The Value of Fairy Tales – Final Reflection Blog
One of the main reasons that fairy tales matter is that they convey the universal themes of human feelings and societal morals through their allegorical stories, and thus, they are the fundamental source from which we learn concepts of courage, self-awareness, and change.
Works of Zipes, Darnton, and Tatar show that fairy tales are not only the stories created to entertain kids, but they also represent the same struggles, ethics, and cultural problems, which are the core of the new age of storytelling, including the movie Spirited Away.
Jack Zipes was the scholar whose ideas I used to view fairy tales as oral stories of culture that are still alive and change continuously according to the needs of society. His study showed that fairy tales reveal the power structures of the ruling class during the different historical periods, show the gender roles, and support the values of that particular time; therefore, changes in the endings to suit the expectation of the society are the only alterations made while the emotional part is kept intact.
Comparing the original versions of fairy tales with many of the Disney adaptations, especially The Little Mermaid, I found out that the former are much darker, and the fact that struck me most was that the original one was mostly about pain and sacrifice, not love.
This in turn shows that fairy tales were in essence about the struggles of mankind and survival.
I found the correlation between the fairy tales and Spirited Away regarding the magic, pain, and transformation very cool and fascinating. Nevertheless, instead of the traditional fairy tale ending of “happily-ever-after”, Spirited Away depicts the emphasis on character development and taking up personal responsibility.
In my view, we could have benefited from investigating non-western versions of fairy tales further and talking about the present adaptations of fairy tales in graphic novels and games where they, as an art form, continue to develop and evolve.
