I'm very happy to have Elizabeth Eckhart back with another guest post! This time she discusses the new Disney movie Maleficent!
Many people have grown up hearing
the stories of the Grimm brothers, whether they’re aware of it or not. The
German duo is infamous for their dark fairy tales preaching morality and
punishing the wicked, however, many of those stories were slowly changed and
reinterpreted over time into the much more child-friendly versions most of us
are familiar with today. In fact, one of their most famous stories, Sleeping
Beauty, is undergoing another reinterpretation in the new film Maleficent, which is
hitting theaters this weekend. In honor of the film, let’s take a look at some
of the other interpretations of famous Grimm stories.
Little Red Riding Hood
This European folk tale was
originally published by French author Charles Perrault as Le Petit Chaperon
Rouge (meaning little red cloak/cape) in 1697. His version was very
moralized, so much so that he even finished the story with a warning to little
girls to not listen to strangers. The Grimm version was undoubtedly influenced
by Perrault's version, but the little girl and her grandmother are instead
saved by a huntsman looking for the wolf's skin. They also wrote a sequel,
where the townspeople trap and kill wolves based on their knowledge of the
wolves’ moves from the first encounter. However, both versions were modified
and watered down by the brothers in later publishings far before it became the
well-known story it is today.
Of
course the story has been adapted even further by different authors and
artists, the most recent of which is the 2011 film Red Riding Hood starring
Amanda Seyfried. It’s also a featured plotline on the NBC television series Grimm which is based off of
the brothers’ stories (both the series and film are streamable online or
available on
demand through your cable
provider). In addition to adaptations on screen, there’s the extremely
popular musical Into
the Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, which incorporates not
only Little Red Riding Hood but also themes from other fairy tales as well.
And, of course, there is Hungry Like The Wolf by Duran Duran, which is
said to have been inspired by the wolf in the story.
The
tale has even been transformed into YA lit, with titles such as Red Riding
Hood by Sarah Blakely-Cartwright and the more gory, popular
interpretation, Sisters
Red by Jackson Pearce which follows a one-eyed werewolf slayer named
Scarlet.
Snow White
While Snow
White’s modern popularity is obviously credited to Walt Disney thanks to
his internationally known animated version of the fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,
the Grimm Brothers were telling this story long before Disney was. Their
original publishing of this German folk tale was in 1812, and their version was
largely copied by Disney for his film adaptation. In fact, it is the Disney
fairy tale adaptation that remains most true to its original story.
The
numerous similarities between the two include an evil stepmother consumed by
vanity, a magic mirror, seven dwarves, a huntsman, a poisoned apple, and a
glass coffin. Like most Grimm fairy tales, the brothers’ tale included some
elements that were excluded from later adaptations, including the fact that the
Queen requested Snow White’s liver and lungs to eat, not her heart, the fact
that the Queen tried twice to kill Snow White before giving her a poisoned
apple (one of the times she disguised herself as a seamstress and pulled Snow
White’s corset so tight she fainted), and finally that the evil Queen’s final
punishment was to wear red hot iron shoes and dance until she died.
The
latest film adaptations of this classic story both came in 2012 when two films
that built off Grimm’s story were released; Mirror, Mirror with Lily
Collins and Julia Roberts follows the original for the most part, while taking
a much more saccharine approach to it, while Snow White and
the Huntsman starring Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron takes
many liberties from the original story – such as the Raven Queen being able to
transform into a flock of birds.
The
book version of Snow White and the Huntsman received poor reviews, but
so far Maleficent’s
novelization seems to be faring better. Other written renditions based on Snow
White are Six
Gun Snow White, where the heroine’s tale is transported to the Old
West, and Snow
White And Rose Red, which is a renaissance version by Patricia C.
Wrede.
Rapunzel
This is
yet another example of a folk tale making its way around Europe and taking on
new forms. The story of Rapunzel was first recorded in 1698 by French author
Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force under the title Persinette. The
Grimm brothers published their version, called Rapunzel, in 1812, which
helped solidify it as a classic fairy tale.
It took
Disney a while to tackle this classic fairy tale; their version, Tangled, came out in
2010, and goes far more off plot compared to the original story than past
Disney adaptations ever did. The stories both include the trademarks, like
Mother Gothel, Rapunzel being trapped in a tower, and, of course, her long
hair, but that’s more or less where the similarities between the two end.
In the
original, Rapunzel is sold by her parents in exchange for her father not being
punished by Gothel (who is a witch) for stealing from her garden to feed his
pregnant wife’s cravings. Eventually Rapunzel is courted by a stranger, but
it’s a prince, not a thief like in Disney’s film. Also, in Grimm’s tale
Rapunzel becomes pregnant, which is why Gothel then cuts off Rapunzel’s hair
and banishes her to the woods. Gothel then tricks the prince to climb the tower
again – he then jumps from the tower and is blinded by the thorns below.
However, he eventually finds Rapunzel (with their twin children) and her tears
cure his blindness.
The
most famous modern literary adaptation is Cindy C. Bennett’s Rapunzel
Untangled and Alex Flinn’s more traditional The
Towering.
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