Friday 6 June 2014

Fairy Tales As Women Tales: Which Are The Modern Ones?

I got a link recently to this post.
http://the-toast.net/2014/05/26/fairy-tales-are-womens-tales/
Read it before you continue or half my post wouldn't make sense-or more.
...
Did you do that? Good. I read it myself, of course.
Of course, me being me, I set myself to analyse it as thoroughly as I could in order to get the most information on what the First Edition was like. And then I was reminded of this post. (Sorry, link -time today, read it).
http://adept-press.com/ideas-and-discourse/other-essays/naked-went-the-gamer/

Why? Because the tales, as written in the First Edition of Brother Grimm's Tales, were pop-fantasy in its purest form. Popular fantasy by popular demand... including women at the time and what they dreamed (and dreaded) for.
So it had sex, almost all consensual, and it had violence, but not mindless violence for violence's sake (although the standard for what is worth killing for was slightly different back then-more relaxed, one might say). But still, these were pretty normal characters for those people - probably mostly women, yeah - that were telling the stories.
Oh, and there was magic and superpowers. And it was probably a "tale of the day" format.
By now you might have guessed my answer to the question in this post's title. The modern-day scions of the fairy tales are the urban fantasy stories. Especially if they're series.
Dresden Files, Lost Girl, Vampire Diaries, all the Ann Rice books... and yes, Anita Blake and Fifty Shades of Whatever (there are probably enough imitations with similar titles that you can pick whatever). They feature pretty normal people that deal with the same everyday issues. And they have magic at their disposal, or against them, because many readers find magic fun.
Please note, I'm not debating which of these series actually have good or at least decent story, characters, or whatever... it's besides the point. What I'm saying is that they're filling the same niche.
The problem, and it is a problem, is when people react like the Grimms:
"Eww, sex in my fantasy...how gross!"
Really? Is that the best we can do? One would think sexuality should be accepted as one of the primary motivators of humanity's behaviour by now! So why should it be kept out of the stories? (And yes, it can be used poorly. Everything can. If we avoided stuff because it can be misused, we should stop telling stories right now!)

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