 Fantasy: June 02, 2021 Issue [#10796] |
This week: Fairy Tales Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
― Albert Einstein
Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.
― Alice Hoffman
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 |
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People are always remaking and/or updating stories to make them more culturally relevant. This is not a phenomenon new to Hollywood movies; apparently, it has been going on for a very long time.
It's only when a story gets written down that it becomes, in effect, set in stone, unchanging. Before writing, stories were passed down verbally, and it's harder to track such changes.
Some have tried, though. For instance, this article from Smithsonian Magazine, which delves into the history of fairy tales.
Fairy tales can be considered a kind of, or at least a precursor to, today's Fantasy literature. Both tend to involve magic and supernatural elements, for example.
The main thrust of the article appears to be research into the age of some of the stories that fall under the general heading of "fairy tales;" we know that their origins predate their writing, but the question is, by how much? The author asserts, "A new study suggests that their origins go all the way back to prehistory."
"Suggests" is kind of a weasel word; there's nothing definitive here, but I don't think we can discount the possibility. Storytelling is as old as humanity itself. Perhaps the beginning of storytelling was the beginning of humanity, but of course a writer would think that; if I were an artist, I'd probably point to cave paintings and say "we became fully human when we started doing art."
Either way, though, we know that storytelling itself is ancient. The oldest written story we know about is the Epic of Gilgamesh, something like 4000 years old... and it can be described as being in the Fantasy genre. There's some writing even older than that, but it might not fall under the category of "story." When it comes to writing them down, though, t should be obvious that such things didn't spring out of nowhere, but instead were transcribed from oral traditions into this newfangled invention called "writing."
So just as storytelling is probably as old as humanity, the practice of reimagining stories in different cultural contexts is likely almost as old. If you imagine, say, a story about a mammoth hunt, at some point there were no more mammoths, and younger generations would not be able to relate to such a beast. It would pass into the realm of fiction, or possibly morph into a story about hunting different animals. Add to that the inevitable transcription drift, and a written story could bear little resemblance to its original form.
Consequently, all those retellings of old stories, aimed at a new generation of people, only carries on a vastly old tradition.
Remember that next time someone tries to tell you that Hollywood is out of ideas. It's perfectly acceptable to update old stories, fairy tales or otherwise, to appeal to modern sensibilities. New ideas are rare, but new takes on the old ideas are legion. Some of them are even quite good. |
Some lore for your perusal:
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Last time, in "Giant Monsters" , I spoke of kaiju movies.
Quick-Quill  : I'm watching GRIMM again. I love the characters. Nick, the last Grimm, so he thinks. Then there are all the Wesson who is wonderfully crafted. I wanted so much more from the writers. They say they ran out of inspiration. I say they ran one storyline off the rails.
Speaking of fairy tales... but I haven't seen that show, so I can't comment on it.
Grin 'n Bear It!  : Not a subscriber to the Fantasy NL but this month's title intrigued me. I read fantasy, but don't write in this genre. Enjoyed your NL so much, I decided I really should be subscribing.
Hope you're still with us! Thanks for reading.
Elfin Dragon-finally published  : You stated, "But there are other massive problems, too - injustice, starvation, pollution, climate change, and so on"...I will state that if you're a fan of Japanese monster flicks you'll know that they have a movie monster for almost all of these. If you check out this link https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/every-godzilla-monster-ranked/#12-hedorah they'll tell you all about most of the movie monsters in the Godzilla films and what they're capable of.
Good stuff, thanks!
So that's it for me for now - see you in four weeks! Until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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