Women's role in fairy tales Vs. Women in 2009

   Women's roles in the ancient time, used to be housewives and doing nothing but just taking care of their husbands and kids. The most original fairy tales we read in class been wrote long time before; few centuries earlier than today. The women descripted in the failry tales were all based on the role of housewives and they don't received much rights in their life. The women in the fairy tales also need to obey their husbands, and if they don't they will consider as not doing the wife's duty and will receive some kind punishment. The example that shows the women have to obey their husband in the fairy tale is the wives of Bluebeard. His women got punishment of death because they disobied Bluebeard, and their bodies were hung on the wall after they got chopped off.

  Another example in the fairy tales that used to descript the stereotype women in the old time is "Cinderella". Cinderella is the youngest lady in the house, and she deos everything that older people in the family asked her to do, included her step-mother and step-sisters. She can't do anything to save herself, but she can find a "Prince Charming" guy to help her out. Using man's power to rescue women is one of the stereotype example that using to represent the idea of man is the dominated in the society back to old time, and women can do nothing except wait for the men to help them.

  Is that kind phenomenon still happen in 2009? Probably not. Today's femelas were became more indepedent and they were equal to men's statues in today's society. A lot femelas in today's soceity were also doing the professional and public jobs, such as lawyer, doctor, and officer. The roles of women had totally been changed; from weak and waiting for men to save them in the old times, to today, females became strong, professional, well educated, and handling heavy duties. Women just became same as men in the year 2009, and they can do everything that men can do.

Red Riding Hood

  Recently, I found a video clip of Little Red Riding Hood from YouTube, this video version is most similar to the Grimm's version that we read for class, but there also are some differences.

 
  In the beginning of this video clip, the grandmother gave a red cap to a little girl, and then people started to call that little girl Red Riding Hood. In Grimm's version, it didn't mentioned where is that red cap came from. Another difference between these two versions is that , the wolf acts very silly and he is useless in the video clip; animals that smaller than himself are making fun on him, such as the squirrels were throwing things on him. The wolf in the video was also scared to the human; when a woodcutter yelled at him, he is not dare enough to say anything back to that woodcutter. In Grimm's version, the wolf is such a smart guy, and he doesn't scare to anything.

 
  The similarities between this video and Grimm's version of LRRD is not found until almost the end of the story. Almost toward the end of the video, the wolf ate LRRD and her grandmother sucessfully, so he took a nap after he ate them. Then there is a hunter walked by and he figured out that the wolf ate two people by hearing the sound he hearded that is calling from inside of wolf's stomach. The hunter cutted wolf's belly and saved two ladies. LRRD decided to put rocks into wolf's belly and she killed the wolf by drown him to death with the rocks that she putted into his stomach. All the events that happened toward the end of the video are exactly same as the end of the Grimm's version of "LRRD"; hunter saved the ladies, LRRD putted rocks into wolf's stomach, and wolf got drown to death with those rocks inside his belly.

Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYzCnQJOWWI

"Damsel in Distress" and "Prince Charming"

The idea of "Damsel in Distress" and "Prince Charming" are well connected with each other in either today's society or ancient days; because someone is a damsel in distress, it encourage her to find the prince charming person to rescue; or because some fail to find her right price charming person, it leads her into the damsel in distress position. In the fairy tale, Cinderalla was living as a maid in the family, and she does everything that her step mother and her sisters asked, and she received no respect and money for the works she done. Cinderella is living as a damsel in distress postion, therefore, she wants to find the "Prince Charming" person to rescue her from that kind taugh living environment.

The definition of the "Prince Charming" can be vary, and it is really depends on one's social statues and living position; such as, a rich woman's "Prince Charming" guy might be the one who will love her with all of his heart, and a poor woman's "Prince Charming" might be the one who will bring her wealth. The "Prince Charming" for Cinderella can be define as the guy who can give her more power and help her to receive more respects from the people around her.

The ideas of  "Prince Charming" and "Damsel in Distress" are the essential elements in the society. The "Damel in Distress" can be seen as the objective for us to find the things better, and "Prince Charming" can be as the goal for us to fight for, and they both providing us the energy to find the things that we want to get the most.

Disney and the society

Today, Disney became one of the biggest producer in the animation industry in the world, its products reached very wide and connected to all kids in the world. How Disney impacts today's kid: positive or negetive, is one of the issue that most parents and scholars disccuss about in today's society. Pocahontas is one of the most successful animate made by Disney, but there are some elements are very imappropriate to kids to watch and very offensive for some cultural group.; Such as, in this animate, people doing  "Wowowo" as to represent they got excited in Indian culture. This is learned by a lot kids, and they did it to the people who they think they are the Indians. This became very offensive when kids did "Wowowo" to "Indians". In the reality, the real Indian may not doing "Wowowo" in the live, but this wrong concept was created by Disney, and all today's kids believed "Wowowo" is part of Indian's life.

In Disney's animations, we don't often see the main characters in black (expect "Princess and Frog" that will come up by this December). The majority main characters in Disney's were white, but not other colors, so it became very doubtful for people to think Disney doing the races in its industry. In order to ripe off this "races" element, by the end of year 2009, Disney came up with an animation "Princess and Frog", which made the Princess black in this movie.

Some parents complained on Disney because it is so fascinate by today's kids. Kids want their parents to buy them the Disney's products, and parents think Disney led them to spend more money for unneccessary things.

Cinderella

Currently, I watched a video of "Cinderella" on YouTube, and this clip is a short version, the whole whole thing only lasted for 9 minutes. This clip version of "Cinderella" is very close to the Disney's version; in both versions, the carriage that carried Cinderella to the ball was transformed from pumpkin, and the horses that pulling the carriage is transformed from the rats, and the cat of Cinderella was transformed into the servant who driving the carriage. By the time Cinderella is about to transform back to the farmer girl role, she rushed out from the ball and left her glass shoe on the stairs, that is also exactly happened in Disney's version.

And comparing this version to Grimm's of "Cinderella", there are some differences, such as: in Grimm's version, there is no animal or any other creatures been transformed. In Grimm's version, after Cinderella left the ball, the prince chaseing for her in a very wild way, such as, the prince chopped down the tree because he saw Cinderella jumped into there. In this clip, the prince didn't did anything after she left; he just simply keep the shoe that Cinderella dropped on the stairs. In both Grimm's version and the clip that I found, the prince is using the shoe that he got from the Cinderella to testify to find Cinderella.  The ending for the both stories are also very similar; Cinderella married to the prince. But in this clip, two sisters didn't got punished, and in Grimm's version, two sisters of Cinderella  got their eyes picked out, and living in blind for the rest of their life.

Over all, this clip is very similar to Disney's versions, and it doesn't has much violence events happened during the story. Comparing to Grimm's version, this clip is better one for today's kids to watch.

Link to the clip:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgT7-W4tCqQ

Comic Vs. Article

When we reading through the articles, the better way to understand the story is to imagine the pictures of the events in the head while reading through it, and doing it can make the story become more sense. But sometime when we reading something that we think is less interesting, then we would probably not want to imagine the pictures in the process of the story, and by this way, the story will become less enjoyable. And in today society, we developed comic, which is depicted pictures for every scenary of the story, and along the pictures it has the written conversations attached to them.

Reading through this fables, I really enjoyed the process of story has the pictures along with it, the visual aids made the story became more colorful and smooth. And for some visual learners, the stories that has more images will help them to understand better. And also, reading the comic is faster than reading the stories that full with text; since the comic is majority covered with pictures, so we won't spend that much time to make our own pictures of the story in our head.

Even though the comic are easier to read and it can be done faster, but the text-type-story also has its strengths. Such as, to read the stories in the all text format, the reader has to convey the contents from the story to images, and combine all this images to make the process of an event.

So, the positive site of the comic is, it is easier to read and can be done faster. And the positive site for story in full text style will require the readers to come up the pictures of the story along when they are reading, and it will help them to explore reader's imagination ability. But with the culture changed, the new generation prefered on the easier way to read the stories, so, the comic became more popular for young kids in today's society.

The stories of swan

Related to "The Swan Maiden" that we had read, I found an another fairy tale that is also about the story of swans from YouTube, and I compared that clip wtih the version that we read for the class.

In the clip, the king married to a witch, and she transformed the princes to the whild swans after she got married to the king, and those wild swans flew away from the castle for escaping from that witch. So far, the difference between two version is: the swans were transformed from the male charaters in the clip, and the swans that we read in our book is transformed from the female characters. After those wild swans flew away from the castle, the only one sister of those princes who is remainded in the human form ran after them and looking for them and to get them back to the castle. At this point, there is a similarity between the two versions: in both version that is someone waiting for the swans to return. And in the both versions, the swans were able to transform back to the human form at sometime point; the females swans in the book we read were able to transform back to the human form after they took their swan feather dress off, and they can do it at anytime they desired , and the princes swans can only and have to return to the human form after the sunset.

The ending of the version that we read for the class is, the peasent told his wife (who is transformed from swan) how he had won her (which is, he stole her swan feather dress), and then as soon as she had her dress back from him, she flew away for forever. And the ending of the clip, that princess made soem dresses of with the special magical plant and wearing them to her brother and broke the curse, and that witch dead after her curse broke.