The Original Version

There have been many books in our house over the years, but the one that I found most interesting was an illustrated collection of fairy tales by the brothers Grimm.  The book had about size 14 font, about A5 sized pages, and was over 300 pages long.  Even at that I am not sure the book was a complete collection of their work.  For one, most of the stories attributed to the brothers Grimm weren't actually imagined by them, but rather were documentations of stories that were common of the era, with their goal to catalogue them all.

One thing I do not like is the tag line that is often placed on movies and TV shows that take fairy tales and depict them as something sinister, and describe them as "a new more darker twist" or those that claim such versions as "reimagined" or "reinterpretation" of these stories.  I don't like this because it implies that the happy, sunshine filled, rainbow worlds of children's fairy tales that the likes of Disney have portrayed are the original ideas and the intended emotions.  They are not.  The original tales as were recounted and gathered by the brothers Grimm were incredibly dark and at times truly sadistic.  It is the idea of sunshine and rainbows that is the reimagination and reinterpretation of the original ideas.

Take for example the tale of Snow White, whilst the version that is recounted by Disney is family friendly, the original is not.  From cannibalism, bondage, torture, and ultimately death, the original tale is actually quite dark.  The most graphic portion of all those which Disney chose to omit perhaps comes at the wedding of Snow White and her Prince where a pair of iron slippers were heated over red hot coals, which her step mother was made to wear and dance before them until she died for their amusement.

There are over two hundred tales in the collection we own, a modern publication no more than a few decades old, although another collection once existed in our family, it belonged to my Grandmother, written in German it was about half the length and was a lot older at least by a hundred years.  Whatever happened to it I am unsure, after my Grandmother passed away I don't know what happened to her belongings.

I am much more a fan of the original tales than the watered down family friendly versions that exist today.  Perhaps because many of the originals were not intended for children at all but for adults to read, this maybe explains why I find them more interesting than those aimed at children.  Either way I don't like the idea of losing history and losing origins.  When things become such a part of our culture and society and become so heavily associated with one person, or one company, the origin is often lost.  Who wrote them first is forgotten.  Like a cover of a track that sells much more than the original you often see surprise in peoples' faces when you tell them it was not the original version.  Like "I Will Always Love You" most often attributed to Whitney Houston in reality it is a song written by Dolly Parton almost two decades prior.

I am not discounting the merit of reinterpretation, simply the acknowledgement of, or at least the desire to acknowledge, that which came before.  By all means improve upon existing ideas and retell stories for modern audiences, but do not deny history, do not write off those who came before and dismiss the effort they put into their work and the merit it gained, for without it you would not have the idea to rework in the first place.