[HN Gopher] The case for not sanitising fairy tales
___________________________________________________________________
The case for not sanitising fairy tales
Author : crapvoter
Score : 101 points
Date : 2024-06-24 19:35 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.plough.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.plough.com)
| colechristensen wrote:
| Theory: A large proportion of adult mental illness is caused by
| an environment mismatch between adulthood and childhood. Fairy
| tales with disturbing themes were a good way to safely introduce
| the real world to children. Insulating children from reality
| leads to them learning the wrong things about the world both on a
| conscious intellectual level and a very low level as in cortisol
| response to stress. You grow up and then have to live in a world
| that is completely alien compared to your childhood and your
| brain just doesn't work right because it wasn't trained to handle
| things while it was malleable enough to learn them.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Alternately, it's parents who confuse comfort and security with
| love and do their best to shield the children from consequences
| of the children's actions.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Maybe those parents are also victims of fairytale
| indoctrination
| pc86 wrote:
| I would have expected most mental illness to be the result of a
| chemical imbalance and/or trauma (either physical or
| psychological). Also, this presupposes that by the time you are
| old enough to experience the world your brain isn't "malleable
| enough" to handle it which seems unlikely unless you're really
| sheltered from the vast majority of the world until your late
| 20s.
| rexpop wrote:
| OP _is_ describing a form of psychological trauma.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >chemical imbalance
|
| One, this is a mostly unsupported phrase used by therapists
| which may be comforting to patients but isn't actually backed
| by neuroscience. The best that can be said is that drugs
| which affect the brain help some people with diagnosed mental
| illness. The chemical mechanisms for most mental illnesses
| are not known or barely hinted at.
|
| >Also, this presupposes that by the time you are old enough
| to experience the world your brain isn't "malleable enough"
| to handle it which seems unlikely unless you're really
| sheltered from the vast majority of the world until your late
| 20s.
|
| This seems to be parroting the "your brain doesn't finish
| developing until 25 (or whatever)" which has gone around
| quite a distance as a meme but has no scientific basis.
|
| There are many development windows for many different things,
| some known better than others. A 20 year old does not have
| the same language acquisition skills as a 3 year old. My eyes
| work a little funny because I was myopic at birth and some
| control systems didn't develop between birth and 6 months and
| that window is just permanently closed. Most things remain at
| least a little malleable and some much more than others but
| this does not mean that there aren't developmental periods at
| a young age which aren't very important. Two, many chemical
| feedback systems are trained in early life. The "chemical
| imbalance" could be exactly this, childhood experiences not
| matching adult ones and as a result brain chemistry responds
| poorly to adult stimuli.
| airstrike wrote:
| > The best that can be said is that drugs which affect the
| brain help some people with diagnosed mental illness
|
| emphasis on "some": https://www.economist.com/graphic-
| detail/2023/01/10/antidepr...
| tptacek wrote:
| If that were the case, you would expect the consequents of
| mental illness (most obviously suicide, but also violent crime)
| to have increased since 1900, around the time that sanitized
| fairy tales were popularized; and: they have not.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I doubt that fairy tails in particular could be isolated from
| the whole culture of insulating children, and it was never,
| as far as I can tell, a sudden change. You can watch kids
| movies from the 80s and see a significant difference in the
| things which children were being exposed to compared to new
| releases. The change is gradual and has been ongoing for a
| long time.
| tptacek wrote:
| What changes are you referring to, since the 1980s? We can
| pick some of them, call them the next intervention you want
| to propose as responsible for increases in adverse events,
| and then look if the epidemiological data lines up with it.
| I bet, though: the data won't work out for you.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| On the other hand, kids these days can pretty easily get
| access to stories which were extremely hard to find way
| back when.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > they have not.
|
| That's a bold claim. Especially given your starting year,
| where religious attitudes predominated, and suicide was
| considered a mortal sin. It seems that quite possibly
| suicides might have increased since 1900, if only because it
| has become an organic disease instead of an express ticket to
| an eternity of torment. Do you have any numbers to back this
| up?
|
| For that matter, we've also noticed from time to time that
| there are upswings and downswings in suicide (usually
| explained by economics), and cultural differences. There's
| plenty of room for for differences in suicide rates over that
| time period, and it wouldn't really surprised anyone.
| epx wrote:
| They have and a lot.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Source your data.
|
| For example, the lowest suicide rate in the US in over a
| century (and ever, as long as records were kept) happened
| in 2000.
| llm_trw wrote:
| https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-us-suicide-rates-
| since-19...
|
| And today the rate is higher than in 1900 and raising.
| Sounds like whatever we did in the 1950-1980 worked
| extremely well and what we've been doing since hasn't.
| tptacek wrote:
| That is, obviously, not a graph of suicide trending
| upwards as a result of an intervention that occurred at
| roughly 1900.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > you would expect the consequents of mental illness (most
| obviously suicide, but also violent crime) to have increased
| since 1900
|
| As long as literally everything else remained the same, or in
| changing, had zero implications on the mental health of the
| population.
| magicalist wrote:
| Seems like a better objection to your GP's post? Or do the
| covariate "kids these days are coddled" vibes it's based on
| cancel each other out.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| More importantly, you would expect not to see high rates of
| childhood mental illness.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Seems to me like the blame is with the schools and parents
| - bringing kids up as helpless victims (can't fight back
| and the schools don't do much to the bullies), the over use
| of screens, and surveillance culture never letting them
| start over (stuff follows you forever now).
| tuatoru wrote:
| My wife was for a time on the board of a local hospital.
|
| I recall her recounting a report from the head of the mental
| health unit saying that there was an increasing number of
| upper-middle-class young women with "princess syndrome" in
| the unit: they have been brought up to believe life is a
| Disney fairy tale, and cannot cope when they get out into the
| world. So they end up in the mental health unit.
|
| This is maybe ten years back?
|
| The Disney Corporation has a lot to answer for.
| tptacek wrote:
| "Princess Syndrome" is not a medical diagnosis, and I
| encourage people to go look up the origins of the term.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I don't think that's a sound prediction. There are lots of
| kinds of mental illness, and at least in my view the ones in
| question are mostly depression, anxiety and the like. Not
| exactly famous for producing violent outbursts, and a lot of
| people get treated, which cuts down on suicide. Besides, I
| don't know if I would trust historical stats for suicide, but
| whatever.
|
| Also the GP comment was arguably more about sanitized
| childhood in general, which is a more gradual trend than
| starting at the 1900s exactly.
| tptacek wrote:
| The reason you look at suicide and violent crime is that
| they're clear indicators. Diagnosis of mental illness is
| not: definitions, diagnostic techniques, and access to
| diagnoses have changed radically over the last 100 years.
| It's similar (though less rigorous, for several reasons) to
| homicide being the gold standard crime statistic.
|
| I'm not making a claim that mental health doesn't matter if
| it doesn't result in suicide or incarceration. I'm saying:
| those are two sets of numbers you can find going back to
| the intervention (the sanitization of fairy tales) and
| trace since then.
|
| The story those numbers tells doesn't match the just-so
| story the comment provides. Maybe there's more going on
| than those numbers represents! But I think you'll have a
| tough time supporting that argument with facts. For
| instance: the claim was made across the thread that suicide
| levels were artificially suppressed in 1900 because of
| religious norms, which works against the story; moreover:
| you can see in the actual charts what suicide tracks with
| (it's not a smooth line).
| lmm wrote:
| > I'm not making a claim that mental health doesn't
| matter if it doesn't result in suicide or incarceration.
| I'm saying: those are two sets of numbers you can find
| going back to the intervention (the sanitization of fairy
| tales) and trace since then.
|
| That's like the drunk searching for his keys under the
| streetlamp because that's where the light is! Yes, those
| are the numbers we have, but do they reliably measure the
| things we care about?
|
| (Are you denying that the millennial mental health crisis
| exists at all? The fact that it doesn't show up in your
| preferred statistics is completely independent of any
| discussion of what the causes may be)
| tptacek wrote:
| If you want to make the concession that there's no
| evidence in either direction for the hypothesis that
| roots this thread, I'm fine with that.
| jackpirate wrote:
| I think you're wrong.
|
| Suicide does not have stable reporting rates. It was very
| stigmatized in the past, and so investigators would
| notoriously report suicides as "unknown cause of death"
| if they could.
|
| Violent crime, on the other hand, is much more correlated
| with things like poverty than with mental health.
|
| I think it's quite obviously the case that there are no
| clear indicators about what "mental health" looked like
| 100 years ago and there. Any projections into the past
| will involve a lot of extrapolation and have all sorts of
| biases.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| But if the clear indicators are only tenuously linked to
| the question you're interested in, then you may just have
| to accept that you can't answer the question, neither
| proving it nor resoundingly falsifying it as you
| attempted.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Since 1900 we have invented painless dentistry.
|
| As someone who got to experience a minor filling done without
| anesthetic when I was 9 I'd say that alone improved mental
| health by an order of magnitude.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I had a full-blown pulpotomy (baby tooth root canal) done
| with no novocaine injection. I was terrified of the needle.
|
| I'm prone to bouts of depression but that's probably got
| more to do with reading too much news and chronically
| overextending myself.
| hobs wrote:
| For most children of history I dont believe this was a real
| problem, my father for instance was a farm hand herding goats
| and picking olives at 5 years old - there was no time for an
| idyllic childhood.
| colechristensen wrote:
| "Childhood" is a fairly modern invention.
|
| >herding goats and picking olives at 5 years old - there was
| no time for an idyllic childhood
|
| I bet you could charge wealthy people $50,000 tuition to have
| their 5 year olds herd goats and pick olives if you had a
| good marketing team. You could lean heavily on calling it an
| idyllic childhood experience, make sure to overuse the word
| "rustic".
| robohoe wrote:
| "farmhouse chic"
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The most common cause of death during the American Civil War
| was disease. Not bullets, not bayonet wounds, not cannon fire.
|
| Disease.
|
| Imagine being the guy who discovered that washing your hands
| and tools meant less maternal mortality immediately after
| childbirth and being shunned because people had real
| understanding of infections or microbiology.
|
| When you think about those fairy tales, you cannot do it
| properly without thinking about the context in which they were
| written. Children were face to face with mortality every day.
| Polio, measles, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, diarrhea, plagues,
| minor wounds that got infected, etc.
|
| Kids today live in a world where if you make it to adulthood,
| you have a very strong likelihood that you will survive until
| you are no longer able to be productive.
|
| Your mental illness "theory" makes absolutely zero sense,
| because virtually all mental illnesses outside of degenerative
| conditions present themselves during childhood. I've had ADHD
| since I was a child. I didn't get diagnosed until well into
| adulthood, because my family never sought treatment. I didn't
| get this "mental illness" because of a lack of proper fairy
| tales. I was born with it.
| ajuc wrote:
| A lot of fairy tales are just there to scare children into
| obedience. Probably most of them.
| avereveard wrote:
| It's not really obedience, they convey that fire burns
| without the need to have it proven by trial.
|
| Stereotypes keep children alive until higher cognition kicks
| in and that learn consequences
|
| Now I do agree some of the stereotypes are antiquated,
| biased, and need a 21st century refresh, but there's more
| there than obedience.
| ajuc wrote:
| It's not teaching "fire burns", it's teaching "whatever
| authority tells you - you should do, even if you really
| want to investigate for yourself, because you'll die".
|
| Which I call obedience. And yeah - it's useful for parents
| because when your kid runs towards a busy street you don't
| have time to explain the reasoning and persuade it to go
| back. You need it to listen to you immediately. So it has
| some value. But let's not sugercoat it in psychological
| theories. It's simply obedience.
| techostritch wrote:
| So in this theory, people with rough childhoods have less
| mental illness and those with pleasant childhoods have greater
| mental illness?
| Iulioh wrote:
| ...these are extremes and i bet someone with a "rough
| childhood" will have greater mental illness chances
| because...material conditions but it depends how you define
| it.
|
| But i think not begin totally sheltered from every evil of
| the world will probably lead to a more well adjusted adult
| smegsicle wrote:
| if by rough childhood you mean being safely exposed to rough
| concepts under the supervision of caring and mentally stable
| parents, and by pleasant you mean anything else, then i think
| you got it
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| No, trauma is harmful. The whole idea here is to reduce the
| risk of trauma, not cause trauma.
|
| Think of it like this: Growing up in an excessively sanitized
| environment leaves children's immune systems weak and makes
| them susceptible to serious diseases later.
|
| The solution: Give children inoculations, let them play
| outside, etc., to exercise their immune systems in safe
| conditions.
|
| Not the solution: Give children serious diseases.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| This, this and this. And just like how kids who spend too
| much time in sanitized indoor environments are more likely
| to develop allergies and other autoimmune disorders, kids
| who are kept psychologically sheltered to too large a
| degree are more likely to develop anxiety disorders as
| adults.
|
| When "getting everything perfect" is normal to you and not
| a refreshing exception, you feel like you're a screwup most
| of the time even when you haven't done anything wrong
| besides being too hard on yourself.
| kergonath wrote:
| You're exaggerating, there are degrees between "being exposed
| to disturbing concepts" (which does not imply abuse) and
| "rough childhood" (which does, or at least mistreatment).
|
| You could frame it the other way: "are people with sheltered
| childhood more likely to suffer mental illness"? And my
| experience would suggest that the answer is "yes".
| NeoTar wrote:
| I encourage everyone to read the original versions of the fairy
| tales, as told in the Grimms, Perrault, etc.
|
| These stories sometimes read like something from another world.
| Like they are set in a world with hidden rules and assumptions,
| that we do not understand and seem alien to us.
| gwd wrote:
| Reading Thumbelina to my four-year-old, and realizing that she
| was basically... trafficked? Kidnapped from a loving home by a
| mother toad to marry her ugly son; she escapes but then is
| homeless, eventually taken in by a kindly field mouse. But then
| the field mouse eventually decides to force her to marry a mole
| who wants her to live underground, before finally escaping
| _that_ and finding people of her own kind who respect her
| decisions. Makes you wonder for how many children that was more
| an allegory than a fairly tale, and how many didn 't manage all
| their escapes.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Like they are set in a world with hidden rules and
| assumptions, that we do not understand and seem alien to us.
|
| Is that so difficult to believe? That world existed (and still
| exists), and each new generation of young people acts
| flabbergasted when the rules and assumptions smack them in
| their faces. I was young once, and only now am starting to
| recognize the world(s) that is far older than myself, whose
| rules and assumptions I can only vaguely begin to comprehend.
| You find this in fairy tales too, but not only there.
| zhynn wrote:
| Also recommend the Kalevala if you are curious about such
| things. It's very interesting.
| techostritch wrote:
| I've been collecting this series of folk tales, and some of
| them really are a completely different view of the world /
| sense of morality. It's wild.
| zeristor wrote:
| I remember watching the Czech version of The Little Mermaid, not
| the Russian one.
|
| It was just so intense, and obsessive.
| icepat wrote:
| Czech children's TV is something else. I've seen some of it too
| and, to my North American perspective, it feels like a
| feverdream.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Who can forget "Worker and Parasite"?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2_dhUv_CrI
| troad wrote:
| Some of it, yes, but some of it is very cute, e.g.: [0][1].
| They've historically had a fairly significant animation
| industry, so you're bound to get many different examples. If
| I remember correctly, thirteen Tom & Jerry episodes were made
| in Prague in the 1960s, in weird circumstances, on a shoe-
| string budget by animators unaccustomed to the idea of
| violent cartoons, and were received with some confusion by
| the American audience, hence the lingering reputation of
| Czech animation as weird (and consequent parodies like The
| Simpsons' _Worker and Parasite_ ).
|
| [0] Krtek chemikem / The Little Mole as the Chemist :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8xO4PiJ--w
|
| [1] Krtek a telefon / The Little Mole and the Telephone :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYwrCTxF9Oc
| zeristor wrote:
| Who'd have thunk, it has been almost 50 years since I watched
| it...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VCE2PRS-C8
| tnias23 wrote:
| My knee jerk reaction to the title was a strong feeling that
| racist, sexist, and ageist tropes absolutely should be sanitized
| out of fairy tails. But this article discusses a different kind
| of sanitizing, and i feel more comfortable with its premise.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > My knee jerk reaction to the title was a strong feeling that
| racist, sexist, and ageist tropes absolutely should be
|
| How can we ever have our utopia, if there are hints in
| centuries-old stories that people were once racist or "ageist"?
| Why can Winston not stuff all these fairy tales down the memory
| hole?
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Should we sanitize history of the nazis? How about Rome?
|
| Be less precious. The world is a brutal place and the lessons
| of that should NEVER be forgotten.
| petesergeant wrote:
| I'm unclear how teaching someone about an unpleasant
| historical event is perpetuating "racist, sexist, and ageist
| tropes"?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i don't think this is a fair comparison to sanitizing racism.
|
| it would be more like if we taught the story of the Nazis
| from the perspective of Nazism as wrongfully defeated. we
| certainly do sanitize narratives of history so the victors
| are the good guys
| nemo44x wrote:
| Many of these old, outdated stories even refer to the children
| as "girls" and "boys". At no point did they establish their
| pronouns. Like fine, the wolf wants to trick the child but it's
| disgusting that the wolf assumes the child is a girl by
| referring to they/them as "little girl" when calling them over.
|
| How am I supposed to explain this to my non-binary toddler? The
| damage is done and they/them are shattered. Burn these old
| tales is what I say and replace them with new, inclusive tales
| that feature BIPOC and LGBT+++ characters and center the
| stories around these identities. Replaced wolves with straight
| white Christian men!
| anotheraccount9 wrote:
| I recall a quote from Mr. Gaiman:
|
| "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that
| dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be
| beaten." -- Neil Gaiman, Coraline
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| I love that quote too! I have it from the introduction, I
| believe, to _Smoke and Mirrors_ :
|
| >Fairy tales, as G. K. Chesterton once said, are more than
| true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because
| they tell us that dragons can be defeated.
|
| The corresponding original Chesterton quote is
| supposedly/apocryphally:
|
| >Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children
| already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the
| dragons can be killed.
|
| I like the original for the "children already know" portion,
| but I prefer Gaiman's for lyricism and, perhaps ironically
| given TFA, saying "defeated" instead of "killed."
|
| At any rate, Chesterton didn't say it in so many words. There's
| some back-and-forth noted here, seems like it's oft-
| misquoted--<https://www.tumblr.com/neil-
| gaiman/101407141743/every-versio...>--with a longer version
| here:
| <https://saveversusallwands.blogspot.com/2016/05/tracking-
| bac...>.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Speaking of Gaiman, and fairy tales, I'll always recommend
| _Snow, Glass, Apples_ (1994).
| kouru225 wrote:
| My mom read Grimms to me when I was a kid. I loved it. We also
| read D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, which I remember being
| pretty wild.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| I had that Greek Myth book plus D'Aulaires' Book of Norse
| Mythology.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I was always partial to the Looney Tunes' Hansel and Gretel.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCwas_GPBxU
| bitwize wrote:
| J.K. Rowling satirized the idea of "sanitized" fairy tales in
| _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ through the character of Beatrix
| Bloxam, whose bowdlerized versions of Beedle 's tales were so
| wretched they caused kids to vomit, thus undermining her stated
| goal of writing stories more appropriate for children.
|
| Relatedly, recently an image appeared on Facebook of the
| character Lady Elaine Fairchilde as she appears in _Daniel Tiger
| 's Neighborhood_; both her ugly face and her irascible attitude
| are considerably toned down. It only made me miss the original
| version of Elaine from _Mister Rogers ' Neighborhood_ all the
| more. Fred Rogers was not one to shy away from the ugly feelings
| we all feel from time to time; and Elaine's original design draws
| heavily from the Punch and Judy tradition (which itself could
| have very dark and scary themes whilst still being entertainment
| for children, and itself has been toned down).
|
| When all the hard surfaces of our culture have been made soft,
| spongy and safe, when all the sharp edges are filed down smooth,
| how will we raise children who grow into adults adequately
| prepared to deal with the harshness of the real world?
| cogman10 wrote:
| > When all the hard surfaces of our culture have been made
| soft, spongy and safe, when all the sharp edges are filed down
| smooth, how will we raise children who grow into adults
| adequately prepared to deal with the harshness of the real
| world?
|
| Scarred and maimed kids aren't more ready to take on the real
| world. Losing a toe doesn't make you any more prepared to deal
| with a difficult coworker.
|
| Daniel Tiger is actually really excellent in how it prepares
| kids for the real world. No other kids show does a better job
| of talking about strong emotions, acknowledging them, and
| dealing with them (or dealing with conflict in general). It
| shows parents getting upset, kids being shits, and stuff
| generally just not going right all the time.
|
| I see no way that having an ugly mean Elaine would benefit the
| show.
| relaxing wrote:
| The kids will soon need an episode where Lady Elaine is
| jailed for her interracial relationship with Music Man Stan.
|
| Miss Elaina visits her mother in prison and learns the cruel
| and capricious nature of King Friday (featured frequently in
| the original series and sadly missing from the spinoff). Bob
| Trow plays the LEO and jailer.
| cogman10 wrote:
| King Friday is a regular character in DT. He cruelly makes
| his son prince Tuesday run the entire city because his
| favorite son, Prince Wednesday, is being groomed to be the
| true heir to the throne.
|
| I believe X is plotting a Coup d'etat. What he's doing in
| the enchanted forest is shrouded in mystery. The very name,
| X, conjures intrigue.
|
| If anyone is running the Jail cells, it's Tuesday. He does
| that in-between babysitting daniel, maintaining the
| baseball field/running the little league, and working as a
| volunteer fireman. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/DanielTigerConspiracy/comments
| /brsf...
| quacked wrote:
| I feel so frustrated by nearly any degree of censorship. "Should
| we censor fairy tales? Should we censor Roald Dahl? Should we
| censor the speeches of Confederate generals?" No! Why do the pro-
| censor groups think that an uninformed populace with incorrect
| understandings of what people in the past said and did is better
| for the future?
| techostritch wrote:
| This wasn't exactly my reading of the article, in this case,
| sanitization seems more about capitalism and appealing to the
| lowest common denominator (I.e. a happy version of the Little
| Mermaid) than censorship.
|
| I'm conflicted because do we live in a free society where
| people are free to choose the type of material they popularize
| or should we force legacy versions of fairy tales on them in a
| paternalistic sense it's good for them.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| we should absolutely make the originals available, next to
| the "sanitized" versions that are clearly labeled as _" not
| original"_ or _" loosely based on the original story"_
|
| Even "The Shining" is labeled as _" based on the original
| novel from Stephen King"_ and not as a _" faithful adaption
| of ..."_
|
| Any other way of presenting the redacted material it's bad,
| as in "universally bad".
| techostritch wrote:
| "we should absolutely make the originals available, next to
| the "sanitized" versions that are clearly labeled as "not
| original" or "loosely based on the original story""
|
| My point was definitely not to imply otherwise and I'm
| sorry if I did. I don't think it's wrong to create a new
| work that happens to eclipse the old work in popularity, I
| do think it's wrong to eliminate or censor the old work
| entirely.
| roywiggins wrote:
| The thing with traditional fairy tales in particular is
| that they don't _have_ original versions.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| The thing is that the original fairy tales are surely not
| "sanitized" versions of the ones we know.
|
| So if the idea is that we should clean-up the original
| stories so that they can replace the ones we know now in
| the future, we're doing a disservice to future people,
| because we have the oldest ones that have been printed at
| disposal and should not deprive them of the possibility
| of reading them, if they want to.
|
| The fact that before the press there was no book of fairy
| tales is irrelevant.
|
| The Grimm's are the Grimm's and we should keep printing
| and reading them as they were intended by the authors.
| segasaturn wrote:
| Indeed, today's issues of censorship and "sanitization" isn't
| caused by the government, or bands of overzealous activists,
| but the Free Market and capitalism working as intended -
| appeal to the greatest possible audience by removing anything
| that could be seen as questionable/objectionable to capture
| the largest possible market share & thus derive the most
| profit. The free market has created a kind of crisis of
| creativity where all the movies, TV shows and books kind of
| look and feel the same, where nobody's feelings get hurt and
| nobody's ideas are challenged, because that kind of media is
| objectively the most profitable.
| techostritch wrote:
| I'd like to be more charitable to your response so please
| correct me here:
|
| Wouldn't it be more censorship to say that people are not
| to create such media where "nobody's feelings get hurt and
| nobody's ideas are challenged." Like who would decide what
| media is sufficiently challenging?
|
| I feel like this is always the problem with the complaint
| about popular culture is it seems like the only solution is
| something that doesn't look like freedom.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Do you have an example of someone wanting to censor these
| things? This isn't something I've seen.
| bonzini wrote:
| Roald Dahl was censored a couple years ago.
| cogman10 wrote:
| His estate decided to modify the property they own to
| exclude words they found offensive. Do the owners of a book
| with the rights to its publication not have the right to
| publish whatever they like?
|
| The only thing I don't like about this is copyright keeps
| his books from being republished by anyone but his estate.
| Copyright lasts far too long.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| The argument is that we don't use Dahl's books as cautionary
| tales. They're entertainment. The concern is that kids may
| instinctively pick up some harmful stereotypes from that.
|
| Personally, I don't like it and I think we are so obsessed with
| sanitizing the language mostly because it's _easy_. You can
| search-and-replace all "blacklists" in the codebase and pat
| yourself on the back and feel like a good ally. Fixing real
| issues is a lot less convenient, and it's a lot harder to agree
| on the approach.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Even the Grimms themselves seem to have toned down the gore in
| their stories to appeal to larger audiences. It seems like many
| people _at the time_ didn 't think the original editions were
| suitable for children, so they brought out more family-friendly
| editions once they realized there was a demand for it.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/12/grimm-brothers...
|
| > "Zipes describes the changes made as "immense", with around
| 40 or 50 tales in the first edition deleted or drastically
| changed by the time the seventh edition was published. "The
| original edition was not published for children or general
| readers. Nor were these tales told primarily for children. It
| was only after the Grimms published two editions primarily for
| adults that they changed their attitude and decided to produce
| a shorter edition for middle-class families. This led to
| Wilhelm's editing and censoring many of the tales," he told the
| Guardian."
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Well, if the authors believe it, the authors have all the
| rights to change their books.
|
| But not the rest of us.
|
| EDIT: if the Grimms edited their books, it was in their
| rights. If we decide to edit Rolad Dahl (or the Grimms) and
| still call them Roald Dahl/Grimm's brothers we have no right
| to do it.
|
| It's as simple as that, regardless who the original author of
| the story was, the author(s) of the books are very well
| known, it's the Grimms (in this particular case) and we
| should not edit them and call them "Grimm's brothers works"
| but "The X works (based on the Grimm's brothers works)" and
| see how many copies it sells (I bet not many as exploiting
| the Grimms' name).
|
| Imagine Tolkien being rewritten based on "The rings of power"
| and still attributed to Tolkien or if Dune is republished as
| it is in the movies, with all the scenes removed, but it's
| still called Frank Herbert's Dune.
|
| Wouldn't it be disappointing?
|
| It is also about cultural heritage.
|
| These works are from different cultures, they are not native
| of the US, where the debate is taking place about them.
|
| Some time ago I read about rewriting Pinocchio. The majority
| of people think it is a Disney's story, they do not know or
| imagine that it is one of the most important piece of the
| Italian culture, written by Carlo Collodi and it's as
| important to us as Sherlock Holmes is for UK.
| roywiggins wrote:
| They're fairy tales. They don't have singular authors. They
| were transmitted orally and almost certainly adjusted based
| on whoever the audience was at the time. Just because the
| Grimms fixed them in print (more or less) doesn't make us
| beholden to them: they're still fairy tales. Fairy tales
| have always changed. There is no canonical version of a
| fairy tale, and no ownership. Disney's Snow White is as
| valid a telling as anyone's.
|
| The original stories weren't even _meant_ to be read to
| children. They got adjusted to be more child friendly even
| in the 19th century. It 's very weird to insist that we
| must read children the original Cinderella even though 1)
| Grimm's story isn't the "original" Cinderella because there
| is no original, and 2) even the Grimms didn't think these
| stories child-friendly.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > They don't have singular authors
|
| True, but that is true for everything before the press
| was invented, it's also true for music, before music
| notation was invented or for kitchen recipes...
|
| What we are talking about here is publishing the Grimm's
| fairy tales, that are the most popular _adaption_ ever of
| German folklore (we know they are mostly not original,
| but we can almost say they saved them from oblivion) and
| republish a sanitized version using the original title
| and the original authors names.
|
| We still adapt fairy tales when we tell them in front of
| a campfire, that doesn't change the fact that for some of
| them the author exists and we know who that is.
|
| Charlie and the chocolate factory, for example, is partly
| inspired by the author's real life experience with
| confectionery manufacturing plant Cadbury, it also
| contains more than one timeless archetype, inspired by a
| long tradition of orally transmitted tales, but at the
| same time it's also a completely original story, written
| by a man named Roald Dahl.
|
| Disney chose those fairy tales exactly because there were
| no copyright fees involved, ironically today they refuse
| to let mickey mouse go...
|
| EDIT
|
| > the Grimms didn't think these stories child-friendly
|
| AFAIK this is not what happened, the book was criticized
| for its content not deemed suitable for kids, given that
| the title "Kinder- und Hausmarchen" made people think
| otherwise.
|
| They decided to change them and made a specific version
| for kids, that had an immense success and was re-
| published many times (I believe it was 10 editions).
|
| We know that, we can refer to the original stories, tha
| doesn't mean Disney's Cinderella is not a Cinderella
| story, it means it is based on the Grimm's story, but
| it's not a faithful adaptation.
|
| I don't see what difference it makes for the sake of the
| argument if the Grimms decided to edit _their_ books.
| madars wrote:
| If you like dogs, one can recommend
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishbone_(TV_series) which got
| praise for "refusing to bowdlerize many of the sadder or more
| unpleasant aspects of the source works." Not sure if PBS is
| streaming it anymore but there are magnet links around.
| tombert wrote:
| I loved Wishbone as a kid precisely for that reason; despite
| the premise being pretty bizarre (telling a classic story but
| make the main character a dog), even as a kid I always thought
| it was cool how little they "talked-down" to me.
|
| I remember the Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde episode unambiguously
| kills off Jekyll at the end of the episode, and it genuinely
| kind of disturbed me a bit when I was a little kid, but in a
| good way.
| roywiggins wrote:
| This article is a bit weird: even the Grimms sanitized their own
| stories to appeal to wider audiences, it seems like people _in
| the 19th century_ didn 't think their original editions were
| suitable for children. The first edition didn't even get
| translated into English. Reworking fairy tales for different
| audiences likely is as old as fairy tales- after all, these were
| ostensibly originally orally transmitted.
|
| They're _fairy tales_. There is no canonical version. Stories
| repeated by the fireside do not have original authors. Neither
| the Grimms or the Germans they got the stories from have a
| monopoly on what the correct version of the story is.
|
| The original published versions _weren 't meant for children in
| the first place_:
|
| > "The original edition was not published for children or general
| readers. Nor were these tales told primarily for children. It was
| only after the Grimms published two editions primarily for adults
| that they changed their attitude and decided to produce a shorter
| edition for middle-class families. This led to Wilhelm's editing
| and censoring many of the tales," he told the Guardian.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/12/grimm-brothers...
| wonder_er wrote:
| I've been reading the original brother's grimm to kids for
| _years_ and the stories are always gripping. I don't love the
| reinforcing motifs of the world as perpetually experienced as
| dangerous, however.
|
| I've been LOVING working through the Studio Ghibli anthology with
| my toddler. Been curating a list (and then finding the right
| file) of the movies they like with the best audio tracks. (she
| cannot read, so watching them in the original audio, while
| engaging, isn't as helpful as good dubs. Some english dubs have
| been terrible, some quite good.
|
| We most recently watched Ponyo ["poh-noh-fish" as its sometimes
| called around here], had it playing on the background a few more
| times. She's been vastly less drawn to things like baby shark and
| it's ilk, with the availability of Ghibli's works, and we discuss
| the characters and events and the ups and downs in the movies
| throughout, and after.
|
| The pacing, the anti-imperial bent, dignifying many oft-de-
| dignified tropes, the art, the music, the foley, the mystery and
| the spiritualism and obvious deep love of the harmony of nature.
| mmm. I've paid Jeff Bezos more than I wish I had in my pursuit of
| the best/easiest files, but alas. Here's my beta, if you'd like.
| [0]
|
| I discovered Studio Ghibli only as an adult, more than 30 years
| old, so for anyone who doesn't know about it, you might be one of
| today's lucky 10,000. huzzah [1]
|
| [0]: https://josh.works/recommended-reading#studio-ghibli [1]:
| https://xkcd.com/1053/
| cebu wrote:
| Maybe the world is dangerous, but maybe that doesn't mean we
| have to be afraid. It's dangerous business stepping out your
| front door after all
| wonder_er wrote:
| exactly. Also, there's so much adventure to be experienced,
| so much beauty to appreciate. It's worth it. Also, the world
| _does not have to be experienced as constantly dangerous_ and
| it's important to allow a respite from that message.
|
| That the world is dangerous is self-evident, but it's not
| interesting to me to force that message into places it ought
| not be. And I think adults conceptions of 'the world is
| dangerous' does not always match the harm as experienced by
| children. They know the world is dangerous. They experience
| it all the time.
| cebu wrote:
| Of course. It certainly depends on context. Maybe some
| children need a respite from safe places. Others, an invite
| into them
| techostritch wrote:
| Is it though? I mean yes, but one argument I would have
| against overly glorifying some of these fairy tiles is that
| the way the world is dangerous today is very different from
| the way it was two hundred years ago.
| troupe wrote:
| I agree with the overall idea of the article, but it is important
| to recognize that our modern assumptions make us think there is a
| particular version of a fairy tale that is the "correct" or
| "original" version. Stories handed down orally are likely changed
| in each telling to better fit their audience, so in that sense,
| the way fairy tales were told almost always included some type of
| sanitization or embellishment depending on who was listening.
| noodleman wrote:
| This is actually an interesting point. There's a tendency to
| assume that the core of a story is the same, even if the way
| it's told is different. I wonder how many generations of
| retellings it takes for us to notice significant differences.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I think stories about King Arthur would be a good comparison.
| They fit a similar cultural niche, but we have lots of
| different versions that were written down over the centuries.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Even the Grimms' original versions weren't meant for children
| _at the time_!
| jonahx wrote:
| You're technically correct, ofc, but I feel this is a red
| herring.
|
| Sure, all fairy tales have oral origins, and with Grimm you
| even various translations over the years.
|
| Nevertheless, me, my parents, and their parents were all
| reading basically the same thing, and often the exact same
| book. That is, the _books_ have been around over 150 years and
| have become canon in their own right. It is the sanitization of
| those books that people are objecting to.
|
| So you can't just say "hey these things come from an ever-
| evolving oral tradition and this is just one more evolution".
| That doesn't accurately describe what is happening.
| relaxing wrote:
| I'm missing the point where that's not happening. Is it that
| a book is not oral transmission?
| jonahx wrote:
| Correct it is a book. The analogy to what's going on now is
| not "oral evolution" but the OG bowdlerization of
| Shakespeare by Bowdler himself, and we (rightly) see that
| today as ridiculous.
| pyrale wrote:
| > So you can't just say "hey these things come from an ever-
| evolving oral tradition and this is just one more evolution".
| That doesn't accurately describe what is happening.
|
| On the other hand, why should people stop doing what they've
| done for cenuries because some guy wrote something down at
| some point? Part of what keeps stories relevant is that
| parents adapt them to the current context. Stopping their
| evolution is the best way to kill their transmission. Whether
| the transmission is oral or written is kind of irrelevant.
| magicalist wrote:
| Saying "my book is the canon because I've had it a long time"
| is a type of censorship itself. Having more than one version
| of a story is not the type of sanitization this article is
| talking about.
| schneems wrote:
| I think in an ideal world they come with some kind of a diff.
| Maybe an activity guide with prompts for parents.
|
| I picked up "Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and
| Ourselves" from naeyc and that's more or less what they
| propose. They suggested that when you see a problematic
| representation in your kids media not to hide it, but note it
| "That doesn't seem very fair to be judged only by <blank>"
| and if there's time engage the kid "what do you think?"
|
| It gives a natural way to talk about the problems while also
| showing good examples of how they might come up in the kids
| life.
|
| You can also do the inverse. Remove the gnarly reference and
| then introduce a surrogate conversation with possibly easier
| to understand plots or themes. Later when they are older you
| can, and should, talk to them about how the differences and
| ask what they think. Ask them to come up with a different
| change and think how that might influence the reader.
|
| Now not only did they get the changed and original they get a
| healthy dose of media literacy to understand how changing
| narratives can change how we view the world.
|
| There are challenges and difficulties of course, but it's
| certainly possible to do well in my opinion.
| taberiand wrote:
| I don't think it's a question of the correct version, just a
| question of the most appropriate for what our children need.
| The article also mentions modern series and YA novels that have
| in some ways even bleaker themes, and I think there's nothing
| wrong with a feel good Disney story either.
|
| I think there is a tendency for parents to excessively avoid
| letting their children be afraid, instead of providing a safe
| place to experience fear, and these older stories didn't shy
| away from those themes and so can be useful for bringing some
| of that safe fear back for children.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| The world is good, bad and everything else in-between at the same
| time, and we try to stick to the good bits. I remember reading
| that children gain the ability to understand that around the age
| of 7. Prior to that, seeing the bad taints the whole world for
| them.
|
| I can't tell if that's true, but intuitively rings so. Now, if it
| is of life-or-death importance to condition your children never
| to go into the forest alone while you are tilling the fields,
| perhaps that's a good tradeoff. Most medieval people died in
| their childhood anyway, worrying about their psychological
| baggage in adulthood was premature optimisation.
|
| But in 21st century, I think we can do better, and wait with
| teaching children about the good and evil parts of the world
| until they are more ready for it.
|
| That's not to say we dumb everything down and take away nuance.
| But it doesn't have to be gory. Bluey is full of nuance and
| suitable for all ages.
| squidbeak wrote:
| My parents read Roald Dahl to me and would put on Watership
| Down years before I was 7, without ever tainting the world for
| me. The same was true for several generations of British kids.
| A happy ending after a disturbing struggle is more like a way
| of instilling durable optimism in children.
| wonder_er wrote:
| strongly agree. I've been loving anything/everything produced
| by the animation studio "Studio Ghibli".
|
| I was introduced via the first few works created by the first
| director, Hayao Miyazaki, it's absolutely ruined me for
| nearly all other works that claim to be for children.
|
| Their productions feel so dignifying to everyone, embracing
| the full human experience, not so necessarily dark and
| disturbing.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Funnily enough, my parents read Watership Down to me too, I
| would have been around 4-5 then. They skipped the worst bits,
| and yet still I remember being scared. I liked the rest of
| the story, including the happy end.
|
| You can sanitize without hurting, and even if you think you
| remove the worst bits, it can still be too much, for some
| children at least.
| Swizec wrote:
| > I remember reading that children gain the ability to
| understand that around the age of 7. Prior to that, seeing the
| bad taints the whole world for them.
|
| My country had a [short] war when I was 4 years old. Kids are
| plenty capable of experiencing bad and not being permanently
| tainted by it. Takes parental guidance of course.
|
| I also grew up on the version of Little Red Riding Hood where
| they actually get eaten and the hunter has to cut them out of
| the wolf after killing it. It was one of my favorite stories
| growing up because bad things happen but they get rescued.
| taberiand wrote:
| I'm frequently surprised by what is considered by other parents
| as too scary for their children to watch or read, when it seems
| to me the whole point of scary stories is to provide a safe place
| for children to feel scared and learn what it takes overcome
| fear.
|
| That's not to say that anything goes, just that I think parents
| need to be willing to let their children be appropriately afraid
| and comfort them and teach them courage. Avoiding any scary
| themes or dangerous ideas, instead of providing safe ways to
| engage with these things, I think leads to children growing into
| adults who will have a much harder time recognising and dealing
| with the real dangers of life.
| llm_trw wrote:
| >Fairy tales can often be brutal and cruel - people and animals
| die - and yet, despite everything, the positive powers always
| win. There can be no other ending.
|
| That is a very 21st century view of fairy tales, no less
| sanitized than what Disney does.
| 6510 wrote:
| A wise man one day created a standard formula for fairy tales:
| They should involve the 3 evils in the world, your employer,
| your government and your god. Then the protagonist worships
| them and works hard only to be punished by all 3 for not
| working hard enough and not bowing deep enough. In each story
| the protagonist should embrace a logic fallacy that justifies
| the punishment.
|
| The writers he hired struggled hard implementing the formula
| but ultimately couldn't write any part of it into any story.
|
| The children worked a shit job, paid many fines and burned in
| hell for ever, until the end of times.
| petsfed wrote:
| Its curious, because I have pretty stark objections to The Little
| Mermaid (chiefly, the subtext seems to be "it's totally ok to
| change everything about yourself to win the affection of a boy
| you literally just met" and in light of that, the only moral
| becomes "read the fine print before signing a contract"), they
| are neatly addressed by the original text. The original is more
| an allegory about how changing everything about yourself is
| actually _bad_ than the fairy tale romance that Disney pitches,
| which is not AT ALL what I expected.
|
| There's real benefit to exposing kids to darker themes (my eldest
| loves a book that kills its main character's father on the second
| page, and after she recovered from being a little weepy about it,
| it became one of her favorites), but there's also merit to
| letting the kids choose to hit pause on scary/disturbing/whatever
| themes until they're in a place to deal with it.
|
| Showing your kids The Two Towers might have a really positive
| impact on them at the right time, but only if they're mature
| enough that it doesn't lead to e.g. bed-wetting levels of dis-
| regulation.
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