A dark rainbow

A blog entirely dedicated to fairy tales

[enchantedbook]

'Little Red Riding Hood' Illustrated by Árpád Schmidhammer, 1905.

[enchantedbook]

The Twelve Brothers (Die zwölf Brüder) Illustrated by Louis Rhead, 1917

[adarkrainbow]

I love how EVERYTHING in this picture is creepy X)

[enchantedbook]

Art by Yoshitaka Amano

[pmamtraveller]

Behind the scenes of PAN’S LABYRINTH (2006).

[marwyn]

McKinley’s retellings have generally been designated as “young adult” (YA) literature, an endlessly vexing category to define. Even if Perrault’s “Donkeyskin” has appeared in recent collections for younger audiences, Deerskin is not designated as YA. The Booklist reviewed Deerskin twice in one issue—once under Adult/Science Fiction and once under Adult Fiction for Young Adults, a clear sign of uncertainty about boundaries. The cover “blurbs” to the novel and audience designations in book reviews imply that the novel is McKinley’s “crossover”—from YA to “adult”—text. Since the YA designation can attract readers as young as the ten-to-thirteen age group, she clearly intended to exclude readers of her earlier novels. Here are McKinley’s own words, from an online interview: “I [ . . . ] received some fairly spectacular hate mail for Deerskin, which is, and was meant to be, a more difficult and bleaker book, telling me I had ‘betrayed my audience’ and was a vile human being to tackle such a subject at all and so on. Deerskin was even published as an adult book for adults—partly, I hoped, as a clue that it wasn’t for younger readers—and perhaps the clue worked with some people. It certainly didn’t with others.” Intensity of sexual violence, a negative image of parents, and a depiction of active vengeance against these parents are elements that tend to move a book toward the “adult” designation. Interestingly, school library journals do not exclude mention of Deerskin; they do signal its “difference” from The Door in the Hedge or Beauty, probably the most popular of McKinley’s YA fantasies, and classify it for “grade ten and up.” This designation is appropriate; the novel demands mature empathy (but not beyond the scope of some readers in this group) and its measured style requires a willingness to participate in a demanding reading experience.

Amelia A. Rutledge, “Robin McKinley’s Deerskin: Challenging Narcissisms”

[adarkrainbow]

I still believe the "YA" appelation is an artificial, purely commercial invention which didn't truly meant anything because of how large of a series of meanings it covers, and only became specific in a retrospective way...

[enchantedbook]

'East of the Sun and West of the Moon' by Kay Nielsen, 1914

[princesssarisa]

Villeneuve's original "Beauty and the Beast": the father and brothers

I've been thinking of certain characters in Madame de Villeneuve's original version of Beauty and the Beast: Beauty's father, the merchant (spoiler alert: who's really her adoptive father), and her brothers.

Now, most retellings of the tale portray Beauty's father and brothers as fully sympathetic, loving characters, in contrast to her selfish and spiteful sisters. (That is, when they don't omit the brothers and leave only the father and sisters, as most recent retellings do.) On the surface, at least, Villeneuve's novella seems to do this too. But having read Villeneuve's version several times now, I'm wondering:

Are their portrayals really, wholly positive, or are they negative in their own ways, just less overtly negative than the sisters' portrayal?

@adarkrainbow's posts about Perrault have made me more alert than I once was to the possibility of hidden meanings and satire in French literary fairy tales.

Now there's no question that the merchant loves Beauty, or that she loves him, enough to sacrifice her very life to save him. An essay I recently read that analyzed the novella insisted that their relationship is framed as the ideal father/daughter bond. Not only because of their mutual love, but because Beauty often serves as an advisor to her father, to whom he listens and whose opinions he respects, while he in turn offers valuable advice to her too (namely when he encourages her to marry the Beast), yet respects her enough to let her make her own choices rather than demand anything of her. That's certainly valid.

But in the first place, the merchant so clearly favors Beauty above all his other children. Maybe it's only natural in the case of his other daughters, since they're detestable, but he also favors Beauty over her "brave and virtuous" brothers who were willing to die for him too. When Beauty comes home from the Beast's castle to visit and at first he thinks she's come home for good, his response is effectively "Now I can marry off your sisters and be rid of them, and it will be just you, I, and your brothers... or if you like, we can leave your brothers and it will be just you and I!" Is that really the stance of an "ideal" father?

Then there's the inescapable fact that he does take Beauty to the Beast's castle in exchange for his own life. As far as both he and Beauty know, the Beast is going to kill her. Of course, the merchant is extremely reluctant, and throughout the journey he begs Beauty to turn back and let him go alone, but Beauty insists on making the sacrifice. Still, the fact remains that he does take her to the castle and leaves her there, presumably to die. And before that, when the Beast first proposes the exchange, his response is "Could I be so inhuman as to save my own life at the expense of one of my children's, under what pretext could I bring her here?" In other words "Even if I were willing... which I'm not... what could I say to trick her into coming?" Then, after he learns that his daughter needs to come willingly, he thinks (paraphrased) "Even if I were such an unnatural father as to do this... which I'm not... none of my daughters would agree to it anyway." When he repeatedly phrases his objections as "Even if I were willing, I couldn't possibly persuade her to come anyway," it's tempting to think the gentleman doth protest too much about his unwillingness.

Beaumont's later version makes it clear that when the merchant accepts the deal the Beast offers, he intends to come back alone, but just wants to say goodbye to his children first. But Villeneuve's version mentions no such ulterior motive: it leaves open the possibility that at heart, he does hope one of his daughters will sacrifice herself for him, and that if he would really have rather died than lose a daughter, he would have rejected the deal and let the Beast kill him on the spot. The merchant himself contemplates that possibility as he rides home, thinking "What have I promised? I should have let him kill me!" in horror and remorse. Though to his credit, at that point, he does try to turn back to the castle to accept his doom after all, but is magically unable to do so. And then he resolves not to tell his children about the Beast, but just to say goodbye and then go back alone: only his children's curiosity makes him finally tell them the whole story. (Though at the same time, he's the one who rouses their curiosity by dropping dramatic hints about the terrible cost of Beauty's rose.) And when his sons want to kill the Beast, his sense of honor makes him refuse to consider it, even to save himself. Maybe it was only human of him to make an impulsive promise to save his own life in the Beast's garden, only to regret it afterwards, and we shouldn't hold it against him.

Later, after Beauty comes home and tells her father about her life at the Beast's castle, he encourages her to marry the Beast. Now, the essay I read views this advice in a positive light. And understandably so, because the whole story is building toward Beauty choosing to marry the Beast and finding her ultimate happiness with him.

But at the same time... her father is urging her to marry a gigantic scaly elephant monster (yes, the Beast has scales and an elephant's trunk in this version), who previously threatened to kill him, and who is (seemingly) stupid to boot. Even after Beauty makes it clear that the very idea repulses her and she would rather die. And very conveniently, the Beast just sent the family chests full of lavish gifts again, having already given them a vast amount of money and jewels. How much is the Beast's wealth influencing the merchant at this point?

As for the brothers, Villeneuve describes them as "full of courage and filial affection" and portrays them as wanting to take heroic action to save their father. First, as I mentioned, they propose killing the Beast, but the merchant refuses to let them commit such a dishonorable act. Then they insist that one of them should be the sacrifice in their father's place, but their father reminds them that the Beast specifically demanded one of his daughters, not a son. I have to give them credit for being just as willing as Beauty is to make the ultimate sacrifice. The essay I read viewed the brothers as straightforward heroic figures and argued that they embody the "masculine" virtues that were extolled in the Age of Enlightenment, so that when Beauty shows the same virtues, the message is that women can be just as selfless and brave.

But then the brothers turn to their sisters and start pleading for one of them to sacrifice herself for their father's sake. That doesn't seem very chivalrous, does it? And when Beauty decides to do it, the brothers grieve, but they don't object, because they realize it's necessary to save their father's life. That's valid... but it is interesting that they so clearly prioritize their father over their sisters and are willing to sacrifice one of them to save him. Even as Villeneuve held up Beauty to be admired for her self-sacrifice, might she have meant to subtly criticize the prioritizing of male family members over females?

In this version, it's also the fault of the merchant and his sons that Beauty delays her return to the Beast after her home visit. The popular theme of the jealous sisters feigning love for her and begging her to stay longer, in hope that the Beast will kill her for breaking her promise when she does go back, is an invention of Beaumont's version. In Villeneuve's original, it's the sincere pleas of her father and brothers that make her put off her return. Now of course this just shows their love for Beauty and their reluctance to say goodbye, especially because they don't know when, or if, they'll ever see her again. Still, it nearly causes the Beast to die of grief.

At any rate, we eventually learn that the merchant and his children aren't Beauty's birth family anyway. Beauty is really the half-fairy daughter of the king and queen of Fortunate Island. When she was three years old, the same wicked fairy who cursed the Beast wanted to kill her (it's a long story), so her good fairy aunt spirited her away. The merchant's real youngest daughter died of an illness, but the fairy replaced the body with little Beauty, then cast a glamour over her so no one would notice the difference and let the merchant think his little girl had recovered. (This whole plot twist might add further grayness to the merchant: allegedly his youngest daughter was always his favorite child, even when she was a toddler, yet for thirteen years he never realized she had been replaced by a different child, but just went on favoring the changeling.) In the end, Beauty still considers the merchant her father and his children her siblings, and she gives them all positions in her new court, but at the same time, she's reunited with her birth parents and restored to the royal status she was born into. Her relationship with her adoptive family will continue, but there will obviously be a certain distance between them from now on.

In the end, I'm not sure how we're meant to feel about the merchant and his sons. Did Madame de Villeneuve intend for us to see them as an ideal father and brothers, or did she write them with subtle satire? I wish it were possible to know her exact intentions.

[adarkrainbow]

I used to have access through my university's library to the full, final, and recent annotated edition of Villeneuve's fairytales, but now, of course, right as I would require it to provide more info, I can't borrow it X)

It is a very good and interesting point. It is further muddled by the fact that Villeneuve's fairytales are of the "second generation" (or third if you count the Arabian Nights-generation), the mid 18th century ones, which are when people started to take fairytales very seriously (such as Leprince de Beaumont's making them actual moral lessons for children)... But there were also a lot of fairytales that were so openly unserious and goofy it was impossible not to mistake them as humoristic (I am thinking of mademoiselle de Lubert for example). So it blurs the line.

I have not heard of Villeneuve as being particularly ironic, yet at the same time she was sly and I do know she enjoyed having some cunning, "flat jokes" inserted in her text (I think there was one of her fairytales where you had a very long, drawn-out explanation about why the antagonist turned the protagonists into animals - so that he could kill and eat them without offending the moral authorities, which was a subtle jab at the people exploring rhetorical loopholes). So I cannot say (at least for now).

[enchantedbook]

“Little Brother and Little Sister” from the 1925 edition of Hansel and Gretel and Other Stories by the Brothers Grimm.

🎨 Illustration by Kay Nielsen.

[no-where-new-hero]

Random Reminder that if you are a fan of Disney’s animated 1991 Beauty and the Beast, many many aspects of Belle’s character (bookworm, slightly tomboy, connection to a Big Horse, only child) was cribbed DIRECTLY from the 1978 novel Beauty by Robin McKinley and you all should go read it because it’s an underrated masterpiece of fantasy/fairytale fiction.

[rosieandthemoon]

Olga Dugina & Andrej Dugin "The Dragon Feathers"

[rosieandthemoon]

Robert Leinweber, for a 1912 edition of Grimm's Fairytales

[enchantedbook]

"Old German Folk Tale" 🎨 Hermann Hendrich. 1896

[charnel-grounds]

Daniel Álvarez, “Then she approached the enchanted tree…”

charcoal on paper, 2025

[themousefromfantasyland]

How the Dark Fairy Tale Films Led to Disney Live Action Remakes

As promised during the week, I'm sharing and expanding a little this presentation that I first gave to my good friend @mask131

Originally, in the early 2010's for a brief time Hollywood had this trend of adapting fairy tales and children's novels into dark and twisted action and drama blockbusters. This trend marked the transition from the high fantasy of the 2000's to the super hero films of late 2010's.

And more important for our conversation, this trend is what caused the wave of Disney Live-Action remakes that would dominate late 2010's and 2020's. I'm not kidding, you can trace a clear timeline of events that show how these films led into the endless Disney reboots. When you put the films in release order you can see the dominoes falling into place.

Funnily enough, it all started with Disney with their Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in 2010. Burton's Alice was a smashing hit, grossing one billion at the box office. This film is now listed as being the first remake, but it was anything but. It drastically reinvents how the characters look and sound, and is more an action sequel of the Lewis Carrol books than the 1951 animated film. The only think this film and the Disney classic have in common is being inspired by the same source material.

This film's sucess led for a script to be greenlit at Universal, a script that was shelved since the failure of Terry Gilliam Brothers Grimm, this script was for what would become Snow White and the Huntsman.

Yeah, @mask131, you were right, technically it all started with Terry Gilliam, but without Alice nothing of this would have happened.

Snow White and the Hunstman was released in 2012, and it was a modest box office success, grossing 396.6 million at the box office. It was hugely driven by Kristen Stewart, who was coming freshly from the Twilight movies.

The Twilight movies also helped to propell another dark fairy tale project, the 2011 Red Riding Hood, who served as the missing link between Alice and Snow White. A dark fairy tale romance, heavily inspired by the YA wave also happening around the same time.

On the small screens, in 2011 ABC greenlit Once Upon a Time, and NBC greenlit Grimm.

I argue that it was the initial success of ABC's Once Upon a Time that led into Mattel's launch of Ever After High, released around 2013. Notice how the franchise's design for the Evil Queen seem to be more inspired by OUAT renditions of the character than Disney's or any other past version of her. Notice black and black feathers became a Evil Queen motiff.

After the 2013, the floodgates opened.

Between 2013 and 2015, we had Jack the Giant Slayer, Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters, Oz the Great and Powerful, and Pan.

I argue that even the 2014 adaptation of Broadway classic Into the Woods is more inspired by the then current trend of dark fairy tales than the original show.

And this is all led to 2014 Maleficent. Maleficent was Disney's response to Universal's Snow White, and it was the first time Disney actually reinvented their own IP in the 21st century.

If you doubt the Snow White connection, look at these. One frame is from Snow White and the Hunstman, the other came from Maleficent. Can you honestly tell me which was which?

As per wikipedia: Maleficent was originally developed as an animated project in 2003, before it was changed to a live-action feature in 2006, following Disney's acquisition of Pixar. Tim Burton was originally attached to direct the film, but was replaced by Stromberg in his directorial debut.

The film was another box office sucess, crossing 759.8 million at the box office.

The success led to Disney starting to looking back at their catalogue.

In 2015 we had Cinderella, and in 2016 we had the Jungle Book, but while they had call backs to their animated counterparts, they were completely reimaginings of the source material.

This all changed when 2017 Beauty and the Beast crossed 1.266 billion at the box office. In many ways technically this film can be blamed as the first Disney Remake because before that Disney was redapting the source material and adding nods to their classics, but after this film Disney started making straight retellings of their films, making them as close to their original story structure as possible.

Meanwhile around 2014-2016 all sequels to the big dak fairy tale films from the beginning of the decade underperformed. Huntsman Winter War, Maleficent Mistress of Evil and Alice Through the Looking Glass were box office bombs. The trend officially had ended and the public appetite for dark fairy tales and for dark fantasy as a whole had ended. It was officially the superhero era.

But the Disney remakes persisted despite this. They became safer, closer to their source material, and after the social scandals of the first Trump administration and the following Covid Pandemic, these film became a huge source of comfort food for a lot of people around the world.

So while nowadays this trend of dark fairy tales is just a burning memory from the early 2010's, and the Disney live-action remakes are a constant source of culture war battles and media fatigue in the 2020's, one would never exist without the other.

@mask131 @ariel-seagull-wings @thealmightyemprex @the-blue-fairie @princesssarisa @maimoncat @theancientvaleofsoulmaking

[fairytale-poll]

ROUND 3D, MATCH 1 OUT OF 2!

Who is the best Fairy Godparent?

Magrat Garlick (Discworld: Witches Abroad)

Katriona (Spindle's End)

Voting ended onFeb 17, 2025

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Margrat:

She inherited the role on the death of an acquaintance and she's doing her best but she's like twenty-one and so, so shit at it. She can't make the wand turn things into anything but pumpkins. She's being followed around by two interfering old ladies who are better at everything. She's up against a far more competent Wicked Fairy Godmother who believes *she's* the good one. It's Mardi Gras, there are zombies, she punches a snake in the face at one point...

Katriona:

An adaptation of Sleeping Beauty, Katriona wasn't originally going to be one of the princess' fairy godparents (she was simply a guest there for the naming day, and probably only 16ish at the time, but I am having a difficult time figuring out her age other than she was a young woman), but when the evil fairy showed up gave her cursed gift, she rushed up and babbled her own gift, and was given custody of the princess to protect her. She and her aunt do her best to raise the princess with the hope that "ordinariness" will protect her from the evil fairy's plans

[adarkrainbow]

Speaking of Cecelia Condit, a lot of her other short films have a kind of moody fairy-tale vibe lite but an underrated and overlooked one that I think has more blatant fairytale elements is Oh, Rapunzel. It's basically a short musical, but it has themes of generational trauma and the connections mothers and daughters have. I highly recommend it for anyone that likes Possibly in Michigan and wants to check out more of Cecelia Condit's work.

Also hi, me again :)

I have to confess I never searched for more context about the short, so such an addition is welcome!

And hi again :)

[adarkrainbow]

Just a few hours ago Dark Corners Reviews posted this overview of the new DVD box about the DEFA produced fairytale movies (that most people will know as the "Eastern German fairytale movies"