This is a short film by the wonderful Mucky Puppets based on the tale the Grimms removed from Children's and Household Tales after the first (1812) edition.
I love the film's atmospheric silhouette puppetry, and I'm intrigued by its treatment of this very dark story (the tale can be read online here, along with a commentary by Donald Haase on using it in his teaching here).
Watching the film I couldn't help thinking of this article I read in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago. There's no shying away from the fact that this is a very upsetting subject, but then fairy tales often touch upon subjects that we'd prefer to pretend didn't exist: murder, child abuse, rape, forced marriage, incest, cannibalism, bestiality. In their simple prose, and with their refusal to engage in explicit sensationalism, they have, perhaps, always offered us a way of discussing these subjects. But from the Grimms to the present day there has been a dominant move towards the sanitisation of fairy tales for children. I can understand the desire to protect children but this leaves us with a problem—we can edit our collections of stories, but can we can't edit the world.
Thanks to Richard Mansfield for giving me permission to post the film here.
2 days ago
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Wonderful film, thanks for posting. Everyday I think I'd like to edit the world...well put.
ReplyDeleteThanks for an interesting and enlightening post. I did not know about this fairytale, hidden from the Grimms edition. This reminds me about the first edition of the norwegian fairytales og Asbjørnsen and Moe. It is a story very similar til Knight Bluebeard, called the The boyfriend in the woods. It was not published then, because it was to violent and horrible.
ReplyDeleteI also know a story from sami culture, where the children are playing slaughtering the reindeers.
Eirin - norwegian storyteller
Fascinating link to the Guardian - too difficult a topic to comment coherently, but very interesting :)
ReplyDeleteSorry, I'm a bit off topic here. Basically, I'm just stopping in to tell you that I absolutely LOVE your blog! Thanks for bringing it to the world. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks all for the comments, and thanks for the info about those tales Eirin.
ReplyDeleteBest,
Claire
What an amazing video! I have never understood the censoring of children's book because my parents read me the original Grimms and Edward Gorey's deadly alphabets when I was little. That's probably why I became a fairy tale illustrator, so that I can keep those 'controversial' books in children's hands.
ReplyDeleteI love Gorey's work. I love Hoffman's Der Struwwelpeter too. Mucky Puppets have also made a great film of Suck-A-Thumb: http://www.youtube.com/user/bonbichie#p/u/3/wYikBotWFHk
ReplyDelete