right, there
42:12
Speaker 1: are lots of stepmothers and they were competing for resources
42:14
Speaker 1: bet Ohaim and the Freudians say, well, no, the stepmothers
42:18
Speaker 1: are there because UM children love their mother, but they
42:22
Speaker 1: also hate their mother, and this gives them a way
42:24
Speaker 1: to work through the complex. Yeah, that complex um combination
42:28
Speaker 1: of emotions where they can hate the wicked stepmother, but
42:32
Speaker 1: they can also love the biological mother who's absent or
42:35
Speaker 1: appears early on and then dies, but who is always
42:38
Speaker 1: very loving and kind. Right, so they can work that out.
42:42
Speaker 1: That's a great example of it. Yeah, and then you
42:44
Speaker 1: have Zips, who Jack Zip says, you know what it
42:47
Speaker 1: really is is, uh, children see the fairy tale as
42:52
Speaker 1: like a counterworld of reflection of their own world, and
42:55
Speaker 1: it allows them to, you know, consider what's going on
42:58
Speaker 1: in that world and then take steps in their own
43:00
Speaker 1: world to reform it and not do those things right.
43:04
Speaker 1: And specifically it teaches children to identify tyrants and people
43:08
Speaker 1: who are power mad, and people who hoard money or
43:12
Speaker 1: harm other people, because those people almost invariably come to
43:16
Speaker 1: a terrible end in those things. And then fairy tales, right,
43:20
Speaker 1: So you've got all these different interpretations Freudian Carl Young
43:23
Speaker 1: got into it um, sociohistorical feminist interpretation, Jack Zipe's own
43:29
Speaker 1: personal leftist interpretation, right um, and all of them, although
43:35
Speaker 1: they compete here there none of them are wrong and
43:38
Speaker 1: none of them are right. And then again, it's the
43:41
Speaker 1: beauty of fairy tales. It's like a blank white piece
43:44
Speaker 1: of ply would that we project our own thoughts and
43:47
Speaker 1: fears and hopes and ideas onto culture by culture, age
43:51
Speaker 1: by age. And Tatar and her collection did a pretty
43:55
Speaker 1: smart thing. I think she actually collected some of the
43:58
Speaker 1: more disturbing one in the back of the book under
44:02
Speaker 1: the title Tales for Adults. Basically read these first on
44:05
Speaker 1: your own. See if you want to read them to
44:07
Speaker 1: your kid, don't frontload it with the juniper tree. Right.
44:12
Speaker 1: And actually, Joan Accella says that you should take an
44:15
Speaker 1: exact and if and just cut the juniper tree out
44:18
Speaker 1: of your said that. I thought that was pretty funny. Yeah,
44:22
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if your kids got a
44:24
Speaker 1: strong fortitude. It's up to the parents. But it wasn't
44:26
Speaker 1: always up to the parents. There was a big movement
44:28
Speaker 1: in the mid twentieth century for um realism among children's books. Yeah,
44:34
Speaker 1: and and the Grimms were first on the chopping block there. Instead,
44:39
Speaker 1: it was replaced by like Judy Goes to the Firehouses.
44:42
Speaker 1: Zachcella says, I totally like think about it. It's like
44:44
Speaker 1: a total fifties children's book, like see Dick and Jane Run.
44:49
Speaker 1: You know. Um and it was I guess Maurice Syndec
44:52
Speaker 1: with Where the Wild Things Are? Who? Who said I
44:55
Speaker 1: we were not doing that anymore. He brought the cool
44:57
Speaker 1: back to children's books. He definitely did. Yeah, I have it,
45:00
Speaker 1: read many children's books lately, But I think there's a
45:04
Speaker 1: lot of you read Daddy Sat on a duck, right, Yeah,
45:07
Speaker 1: I did read that. Lots of far jokes in that one. Yeah,
45:09
Speaker 1: that was written by one of our listeners. Um, highly
45:13
Speaker 1: recommended it is. It's very good. But I think these
45:15
Speaker 1: days there's a mix of things going on, realism, fanciful
45:19
Speaker 1: stuff stories and now uh well this is more of
45:23
Speaker 1: a young adult novel. But Colum Alloy of the December
45:25
Speaker 1: sort of three part children's novels, like big, big books
45:30
Speaker 1: about this fantastical world in Oregon, this forest in Oregon
45:34
Speaker 1: where I can't I bought them all. I can't wait
45:37
Speaker 1: to read him. It's cool man, Yeah, I think he's
45:40
Speaker 1: he's that's more the tradition of the like lion which
45:43
Speaker 1: in the wardrobe And you said that, I wanted to say,
45:46
Speaker 1: Avon is not the name Narnia Narnia. Um, yeah, I
45:50
Speaker 1: have no idea where children's books are these days either.
45:53
Speaker 1: I wonder though, what what it reflects about society at large,
45:58
Speaker 1: whatever phase children's books are, whether it's realism or fancifulness,
46:02
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, like are we like when you're in
46:04
Speaker 1: an economic downturn? Is realism or fantasy the one that
46:08
Speaker 1: steps in? Yeah, I would guess fantasy because people want
46:11
Speaker 1: to escapism. Then I was way into that stuff. I
46:14
Speaker 1: wasn't into like Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and
46:17
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But I love Maurice Sendak really and
46:22
Speaker 1: stuff that was really kind of out there. I love
46:23
Speaker 1: Dr Seuss. I found out that it's um not every
46:27
Speaker 1: boy read Ramona Quimpy books. I thought it was Nix
46:31
Speaker 1: apparently not. Yeah. I read uh some Judy Bloom Yeah,
46:35
Speaker 1: of course. Um and I did read the first couple
46:39
Speaker 1: of the The Chronic What Cools of Narnia? Did you
46:44
Speaker 1: ever see that skit? No, it's one of the setting
46:47
Speaker 1: live shorts they were doing, Chris Parnell and Sandberg. We're
46:50
Speaker 1: doing a rap the Chronic What Cools of Narnia. I
46:54
Speaker 1: didn't see that. It's like a very weird, misplaced What
46:57
Speaker 1: did you see Mr Shows coming back on Netflix? Yeah?
47:00
Speaker 1: Well close as we're gonna get the Mr Show. I
47:02
Speaker 1: don't think they can call it Mr Show. No, they're
47:04
Speaker 1: calling it uh with like w slash Bob and David.
47:08
Speaker 1: I can't wait. Man. I saw a couple of clips
47:10
Speaker 1: and it looks like, Yeah, it looks like it's going
47:12
Speaker 1: to be as good as it ever was. I'm pretty
47:15
Speaker 1: Before we leave you, since we're talking about fairy tales,
47:18
Speaker 1: we thought would be appropriate to mention that two of
47:21
Speaker 1: our horror fiction contest submitters are published once published again.
47:26
Speaker 1: J McMurray published The Dreamings of Leonard J. M. Leaper
47:30
Speaker 1: and you can check that out at take publishing dot
47:32
Speaker 1: com not Leper, no Leaper. And then also you can
47:36
Speaker 1: find Patrick Scott. He wrote play I Believe, which was
47:40
Speaker 1: in Meat for Tea magazine and you can find uh
47:43
Speaker 1: information about that at meat for t dot com. Uh.
47:49
Speaker 1: Since I said meat for Tea, it's time for listener, man,
47:53
Speaker 1: I don't I wish it was time for us to
47:54
Speaker 1: meet for tea No M E A T. Yeah, okay kidding,
48:00
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this uh a little bit more on
48:04
Speaker 1: vocal Fry. We've got a lot of response from this one.
48:07
Speaker 1: I think it's second in controversy only homelessness. Yeah. A
48:10
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of ladies wrote in women that
48:13
Speaker 1: were very appreciative. A lot of men wrote in, um
48:17
Speaker 1: who were not appreciative. Many were too, Yeah, many were,
48:21
Speaker 1: But a lot of dudes wrote in. I think they're
48:23
Speaker 1: part of the men's movement. You know. It was divided
48:25
Speaker 1: like you would expect, but there were men who wrote
48:28
Speaker 1: in to support us. There are women who who wrote
48:30
Speaker 1: into to criticize vocal Fry. They agreed with Naomi Wolf. Yeah,
48:34
Speaker 1: And I just want to clear up, I don't mean
48:37
Speaker 1: all old white men are awful. I don't I you
48:40
Speaker 1: don't even need to say that. If you're not one
48:41
Speaker 1: of the ones that are doing these things, then great,
48:45
Speaker 1: who cares? Yeah, I know you don't need to defend
48:47
Speaker 1: the ones who are all right, here we go. Hey, guys,
48:50
Speaker 1: just want to say thanks so much for your recently
48:53
Speaker 1: for recently tackling some very charged gender issues in the
48:56
Speaker 1: most mature but not apologist of ways. I like how
48:59
Speaker 1: this emails on, whether it be female puberty, vocal Fry,
49:02
Speaker 1: or your excellent double duo with the stuff you misson
49:05
Speaker 1: History Class Crew and listener mail. You nailed what I
49:08
Speaker 1: consider to be the best way to handle the ubiquitous
49:10
Speaker 1: double standards that women find themselves held to state that
49:14
Speaker 1: it is unequivpably wrong, then calmly and rationally pick apart
49:17
Speaker 1: why you were not trying to start a gender war,
49:20
Speaker 1: though I'm sure there are those out there who will
49:21
Speaker 1: take it as such. Uh see the beginning of this email. Um,
49:26
Speaker 1: but you meticulously undercut the meticulously undercut the arguments and
49:30
Speaker 1: unconscious justifications that allow these attitudes to endure underneath all
49:34
Speaker 1: the truths by consensus and familial and cultural norms. Very
49:38
Speaker 1: little remains to give weight to these perspectives, and I
49:41
Speaker 1: believe that both genders are, albeit slowly shedding them, thanks
49:45
Speaker 1: to the efforts of you and many others on this path.
49:49
Speaker 1: Very well said right now, this is the road to equality, dudes.
49:53
Speaker 1: I throw that in there, and I cannot say how
49:55
Speaker 1: much I appreciate your proper championing of it. We are
49:57
Speaker 1: all persons, no matter our gender, and should you respected
50:00
Speaker 1: as such, free as much as possible of worthless generalizations. Also,
50:05
Speaker 1: as a side note, I was once upon a time
50:06
Speaker 1: a linguist and very much agree with your handling of
50:09
Speaker 1: socio linguistics A linguists. Sorry, Chuck, is that because I
50:14
Speaker 1: said like linguists, linguisticator or something. A linguists most fundamental
50:21
Speaker 1: tenant is that no use of language to communicate is wrong,
50:25
Speaker 1: and thus linguistic evolution should be no more surprising than
50:28
Speaker 1: that of pop music or fashion. Yeah, the prescriptivists are
50:31
Speaker 1: just screaming at their ipous ideas and perspectives change and language,
50:36
Speaker 1: by its nature will rise to meet it. Cheers. That
50:39
Speaker 1: is from David, a long time Stuff you Should Know FAM.
50:41
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, David. That was a very kind email,
50:44
Speaker 1: Very well said UM representative. I would say about half
50:48
Speaker 1: of the emails that we got about vocal Fride the
50:50
Speaker 1: other half. If you want to get in touch with us,
50:54
Speaker 1: you can tweak to us at s y s K podcast.
50:57
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
50:59
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
51:01
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has
51:04
Speaker 1: always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff
51:06
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com. For more on this and
51:13
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com