The trouble with Happily Ever After

Happily ever after - as if

HEIDI DAVOREN | No life lessons to be learned from politically correct children's stories.

The trouble with happily ever after
Dirty Laundry

Telling spooky stories is a childhood rite of passage. Every child at some point has buried their head under the covers in fear of the monster under the bed or the ghost in the wardrobe.  As parents however, we do our best to discourage the practice because we know how uncomfortable it is sleeping with a small pair of feet under our ribcage and an elbow in our face. 

A child who is scared witless by a blood-ravaged horror story and refuses to sleep in their own bed makes for one even scarier mummy come sunrise.

I have two young daughters so ghost stories have only recently entered the picture (thanks very much over-saturated Halloween marketing propaganda), but fairytales have tended to rate fairly highly on the bedtime-story wish list.  The beautiful fair maiden is rescued by her knight in shining armour and they ride off into the sunset to have equally beautiful children and live happily ever after – dear God, Disney has a lot to answer for.

I’m not sure which is worse, the horror story that leaves them with nightmares or the insane stereotypes offered up by Sleeping Beauty and the like that may very well scar the inner-most workings of a young developing consciousness.
Without getting too bogged down in the psychology of it all and before we start deconstructing Cinderella and her “father issues”, the role of fairytales and storytelling is an opportunity to share a mutual experience with our children. To perhaps spark a discourse about the moral fabric of society and why beautiful girls with long golden hair should not be trapped in castles for eternity.

Cast member of The Queensland Theatre Company’s Grimm Tales, Scott Witt, has suggested our modern-day fairytales are sanitised versions of what were once originally graphic tales filled with death and despair, murder and mayhem.  “The concept of life and death was once very much a part of children’s lives, public hangings, executions, but these are now foreign to our children,” Witt explained.

With two young sons of his own, Witt said he had no problem taking his children to see the Grimm Brothers’ more graphic versions of the old classics.  “Children can work out a lot more than we think and theatre makes the story more accessible to children. These tales are deeper and reach a bit further than Shrek,” he said.

Stories have always allowed us to explore the extremes of human behaviour and to reflect on what constitutes an evil act and what motivates a hero.  Harnessing the imagination of a child through storytelling helps them generate a moral construct and in turn determine their own beliefs.

So I guess the moral to the story is – political correctness has no place in the world of make believe.
Maybe we shouldn’t be afraid to let our imaginations run wild.