(no subject)

[adiva_calandia]

F-list, solve my life for me.

Are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass fairy tales?

Important question is important! Seriously!

Comments

[ashen_key]

Iiiii would say no! Fairytales I think of as being traditions and folklore - the Alice books are still books created by one person.

*lazy with logins*

[i_grenfelz]

Which raises a corollary question, to my mind: Is it possible to write a fairy tale? Not retell one, I mean, but write an entirely new one. Like, what about Pan's Labyrinth? I would unhesitatingly call that a fairy tale structure, with the tasks to fulfill and all; is structure enough to make it a fairy tale?

Re: *lazy with logins*

[ashen_key]

I...would say 'no'. To me it's not just structure, it's also...tradition and history and an organic growing of something. Like the Arthurian tradition, in a way. Fairytales don't belong to anyone.

Sorry, brain not working today so it's hard to articulate things *thawps brain*

Re: *lazy with logins*

[i_grenfelz]

'sokay! This is still helpful. :D

Second corollary question: can a story become a fairy tale? If something exists in our collective consciousness long enough, does it gain the status of myth and folk tale?

See, here's my thing about Alice (to make this sound less like POP QUIZ: FOLK TALE AS LITERATURE): those books shouldn't really be fairy tales, because they don't fit the structure unless you squint reeeeeeally hard -- but they act like them. My theory is that the reason we have all these retellings of Alice is the same reason we have so many retellings of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and so on: Alice somehow became so prevalent in our culture that the story's characters and tropes and catchphrases have the same status as the characters and tropes and catchphrases of fairy tales. If I say "Ashie, what a big ______ you have!" everyone can be expected to follow that with "The better to ____ with, my dear!" and if a character in a movie is wearing anything with a red hood, it's a pretty safe bet some kind of metaphorical wolf is going to be coming along. In the same way, Trinity can tell Neo to "follow the white rabbit" and the audience instantly knows he's going to be leaving this reality in some way, and I'll bet 95% of people you go up to will know what comes next if you say "The time has come, the Walrus said--"

And THEN my question is, is this all Disney's fault?

Re: *lazy with logins*

[ashen_key]

If something exists in our collective consciousness long enough, does it gain the status of myth and folk tale?

I think it can, but *rubs head* Okay, if I were to walk up to you and say, "may the Force be with you" or "these aren't the droids you're looking for," you ALSO will know what I'm referring to. On the other hand, film is a fairly new medium when assessing culture and status of things. Is Star Wars a fairy tale?

We also have many, many retellings of Shakespeare, and of Dracula. "I don't drink...vine", and all of that.

I suspect that Disney has a large part of it, actually - take the little mermaid. How many people know that she should be feeling like she's walking on knives, that she doesn't get the prince? (then again, there are a number of versions, but Disney certainly made things happier and that's the course that a lot of kids' books now take).

Re: *lazy with logins*

[i_grenfelz]

Good point about Star Wars etc! You're right -- cultural touchstone =/= fairy tale automatically, clearly.

Re: *lazy with logins*

[batyatoon]

Star Wars is totally a fairytale.

Or rather, it's the fairytale's big brother: a hero myth.

[shati.livejournal.com]

How about Hans Christian Andersen?

[adiva_calandia]

I was wondering about that too. *frowns* And Perault. Were they collecting, retelling, or creating?

RESEARCH TIME~

[shati.livejournal.com]

IIRC, Perault was retelling at least a good chunk of his, but he definitely left an imprint either way. I guess we could argue the degree to which HCA's were original, in the same way we can argue that about pretty much any story, but he's generally credited as the original author of a fair number of well known fairy tale plots?

I think probs in its most recognizable form "fairy tale" is just going to attach itself to various related globs of stories that may or may not have anything in common on a deeper level. I have never ever heard a consistent, comprehensive definition of the term. Which I guess also true of most genres ... but I never tried to write a paper about the definitions of most genres so I harbor less bitterness?

[batyatoon]

Perrault was collecting, but Hans Christian Andersen was creating; he wrote those stories, and they didn't exist in any form before he did.

*mutters savagely about the Victorian ideal of the beautiful death*

[shati.livejournal.com]

Define your terms!

[i_grenfelz]

That's what I'm working on! Because I keep going "Well, a fairy tale has to have [this element], and Alice doesn't have that. Except it kind of does in that . . ."

Example: A fairy tale generally has to have a quest, and Alice is not on a quest. Except in Looking Glass she kind of is because she's on a quest to become a queen. And a fairy tale usually involves magic, and Wonderland isn't a land of magic because unusual things are like laws of physics in Wonderland, not something you have to work at or go to a witch for. Except Carroll calls the Drink Me bottle "the little magic bottle," and Alice does have to go to the Caterpillar for her size-changing mushroom, and furthermore if I try to pin down exactly how to define magic in fairy tales I will go insane. Not to mention that Carroll himself calls it a fairy tale in one of the introductory poems -- I think the one for Looking Glass -- but The Author Is Dead, who gets to define what a text is, blah blah.

My gut feeling is that Alice is not a fairy tale; it looks like one in some respects, and it acts like one culturally (see my rambles to Ashie above), but it's really a goose no matter how much it tries to look like a duck. But I need to ramble about it and poke at it some.

[shati.livejournal.com]

I just wouldn't call it a fairy tale because it's a hell of a lot longer than most of the stories I think of as fairy tales. Which is not super meaningful.

You can say a story has fairy tale elements without saying it's a fairy tale, though.

[beyondthesunset.livejournal.com]

I was just going to say this: it's not a fairy tale because it's too long. It also isn't a fairy tale because it doesn't take itself seriously. /Alice/ is completely tongue in cheek. Fairy tales, even while utterly fantastic, are srs bizns. That's why Andersen's are fairy tales, and even those dreadful moralizing Victorian things: they mean what they say. They have levels of meaning, true, but they are straightforward about it. Carroll was using the trappings of a fairy tale to satirize society. A fairy tale would never do that. Criticize? Maybe (though usually not). Satirize? No. Fairy tales also tend strongly toward upholding the dominant social order and are pervaded by the culture's morals (this can be seen in the many fairy tales in which vengence is wreacked upon the wicked, cruel and even the lazy).

[batyatoon]

Pervaded by the culture's morals yes, but they're not always about upholding the dominant social order! Sometimes they're downright subversive -- see "Puss in Boots" or "The Brave Little Tailor" or even "Rumplestiltskin". A lot of times fairytales put power in the hands of those who don't have any in the ordinary way of things.

[beyondthesunset.livejournal.com]

Yes, but they don't really subvert the general social stucture to make good - they usually end up taking advantage of it, ending up at the top of the food chain themselves. /Cinderella/ doesn't end with a call for better living standards for servants; SHE will live Happily Ever After, because she deserves to, but society itself remains unchanged. It's pretty Calvinist, actually.

[batyatoon]

Mmm, that's a good point. Subversive for its time, perhaps -- it's never about changing society as a whole.

[beyondthesunset.livejournal.com]

...and now I know WHY /Alice/ is "too long": a fairy tale can be reduced to the following formula: X happened, causing protagonist to do Y, good was rewarded, evil was punished, THE END. /Alice/ can be reduced as follows: weird shit happened, followed by yet more weird shit, THE END. The plot itself is irreducible, because it doesn't have a point. It exists merely to exist (well, that and be satirical), not to teach any lessons or make any serious points /in and of itself/.

[adiva_calandia]

Yeah, that's (one of) my sticking point(s) with Alice: Cause and effect is . . . iffy, whereas in fairy tales cause and effect is very clear. The fairy tale structure is "Share your food with a traveler -> receive advice/magical help/a magic ring/whatever." The Alice structure is "Share your food with a traveler -> Be regaled with a long, pointless poem and ridiculed for not knowing anything."

Wonderland's kind of nasty, when you get right down to it.

[ceph.livejournal.com]

This. To my mind, fairy tales have Rules, which Alice manifestly and deliberately doesn't.

I do think it's a bit futile to try and define 'fairy tale'; it's like trying to define pornography or definitively distinguish science fiction from fantasy. But you can make pretty convincing arguments that Alice isn't one. Do you suppose some of the reinterpretations could be trying to turn it into one?

[sdelmonte]

I will buck the trend and say it is. Anything that is treated as one by the world is one. Same for Hans Christen Anderson. Same maybe even for The Jungle Book.

Yes, I am using use in Fables as an indicator.

[batyatoon]

Bite your tongue; The Jungle Book is ABSOLUTELY not a fairytale.

*bares teeth at Willingham*

[batyatoon]

I think I have to disagree with Ashie and say that a story can be a fairytale without being a folktale -- "tradition and history and an organic growing of something" being essential to the latter but not the former.

This doesn't address whether or not Alice is a fairytale, though. I may still be kind of stumped on that.

[adiva_calandia]

And this is my problem: if I start thinking about fairy tales, I can name any number of short stories and even movies off the top of my head that are deliberately constructed as fairy tales. As mentioned, Pan's Labyrinth; Isaac Asimov's The Fable of the Three Princes; Wilde's The Selfish Giant; like a quarter of Neil Gaiman's oeuvre . . . Yeah, oftentimes these stories are written to subvert some aspect of fairy tales, but you can write a haiku that subverts the form, too. (Haiku isn't hard / You just need seventeen syll / ables to do it.)

But I dunno. I lean towards agreeing with Ashie as a general rule: an author's name under the title makes a text fairy tale like rather than a fairy tale. Fairy tales are unattributed. Which I guess makes Andersen's stories the exception that proves the rule.

But I also think Alice has structural, ah, oddities that preclude it from being a fairy tale.

(Can one make a statement like "It waddles a little like a duck, and people treat it like a duck, but it's really still a goose" in an academic article and still be taken seriously? >.>)

[batyatoon]

(Well, if your academic article is about fairytales, you should end that with "but it's really a BABY SWAN".)

I don't know if I agree that fairytales are unattributed, is the thing. But there's no real way to determine whether or not that's part of the definition, except by declaring it so (or not).

[beyondthesunset.livejournal.com]

LOLing at the baby swan.

I don't think attribution or the lack thereof is as important in this context as structure. It is certainly a part of our common definition, but as you pointed out, there are modern stories that are definitely fairy-tale like. We may have to draw a distinction between folklore/folktale and fairy tale. They often overlap, but one is not always both. Then there are other archetypal stories; they may fit into Jung's collective unconsciousness, but I don't think of them as fairy tales.

The cause-and-effect structure you mentioned might be a good working definition; you can flesh it out as you go.