> all without doing any real damage to the fairy tales which inspired him
I agree with the rest of that sentence, but this really isn't true. Disney's bowdlerized versions actually do harm and even displace the source material in public consciousness.
Spoiler & trigger alert - the princess discovers
the true nature of the Frog Prince not with a kiss,
but by flinging him against a wall. Many of the other
stories are equally blunt, forceful, or realistic
for the times they came from.
Of note is the modern excision of the last phrase
from the closing formula:
"And they all lived happily ever after until they died."
> Of note is the modern excision of the last phrase from the closing formula: "And they all lived happily ever after until they died."
I think this is true of English speakers. In German everyone knows the standard phrase "und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, dann leben sie noch heute" ("And if they have not died then they are still alive today.")
It's a sufficiently well known meme that people use it regularly in jokes.
Most of the Grimm stories don't seem to have a closing formula, as far as I can tell, though there's (at least) one that ends with "sie lebten vergnügt bis an ihr Ende". I suppose I might translate that as: "they lived happily to the end of their days".
To me the most familiar closing formula is "und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, dann leben sie noch heute", which is quite interesting to think about really: what does it tell or suggest to the listener?
I'm not a huge fan of Walt Disney's versions of fairy tales but in fairness stories like Cinderella were bowdlerized long before the Disney team got hold of them. Disney stories were mostly notable because they were so successful.
For example, in the Grimm Brothers version the stepsisters cut off toes and heels to fit into Cinderella's shoes and ride to visit the prince with blood dripping down on the ground. Later they were blinded. The already old version I read while growing up in the US in the late 1960s left that part out.
More interestingly, the Grimm Brothers themselves altered many of their own stories substantially in the 7 or so full editions of Grimms' Fairy Tales they published before 1857. Some of the originals were pretty crude.
There is no "true version" of fairy tales. They are an oral tradition with a multitude of versions - for example Cinderella is known in dozens of different version from across the world, and in the oral tradition probably every narrator had their own version.
The Disney Cinderella is based on Charles Perrault's version which was actually published earlier than the Grimms version. Both are recorded from oral versions. Perrault does not have the cutting off of toes, but have a fairy godmother and a magic pumpkin which is not present in the Grimm version.
Disney put their own slant on the stories of course, just like any other retelling.
Indeed. The Grimm fairy tales also include "German" stories that were actually of French origin. At least some of their supposedly rustic native sources were Huguenots, i.e., French Protestants, who settled around Kassel where the Grimm brothers lived.
Personally I grew up reading (and rereading) the Andrew Lang Fairy Books. They hew to the Perrault version of Cinderella. It would not be surprising if Walt Disney read those growing up. They were immensely popular and included wonderful Art Nouveau illustrations of characters in the stories. H J Ford was the artist for many of them.
To be fair though, once you undermine this clause, the rest of the comment can be applied to almost any enterprise: illegal drugs, weapons, or almost any other harmful industry.
It'd be difficult to argue that most drugs do not bring extreme joy to their users, it's just coupled with equally or even more severe lows after. If you could take heroin without getting addicted or dealing with withdrawal, why wouldn't you?
That you compare Disney and children's stories to narcotics and "harmful industry" is laughable. Sure guns/drugs etc bring joy to some people but their harmful side effects - both to society and the individual - are much much much worse and widespread compared to Disney which really has very little to no harmful side effects.
Disney created something people liked. The source material of original fairy tales still exists and is readily available.
That he "displaced source material in public consciousness" is hardly a critique, in that case I guess we should stop making new music and literature as popular newcomers tend to displace what's previously popular in the public consciousness.
Definitely. Most children born in the Netherlands at one point knew the well-known Grimm collected fairy tail of Rapunzel by its Dutch moniker ('Raponsje'), but ever since Disney released its version of that story the Dutch name got displaced by 'Rapunzel', because that's what Disney is calling her in the Dutch release as well.
I agree with the rest of that sentence, but this really isn't true. Disney's bowdlerized versions actually do harm and even displace the source material in public consciousness.