Why do we dissect childhood so?
The innocence of childhood is so because life is unfettered with impressions from the worlds along with voices of experience. There is a reason for that, am sure. Why are people so hell bent of destroying images you carry forward from your childhood.
Enid Blyton is one such example where books were about idyllic childhoods and pain that always always went away. Friends always rescued you and bad people who often turned good by the end of the book.
Now that we can access more information we are told that Blyton was accused of racism even as I keep reaching for those books and reliving afternoons of relishing those books. Even though shades of trees around my house never match the shade in the books and most certainly tea was never the same! Where were the scones and tarts and cakes?
Came across another such a killer of a fairy tale but this is one person's opinion (as far as I can tell). The Prince in Snow White and Seven Dwarfs is a necrophiliac!
Any other such 'tales' to tell?
posted by Janaki @ 1:23 AM
4 Comments:
I don't see why it isn't possible to continue to cherish our childhood associations while at the same time accepting that the people responsible for them were flawed human beings with their demons and prejudices (just like any of us). A lot of authors who wrote the most delightful children's stories were famously dysfunctional (in some cases even badly screwed up) people - we know the stories about Lewis Carroll and J M Barrie, to name just two. Given the milieu Enid Blyton grew up in and the set of beliefs that were probably indoctrinated in her at a very early age, being racist doesn't make her an evil witch with no redeeming qualities - I know that sounds politically incorrect, but there it is. (Heaven knows what crimes and prejudices our children and grandchildren will be accusing us of decades from now!)
She was also incorrigibly sexist, by the way - you don't need to look much beyond the Anne character in the Famous Five books to see that!
About the Snow White thing - let's not even start to discuss the European fairytales (by the likes of the Brothers Grimm etc). The versions of those stories we read as children were extremely toned down, sanitised ones. Necrophilia would be a relatively mild crime compared to some of the themes in Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel etc.
Thoroughly disillusioned now? :)
Its not so much disillusioned as much as - I, for one, wont be able to tell these stories and secondly .. you know all those adult versions that come out of these fairy tales.. they some how seem more palatable!
My personal take about the fairy tales is that it doesn't really matter how they started and what covert meanings they have. What matters is what the audiences of these fairy tails understand them as. As far as I know kids don't interpret it as necrophilia so I think we got nothing to worry about.
About Blyton, I agree with the reviewer that she shows signs of sexism. But it might be just the times she was living in, may be she did not intend to be that way.
Just thinking about Blyton makes me hungry :)
Twisted DNA: Yes kids wont but while telling a story.. am telling.. and thinking ewww!! Yeah Blyton makes me hungry for the stf she writes about and tea and cookies here in the real world is as sad as it could possibly get.
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