Latest / Ridiculous History / Ye Xian: The Story of China's Cinderella

Transcript

Ye Xian: The Story of China's Cinderella · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Once
0:27
Speaker 1: upon a Time. You yes, you decided to tune into
0:31
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History. We're so glad you did. We're gonna do
0:35
Speaker 1: something a little bit different today. Hi, I'm ben. Hey,
0:38
Speaker 1: I'm no. It's true. We are going to have a
0:40
Speaker 1: little bit of ridiculous story time and then we're gonna
0:42
Speaker 1: go back afterwards and um have a little discussion. Actually
0:46
Speaker 1: do an episode. Christ is an episode, but it's it's
0:48
Speaker 1: all okay, Yeah, it'll become clear what we're trying to
0:50
Speaker 1: go for here and never fear our our our better.
0:54
Speaker 1: Third super producer Casey Pegram is here. We're not up
0:58
Speaker 1: to some weird high jinks without them. Uh So, without
1:01
Speaker 1: further ado, you already said once upon a time, We
1:03
Speaker 1: already said once upon a time. So uh nol, why
1:06
Speaker 1: don't we Why don't we tell the story together? Would
1:08
Speaker 1: you like to start? Sure? This is the story of
1:11
Speaker 1: e Shian. Long ago, there was a community of cave
1:15
Speaker 1: dwellers in China called the Woodong, and they had a
1:18
Speaker 1: chief whose name was Woo, and he had two wives
1:21
Speaker 1: and a daughter by each of the wives. Uh Ye
1:24
Speaker 1: Sean was Woo's daughter. Um and she was of course
1:29
Speaker 1: extremely beautiful, kind, gentle, intelligent, gifted, She had many skills.
1:34
Speaker 1: She could make pottery, she was a poet. Then she
1:38
Speaker 1: had a half sister named June Lee, who was uh
1:42
Speaker 1: the opposite of those things. She was cruel, she was selfish,
1:45
Speaker 1: she was vain. So ye Shian was the daughter of
1:48
Speaker 1: Wu's first wife, and she died when Hi was just
1:52
Speaker 1: a baby. Who's second wife, who was the mother of
1:56
Speaker 1: the cruel, selfish sister, was a classic wicked stepmother kind
2:01
Speaker 1: of situation. She was envious of all the attention that
2:05
Speaker 1: Wou lavished upon Yeshion, and she wanted her daughter to
2:08
Speaker 1: be the top daughter. Ah ha. Some of us may
2:12
Speaker 1: be saying, this story sounds a little familiar. Listen along
2:16
Speaker 1: and tell us how many familiar tropes you can spot,
2:21
Speaker 1: and bonus points if you can guess which story this is,
2:23
Speaker 1: we'll tell you at the end. Back to the story. Unfortunately,
2:28
Speaker 1: for Ye Shan, her father also passes away. Wu dies
2:31
Speaker 1: from a local plague. Wo has no sons, so a
2:34
Speaker 1: new chieftain is appointed to take his place. Ye Shan's
2:38
Speaker 1: family is reduced to poverty. She has to become a
2:40
Speaker 1: lowly servant. She finds work as the employee of the
2:46
Speaker 1: same stepmother and envious sister who have hated her all
2:49
Speaker 1: her life. She's burdened with chores, abuse, and housework, but
2:55
Speaker 1: she still retains her inner beauty, her cleverness, and you know,
3:00
Speaker 1: she's still very popular because everybody likes her. She makes
3:04
Speaker 1: friends with a mysterious, stunning, just exquisite, tin foot long
3:11
Speaker 1: fish in a lake near her home. This fish has
3:14
Speaker 1: golden eyes and scales, and the fish you see is
3:18
Speaker 1: no ordinary fish. It is a guardian spirit sent to
3:21
Speaker 1: her by her own mother from beyond the grave, who
3:24
Speaker 1: never forgot about her daughter. It's true. Um and uh
3:29
Speaker 1: Yehan takes solace in her visits with this giant golden fish,
3:34
Speaker 1: who apparently talks quite a lot as well. And one day, unfortunately,
3:39
Speaker 1: June Lee, the unkind step sister, follows ye Shian to
3:44
Speaker 1: the lake where she discovers her talking to the fish,
3:47
Speaker 1: and Um, she just doesn't want her sister stepsister to
3:50
Speaker 1: have any anything nice, any happiness, because she runs back
3:54
Speaker 1: tells her mother what she's seen, and then the evil
3:56
Speaker 1: stepmother comes back and confronts Ye Sean and stabs the
4:02
Speaker 1: fish in the heart, killing it. Instantly and cooks it
4:05
Speaker 1: up for she and her less remarkable daughter's dinner, and
4:11
Speaker 1: of course Ye Shan is absolutely crushed. This was her
4:14
Speaker 1: one glimmer of happiness that was keeping her spirit alive,
4:17
Speaker 1: this magical, you know, talking creature sent from on high
4:21
Speaker 1: by her dead mother. But then, as as happens in
4:25
Speaker 1: many Chinese folk tales, we're going to have the appearance
4:28
Speaker 1: of an ancestor in the form of an old, wizened
4:32
Speaker 1: man with a white beard who could have possibly been
4:36
Speaker 1: her maternal grandfather. He's dressed in robes, and he appears
4:39
Speaker 1: to her and tells her, hey, it's cool. Even though
4:43
Speaker 1: the fish, your fishy friend, has been decimated and devoured
4:47
Speaker 1: by these gluttonous, disgusting people. Uh, the spirit remains, and
4:52
Speaker 1: all you have to do is take the bones of
4:55
Speaker 1: the fish and bury them in the ground in four
4:59
Speaker 1: separate pots. Classic and has to hide each one under
5:03
Speaker 1: her bed at the four corners. And then the spirit
5:05
Speaker 1: also tells her that these bones she can keep talking
5:09
Speaker 1: to them. It's a little morbid. I'm not going to
5:10
Speaker 1: talk back. But what they will do, gentle listeners, is
5:13
Speaker 1: grant her wishes. Once every year, people get together and
5:17
Speaker 1: celebrate the New Year festival. This is an auspicious time.
5:22
Speaker 1: This is also the time of year for young maidens
5:25
Speaker 1: to meet potential husbands. Now, the stepmother, who is still
5:30
Speaker 1: very much in play and very much a pill, doesn't
5:32
Speaker 1: want to spoil her own daughter's choices. This is the
5:36
Speaker 1: unpleasant daughter, so she makes her stepdaughter, Yes, stay home
5:42
Speaker 1: and clean their house, which is also a cave by
5:45
Speaker 1: the way, so she pictures she's on her knees scrubbing,
5:48
Speaker 1: you know. And after her step family has left for
5:52
Speaker 1: the big festival, Yeshan makes a silent wish to the bones,
5:56
Speaker 1: and then she finds herself clothed in magnificent ramiant in
6:00
Speaker 1: a gown of sea green silk, a cloak of kingfisher feathers,
6:05
Speaker 1: and a pair of golden slippers. She goes to the festival,
6:09
Speaker 1: so he shan't hot foots it to the festival, where
6:11
Speaker 1: she is the belle of the ball. Everyone admires her
6:14
Speaker 1: and she becomes a sensation immediately. But then when she
6:18
Speaker 1: notices that her wicked step family are there as well,
6:22
Speaker 1: and she worries about being made, she equally hot foots
6:26
Speaker 1: it back home, and in her haste she trips and
6:29
Speaker 1: loses one of the golden slippers that is left behind
6:33
Speaker 1: and the only evidence of this remarkable woman that graced
6:37
Speaker 1: this New year's celebration. The Fishbones, by the way, are
6:40
Speaker 1: not on speaking terms with the Sean at this point,
6:43
Speaker 1: because the bones had warned her not to lose even
6:47
Speaker 1: one of her slippers. She falls asleep, despondent under a tree.
6:51
Speaker 1: Her step family comes back from the festival and they're
6:53
Speaker 1: talking about this mysterious beauty, this real smoke show who
6:57
Speaker 1: appeared at the festival, but they don't know that they're
7:01
Speaker 1: talking about Yeshan. The golden slipper is found by a
7:05
Speaker 1: local peasant. There is a big fine for him. He
7:07
Speaker 1: trades it and it's passed on to various people until
7:10
Speaker 1: it reaches the hands of the nearby king of the
7:13
Speaker 1: Tohan Islets. This is a powerful kingdom covering many thousands
7:18
Speaker 1: of small islands. The king is fascinated by the small
7:22
Speaker 1: size of this shoe, and he issues the search, saying
7:25
Speaker 1: find the maiden and whose foot will fit in the shoe,
7:29
Speaker 1: and if they find her, he proclaims he will marry
7:33
Speaker 1: that girl. The search goes on without much luck until
7:37
Speaker 1: it reaches a community of cave dwellers. Of course, no
7:41
Speaker 1: one's foot will fit inside the slipper except Yeshi, but
7:45
Speaker 1: she is not allowed to come. Of course, her wicked
7:48
Speaker 1: step family would not allow it. So she gets there
7:51
Speaker 1: late to try to get the slipper back so she
7:53
Speaker 1: can earn her way back into the good graces of
7:54
Speaker 1: the four pots of fishbones. Um, and she is accused
8:00
Speaker 1: of trying to steal the slipper right so um. She
8:04
Speaker 1: has taken before the king and she's forced to make
8:06
Speaker 1: her case, and she says, look, this is what happened.
8:10
Speaker 1: I was abused of horrible home life, and then I
8:12
Speaker 1: befriended this giant golden fish, and my evil stepmother's dad
8:15
Speaker 1: been in the heart and then they ate it. In
8:17
Speaker 1: the spirit of my ancestor told me to put the
8:19
Speaker 1: fishbones into these four pots, and then I lost the slipper,
8:21
Speaker 1: and YadA, YadA, YadA. And the King, you know, clearly
8:24
Speaker 1: not fazed by any of these bizarre details, is actually
8:28
Speaker 1: struck by her goodness and her kindness and her forthright pluckiness,
8:33
Speaker 1: all of the things that we've loved about Yeshian from
8:35
Speaker 1: the start of this story, and he allows her to
8:38
Speaker 1: go home with both her life and the slipper. But
8:41
Speaker 1: he's not done. He's still mystified by this, this, this
8:44
Speaker 1: amazing striking beauty Yeshan. So he goes to her house
8:50
Speaker 1: and he says, come with me, Come with me and
8:52
Speaker 1: live with me in my kingdom. Come away with me
8:55
Speaker 1: and be my love, and so on. Yeeshan puts on
8:57
Speaker 1: both of her slippers and appears in that beautiful sea
9:01
Speaker 1: green gown. The stepmother and June Lee say there's no
9:05
Speaker 1: way this broad could have these clothes, ye Shan, of
9:09
Speaker 1: all people, she is our slave. And the stepmother says,
9:13
Speaker 1: the finery is my daughters, and this woman stole it.
9:17
Speaker 1: And the king says, ah, you're lying, ye Shan. Don't
9:22
Speaker 1: just come away with me to the kingdom, be my wife.
9:24
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, be the queen, and she says, dope, yeah, totally.
9:29
Speaker 1: She accepts, and her cruel step family is left to
9:32
Speaker 1: their fate. In one version, they are banished to the
9:36
Speaker 1: wilderness by the king forever. They live a harsh, unhappy
9:39
Speaker 1: life until the day that they are killed by a
9:42
Speaker 1: reign of fiery stones. And this is all happening while
9:47
Speaker 1: Ye Shan is queen and they live happily ever after.
9:53
Speaker 1: That's one version of the story. It's true. You've probably
9:56
Speaker 1: figured out by this point with some of the recurring
9:58
Speaker 1: tropes of fairy to hailed them, and specifically, uh, the
10:02
Speaker 1: Cinderella story. Sorry for everyone who bet on Rapunzel. We
10:06
Speaker 1: did an episode on that earlier. It's true and was it.
10:08
Speaker 1: It was the root of the vegetable and Rapunzel. It
10:11
Speaker 1: was like the lettuces, fine, fine lettuces. It felt pretty
10:16
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe rampian, rampian ramps exactly. This is one of
10:21
Speaker 1: the oldest known versions of the Cinderella tale that was
10:26
Speaker 1: truly truly made popular um in the version in written
10:32
Speaker 1: and published by Charles Perrault, a Frenchman, but in eight
10:37
Speaker 1: fifty a d in China, this story was clearly first
10:43
Speaker 1: to the finish line. The story of Cinderella is one
10:47
Speaker 1: of the most popular stories in the world, and we
10:51
Speaker 1: can see variants of it not just in the West,
10:54
Speaker 1: not just in China, but in Indonesia and many other countries.
10:58
Speaker 1: Because people love a good story. We are a communicative species.
11:08
Speaker 1: The variant that's most well known in the West is
11:12
Speaker 1: the version you mentioned earlier. Nol that's Charles will hang
11:15
Speaker 1: on just to be safe, Hey, Casey, Yeah, I think
11:18
Speaker 1: you'd say it more like Charles Perro Perro Casey on
11:22
Speaker 1: the case. So this, this version is the most well
11:26
Speaker 1: known for us here and for many people in Europe perhaps,
11:31
Speaker 1: But like any other tale, folklore is anthropologists historians are
11:35
Speaker 1: more spend countless hours trying to figure out the origination
11:41
Speaker 1: of the story. Right, So you'll hear people say this
11:46
Speaker 1: story is Chinese in origin, right, like you mentioned before, No,
11:51
Speaker 1: because that's the earliest recorded version you'll find. But you'll
11:55
Speaker 1: also hear people say that the story originated in ancient Egypt.
12:00
Speaker 1: Did you see that part? I did? And I think
12:02
Speaker 1: that version has been largely debunked, right, Yes, that got debunked.
12:07
Speaker 1: I think the claim they were attempting to make there
12:09
Speaker 1: was that they could attribute it to the Greek historian Strabo.
12:15
Speaker 1: But it feels kind of like an echo chamber. It
12:17
Speaker 1: feels like a lot of people are just quoting themselves,
12:20
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And then they fell victim
12:23
Speaker 1: to forgery. A Mrs Olive Miller of Aurora, Illinois reimagined
12:29
Speaker 1: the Greek historian story, intertwined it with Pero's tale, and
12:34
Speaker 1: then created this quote unquote ancient Egyptian Cinderella, and people
12:38
Speaker 1: fell for it. So don't fall for that, we're telling
12:41
Speaker 1: you right now. The Chinese story seems to be the
12:44
Speaker 1: genuine article here, right, and that would have taken place
12:47
Speaker 1: during the Tang dynasty, which is between six eighteen and
12:50
Speaker 1: nine oh seven CE, whereas the Seal Perol version did
12:54
Speaker 1: not uh see publication until six And this is interesting
12:58
Speaker 1: because we're talking about the proliferation of storytelling in some
13:03
Speaker 1: ways before the written word, right, A lot of these
13:06
Speaker 1: were probably communicated orally. I have to say, this is
13:10
Speaker 1: just my opinion that it feels like there are too
13:14
Speaker 1: many similarities for this to be parallel thinking, right that
13:17
Speaker 1: we've got we've got the evil step parents and sibling.
13:22
Speaker 1: We've got the magical assistant, we've got the wise old counsel,
13:27
Speaker 1: the orphaned beauty, the orphaned beauty, we've got the magic clothing,
13:32
Speaker 1: the magic slipper. In particular, talking animals, talking animals, enchanted
13:37
Speaker 1: talking animals. Disney really leaned into that part too. I
13:40
Speaker 1: wish they you know, I don't know. I don't want
13:42
Speaker 1: to knock Disney Cinderella. I thought it was a good ride, sure, absolutely, um,
13:46
Speaker 1: but here's the thing. We've got all of these hallmarks
13:48
Speaker 1: that were then reworked in the seventeenth century Italian version
13:52
Speaker 1: that was even before Perot's work by the poet giam
13:56
Speaker 1: Battista Basile, who was born in fifteen sixty six and
14:00
Speaker 1: died in sixty two c e um. And this was
14:04
Speaker 1: released in posthumously in his quite famous children's book Il
14:08
Speaker 1: pentamarone uh and that was in sixteen thirty four, which
14:12
Speaker 1: included a version of this story called Lagata sinerentola which
14:18
Speaker 1: means the Cat Cinderella, which is recognized as the first
14:22
Speaker 1: appearance of the story in print. And it was already
14:25
Speaker 1: a widely known tale throughout Italy because of that proliferation
14:30
Speaker 1: of these stories and these folks, these folk tales. Um.
14:32
Speaker 1: It was then reworked and republished in Germany and Russia
14:36
Speaker 1: in several forms. And Patricia Montaghan, who is a scholar
14:41
Speaker 1: of of literature, wrote about the Cinderella tale that the
14:46
Speaker 1: thousand year old circulation of Cinderella's story makes it the
14:50
Speaker 1: world's best known fairy tale, but no one can really
14:53
Speaker 1: say where it began or when Cinderella's magic slippers brought
14:56
Speaker 1: her to Europe. It's pretty crazy. So the oldest known
15:01
Speaker 1: oral version of the story is an ancient Greek story
15:05
Speaker 1: called Rhodopis, but that's the one that's still like largely debunked.
15:10
Speaker 1: It has some similarities, but it's not a pitch perfect
15:13
Speaker 1: Cinderella story. There's also a twelfth century French version. Uh.
15:17
Speaker 1: There's the Japanese folk tale Sumiyoshi Manogatari, which is pretty
15:24
Speaker 1: much Cinderella. You can even find versions of Cinderella's story
15:29
Speaker 1: in one thousand and one Nights, also known as Arabian Nights. Uh.
15:35
Speaker 1: It's it's strange how how completely this has inundated our
15:42
Speaker 1: our consciousness, our fairy tale consciousness. And I'm fascinated. I
15:46
Speaker 1: don't have the answer to this, but I am fascinated
15:49
Speaker 1: by imagining the path this story must have taken around campfires,
15:55
Speaker 1: maybe at a caravan, sorry, maybe at a spot on
15:59
Speaker 1: the Silk Road. You know, as as they're transporting goods
16:04
Speaker 1: back and forth, they're also transporting these stories. So let's
16:07
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some of the similarities and
16:09
Speaker 1: differences between the Yeshian version of the story. And we
16:13
Speaker 1: have Paro's version, which was published under the name Sindrillon
16:17
Speaker 1: and then of course we have the quite famous Brothers
16:20
Speaker 1: Grim version, which was known as ashan Puto, which means
16:24
Speaker 1: ash girl. Um. So here's some of the things that
16:26
Speaker 1: struck me. Uh, the the slippers um and the fact
16:30
Speaker 1: that it's tied to the feature of this princess of
16:36
Speaker 1: this you know, great beauty as having small feet. I
16:39
Speaker 1: think that's very fascinating because tracing it back to the
16:42
Speaker 1: Chinese version of the story, as we know, in Chinese culture,
16:45
Speaker 1: it was very much a feature of great beauty and
16:49
Speaker 1: daintiness and lady likeness to have very small feet, with
16:53
Speaker 1: the terrible practice of foot bind absolutely, and there was
16:56
Speaker 1: one version of the Yeshian story that we saw that
17:01
Speaker 1: imparted some sort of magical powers on the slipper that
17:04
Speaker 1: anyone who would place their foot inside the slipper, their
17:07
Speaker 1: foot would magically shrink. So there's definitely some some big
17:11
Speaker 1: foot stuff going on in this YC version. Not Tarantino associated, No,
17:16
Speaker 1: not Tarantino associated, but definitely like valuing that feature above
17:21
Speaker 1: anything else, you know, because that's literally the king is like,
17:25
Speaker 1: whoever's got the daintiest feet is the one that I
17:28
Speaker 1: will make my bride. He wasn't even at the ball
17:31
Speaker 1: that's a feature in the Escan version of the story
17:33
Speaker 1: that's really interesting because in the Parole version, or at
17:35
Speaker 1: least in the one that we know from the Disney film,
17:38
Speaker 1: uh that prince sees Cinderella at the ball and remarks
17:42
Speaker 1: upon her beauty, the slipper is literally just looked at
17:45
Speaker 1: as like a piece of the puzzle to try to
17:47
Speaker 1: find this beautiful woman. In this one, the king's side
17:51
Speaker 1: unseen saying, whoever's got the smallest feet that are going
17:53
Speaker 1: to fit into these golden slippers, I will wife immediately.
17:56
Speaker 1: And just like the Western version of Cinderella, there are
18:00
Speaker 1: alternate versions and alternate endings to the story of Yan.
18:04
Speaker 1: So we talked about how the stepmother and the step
18:08
Speaker 1: sister die in a rain of fiery stones. What what's
18:13
Speaker 1: interesting to me about this is it has the ring
18:16
Speaker 1: of truth because many older fairy tales have completely grewsome
18:21
Speaker 1: consequences for the batties right the pills in the story.
18:26
Speaker 1: In another version of the Yeshan story, the stepmother and
18:30
Speaker 1: step sister are buried in a shrine called get this,
18:33
Speaker 1: the Tomb of the Regretful Women. They become goddesses in
18:38
Speaker 1: a later tradition and they can grant wishes eventually. See
18:41
Speaker 1: that's really interesting because they almost come out on top,
18:44
Speaker 1: at least legacy wise, and that right they are imbued
18:48
Speaker 1: with magical powers. It goes on. So in the alternate version,
18:52
Speaker 1: Yeshan and the king do not actually live happily. Ever,
18:55
Speaker 1: after her husband gets greedy and he starts abusing the
19:00
Speaker 1: power of the four pots of fish bones until it
19:03
Speaker 1: runs out of magic. It stops granting wishes, and the
19:06
Speaker 1: queen buries the bones on a nearby beach with a
19:09
Speaker 1: ton of gold. A year later, the king's people are
19:12
Speaker 1: tired of his malarkey. They lead a revolt, and the
19:16
Speaker 1: king tries to dig up the fish bones and give
19:19
Speaker 1: the gold to the rebels, but the gold had washed
19:21
Speaker 1: away with the tide, along with the magical bones, and
19:25
Speaker 1: nobody knows what happened to the king and his bride
19:28
Speaker 1: Yeshan after the siege. I think that's an amazing ending.
19:32
Speaker 1: I think that's really pretty compelling and cool, because that's
19:35
Speaker 1: how people actually are, uh, disappointing kind of. That's the
19:39
Speaker 1: thing about fairy tales. It's like, you know the whole
19:41
Speaker 1: you know, because we know the grim stories typically did
19:44
Speaker 1: end with some horrible stuff happening to to our characters,
19:47
Speaker 1: right to the to the antagonist, to the antagonist. Yes
19:51
Speaker 1: that's true, but even in general, sometimes to get to
19:53
Speaker 1: the place where you win, some horrible things have to happen,
19:57
Speaker 1: like with a little mermaid, for example, when she gets
19:59
Speaker 1: human legs in the hands Christian Anderson version of that story,
20:02
Speaker 1: she's described as having like stinging pain, like knives and
20:07
Speaker 1: swords through her feet and legs as she walked or whatever,
20:10
Speaker 1: when she got legs from being a mermaid. Have you
20:12
Speaker 1: read Joseph Campbell, he wrote with a thousand faces, I
20:15
Speaker 1: am aware of it. I have not read that one.
20:17
Speaker 1: I love the troupe because what you're describing is that
20:19
Speaker 1: same like venturing out into unknown, dangerous territory, and you
20:23
Speaker 1: have to hit a low status to get to a
20:26
Speaker 1: higher states exactly. And for this one, um again with
20:30
Speaker 1: the retribution. Uh so, instead of we don't have flaming
20:33
Speaker 1: stones or burial alive, one would assume of the wicked
20:38
Speaker 1: step sister and the wicked stepmother. But in the Grim
20:41
Speaker 1: Brothers version, you do have the wicked stepmother convincing her
20:46
Speaker 1: stepdaughters to slice off parts of their own feet so
20:49
Speaker 1: that they can fit inside of the shoe, which you
20:52
Speaker 1: think would be a pretty obvious ruse, you know, especially
20:55
Speaker 1: for a dude that's potentially maybe in defeat. I don't
20:57
Speaker 1: think you would want mangled feet, right, and her all things,
21:00
Speaker 1: And that's okay when once your royalty you will never
21:03
Speaker 1: have to walk. You'll be presumably carried around on a
21:06
Speaker 1: palanquint all the time, right, So who needs your feet
21:09
Speaker 1: when you can have riches untold? You know? Yeah, yeah,
21:14
Speaker 1: it was a very palanquin heavy industry at the time
21:17
Speaker 1: in fairy tale Land. It's so fascinating to examine how
21:27
Speaker 1: these stories proliferate, how they change, how they create such
21:32
Speaker 1: a rich, dense variety of adventure and fantasy and intrigue
21:38
Speaker 1: and magic. And this is a thought that I've been
21:41
Speaker 1: having since we decided to do this episode. I'm very
21:44
Speaker 1: curious about this. Do you think, you, Casey, you know,
21:49
Speaker 1: and all of us listening, do you think that there
21:51
Speaker 1: will be future versions of stories like this Cinderella Rapunzel,
21:58
Speaker 1: you know, the what are some other ones? Brumples still
22:01
Speaker 1: skin and so on? Do you think there will be
22:03
Speaker 1: future versions that historians will look back on, maybe eight
22:08
Speaker 1: and one thousand years from now if we make it. Uh,
22:11
Speaker 1: and if so, like what might change? Yeah, I don't know,
22:14
Speaker 1: because like we're not into the whole brevity of fables anymore,
22:18
Speaker 1: you know, even like our biggest literary like hallmarks, like
22:21
Speaker 1: the cultural milestones, like a Harry Potter or something like that,
22:24
Speaker 1: they're not short. You can't really sum up Harry Potter
22:28
Speaker 1: and the Journey of Harry Potter like in like a tiny, little,
22:31
Speaker 1: you know paragraph, which is sort of what makes these
22:34
Speaker 1: folk tales important because they're easy to tell and they're
22:37
Speaker 1: easy to carry over to tell somebody quickly on the road. Right. Uh,
22:41
Speaker 1: it feels like the short story, Like can you I
22:43
Speaker 1: can't think of a single like super famous short story
22:46
Speaker 1: from the last twenty years, from the last twenty years,
22:49
Speaker 1: I know, fifty years whatever. Like I can't think of
22:51
Speaker 1: a super famous short story other than maybe like a
22:54
Speaker 1: good Man is Hard to Find or whatever from good
22:57
Speaker 1: Country People, the Nine Bill, the Names of God. I
23:01
Speaker 1: don't know those. Uh, where I'm calling fear more of
23:04
Speaker 1: a reader than me of that kind of stuff. I'm
23:06
Speaker 1: just saying in terms of something that would stand the
23:08
Speaker 1: test of time and be carried on in oral tradition.
23:11
Speaker 1: I think they need to be short and pithy and
23:13
Speaker 1: communicate some sort of universal ideal. Sure time is the
23:18
Speaker 1: most brutal and efficient editor of all. That's why a
23:21
Speaker 1: lot of stuff we remember from the days of the
23:25
Speaker 1: ancients is often going to be paraphrased or or shortened.
23:30
Speaker 1: I want to correct where I'm calling from as a
23:32
Speaker 1: book by Raymond Carver. The story I was thinking of
23:35
Speaker 1: is a story called Cathedral. And to your point goal,
23:38
Speaker 1: I would add that I don't know how many of
23:41
Speaker 1: those stories are what we would consider mainstream. Everyone in
23:45
Speaker 1: the US is vaguely aware of the story of Cinderella,
23:48
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But I don't think we
23:51
Speaker 1: can say the same for a lot of short stories.
23:55
Speaker 1: You know what, maybe there's one we're missing, maybe we
23:57
Speaker 1: have a blind spot. Let us know, let us know
23:59
Speaker 1: what uh what you think is a modern fairy tale
24:03
Speaker 1: or original or or new version of the fairy tale
24:06
Speaker 1: that everyone knows, or something that in the future maybe
24:09
Speaker 1: looked at the same way that we look at the
24:12
Speaker 1: evolution of Cinderella today. Thank you so much for listening.
24:16
Speaker 1: As always, big shout out to our super producer Casey
24:19
Speaker 1: Pegram Casey. Just by the way, do you have a
24:22
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite fairy tale? Favorite fairy tale? No, no,
24:28
Speaker 1: you're not moved by no Princess in the Frog not really.
24:31
Speaker 1: No favorite short story shirt, but not fairy tale. I'm
24:34
Speaker 1: a big Raymond Carver fan. Two. Oh, nice nold. Do
24:38
Speaker 1: you have a favorite fairy tale? I've always been pretty
24:41
Speaker 1: fascinated by a Handling Gretel because of the macabre qualities
24:44
Speaker 1: of it, you know, with the cannibalistic child eating witch
24:47
Speaker 1: living in a house made of candy. It's it's sort
24:50
Speaker 1: of like a classic cautionary tale against talking to strangers. Um,
24:54
Speaker 1: but it has some nice magical undertones. And I grew
24:57
Speaker 1: up um. There's an opera version of it by Ingleberd
25:00
Speaker 1: Humperdink that you know. My mom was an opera saying
25:02
Speaker 1: we always was singing pieces from that with her students.
25:05
Speaker 1: And there is a really really creepy and cool claimation
25:09
Speaker 1: version of that opera I saw when I was a kid,
25:12
Speaker 1: and that russis out of me. Yeah, I think so, yeah,
25:16
Speaker 1: I think I've I've seen that or something like it.
25:19
Speaker 1: I would I would say disney wise. I feel like
25:21
Speaker 1: I have to differentiate Disney Wise. I was a big
25:24
Speaker 1: fan of Sleeping Beauty, just because of the moment at
25:27
Speaker 1: the end where Maleficent turns into this amazing dragon creature.
25:33
Speaker 1: Also char no box yarn, no bog. I think in Fantasia.
25:38
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's a tough question, and we want
25:40
Speaker 1: to hear from you. What are your favorite fairy tales?
25:44
Speaker 1: What are your favorite variants of fairy tales? Do you
25:47
Speaker 1: have a particular favorite fairy tale that might be unfamiliar
25:50
Speaker 1: to us and your fellow listeners. If so, we'd love
25:53
Speaker 1: to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook.
25:56
Speaker 1: You can find us on Instagram. You can find us
25:58
Speaker 1: on Twitter. We highly recommend our Facebook group page Ridiculous Historians,
26:04
Speaker 1: where we found out that we were on broadcast radio.
26:07
Speaker 1: It's true, Um, what's you know? What was once old
26:10
Speaker 1: is now new again. By the way, the name of
26:12
Speaker 1: the artist that did that Handling Gretel thing, which is
26:15
Speaker 1: called Handling Gretel and opera fantasy is Evald's Dayevskis, And
26:20
Speaker 1: he was a Russian immigrant and did the work for
26:23
Speaker 1: that in New York City. It was Russian somehow, right.
26:28
Speaker 1: Big thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Big
26:31
Speaker 1: thanks to Christopher Hasciotas and research associates Gabe Luzier and
26:36
Speaker 1: Ryan Barrish. Thank you, Joe. I guess this podcast did
26:39
Speaker 1: end happily ever after. We'll see you next time. Books.
26:53
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
26:55
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
26:58
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.