Marxist Approaches to Fairy Tales

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Marxist Approaches to Fairy Tales

• Jack Zipes

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Outline

• IAESTE Internship opportunities
• Bridget Killilea
• Announcements
• Marxist Approaches to Fairy Tales (Zipes)

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What is IAESTE?

• Founded in 1948, the International Association
  for the Exchange of Students for Technical
  Experience (IAESTE) is an international network
  that coordinates on-the-job training for students
  in technical fields such as engineering, computer
  science, mathematics, natural/physical sciences,
  architecture, and agricultural science. IAESTE
  United States has represented IAESTE in America
  since 1950.

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What Does IAESTE Do?

• IAESTE United States offers an array of exchange
  programs for technical students looking to intern
  outside the United States and companies looking
  for international technical interns.
• IAESTE Exchange Programs develop global skills in
  tomorrow's technical leaders.

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IAESTE at Pitt

• A new local IAESTE chapter has just been started
  at the University of Pittsburgh! Come see what
  it is all about at our next member meeting. For
  more information email Jasmine Barber, Pitts
  IAESTE president, at jab256_at_pitt.edu.
• Next Member Meeting
• November 14, 2001
• 423 Benedum Hall
• 830pm

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Announcements

• Exam results will be posted no earlier than Wed.,
  Nov. 21
• Absentation of male instructors ThursdaySunday
  this week
• Bring printout of Ostrovskiis The Snow Maiden
  (on the Web site) to this weeks recitation

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Jack Zipes

• All the tools of modern industrial society (the
  printing press, the radio, the camera, the film,
  the record, the videocassette) have made their
  mark on the fairy tale to make it classical
  ultimately in the name of the bourgeoisie which
  denies involvement for the fairy tale must
  appear harmless, natural, eternal, ahistorical,
  therapeutic.

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Frankfurt School

• Marxist but anti-Soviet
• Social truths are actually representations of
  the interests of those in power
• The Culture Industry
• Culture as a commodity
• Creates and satisfies false needs
• Suppresses true needs, which capitalist system
  cannot meet

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Zipes on Fairy Tales

• Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale (1994)
• Approach
• Historical
• Sociological
• Ideological
• Social issues
• Social class
• Social convention
• Literacy
• Oral and literary fairy tales

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Duplication and Revision

• Duplication if the writer subscribed to the
  hegemonic value system of his society and
  respected the canonical ideology of Perrault, the
  Grimms, and Andersen, he/she would write a
  conventional tale with conservative values,
  whether for adults or children.

• Revision On the other hand, many writers would
  parody, mock, question, and undermine the
  classical literary tradition and produce original
  and subversive tales that were part and parcel of
  the institution itself.

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Oral Fairy Tales

• Rituals that explain customs and natural
  phenomena
• Common experience and belief
• Official story-tellers
• Communal reception
• Printing and literacy altered the control of texts

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Literary Fairy Tales

• Social function private reading vs public
  performance
• Accessibility
• Language and literacy
• Social class
• Mutual relationship between oral and literary
  fairy tales
• Ideology concerns of court society
• Women and salon society
• For children?

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Tales for Children

1. Didactic Reinforce emergent code of civility
2. Short Easily learned and retold
3. Pass adult censorship No impediment to
   circulation
4. Address social issues Appeal to the interests of
   adult authors and publishers
5. Suitable for children in school Can be taught
6. Train the next generation of power elites

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Beauty and the Beast

• Maintain the structure of the family and society
• Improve the position of women
• The responsibility of the dominated (Zipes 37)
• Beauty easily exchanges one domination (father)
  for another (beast)
• New life, like old, is based on her pleasing men
• Beauty accepts this arrangement as normal, since
  both men cannot live without her
• Beauty conforms to male interests and believes
  that she controls her own fate
• The reward is social and economic advancement

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Men and Beasts

• Men can win women only through power and
  emotional blackmail
• Men should expect women to be nurturing,
  merciful, obedient, and responsible, regardless
  of mans appearance
• Men can obtain tenderness and compassion through
  women (and through abduction and extortion, at
  that), but are not expected to be naturally
  tender or compassionate
• (Zipes, p. 40)

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Disneys Beauty and the Beast

• Belle (Beauty) speaks her mind, but is ultimately
  as submissive as ever, setting her sights on
  being rescued by a man, so that she defines her
  interests as meeting his.

• the commodified literary fairy tales and their
  filmic versions want to induce us to, if not
  seduce us into, thinking according to the
  traditional scripts of sumission and domination,
  scripts that may appear to be our stories, but
  that have more to do with our taming and
  domestication than anything else.
• (Zipes, p. 47)

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What About Russia?