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.