(no subject)

[timelets]

One way to narrate the current war to children would be to see Putin as somebody who imagines himself to be Prince Charming while actually being a Dementor. Sleeping Beaty wakes up to his touch and finds herself face-to-face with a life-sucking monster.

Comments

[dmm]

!

[tijd]

The original Sleeping Beauty is a story of rape.

"The version of Sleeping Beauty with its chaste, true-love kiss that most of us remember from Disney or the Brothers Grimm derives from a 17th-century Italian tale called Sun, Moon, and Talia by Giambattista Basile, based on folk legends dating from the 14th century. In these early versions, the sleeping princess is raped and impregnated by a passing king – but it all ends well because after she wakes and recovers from the initial shock of finding she has twins, he returns and marries her. This constitutes a happy ending.
I grew up with the Grimm and Disney versions of Sleeping Beauty, and as a child it never occurred to me – or anyone else – to question whether it was appropriate for the prince to kiss her when she had no say in it; that was his role, just as hers was to be rescued. If we’d been read the Basile version it might have been a different matter; by the end of that story, after the king’s original wife has tried to kill the princess Talia and have the babies cooked and served to her errant husband for dinner (spoiler: the cook replaces them with lambs), you’re positively rooting for Talia to end up happy ever after with her rapist – he is no longer the worst offender in the story. As in Fatal Attraction, it’s the raging, jealous woman who becomes the destroyer of family, not the guy who can’t keep it in his pants."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/27/sexual-assault-sleeping-beauty-fairytales-ban-gender-rape

The humanity has evolved since the 14th century but not in its entirety.

[timelets]

Thanks for the info. Many fairly tales for children originated as horror stories for adults :)