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Isn't it time that Snow White learnt stranger-danger?
Summary
We need respite from stereotypes of good and evil—and protagonists waiting to be rescued
Last weekend, I chaperoned my daughter and her friends to see Snow White. You can judge me later, but just bear with me for the next few hundred words. A scene soon after the interval elicited loud guffaws from my group. Sadly it had nothing to do with the script but all to do with a certain member of the audience. Just as Snow White accepted a poisoned apple from the evil queen in her old hag avatar, a child, around 5 or 6 exclaimed to her parents, “But, didn’t her Mumma-Papa not tell her not to accept things from strangers!" Here was a little child spouting words of wisdom, while a young adult in this stale-beyond-years fairytale failed to exhibit basic common sense and continued to do what she had been doing in umpteen retellings of this story.
I waited and waited for some reimagination, some empowering moment when Snow White would break from tradition—a twist in the tale, if you will—but to no avail. Once again, we had a comatose belle waiting for a true love’s kiss. If I had a drinking game for the number of times fairytales have somehow featured this magical kiss of love to make everything better, I would be seriously drunk by now. The sole deviation in this film was Snow White marching into town, brimming with the magic of a good heart, and transforming hardened soldiers into vessels of regained humanity with mere mentions of their strawberry farms and generous feasts of the past.
For most of us, while growing up, fairytales were a stepping stone into the magical world of stories, and it is only natural for us to want to pass on these tales— which often spell comfort—to our kids. But isn’t it time that we demand better of them? Isn’t it time that we get some respite from these stereotypes of good and evil—and the protagonist waiting to be rescued? Why should a beast need to transform into a handsome prince for him to seem deserving of love? What is with this notion that a stepmother will be nothing but wicked?
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Thankfully, I am not alone in wanting these age-old tales to be reinvented. Some creative practitioners have in recent years taken these popular characters and placed them out of their comfort zones in reimagined settings, with new challenges and far more empowering ways of overcoming them. On screen, Frozen and Wicked have taken some steps in this direction. Then there is A Tale Dark & Grimm on Netflix, which falls just a little short of being deliciously dark just like a story from the Grimms’ Fairy Tales ought to be. Even then, it is worth a watch for children aged 10 and above.
Authors have taken to this task with greater alacrity than filmmakers. I have been going back to my daughter’s bookshelf to read The Land of Stories series by author-actor Chris Colfer of Glee fame. Set in contemporary times, this set of six books—and four prequels— follows the adventures of twins Alex and Conner Bailey, who lose their father in an accident just before their 11th birthday. Somehow they end up stepping into an old book of fairytales gifted by their grandmother. The books, meant for 9-12-year-olds, feature a host of familiar characters such as Red, Goldilocks, Jack and Evil Enchantress, but there is more to them. There are stories of greyness, some instances of giving in to and of some rising above emotional challenges, and of second chances.
Young adults can read The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, which offers a dystopian twist on classical fairy tales, with the first book in the series, Cinder, set in a city called New Beijing after World War 4. “A futuristic sci-fi setting, a cyborg heroine and her sassy android sidekick on a quest to defeat a psychic evil queen and her moon army… Cinder is a fantastic twist on a tale as old as time," wrote The Guardian in a review when the first book came out in 2012. Since then five other books have been published based on tales of Rapunzel, Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood, all set amid tensions between Earth and a former colony Luna—incidentally they also feature a raging pandemic.
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Closer home, author Bijal Vachharajani and illustrator Rajiv Eipe set a fairyland in the throes of a climate crisis. The book, When Fairyland Lost its Magic, meant for kids aged 10+, features ogres, witches, wizards and princesses in a world wracked by climate change, and how residents of this distressed land come up with their own Happily Ever After filled once again with brimming oceans, verdant landscapes and clean air.
There are times when parents take matters into their own hands. The husbandwife team of Jonathan Plackett and Karrie Fransman wanted to tell their child these stories but with varied gender roles that did not conform to stereotypes. So, they ended up creating Gender Swapped Fairy Tales, which was published in 2020 by Faber & Faber for kids aged 8-12. “(The book) takes the most famous stories from around the world and gender swaps them using a computer algorithm turning ‘he’ to ‘she’ and ‘mother’ to ‘father’. These stories are for girls, boys, non binary and trans people and adults of all kinds. The books shine a light on the gender binaries in language, the roles we adopt and the stories we’ve been telling our children for generations," they write on their website, genderswappedstories.com. Plackett, a creative technologist and digital inventor, and Fransman, a comic creator, came up with a second illustrated book, Gender Swapped Greek Myths, in 2022.
We are raising a generation of children who have been witness to far more upheavals than ever before—it is a time when aggression has become commonplace, and tolerance towards the “other" is diminishing. In such a scenario, parents need to ask themselves what kind of stories they want children to grow up with—those that vilify people who don’t fit a stereotype or those that empower you to find the will and grit to create safe spaces for all? Put these popular characters outside of their comfort zones, where they can save themselves.
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And, for all those damsels-in-distress, you don’t need a knight in shining armour with minty fresh breath to wake you up from languid sleep, but some selfbelief, gumption, common sense, and perhaps an alarm clock.
Raising Parents is a monthly column about art culture ideas to inspire both children and adults.
