Disney's Frog Prince
So... Many years ago I scoffed at Disney's versions of fairy tales, and how they've ruined them by sanitizing them. Just a couple of years back when I really started making a study of fairy tales, however, I came to appreciate Disney's versions as legitimate permutations of the tales. I still think it's a complete travesty that most people grow
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I'm actually surprised to hear that there is a HCA version. One of my major issues with HCA is that, unlike the Brothers Grimm (which is where I got my version of The Frog Prince) and many other fairy tale folks, HCA didn't collect stories and write them down with, perhaps, a few changes. He made stories up. And while I'm not the sort of person who believes you can never have new fairy tales, HCA's stories generally had such a strong Christian morality built in that I personally find them sort of angering to read. Not to mention that they also (again, IMO) tend to go on for about twice as long as they ought to.
I sincerely doubt the Disney version will have the same primal depth or emotional resonance
I'm actually 100% with you here. When I say that I've grown to accept them as legitimate variations, I meant that I try now to look at them from the same perspective that I look at, for instance, Angela Carter's works. I don't love all of Carter's retellings, but I don't assume going in that they're all going to be awful, either. When I approach Disney fairy tales individually and intellectually, I find that I enjoy them a lot more and often times find some good changes mixed in with the bad.
Disney's Cinderella, for instance, streamlines the 3 nights of festival into one ball, extends and incorporates her affinity with wild animals by making the house mice her friends, and eliminates the confusing role of her father by killing him off shortly after he remarries. I find these changes interesting and at least on some level worthwhile. On the other hand, I find a version of the story in which the step sisters are hobbled and blinded much more viscerally satisfying.
Alternately, I prefer Disney's version of Beauty & The Beast to the original French. I find the characters more interesting and their behavior more sympathetic. Disney cut out Belle's irritating and snobbish sisters and created a villain to explain her prolonged absence from Beast (whereas in the original she simply said she'd be back in X days and then didn't return for no particular reason). They changed the rose's purpose in the story, but retained it as an element, and, I think, made it a more powerful part of the story.
Admittedly Beauty & the Beast seems to be the exception, not the rule, but it's enough to make me go into Disney fairy tales with an open mind, at least.
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There's a non-zero chance I'm confabulating that. It was a very long time ago, and back them I wasn't so concerned with proper attribution. I think I still have the actual book shelved at home; I'll take a look tonight or tomorrow.
When I say that I've grown to accept them as legitimate variations, I meant that I try now to look at them from the same perspective that I look at, for instance, Angela Carter's works. I don't love all of Carter's retellings, but I don't assume going in that they're all going to be awful, either.
Fair enough. I dislike the extent to which Disney versions are altered for the sake of marketing, but I should _probably_ grudgingly apply the same pragmatism to evaluating them that I do to Shakespeare's plays. If I can like Macbeth knowing full well it was written to be marketed to King James, I should probably look past the marketing for Disney, too.
I just don't have to like it. ;)
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Let me know. It's also possible I got the wrong idea about HCA somewhere along the lines.
I should probably look past the marketing for Disney, too.
I think it's understandably harder to look past it when it's happening in your own culture. I'm not sure I'd be able to if I hadn't grudgingly admitted that I liked Disney's B&tB better than Mme Villeneuve's. Once I came to terms with that, it was easier to step back and re-evaluate how I'd been looking at Disney in general.
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