Blog 13: The last one!

When I chose to take this class I thought I was only taking it to get some of my McDaniel plan requirements out of the way and it looked pretty interesting, but as we started to have more and more classes I realized that I was getting much more out of it than I thought. When I was younger I didn't realize all the different messages that can be gotten from fairy tales and how there can be underlying themes throughout them. I just saw them as a form of entertainment, but then I came to realize that they were that and ways to see things like what is right and wrong. I really enjoyed all the material covered in class because we learned about tales from all over and we got to see how different cultures use the tales and how some of them have the same themes even though they originated in a completely different areas. The class wasn't challenging so much because I found myself enjoying what we had to read so it made the class that much easier to talk about because some times I could relate to what was going on in the tales. Sometimes if I didn't fully understand what was going on in a tale I probably should have reread what was going on, but other than that I don't believe that I didn't spend enough time on the material. My favorite part of the class was when we were asked to draw pictures about the tales, whether it was in class with groups or on our midterm it was interesting to see what other people saw when they read the tales. The same goes for when people would talk about what they were getting from each tale because everyone gets something different out of every tale. I love how fairy tales can be seen in everything from an oral story, a written tale, to a movie or even in music videos such as Sonne by Rammstein. That music video was also another one of my favorite parts because it shows something that is simple and seen as something that is for kids to be in a rock video. It shows how diverse of an audience that fairy tales have. The main thing is learned is that fairy tales teach people values, beliefs, rules, and different taboos. They are made mostly for adults and children alike and they are a great source of entertainment. You as listeners or readers and take what ever you like or think of the tale because it is never wrong. A fairy tale is something you can relate to whether your relating to the motif, lesson/moral, or just the character in general. 

Blog 12 Bangladesh

On Thursday Dr. Shabbir Mian, the physics professor came to our class and taught us about fairy tales from Bangladesh. A big difference between these tales and European tales is that the people that listen to these tales truly believe in what is being told unlike the Europeans. The tales from Bangladesh show the traditions of the people and give us a look into their belief system. Bangladesh is on a delta, meaning that it is surrounded by a lot of water, which makes the landscape very lush and green and it does not have very many tall trees. This landscape plays a large role in many of their tales. If a tall tree is sen in a tale it is important and normally will contain some type of demon in it. Because they are surrounded by a lot of water, their main form of transportation is on boats and a lot of their tales involve crossing the seven seas or rivers. Things commonly seen in the tales are also fishermen and endless supplies of rice because they are important to the culture. The tales that come from Bangladesh are called Rupkotha, which translates into beautiful words. These tales are different because they do not contain fairies like most others and they were made for children and adults alike. These tales originated from five books called Panchatantra in 550 AD. One of the most popular author of these tales is Ashraf Siddiqui and he often wrote about a little bird called a tuntuni. Like tales from the Europeans you can see some similar motifs such as good vs evil, greed vs. generosity, and that evil is punished. The types of characters that you see are demons, monsters, kings and queens and you also see a lot of magic, ghosts, talking animals and all these characters going through transformations. Overall I found this lecture to be very interesting and I learned a lot about the culture and their tales through it.

Blog 11 Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales are very interesting. The little mermaid is one of my favorite children’s movies so it was interesting to see the differences between this version and the movie. Andersen’s tales were not made for children and you can see this because there are vulgar parts and you can see that there is a lot of pain and/or suffering. This is a difference from some of the stories we have read. As well as there isn’t really that fairy tale ending that we normally see. In the little mermaid we see that the mermaid doesn’t get to marry the love of her life and because of this she turns into air. Normally we see the main characters live happily ever after, they don’t normally die. Although there are differences some things seen in his story are similar to others that we have read. We see some similar motifs such as love and villains and also the main character goes through a transformation of some sort. The villain of the Little Mermaid was the sea witch and when we meet her you see how the mermaid is going to have to suffer, but she does it for her love. When we look at the stories you see that the main character is very young and that is normally a common theme seen through most of the stories that we have read. Because the character is so young, I think it made if very easy to change this story into a children’s movie. 

Blog 10 African Fairy Tales

Dr. Ochieng’ K’Olewe’s presentation was very interesting. I thought that out of all the guest speakers that we have in class so far, he was one of the most entertaining presenters to listen to. When he came to our class you could tell right away that he was going to be very energetic and enthusiastic when telling the class about folktales and story telling in Africa. Another reason why I enjoyed this lecture is because Dr. Ochieng’ K’Olewe was very interactive with the class, having us sing and dance along with him as he told us his tales. This lecture enriched my knowledge of folk and fairy tales because it gave me a better understanding of how people in Africa look at these tales and why they tell them. The professor told us the reasons that people use these tales were to celebrate wit and their culture, as well as to entertain the people. They teach people values, beliefs, rules, and different taboos. These tales and stories were normally told at night after everyone was done with work. And they wanted everyone to focus only on the voice so they liked to tell them in the dark so people could only listen to the words of the tale. The main thing I learned about these tales are that they bring the African community together, that even now more people use the verbal form of the stories than the written versions. The stories bring the old and young together for bonding time and it gives the people a sense that the community is not lost. 

Blog 9 Fitchers Bird

My favorite Bluebeard tale out of those we read would have to be Fitcher’s Bird. This tale was my favorite because it has the women getting revenge on the villain. Bluebeard is a evil old man that takes the lives of beautiful young girls because they let their curiosity get the best of them. Unlike the other versions of the tale the women are given keys and an egg. The sorcerer tells the girls when he is about to leave that they need to, ”Carry it with you wherever you go, because if it gets lost, something terrible will happen.” Even after this warning and after he told the women not to go into the small room they still disobey him and the first to women are brought to their doom. The last sister of the Three is still obeying her husband but is seen as being so much smarter than the other two because she keeps the egg in a safe place. Once she sees the room and that her sisters are in the room she knows that she must do something to save them. This part is probably my favorite when the third sister put the pieces of the first two sisters back together and they magically are alive again. The last sister is so smart that she even gets Bluebeard to take the sisters that he killed home and fools him when she walks right past him dressed up as a bird. The reason this version of the tale is my favorite is because everyone is fooled by the last sister and because of her wit all the villains are killed.

Blog 8 Rags to Riches

“Rags to Riches” is a common motive seen in the Cinderella tales, but how realistic is this motive. Of course people can marry a person that is very wealthy and become rich themselves, but how often does that happen. Not very much, so when it does it is compared to a fairy tale because this is the most common place to see this occur. In the Cinderella tales you see a beautiful girl that is treated poorly by her step family and eventually is found by a prince because he found her glass slipper and they live happily ever after, with the evil step family somehow being punished. If only in real life could this happen to the average person on a regular basis. Even though a few lucky people get to live out this lucky rags to riches fairy tale, it does not always mean that they are happy because money doesn’t always bring happiness. A lot of times a person may come from "rags" and just find their dream person, not necessarily obtain riches from the marriage. A more convincing rags to riches story occurs for people who start at the bottom of the totem pole at their job and work their way up to get promotions and become rich and successful like they wanted. Although Cinderella is a great tale it is not very realistic.

Blog 7 Seeing The Voice

The lecture by Drs. Rust and Rose was very interesting. Being an ASL student at McDaniel, I already have a fairly good idea about the ASL culture and history, but it was nice having a deeper look into the story telling aspect of the language. It is so amazing to me how little people in the US understand about the culture and the negative connotations they associate with the deaf community and it is very unfortunate. As Dr. Rust explained to the class there were some famous people such as Aristotle that said that Deaf people were dumb and didn’t deserve to breathe because they had nothing in their brains, but this is because people did not take time to understand their language. It was interesting to hear about Dr. Rust’s background and about his family. He told us that his Father refused to use ASL outside of his own home because he didn’t want people to think that he was dumb. I feel like that it is very sad that a person would have to feel that way about the language that they speak. Now that people are better understanding the language and culture, deaf people are more confident in using sign and signers now sign higher and use their whole body unlike in the past when they would try to hide it. It is also interesting to see how technology has helped the deaf culture advance and how it makes things much more accessible to the deaf. ASL is a visual language and can show so much feeling and expression, unlike English. Many hearing people think that ASL is just broken English, but they are very different in structure. Watching the few stories that Ricky signed to the class you can see how you can get so much more meaning and emotion out of the story than the tales told in English. A story told in ASL has so much in it that a 2-3 min story in sign would take at least ten pages for a person to tell in English. The lecture enriched my understanding of folktales by showing us yet another culture that uses these tales to spread history of their culture to different people. Dr. Rust told us that many of the tales told in ASL actually are told to make fun on the dominant culture or the speaking. Seeing of these types of tales was interesting because all of us in class are used to just hearing tales from speaking people and not in ASL. 

Blog 14: Lecture by Vivien Deitz

The lecture by Vivien Dietz was called Imagination: The playground of Fairytales. She began her lecture by telling us the purpose of fairy tales. This purpose is to access your soul essence and to connect with your magical shamanic inner child. You must first access these things before you can move forward in your life. She told us that we all have to walk the path of life and we need to find our own truth while doing so. We can do this by using our imagination because it allows you to look at life from new perspective. To access our imagination we must use the right side of your brains, which she sees as feminine. To help us better understand what she was talking about she had the whole room close our eyes and find our shamanic inner child, by making us think that we were on a magic carpet flying to find him. This child helps us on our path and helps us use our imagination. When we read fairy tales we need to look for the hidden messages to help us build inner strength. Fairy tales also can help us go through a transformation. During a transformation we go into an altered state and we lose touch with ordinary reality and we may lose our memory for the time being, but after there will be a rebirth into our transformed self. We will feel youthful and full of energy; it is a gateway into our lost innocence. Vivien then continued her Lecture by talking about Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. She told us that Aladdin is going through a journey from depression to enlightenment. When his mother first rejects the lamp, Aladdin takes and it helps him throughout his journey because the lesser genie grants his wishes. The rejection of his mother is a sign that she does not want to connect to her son or know about his soul essence. She went through a breakdown of all the characters and symbols in the tale. Two examples of what her breakdown included were the magic cave representing the unconscious mind; something we don’t know, and the lesser genie representing the subconscious mind; something we have forgot. The second and last tale she told us about was the Velveteen Rabbit, where the rabbit goes from anxiety to optimism. She talks about how the rabbit was made real by the little boy and the rabbit would not think anything less of himself because this is how the boy made him feel. When the boy doesn’t need the rabbit anymore he tries to go out into the wild and is eventually changed into a real rabbit instead of a toy. For the bunny to go through the transformation he had to first find his inner child. All the information that Vivien shared with us was very interesting. She definitely gave me a different way to look at life and fairy tales. I learned a lot of why fairy tales are important and how they can show us all these different transformation and messages.  

Dr. Sophia Geng: Poem

During Dr. Geng's discussion see had the class make up our own poems about the tale of The Butterfly Lovers. I was one of the lucky individuals that presented my poem for the class, but here is the poem again for those that didn't hear it.

There once was a young girl that went to school,

At this time this is not what a girl would do.

When she went the whole class she would fool.

She fell in love with her sworn brother,

but needed the approval of her mother.

Her parents did not agree, 

So another man was her husband to be.

Her lover fell deathly ill,

And she went against her parents will.

To see her lover once more

When she saw him her tears started to poor.

Once they flooded her face,

A storm came over and she was erased,

Both lovers returned as butterflies

to fly away together in the skies. 

By: Amanda Barcenas

Blog 6 Sonne vs. Snow White

The music video, “Sonne” by Rammstein has many similar symbols and characters to the tale of Snow White by Brothers Grimm, but even though you can see these similarities I feel that both stories are made for two completely different audiences. In the music video you see the band playing the seven dwarfs. They are mining just as they would be doing in the story, but in this version there is a twist. Snow White is not cooking and cleaning the house for the dwarfs, but the dwarfs are working for her. She is a gold dust addict that has the dwarfs mine all day to find gold for her. She treats the dwarfs almost as slaves and is seen spanking them, but they work hard for her and it seems as though they have a sexual attraction to her. In the video the comb is no longer a threat to Snow White like in the tale because the dwarfs are seen brushing her hair with it. Instead of the Queen being the threat to Snow White, she is a threat to her own self because she snorts the lines of gold and she shoots up while she is in the bath, which puts her in a deep sleep. In this version it can be said that her sleeping would really be like she overdoses from the gold drugs. I think that Snow White being a threat to herself is showing that she may also be the queen because that character is not seen. This example was also brought up in class about how the two characters could really be one in the Grimm version as well. Like in the Grimm version Snow White is put in a glass coffin for all to see her beauty, but the apple no longer puts Snow White to her doom. Instead the apple falls from the tree and brings her back to life. The apple goes from putting her into a deep slumber in the Grimms tale, to saving her in the music video. The music video loos like it could be geared toward people who maybe be addicted to something that is not good for them. Teaching them that the addiction could potentially be fatal. Where as the tale teaches a lesson to a younger audience that you shouldn’t always trust everyone you meet and that you shouldn’t be tempted by things that you see. I personally like the music video, but I feel as if it only shows half of the story. If I was to recommend one over the other it would be the Brothers Grimm version just because you see the whole story unfold. 

Blog 5 Beauty and Psyche Vs. The Monsters

“Cupid and Psyche,” is a tale of a beautiful girl that falls in love with a man that hides his appearance from her until one day she sneaks up on him and reveals what he really looks like and she almost loses him forever. While reading this tale I found that there were a lot of similarities to the tale of, “Beauty and the Beast,” by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. To start, in both stories there is a family that has three daughters and the youngest of both families are the most beautiful girls you have ever seen. The youngest child in fairy tales are often the most spoiled and for these tales this is not any different. This is because both girls get the best husbands that would do anything for them and their houses are filled with riches. Both girls marry a monster of some sort and unbelievably they both fall in love with these so-called beasts. The stories teach the readers to love people on a higher and more personal level, then just looks. The two sisters of both Beauty and Psyche are filled with envy because both girls live in such wonderful places filled with gold and anything you could ever want. The jealous sisters of both girls try their hardest to ruin the marriages of their youngest sisters. For Beauty, they made her stay away from Beast too long and he becomes ill. For Psyche, the sisters entice her to see the true appearance of her husband and by sparking Psyche’s curiosity; they make her almost lose Cupid forever. Because of this envy the sisters learn their lessons. In “Beauty and the Beast”, the sisters turn into statues and in “Cupid and Psyche”, the sister fall to their death. At any rate this is a lesson for readers that they should never let jealousy run their lives. Throughout these two stories you see tons of similar motifs, with small changes to fit their tales.

Blog 4 Little Red Riding Hood (The Revenge)

Little Red Riding Hood gets her revenge on the wolf that ate her Grandmother, but she has a few tricks up her sleeves to get the job done. This cartoon is a comical version of the tale and shows an alternate ending of how the grandmother was saved and how the wolf was defeated. Instead of the wolf pretending to be someone he is not, Little Red walks into the bar like she owns the place, dressed up as a sheep. How can the wolves resist her tasty sheep self? In many of the versions of LRRH there are plenty of hidden sexual situations, but in this version of the tale you can see them clear as day. In this version Little Red is definitely not going to be the victim of seduction. Instead of Little Red depending on the Huntsman to get rid of the wolf and to protect her, she takes matters into her own hands. Just as the other versions show her growing and becoming more mature, this shows her at her full potential not having to rely on anyone. She shows her moves on the pole and points to the wolf that ate her Grandmother and gives him a killer lap dance (literally) that he will never forget. Once she has the wolf under her trance she rips off her costume and pulls out a knife. The wolf at this point is done for. Little Red opens up the wolf, rescues her grandmother and they walk into the sunset.

This version of the tale is made for an adult audience and gives the tale a funny twist that most people would not expect. I personally think that this version is a good change because the comic relief makes the tale that I knew as a little kid change into something funny I can laugh at and makes it a bit more entertaining because I have read the other versions so many times now.  

Blog 3 Fairy Tales and Psychology

 

When you first read a fairy tale you may think that it is just a simple story, but through a psychologist’s mind a tale can be interpreted in many different ways and help better understand the human mind. Through these interpretations there were many underlying messages found throughout many fairy tales. One of the most influential psychologists that have interpreted fairy tales is Sigmund Freud. Freud believed that when something bad happens to a person such as being hurt by their father when they are younger can make them fear men, so when they read a fairy tale these repressed memories that are stored in your subconscious can be revealed. Freud could have a person retell a fairy tale and the person may skip the part in the fairy tale where the character gets hurt by a father figure. They often use fairy tales in this method during psychotherapy to bring out such repressed memories. During Dr. Mazeroff’s lecture he talked about the parts of personality. These parts were also another theory of Freud’s and he uses them to help better understand fairy tales. The first part is the ID. This is where a person’s basic thoughts come out.  The second part is the ego, which helps you negotiate what is going on in the real world and the last part is the super ego. The super ego helps people determine if what they are about to do is right or wrong. Although Freud used these theories to better understand the mind and fairy tales it is really up to the reader to how they interpret them. To conclude I’ll leave you with a quote that Dr. Mazeroff told the class about, which is that “the best explanation for a fairy tale is a fairy tale”, so it is best to keep an open mind when reading them.     

Blog Entry 2 What is a Fairy tale??

What is a fairy tale?  Most of the time people think that fairy tales are just stories read to little children at night so they can fall asleep, but there is so much more to them than meets the eye. A fairy tale is a short story that originally started as a tale verbally told to listeners. Because these tales were verbal they gave the stories life and entertained everyone that heard them. Fairy tales do not have one specific origin because they were passed by word of mouth and people from every country were telling them. Over time they evolved into tales that children could read to give them a greater meaning of life and to learn lessons and to have solutions for different problems that can arise in life. Many people that analyze fairy tales see that when children read them they can better connect with the characters because they are free thinkers and open to more than adults. These tales are presented in terms that younger people can grasp, but every tale can mean something different for every person that reads it. Fairy tales are often compared to artwork because to the creator it can mean one thing, but to all of its viewers it can mean so many other things. A great aspect of fairy tales is that they are entertaining to all ages. They can spark the imagination of all and instill values into those that read them. Fairy tales do not show emotion, which is why everyone can take away something different from them. An example of this is when Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother got eaten, she had no emotion, but you as a reader can get many feelings from this one scenario. Another great aspect of fairy tales are that there is always some type of journey or quest that the character must go on. These quests not only make the tales more interesting, but this is where the hero must overcome some type of problem or struggle. During the quest the reader can connect with the hero and learn from his mistakes or triumphs and watch him always prevail in the end. Although I have given points on how to define a fairy tale the best way to interpret what they are is to read them yourself and see what feelings, emotions, and thoughts you get from them and then you yourself will really understand what they are. As I said earlier they hold so much meaning, but it is in the eye of the beholder.   

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