Fairytales and Social Codes

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Fairytales and Social Codes

• Vulnerability, Imagination, and the Transition
  from Childhood to Adulthood

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The Tales

• The Brothers Grimm wrote, in the introduction to
  one of their books
• . . . Every society, and every age, produced
  its own version of the same tales. (John
  Connolly, The Book of Lost Things, 343)

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Tales for Children

• Tap into childhood awareness
• Life is likely to have pain and loss
• Humans are powerless against mortality
• Children know they are vulnerable

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Tales for Children

• Affirmative stories
• Challenges can and must be overcome
• Transition from childhood to adulthood
• Facing fears
• Understanding ourselves and the world

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Common Elements

• Animals
• Childhood fears
• Symbolic references
• Fantastic elements
• Another world

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Common Elements (continued)

• Riddles/rhymes
• Helpers (often magical)
• Lessons learned
• Tricksters

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Elements of Fairytales The Trickster

• Creator, transformer, joker, truth-teller,
  destroyer
• Shape-shifter All things to all people
• Rule-breaker Theft, trickery
• Mischievous, sometimes malicious
• Tears things down but often builds them back up,
  or enables others to do so
• Often folktale animals
• Roots in ancient myths

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The Trickster

• Creator, destroyer
• Loki Norse god tricks the blind Hod into
  killing his twin brother, Balder, with an arrow
  of mistletoe
• Punished by having poison dripped on him
• Will help bring about Ragnarok, the return of the
  gods

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The Trickster

• Folktale animals and
• Reynard the Fox (France) William
• Caxton printed the story
• in late 15th century
• Always in trouble talks his
• way out
• Causes trouble, often
• malicious rule-breaker

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The Trickster

• Creation
• Raven creates the world in Inuit and Northwest
  native traditions
• Maui of the Thousand Tricks captures the sun to
  slow it down, but does it so his mother has more
  time to cook for him it is a side effect that
  humans benefit

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Bringer of Culture

• Prometheus brings fire, but so do Loki, Anansi
  (African), Raven, Coyote, and Maui (Maori)
• Anansi brings stories to man by tricking
  Nyankopon the Sky-God
• Qat (a spider, Banks Island, northern Canada),
  teaches humans to sleep and brings death

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The Trickster

• Cunning AND foolish sometimes
• Coyote steals a horse in one story, and nearly
  drowns trying to eat berries in another
• In just one collection of coyote stories, coyote
  dies of a snake bite, gunshot, an arrow wound, a
  broken heart, a rock fall, and a drowning
  (Roadrunner?)

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The Trickster

• What Crow Would Say to the Dalai Lama
•    Do you come to this bloated madhouse,this
  bedlamto offer us palliatives or do you come
  hereto help usbreak out of the asylum
•   So become a crow, Your Holinessthat's
  right, become a crow
• Make noise,make noise and wake the
  inmates of thisvast corporate paradise
• Flap your wings,flap your wings and
  startlethe wardenStrike with your beak,for
  sure, strike with your beak,and warn of
  dangerwarn of danger
• That's what I have to say 
• - Steven Raskin

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Trickster role

• Those who encounter him must face their own
  deficiencies, or those of society
• In destruction, leads to creation of better
  structures
• Human psyche unrestricted by convention,
  imagination, confronting and overcoming our
  problems

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Fairy Tale Tricksters

• Robin Goodfellow (Puck)
• English sprite or fairy
• Made famous by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Nights
  Dream

Welsh Version, Medieval Period
William Blake, 1785
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Fairy Tale Tricksters

• Shakespeares Puck
• That shrewd and knavish spriteCall'd Robin
  Goodfellow are not you heThat frights the
  maidens of the villagerySkim milk, and
  sometimes labour in the quernAnd bootless make
  the breathless housewife churnAnd sometime make
  the drink to bear no barmMislead
  night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?Those
  that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,You do
  their work, and they shall have good luckAre
  not you he?

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Fairy Tale Tricksters

• The not-obviously-charming prince stories
• A king poses trials for young men to win his
  daughters hand in marriage
• All the usual suspects apply
• No one has the right stuff
• A young man who appears to be a peasant
  (sometimes royalty in disguise) tries

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Fairy Tale Tricksters

• The not-obviously-charming prince stories
  (continued)
• Avoids or defeats monsters, villains, and
  assorted dangers not through power but by
  unorthodox means
• Uses cleverness and wit to win the princess, and
  they all live happily ever after

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Rumpelstiltskin

• Variation of a trickster
• Benevolence?
• Some versions allow him to escape at the end
• Other characters are greedy he is at least up
  front with his demands
• Feels some pity for the girl

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Modern Tricksters

• Q from Star Trek
• Wisakejak and Pookah (Ghost Master)
• Aang (Avatar)
• Bugs Bunny
• Impossible Man (Fantastic Four)
• The Mask
• The Pink Panther
• Mr. Mxyzptlk (Superman)
• Wiley Coyote
• The Roadrunner
• Bart Simpson