Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales

I got a new book for Christmas! Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimm's Fairy Tales by Ann Schmiesing. I had heard about it on Surlalune and the topic is one of special interest to me-although I'm mostly a stay at home mom now, I also teach a couple music classes to adults with intellectual disabilities. And I'm now amazed I've never realized how common a topic disability is in fairy tales before!

I've only read the introduction so far but I'm really excited to read more. As Schmiesing points out, there are very few studies done on the topic of disability in fairy tales, despite how often it occurs (think the birds pecking out the stepsisters' eyes in Cinderella, or thumbling tales, or many other examples the book will explore). In fact, disability usually functions in one of two basic ways: it sets a protagonist apart and gives them an extra challenge to overcome (such as thumblings) or is indicative of a villain, either by nature or given as a punishment. In fact, some form of disability is often the impetus of the story itself. David T. Mitchell suggests that the purpose of stories is to explain that which has "stepped out of line", and that understanding differences in people are one of the things that "propel the act of storytelling into existence."

Thinking of disability in broader terms, it's not surprising that it appears so often in the Grimms' collection. Wilhelm suffered from poor health, and his first son grew very ill and died in infancy. Because of poorer living conditions, illness and other disabling conditions were far more common during the Grimms' lifetimes, when the average life expectancy was only about 35.

Of course, the stories often treat disabilities in ways that aren't exactly politically correct today. Most people are aware of some of the issues in fairy tales when it comes to gender studies, but not as many people are aware of issues when it comes to people with disabilities in literature. The Grimms were a product of their time, as were their storytelling sources. When folklore scholars have attempted to tackle these issues they often lack sensitivity and awareness,  but many disability scholars may not have a proper grasp of fairy tale studies (Schmiesing cites one article that mistakenly assumed that the Grimms were not two collectors and editors, but one author, "B. Grimm"!!! I'm extremely intrigued as to where that "B" came from...) Interestingly, as Wilhelm edited the stories over the course of the editions, he tended to (probably unintentionally) enhance or add portrayals of disability.

Other authors, in Schmiesing's opinion have taken disability in folklore a little too literally, attempting to give various characters a specific diagnosis. This is often just speculation which ultimately misses the point of how the disability functions. Yet others don't take it literally enough-treating the disability as only a metaphor representing something else and ignoring crucial parts of the story. Fairy tales are certainly a challenging genre to study because of their nature, taking place in "a world in which metaphors take on literal meaning.," as she quotes from Maria Tatar. But from everything I've read so far, I think Schmiesing will strike that much needed middle ground, as someone who is aware of both disability and folklore study. Can't wait to read more!

The Joffrey's New Nutcracker

I don't get out to see the Joffrey Ballet's Nutcracker every year, but last year when we learned it was their final time producing their classic version we made it out to Chicago to soak it all in one last time. This month I got to see Christopher Wheeldon's new take on it.

I've seen other more local productions too throughout the years, and various movie versions/youtube clips, and typically each company doesn't vary too much from the classic story, scenes, and characters. The new Joffrey Nutcracker is certainly unique-it's set the Christmas before the opening of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 (which introduced the first Ferris Wheel to the world, among other novelties-you're welcome, Earth!). Clara (whose name went back to Marie...possibly a nod to the Hoffman story?) is now the daughter of one of the immigrant workers on the Fair.  Her family lives in a shack on the developing Fair Grounds-one that was based on a historical photo.

So it's an interesting choice for a setting, although it may hold less appeal for out of towners. One of the most significant differences is that Marie is now poor, and the Christmas party scene looks very different. Purely from a visual perspective, the party scene isn't nearly as colorful or lush, but it makes for good exploration of what Christmas might have been like for most families around that time who couldn't necessarily afford the luxuries that Clara's family does in most ballets. From the program notes: "Instead of receiving luxurious and rare presents at a magnificent party in a vast house and then dreaming of even more presents and candy, our story offers a small gathering of immigrant workers coming together to celebrate the holiday with the things they have, filling the air with music and their vivid imaginations." When the tree transforms, it's significant not just because the tree magically grows, but because the tree originally started out as basically a cheap, Charlie Brown Christmas Tree that disappoints Marie, and it becomes a more lush and decorated tree in the process of growing.

The score is the same classic Tchaikovsky music, although with a few minor changes-during the party scene, some of the dances were played by three onstage musicians, as characters playing for the festivities. It added a sense of authenticity, although there were times I missed the full orchestra. The dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (who is now the Queen of the Fair) was moved to earlier in Act 2 and I think at least one variation was removed (the Nutcracker or Cavalier's solo after the big Pas de Deux).

I like Chicago history as much as the next person,probably even more, and although the setting was interesting I almost felt by the end like we were being hit over the head with it, in almost propaganda-like fashion: "The Chicago World's Fair of 1893 was the greatest anyone could ever dream of!!!" The Fair isn't merely the setting with interesting themes to explore, it became the thing the ballet revolves around. The opening scene has a huge billboard advertising the coming of the Fair; instead of mechanical dolls at the party the Drosselmeyer character (the Great Impresario, modeled after the Fair's chief architect Daniel Burnham) creates a silhouette model of the Fair for the children; the Waltz of the Snowflakes was performed with the Fair in the background and the entire Land of Sweets was replaced by the Dream Fair. To be fair (haha...no pun intended), the setting did make sense of the dancers from all around the world, as the program compared the World's Fair to Disney World's Epcot, giving you a "taste" of different countries' cultures from around the world. Still, in the old Joffrey production that element was tied together by the dolls that came to life under the tree, each representing one of the dances in the second act.

One of the more disappointing changes for me, personally, was replacing the Russian dance with a Buffalo Bill's Cowboy Show. Although there really was a Buffalo Bill's Cowboy Show at the original Fair, making it historically accurate, the Trepak is one of the most iconic dances in the ballet- but really I just found the choreography to be unimpressive. I feel like they could have done more with Cowboy Bill than swinging a lasso, the saloon girls hardly did anything, and the dance lacked the energy of the Russian dance-but the rest of the audience loved that one. I also thought the choreography was poor for the Mother Ginger dance-which used to feature children doing tumbling and ballet, and is now child dancers in walnut costumes that frankly made me feel like I was watching a local dance studio's production of Nutcracker and not one of the top ballet companies in the country. Yet again, others disagreed-one reviewer called that dance the most hilarious part of the show.

So overall, it was an interesting look at the Nutcracker story and I enjoyed it. Still, for the traditionalists in our group, we kind of missed the ballet we knew and loved. Yet not everyone agreed with us-I overheard a woman afterwards saying she liked this better than the old ballet, and critics have given it great reviews. It will depend on what you're used to and expect when it comes to Nutcracker-some people may be itching for a new way to look at the story, but others of us love the nostalgia of recreating old traditions at Christmas-one of my favorite Christmas memories has just been replaced by a totally different ballet. Although I did like the concept, I don't know that I'll be dying to see this as often as I did the classic version (just as well, since it will be harder to get to it in future with a baby!). Speaking of which...one cool thing was that one of the party guests in the first act was "pregnant"-I think it's probably pretty rare to have a pregnant character in any ballet!

Although I really will miss my favorite element of the old ballet: one year, a child showed up to audition in a wheelchair, and so a character in a wheelchair was made part of the cast every year after that, participating naturally with the other boys in their party shenanigans. At the very end of the party scene, Drosselmeyer would give that child a magical "blessing" and it always made me tear up (I teach music to people with disabilities).

I don't know that I have a lot of local Chicagoland readers, but if anyone else has seen the new Nutcracker I'd love to hear what you think! Gypsy posted on it a few days ago, with several excerpts from other reviews, for more on what the experts have to say and not just my sentimental reaction ;).

How Disney Parks Affect How We View Fairy Tales

I'm back! The trip was fantastic. Exhausting, as I expected, but totally worth it!

After some days of performance we spent a very anticipated day in Disney World's Magic Kingdom. If you think about it, the experience of Disney Parks-from the rides to the shows and characters-are really just a different way of storytelling. In high school I watched Disney's "Snow White" and realized that, if I had ever seen it before, it was so long ago I barely remembered it. But I thought I had seen it-I was familiar with the characters, music, and basic plot. Such is the effect of riding the ride, seeing the characters march by in parades, looking at the merchandise, etc.-viewers are still familiar with the Disney versions of fairy tales even if they've never seen the movie. The rides are such a short, truncated version of the Disney movies-they remind you of the major scenes of the movie in five minutes or less, keeping that specific version prominent in your mind, especially if visitors to the park aren't regularly reading/watching other versions.

The last time I was in Disney World was five years ago so I got to see the new Fantasyland addition for the first time. And as a lifelong Beauty and the Beast fan, it was incredible to see scenes from the movie in life size.

We got to eat in the Be Our Guest restaurant, which allows you to dine in either the library (which looked nothing like the library in the movie, didn't even have any books), the West Wing, or the ballroom. We also walked through the hall of armor and got to take pictures by the stained glass window.

I was thrilled that my buddy for the week was my very good friend Christy, a 17-year old young woman with Down Syndrome, who was actually the junior bridesmaid in our wedding. Long time readers may remember some of her fairy tale artwork or when I blogged about the experience of watching Disney's Sleeping Beauty with her and her reactions. 

Two Beauty and the Beast illustrations done by Christy for me in years past

One thing that was new to me this trip was the whole experience of meeting characters. It was never something my family was really into (the picture of me with Belle and the Beast is an exception). They train each actor with knowledge of the movie they are in, having them mention trivia about their character during your visit, so it  really enhances the feeling that they are real characters with a life even beyond their Disney movie.

Meeting the princesses and heroes was fun for the students in our group, but I really enjoyed visiting Gaston. First of all, we weren't actually in the line, his shift was almost over, so we were just watching. But he saw two adorable girls with Down Syndrome, one in a wheelchair, and when he was done with the people in the line, he came over to us and brought our students over to him! In general the cast members at Disney seem to have a soft heart for people with disablities, but a special thank you to Gaston!

Christy asked him why he was so mean to the Beast. Gaston replied that he wasn't mean; he was the nice one (because he had a nice face). He also had this whole theory-which is actually something that fans and critics of the movie have brought up before-that the Beast was really an imposter, because where did he come from? If he was the Prince, where were his parents, i.e. the reigning King and Queen? How is he a Prince if he apparently has no kingdom? He also called the Beast Belle's dog, and twice insulted my shirt, saying it was horrible:

I was wearing this tank top from Hot Topic last year, no longer available

Hearing Gaston's point of view was interesting for me, and really made Christy think. The rest of the day she kept asking questions, "Why did he say he didn't like your shirt? I don't understand" (even after repeated attempts at explanation) and "Why did he call the Beast a dog? Is the Beast a dog?" She struggles a bit with abstract thinking, but that's what's so great about exposing kids to the fact that, while he might be lying, Gaston would have a different point of view than Belle or the Beast. Christy was great though, continued to challenge him, and when Gaston was showing off his muscles she whipped out her own biceps:

Then, the highlight of the trip: meeting Elsa and Anna. So, Christy has loved Sleeping Beauty for years, but like most other young girls has become OBSESSED with Frozen lately. She knows all the words to all the songs and will tell the plot of the movie, in depth, to anyone who will listen (as well as those who are tired of listening...). So we knew we had to use our fastpasses to skip the three hour line (!!!) to see the characters. 

Now I'm pretty sure Christy doesn't think the characters are actually real, she will ask which people do the voices for some of her favorite cartoon characters and she's seen different plays so she's aware of the concept of actors playing parts. But even if she logically knows, partly, the characters aren't the ones from the movie, she takes them very seriously. All day long she was practicing what things to say to Elsa-she was going to tell her she was her favorite Queen because she has powers, she loves snow, and all her favorite parts of the movie. When it was finally her turn, she excitedly greeted them each by name like they were long lost friends, and ran up to Elsa and gave her a hug. It was so precious I was actually crying as I was snapping pictures...

Here is Elsa noticing her own face on Christy's shirt:

 Anna noticed that Christy also happens to have a gray streak of hair, and was very excited, jumped up and down and said, "we're twins!" Christy LOVED it, the rest of the evening when we saw people from our group she would tell them, "Guess WHAT!! We saw Elsa and Anna, and she saw my HAIR!! We're TWINS!!!"

 I can only imagine what effect this kind of meeting has on a child afterwards. If they were already fans of the character, now he or she will go home and be even more connected to the movie. Christy now has a personal connection with her heroes, who called her by name and noticed similarities between them. She also got a souvenir Frozen storybook from the gift shop and was showing it to everyone, and the next day poring over it in the airport.

And unfortunately for us, meeting the characters in a believable way makes it even harder for kids to accept that the Disney version of a fairy tale is NOT definitive. I didn't bother trying to tell older versions of the fairy tales on this trip; with this audience of mostly concrete thinkers it would be more confusing than anything else, and I didn't want to ruin their special day. Although another day of the trip we were on a lake that had several swans swimming, and Christy was very excited, saying, "It's Swan Lake!" (she's really into ballet too) and we named all the white swans Odette and the black ones Odile.

I'd love to hear from other people-how have your experiences in the Disney parks affected you/young people of your acquaintance, especially in how you thought of fairy tales?

Make 'em Smile!

I've mentioned before that I teach music to people with disabilities at church; long time readers may even remember that three years ago I got the amazing opportunity to go with our group to France, where my students sang and played instruments in various churches, group homes, and a disability festival.
 
We are now going on another trip, this time to Orlando, Florida for the Nathaniel's Hope Make 'em Smile Festival on June 7, as well as some other local performances. And of course, being in Orlando, we'll be spending a day in Disney World.

I thought I'd mention it a few weeks early, just in case any of you have friends or family members with disabilities and might be interested. Nathaniel's Hope is a nationally known organization and hundreds of people attend the festival every year. I haven't been yet but I'm really excited!

Also, with a day in Disney on the horizon, I've been thinking a lot about the whole psychological phenomenon of Disney, the movies and merchandising, and especially the effect the theme parks have on people's attitudes to those versions of fairy tales. Around the fairy tale blogosphere there seems to be more negative attitudes towards Disney than positive, but I agree very much with Kate W. of Enchanted Conversations when she said she has "REALLY complicated feelings about Disney." For all the issues I might have with certain aspects of the choices made in their fairy tale movies, many of the topics we talk about concerning Disney are really quite complex. It would require multiple posts to talk about their portrayals of gender roles over the years, the evolution of fairy tales, even the character of Walt Disney himself. But even being aware of many of the negative aspects of Disney, that doesn't change the fond memories I have of watching Disney movies with my family as a kid or going to the parks.

I fully admit I am SUPER into Disney theme parks. There's something about stepping into the world of the stories you grew up with that seems utterly magical when you're a kid, and to those of us who experienced Disneyland in childhood, we tend to have a soft spot for it far into adulthood. There's a whole culture of adults, with or without kids, to whom visiting/researching/collecting memorabilia of Disneyland is a hobby. Part of Disney's formula for success is this unique experience that involves literally all five of your senses. It's really quite uncanny how a visit to the parks seems to inspire a love of  and loyalty to Disney to even casual fans. (Seriously, I don't think ANYONE can see Fantasmic! without getting a little bit emotional...)

Me, as a kid, in a Beauty and the Beast t-shirt, pictured with my heroes

And as I've mentioned recently, Disney is huge among my students, so it's also a way of connecting with them, and it's been fun to see their enthusiasm. I've been nerdily picking out Disney music for us to perform and having way too much fun Disneybounding on days we have rehearsals.

To bring it all full circle, here's a quote from the post I wrote when I was about to leave on our France trip:
"I love the people I work with. Isn't it interesting that often the heroes of fairy tales are the lowest in society? The youngest child, the servant girl, the one who is thought to be the Fool? And yet they are the ones who overcome all judgement and prove themselves to be the most worthy at the end of the tales. And while my students don't have the highest IQs, they surpass most people I know in the qualities that really count, like love and compassion, and they certainly excel in humor! I hope that through our trip we are able to help overcome prejudice and fear of people with disabilities. For, as we learn in many fairy tales (especially Beauty and the Beast), appearances can be deceiving..."

Article: Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney

Via Megan of The Dark Forest, I just found this New York Times article: Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney. Though it may sound like blatant Disney promotion, it struck a more personal chord with me.

The article tells of the Suskind family, one of many affected by autism. At age 3, their son Owen regressed into a nonverbal state and was largely unresponsive. One of his passions remained watching, and rewatching, and rewinding and watching again and again, classic Disney movies. You'll have to read the full article for the whole story, which is really stunning, but because of Owen's connection to Disney movies, he was able to gradually connect to the world around him again. His family took to communicating with him in Disney quotes and through Disney character voices and it was the only thing he would respond to at first. Now he is flourishing in the world around him, although his attachment to Disney remains.

I've made mention of my jobs through the years, which are always slightly complicated to explain and the simplest thing is to call myself a music educator/special educator, although I have done little teaching in schools aside from my student teaching and the occasional subbing. But for the past 9 years I have been helping in my former church's disability ministry-I went from volunteering to holding a part time job and now I'm back to volunteering. I did various things from running weekend events to working in a group home, but my main passion there has always been teaching music classes.

So many of the stories in the article reminded me of my own students and friends. Through the years I remember acting out Princess scenes with my friend Christy while babysitting her; she would tell me, "okay, you Beast, I Belle" and we would quote her favorite scenes from Beauty and the Beast (the West Wing scene was the favorite, but so was the library). Another student, Tim, who also has Down Syndrome, is really into Disney as well. He and I have a game we play where we'll quote Disney lines and songs to each other, and we have to guess which movie it's from. Just this weekend he was asking me where my Disneyland book was (I brought it to class for a Disney-themed summer music camp I did last summer) and when he could look at it again :).

Image from here

So many of my students with autism and Down Syndrome love Disney. It's familiar to most of them and a way they can connect with other people, and the vast merchandising available for Disney products certainly helps, but is that the only reason people with disabilities have a passion for the Mouse? From the article:

"Owen’s chosen affinity clearly opened a window to myth, fable and legend that Disney lifted and retooled, just as the Grimm Brothers did, from a vast repository of folklore. Countless cultures have told versions of “Beauty and the Beast,” which dates back 2,000 years to the Latin “Cupid and Psyche” and certainly beyond that. These are stories human beings have always told themselves to make their way in the world.

But what draws kids like Owen to these movies is something even more elemental. Walt Disney told his early animators that the characters and the scenes should be so vivid and clear that they could be understood with the sound turned off. Inadvertently, this creates a dream portal for those who struggle with auditory processing, especially, in recent decades, when the films can be rewound and replayed many times."

This is not the first time I've heard someone else make a connection between Disney and people with disabilities, either. I posted back in 2010 about David Koenig's book Mouse Tales: a Behind the Scenes look at Disneyland. From that post (and it's not a Disney endorsed and published book, by the way):

" Koenig lists two incidents which have to do with children with autism-one boy was there who had never spoken in his life. Mickey Mouse was being mobbed, and the autistic boy broke away from his father, rushed over, and said "Mickey Mouse"- his first words. The second incident I'm a little skeptical of-it sounds like a boy with autism "snapped out of it," meaning, I assume, his autism in its entirety, after repeated trips to Disneyland, because "he realized it was better living in Disneyland than in his head." "

I also attended a workshop at a disability conference once entitled "How to use Disney movies to help your child speak." The premise was similar to that of the article-since Disney movies are so popular among the population of people with disabilities, we can use them as education tools to help motivate and engage children. People with autism struggle with social interactions-they often connect with objects, toys, and/or movies better than they do with other people. By entering into their world, we can often communicate better with them.

The original article quoted cited several instances where people with autism felt personally connected to Disney characters-one young man felt like Pinocchio, because he felt like he was made of wood and wanted to feel things like a real boy; Owen himself identified himself as a sidekick, someone there to help the hero fulfill his destiny, scrawling "no sidekick left behind" on paper as he was held back in school, watching his classmates succeed.

Disney movies are not the most popular among fairy tale fanatics. Yet it's important to realize, though they may not be your favorite and you might actively dislike them and disagree with many messages they send, how powerful they can be. Disney and its characters and toys won't be going away any time soon. Parents with fond memories of Disney movies and theme parks are able to share those with their children as together families experience the new hit Disney movies.

So instead of writing off Disney and everything they've produced, maybe we should try to work with it. We can use common ground to help educate people about other fairy tale versions, while being aware of the potential issues associated with their storylines. It's a good reminder to be sensitive too-Disney movies were a core part of many people's childhoods and many of us (myself included!) have strong emotional ties to them.

(This image, found here, is pretty precious...a little girl with autism wanted to see Princess Tiana, but nearby fireworks started and she covered her ears, overstimulated. So this Tiana joined her, covering her own ears, and they had a special bonding moment.)

Why fairy tales make you smart

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."

The above quote, which I've referenced before, comes from none other than Albert Einstein. And though the title of this post was meant to be slightly humorous and not to literally apply to all situations, I think there's something in what he said. He elaborates below:

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking."

When children are young, they are what we call concrete thinkers. This means that they understand things based on concrete objects they can see, and not abstract concepts. As a special ed teacher, many of my students are stuck in the concrete thinking stage. They probably interpret phrases literally and will be confused at puns or words with double meaning. For example, using a phrase like "looks like the cat's out of the bag" is something adults may use and the meaning is obvious to us, but a concrete thinker may start looking around to see where this cat is and wondering why it was in a bag in the first place.

When young children learn math, they can learn basic arithmetic by using physical objects to represent an equation. Two apples plus one apple equals three apples; children can add and subtract by counting with their fingers, and that's why our math system is in base 10. But when it comes to algebra, and the concept of a variable is introduced, that's abstract-a letter which doesn't really represent a letter, but an unknown numeric value. In order to understand algebra, one has to be able to entertain an undefined idea that can't be represented by an object or picture.

Really this is what fairy tales do, although the same argument could be made for fantasy or fiction in general. Except in rare cases, children are able to understand when they hear a story, especially one that begins in "once upon a time" and isn't intentionally presented as a true story, that it didn't actually happen. Therefore they're entertaining ideas in their heads that they know aren't physically real, or thinking abstractly, but in a basic, graspable form. Even more in fantasy and fairy tales, as children learn more about the world, they're able to take in many events in a fictional story and separate in their minds what is not true but could be true, such as Cinderella doing housework, with what is not true and couldn't possibly be true, such as a pumpkin turning into a coach. Very young or concrete thinkers may be confused by this, but an older child who is not yet an abstract thinker won't have to be specifically taught that pumpkins can't turn into coaches to know that that element of the story was magical. And yet it's fun for children-and most adults, I believe-to entertain the notion of living in a world where such a thing would be possible.

I think this is what Einstein meant. It appears to have worked for me-I devoured fantasy as a child and was always good at algebra. Although I can think of people who read lots of stories and fantasy and still didn't understand algebra, so again, it's not meant to be the newest method in math education or anything. But if Albert Einstein said it, it must be legit, right?

How children played butcher with each other

The Annotated Brothers Grimm by Maria Tatar has an Adult Tales section in the back, which is intruiguing, especially considering that morbid tales such as The Robber Bridegroom, Fitcher's Bird, and the Juniper Tree are in the regular section. The tales in the adult section aren't necessarily more violent than the above tales, but either racist ("The Jew in the Brambles") or violent in such a way that is condoned because it's a cautionary tale, but such that goes to extremes.

This was actually quite typical for Victorian children's stories, as can be evidenced by Struwwelpeter-a collection of German tales featuring children who suffer drastically for their mistakes, including: a girl who plays with matches and is burned to death, a boy whose thumb sucking results in his thumbs being cut off by giant scissors, a boy who goes outside during the storm and is carried off by the wind, "presumably to his doom"...you get the idea. Struwwelpeter himself is the cautionary tale about the importance of good grooming, the consequences of which are pretty severe, according to this picture on the left.


So maybe it's not just the violence that makes this tale disturbing, but the matter of fact way it's told:

"A man once slaughtered a pig while his children were looking on. When they started playing in the afternoon, one child said to the other: "You be the little pig, and I'll be the butcher," whereupon he took an open blade and thrust it into his brother's neck. Their mother, who was upstairs in a room bathing the youngest child in a tub, heard the cries of her other child, quickly ran downstairs, and when she saw what had happened, drew the knife out of the child's neck, and in a rage, thrust it into the heart of the child who had been the butcher. She then rushed back to the house to see what her other child was doing in the tub, but in the meantime it had drowned in the bath. The woman was so horrified that she fell into a state of utter despair, refused to be consoled by the servants, and hanged herself. When her husband returned home from the fields and saw this, he was so distraught that he died shortly thereafter."


According to Tatar's notes, the Grimms got complaints that this tale was violent and defended it because of its valuable lesson, Wilhelm saying, "My mother used to tell the story about the butchering when I was young, and it made me careful and apprehensive about child's play." Despite this reasoning, the tale didn't make it to later editions of Children and Household Tales.

I have lots of experience watching children play, and I think they have a pretty good sense that their play is not real, and they use imagination and not literal imitations even when copying adult behavior. Yet the concept of the potential for children to be cruel to each other mixed with their ignorance does make this a chilling tale that could possibly be made into a horror film...I'd watch that, if it was made well.


There is another version of this tale also found in Grimms that reads more like a news story-more specific, including the town name and ages of the children, and at the end the child in question is asked to choose between an apple and a coin, and as he chooses an apple, he is deemed innocent. It seems almost more upsetting to let the child get off scot free for murder simply because he didn't know any better. This article by Donald Haase has an interesting interpretation I hadn't considered-some fairy tales were not meant for children but may express adults' fears about parenting and raising children. The choice of apple verses coin represents the division between concrete and abstract thinking-something I understand as a teacher of students with developtmental disabilities who, in general, never go on to abstract thinking. The article discusses other aspects of this tale and is very interesting reading, so I recommend clicking through.

Farewell for the present

Tomorrow I will be boarding an airplane and travelling to Europe on my own wonderful, magical adventure.

Due to my absence, there won't be posting here for about three weeks, but hopefully I will return with many new insights from the lands that hosted some of the most famous versions of the most well-loved fairy tales.

Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland Paris

The nature of my trip is rather unusual. I direct musical groups for adults with developmental disabilities at my church. We will be performing in several venues in France-showing what adults with disabilities are capable of, and helping local churches to start their own disability ministries.

I love the people I work with. Isn't it interesting that often the heroes of fairy tales are the lowest in society? The youngest child, the servant girl, the one who is thought to be the Fool? And yet they are the ones who overcome all judgement and prove themselves to be the most worthy at the end of the tales. And while my students don't have the highest IQs, they surpass most people I know in the qualities that really count, like love and compassion, and they certainly excel in humor! I hope that through our trip we are able to help overcome prejudice and fear of people with disabilities. For, as we learn in many fairy tales (especially Beauty and the Beast), appearances can be deceiving...

The Joffey's Nutcracker

In the Chicago area, (or the whole coutry according to the ads,) the Joffrey Ballet's Nutcracker is clearly the best one to see-but also the most expensive. When you're used to it, any other productions are disappointing in comparison. Thank goodness for youtube-

One of my favorite things about the Joffrey Ballet's version happens at the end of the party scene. There's always a little boy in a wheelchair at the party. If I recall correctly, they used to have it so that at the end of the party, Godpapa Drosselmeier throws some magic dust on him and he rises out of his chair-a miraculous healing. Last year, from what I could see from my seat, I think the boy in the wheelchair was really a boy with a disability. Godpapa Drosselmeier gives him a special "magic" blessing as usual, but there's no miraculous healing-I think I like it better that way; it gives encouragement to individuals and families with disabilities without an unrealistic solution that won't really happen.

My own personal Beast

Before I started reading more on fairy tales, I thought I was the only one who found the Beast more attractive than the Prince he turns into at the end of the tale. As I read I found out that everyone finds the Prince a little disappointing, and Surlalune has a whole line of products you can buy that have the phrase "Beauty looking for her Beast" on them . I thought I came up with that! (And I thought I was so clever to sing Snow White's tune but insert "Someday my Beast will come...")

Now it is true that there are people who look at me strangely when I say one of the above phrases. But I always wanted to identify with my favorite characters, Beauty being one of them, and hope that I would somehow fulfill the tale. I would meet some forlorn man burning with a passion for me-perhaps a burn victim or someone with a rare skin condition, since the hairy variety are less likely to show up around Chicago-and I, like Beauty, would be the only one capable of loving such a man and he would be eternally grateful for my love. Which is really a selfish and needy fantasy anyway...yet is often dangerously disguised as the ultimate selflessness.

But ever notice how modern Beast figures are really kind of attractive anyway? Man Without a Face isn't really a Beauty and the Beast story since it's not even a romance, but I'm pretty much in love with Mel Gibson's character This is the side of his face that got burned. The other half looks like regular Mel Gibson.

And everyone's favorite, the newest film version of the Phantom:

...

Yet another half-faced deformed man (I could have even thrown Two-Face in here from Batman, but he's not a good guy). It's like we find men attractive if they're unconventional, as long as half of them is a celebrity.

I'm going to do a full post on Gargoyles soon...but OMG Goliath is SO SEXY.

Dude, Beast from X-Men? He's got the strong and manly beast thing going on, but he goes around quoting Shakespeare. Artsy and vulnerable as well. *Swoon* And really, it's that vulnerability factor that makes these Beasts so attractive. In romantic versions, it's his consuming love for Beauty that we really love.

The Disney Beast is animalistic, but still pretty attractive compared to historical Beasts.

EDIT: A more recent addition-Surlalune mentioned how everyone comments that Kyle in the movie Beastly is not even that beastly and I remembered this post.

I can't believe it, but I wrote the whole first draft of this post and forgot probably the best example of taking something that is supposed to be dangerous-a wild animal, to a peasant, or a vampire-and turning him not only into something completely non-threatening, but a romantic ideal. Interestingly, this is why I dislike Twilight (which I have never read or seen), because it changes vampires into something completely different, yet I obviously have no problem with it in Beauty and the Beast...

As you go back through history, depictions of the Beast have been less about the sexual appeal and more literal animals. Imagine being proposed to by these Beasts, compared to the ones above. Eleanore Vere Boyle
Arthur Rackham

Anne Anderson

Walter Crane

In the fairy tale, Beauty didn't find herself strangely sexually attracted to the Beast the way girls do now to various dark and mysterious Beast-like figures. She had to learn to love someone she initially found repulsive. Really, I think that often more extreme appearances aren't as repulsive as your average guy who's maybe a little overweight, a bit nerdy, or acne prone. These we more easily scoff at, whereas if you really saw a burn victim walking down the street, all our Politically Correctness sensors go off and we're very aware of the fact that he/she looks different and that we Must Not Judge. When the appearance is more average, we judge without realizing it.

I still sort of wish that the fairy tale will come true for me, in some way. But maybe I need to think more out of the box. I probably will never come across a musical genious with half a deformed face who is obsessed with me and my voice, or a heroic Gargoyle who saves my life whenever I fall off a building (again...stay tuned for more on that!), but by learning to love that which I find unloveable, I am like Beauty. I often think of the fact that I work with people with developmental disabilities as a non-romantic fulfillment of my wish. My students act different, and usually look different as well. Many people are awkward around them or even afraid of them, yet I love them. But on the other hand, my boss was saying the other day that a lot of the time, we tend to get workers who are there because they need to be needed and that causes trouble, sort of like what I was saying before about the Beauty fantasy being selfish.

To take the thinking outside the box even further, some things in life I find it hard to love aren't people. For me, I find the "Beast" ideal attractive already, so that's really my version of Prince Charming. I often struggle with the loneliness that comes from being single. What if singleness is my Beast? My situation that looks bleak and even ugly at times, yet has so many advantages, if I would only learn to see them?

For more on how the Beast and his perceptions have changed through history, this post is sort of an extension of this post I wrote a while back.

Mouse Tales: A Behind the Ears Look at Disneyland

David Koenig is an unbiased, humorous author who explores the truth behind the Disney movies in Mouse Under Glass, and Disneyland in Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland. This book is a great read for Disney lovers and haters alike. After a brief section on the history of Disneyland, Koenig explores what the Disneyland explorer is like for an employee, and then all the tragic accidents, injuries, deaths, lawsuits, etc. that have happened at the Happiest Place on Earth .


One might imagine it would be a fun job to be a costumed character at Disneyland, but the costumes are heavy and can strain the head and neck, and the furry ones especially are sweat machines. A couple costumes have even caught fire from battery packs worn at the light-up parades. More surprisingly, this job is very dangerous mainly because of the guests. Characters have been hit, kicked, punched in the face, groped, threatened at knifepoint to go on a date, attacked by groups of children, attempted to set on fire, and stabbed. I can't imagine anyone's motivation for this, but even more innocent acts-enthusiastic children pulling and shoving-can be irritations in a costume where movement is limited.

Employees aren't always being attacked, though. They often play minor pranks on park guests, and more elaborate pranks on each other. But being a character can be very rewarding. Koenig lists two incidents which have to do with children with autism-one boy was there who had never spoken in his life. Mickey Mouse was being mobbed, and the autistic boy broke away from his father, rushed over, and said "Mickey Mouse"- his first words. The second incident I'm a little skeptical of-it sounds like a boy with autism "snapped out of it," meaning, I assume, his autism in its entirety, after repeated trips to Disneyland, because "he realized it was better living in Disneyland than in his head."

A majority of the book discusses the accidents that have happened in the Park. A majority were caused by guests doing stupid things-trying to climb from car to car on a moving ride, for example. Some were caused by employee neglicence and some by mechanical failures. Look at the wikipedia link for a list of incidents, many of which Koenig gives more details for. The wikipedia link also includes updated incidents, as the book was published in 1995. The most controversial is not the fact that there are accidents-no one can really be surprised at that, although some do forget that they're still in the real world while at Disneyland-but the fact that Disney tries so hard to make sure the other guests aren't disturbed, they've taken guests to hospitals in unmarked vehicles rather than ambulances, when the faster ride might have saved their life. There's really only one incident in the book where this was a possibility, and I'm not sure if there have been more incidents, or a changed policy, in the past 15 years.

Some of my favorite tidbits:

-The first flying Tinkerbell was 71 years old (Tiny Kline, in 1961)

-At one time the park had a rat problem, so the staff would put rat poison in hot dogs and leave them out at night, later skimming the dead rats off the Rivers of America. One kid get ahold of a hot dog and ate it and got very sick. Whoever this kid's parents are, I don't have any sympathy for them-who lets a kid eat a hot dog off the ground, or ignores a kid that ignorant for long enough for them to eat it?

-"The family of a man who was killed by their neighbors' pet lion sued the park, claiming the neighbors were unable to control the beast because they were spending the day at Disneyland." Forget the lawsuit, which is ridiculous enough in itself-who has a pet lion?? In California??

-Walt Disney World's EPCOT Center wasn't originally supposed to be a theme park, like it is today (which is basically Tomorrowland on steroids, at least in concept.) Walt wanted it to be an actual, idealized city- "a planned and controlled environment, a showcase for the latest in industry, technology, education and culture. Slums wouldn't be allowed to develop because no individuals would own land; they would rent homes, at modest rates, work gainfully and help keep the city alive." Sounds creepy to me...
A picture of the Matterhorn Mountain under construction-the world's first steel roller coaster.

Disney: Helping to educate your child since 1928

I went to a disability ministry conference over the weekend and attended a session entitled, "How to use Disney movies to help your child speak." Needless to say, I was pretty psyched about it, and the speaker was also really good.

The premise of his talk was to meet the kids where they're at-to use children's interests and obsessions as teaching tools. This is a common educational tool, but children with special needs (especially autism) tend to have obsessions, and Disney pops up a lot as being a common obsession. Many children with autism with perseverate, or quote the same line over and over again, whether or not it fits in with the context. They'll quote lines from their favorite movies or songs, and the astute Disney student can often recognize the movie or song being quoted. The speaker shared some of his research on using Disney movies as teaching tools and how they can be used to teach various concepts.

He mentioned a child who got in trouble in the playground for repeatedly yelling, "Stand back, you fools!" Eventually his teachers figured out he was quoting Maleficent.
He showed us these fascinating pictures drawn by a child. (He promised he would have the outline posted on the web later that day, and I haven't found it yet. I'll keep checking and load the pictures if I can, or at least link to the site.) The child had drawn Jafar, only the drawing was a red, completely unidentifiable blob. The researchers taught the child about parts and wholes-everything is part of a whole, and has its own parts. After a short amount of time, the child drew Jafar again, but this time the picture had limbs and was recognizably human. After a little more training, the child drew Jafar a third time, but this time the resemblance was unmistakable.

This particular child had an obsession with Disney villains. The speaker, in trying to guess why the child fixated on villains and not on Princesses, Princes, etc., theorized that it was because the villains were different, just as the child sensed he was different. Which is interesting, because the heroes are ostensibly supposed to feel as outsiders. Snow White and Cinderella are abused and treated like servants, Belle doesn't fit in, Sleeping Beauty is raised all alone in a forest, Jasmine doesn't fit in as a Princess and disguises herself as a commoner, Mulan disguises herself as a boy, Ariel isn't satisfied with being a mermaid, etc., etc. Only the viewer isn't really convinced that these princesses are outsiders, as they are obviously the most attractive and have the best character. Not that it would be easy to create a character that was convincingly realistic, yet that the viewer identified with and wanted to emulate.

This came up when I searched for "Disney Princesses." An attempt to make them more human and relatable?

But overall, Disney movies-as well as other movies-are great teaching tools in general for kids with special needs. While some teachers might shy away from using movies because it's "cheating," movies provide great modelling of correct grammar, plotlines, realistic facial expressions (especially good for people with autism), and in tune singing. Plus, if a teacher uses a still shot from Mary Poppins, for example, to review vocabulary, then every time the child watches that movie again, the vocabulary words are reinforced, unlike a random worksheet.