Rags to Riches

The rags to riches trope is a popular one, driven by everyone desire to be able to become wildly successful no matter where they are in life now. Two examples of this motif are Disney's Cinderella and the film Pretty Woman.

Cinderella is a classic story that most people know, and the Disney version is the most common version you'll see referenced in the present day. In it, Cinderella lives with her stepmother and stepsisters who abuse and neglect her. Eventually she manages to escape with the help of her fairy godmother and the grace of a prince, and goes on to live happily. Pretty Woman is a notably more risqué version of the trope, as the female lead Vivian Ward is a hooker on the streets of Los Angeles. Eventually she manages to rise above her current station when she's hired by wealthy businessman Edward Lewis, who falls for her.

Both of these stories focus heavily on the idea of someone rising above their less than favorable station through the aid of a romantic beneficiary. Of the two, Pretty Woman focuses much more on the characters involved, with Edward Lewis serving as a deuteragonist rather than a plot device wrapped up as a character. Though both feature love as the primary factor through which the female lead rises up, but this is a substantially more significant role in Cinderella where the prince falls in love over a single night, abiding by fairy tale-esque rules.

The rags-to-riches motif is, at its core, wish fulfillment. Everyone wants to become wealthy and successful beyond their wildest dreams, and often wish to do so with little effort on their part. The lottery is a perfect example of this, where people seek to gain great wealth purely through luck, and this mindset is reflected in tales like Cinderella where the prince falls in love after a single meeting and then goes out of his way to help her.

This is not impossible in real life, and Wikipedia even has a page dedicated solely to tracking instances of this. However, this is far less common than it once was. Economic and social factors in modern day America make it very difficult for someone to rise out of the economic segment they were born into, much less become rich. That is not to say it is impossible, but such cases are usually dependent on factors that cannot simply be overcome through hard work alone.

Sonne

Snow White is a story that has been adapted in many different ways by many different people, often in outright contradictory ways. One of the more out-there interpretations is the music video of the song Sonne by Rammstein.

It combines a number of details from the more common interpretations we read with some rather unique ideas. The most notable is the interpretation of dwarves as modern miners, making use of hydraulic picks and drills to mine their gold. But there are parts it keeps consistent, like the traditional description of her appearance in clothes that near perfectly mimic those of Disney's version of Snow White. The apples appear as a motif, but the gold is given more prevalence as the cause for her "death."

The characters are the most distinguishable. In most tales the dwarves are secondary characters, but in Sonne they are the focus. They are presented in a much grimier, down-to-earth manner than miners typically would be in this story, living in a rather utilitarian place and covered in the dust of the mine. Snow White is only a secondary character, and actually seems more like an antagonist. She forces herself into their home and makes them serve her, punishing them on a whim. Despite this, the traditional dynamic of the relationship between Snow White and the dwarves seems to remain, as they don't seem antagonistic towards her and genuinely seem to mourn her death. Instead, she serves more like a cruel tyrant or mother who they obey even as they fear her.

Of our readings, the story this version most resembled was Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman. In both Snow White is a monstrous figure, a vampire in SGA and a cruel sort of dominatrix in Sonne. Rather than being her friends or allies the dwarves are her subjects and serve her out of fear or deference to her power. However, Sonne is a much more self contained version. Done away with are the stepmother and the hunter, leaving Snow White's temporary death in her own hands. In SGA these things are actually given even more focus, with the stepmother serving as the viewpoint character, protagonist, and hero. Also in both Snow White still gets her "happy ending" even as it's not-so-happy for the other characters.

Of all the versions we read, my favorite was the Brother's Grimm's Snow White. Due to its use or interesting structure like the sevenfold repetition with the mirror and the rule of three with the stepmothers attempts on Snow White's life, it was quite good in form. As for function, the characters were rather well done and I enjoyed the manner in which the story progressed in an understandable way.

The Frog King vs. The Pig King

In class we read several fairy tales that abide by the same basic plot where a beautiful woman is married to an ugly beast. Two of these were The Frog King and The Pig King. These stories both had several differences, as well as rather complementary titles, but there is one particular facet of these stories that I wish to focus on and how it differs between them: the transformation of the beast.

In The Pig King, the beast is a prince born a pig who will only become human when he has married thrice. The catch? No one knows about this condition, not even the beast himself or his mother, as the curse was placed on the pregnant queen while she slept. No one knows this curse can be lifted, and no one expects it to be. At the same time, everyone knows the pig's status as the prince and treats him accordingly, even as he acts like a pig. Twice he marries and twice he kills his bride, but the third time the marriage works and the curse is lifted. But rather than tell others that he has been transformed and is now a man,  he keeps it secret even from his wife, hiding in his pig skin and acting as if nothing has changed. He reveals the truth to his wife several days later, and only when she goes against his wishes is his transformation revealed to others.

In the Frog King, the beast is a prince who has been transformed into a frog. He knows the circumstances of his curse and the nebulous circumstances that may release him from it. Unlike the pig, no one else knows he is anything more than a frog, and there are no details behind the breaking of the curse besides that the princess may do it. He is freed from the curse when the princess throws him into a wall in a fit of pique, at which point his true nature is immediately revealed to all.

Of these two, I prefer the transformation of the Pig King. Unlike the Frog King, where the truth is immediately revealed to all, he gets to reveal the truth to his wife on his own terms even if the secret is later revealed outside of his control. Additionally, the pig's transformation came about after time and tribulation in a good relationship, while the frog's was revealed when his "love interest" tries to kill him.

Little Red Riding Hood and Political Cartoons

It's common practice for political cartoons to reference popular culture and classical stories. The tale of Little Red Riding Hood is one of the best known fairy/folk tales out there, so it's inevitable that it would see more than its fair share of references and retellings. Due to the nature of the story, as well as the popularity of defying its original roles and tropes, it sees great use with a variety of topics. In this post, I'd like to look specifically at this strip:

This strip was written in 2009 by Chuck Asay, a conservative political cartoonist who worked for Creators Syndicate at the time. The story of Little Red Riding Hood has many aspects and ideas at play within it, but the one he chose to play on in this strip is naiveté. In the original story, Little Red Riding Hood's ignorance led to her grandmother's death and nearly got herself killed. In the political cartoon, she is not ignorant, but willfully chose to ignore warning signs because she is "opposed to profiling."

Decrying the left as too willing to ignore problems in favor of non-discrimination is common conservative rhetoric. In the strip this is exaggerated and overblown, where not wanting to unfairly discriminate is presented as deliberately ignoring signs of problems. This is a distortion of Little Red Riding Hood's original ignorance, presenting her as knowledgeable about the warnings signs themselves and the problems they represent, but ignorant and naïve about what to do in response.

Personally, I disagree with the message of the strip. Not wanting to unfairly discriminate against entire groups because they happen to share traits with certain problematic individuals is a far cry from ignoring problems despite all evidence to indicate them.

Folk vs. Fairy Tales

There are many types of stories in the world, and classifying them can be tricky. This is more than simply determining genre, but finding the difference between ordinary fiction, myth, legend, folk tales, and fairy tales. Within this class, it is the fairy and folk tales that we focus on.

Folk and fairy tales are stories set within a world contain fantastical but normalized elements. Within a fairy tale, no one will question a talking cat or think twice about a witch bringing winter several months early. At the same time, these phenomenon will not be contemplated or analyzed as one would a typical aspect of life. These elements of magic and fantasy are accepted as existing and not contemplated beyond that.

In terms of a role, folk and fairy tales reflect the collective subconscious of a group or society. Within it one can see reflected the values and fears of the author and their people. Forests, swamps, and frozen plains become the homes of evil, wolves and unmarried old women threaten children, and magic curses befall those who are impolite.

Collectively, fairy and folk tales are stories with normalized fantastic elements that display the cultural values held by the society in both region and zeitgeist.

Goals and Favorite Fairy Tale

I first heard about this class because it was an Honors Elective and I needed to take another one of those to complete my Honors requirements. The reason I chose it over the other options is that it was the one that interested me the most. Fairy tales interest me as they're something that was never really able to develop in America due to the time period in which it was founded, so by their very nature they give an interesting glimpse into stories from various cultures through history.

In this course, I hope to gain a greater knowledge of how these stories came about and how they functioned within a culture. I'm also interested in learning the differences between fairy tales, folk tales, myths, legends, and straight fiction, as well as where urban legends and cryptids fall among these categories.

My favorite folk tale is the story of Koschei the Deathless, though that's a bit tricky to define. Koschei is an antagonist in several Slavic fairy tales, such as Marya Morevna, Ivan Sosnovich, and Tsarevich Petr and the Wizard. These stories are not connected to one another save that Koschei is the villain or rival in all of them, but it is this character that interests me. Koschei is a creative villain, a wizard who hid his death in a needle, which was placed in an egg in a duck in a hare in an iron chest under a tree on the island Buyan, itself a mythical location said to move around the ocean and be the source of all weather. The quests the various heroes must go on to obtain his death are entertaining, and the character himself shows some interesting breath to his personality, such as both freeing a captured prince and chopping a protagonist into pieces and throwing them into the coean (don't worry, he got better). He also serves as a male counterpart to Baba Yaga in some stories, presenting an interesting dynamic between two villains. Koschei himself has never been popular enough to gain much traction in American fairy tale adaptations, but he did inspire the idea of liches in modern fiction.