Lunatics Radio Hour
The history of horror and the horror of history.
Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 76 - The Disturbing History of Fairy Tales: Part 2
Abby and Alan are joined by Jon Cook of Fadò Podcast to continue their conversation on the disturbing and brutal history of Fairy Tales. Some fairy tales are thousands of years old and by examining iterations throughout history, we get insight into each culture that retold them.
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[inaudible]
Speaker 2:Hello everyone. And welcome back to the lunatics radio hour podcast. I'm Abby Brinker here with Alan COO Dan. Hello, and we are joined again by John Cook from Fidel. Hi John. Hi, how are you doing good. And so, thanks again for coming back. If you guys haven't listened to the first part of the disturbing history of fairytales, please go back and do that. This is a continuation of that conversation, and I think we're going to kick things off with discussing the especially brutal fairytales beyond just being general history enthusiasts, right? Where we really see the overlap between the subject. Matter of our podcast, the history of horror and fairytales is how brutal and disturbing some of the origins are. So we're going to talk now about some, some, and not all. Again, this is, it's so hard to do a comprehensive look at this because it's just, it's huge, but these are some of the especially brutal fairytales that I found, especially interesting. And I'm going to do a lot of recapping here, so don't worry if you're not familiar. It is commonly known how brutal classic fairytales are before they were adopted for a more modern audience. Now we're going to get into the gritty, disturbing and shocking versions of these folklore tales, starting with the classic Honzel is it Hansel and Gretel, Hansel and Gretel? It probably
Speaker 3:Is closer to Hansel, but most people say Hansel. I
Speaker 4:Just, yeah, just, if you go hon Zelle, you should be safe.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Starting do Hayneedle Painesville, starting with the classic Hansel and Gretel side note. Uh, this is just a funny, personal story. So my sister and I, when we were young adopted twin cats from the cat shelter, you know, it was kind of like a, you got to take both of them because their actual biological brother and sister, they came with the name Hansel and Gretel. And my sister was, did not want to retain the names. She, we, she insisted that we change them because she found, she knew the story of Hansel and Gretel and thought that it was so disturbing. So we renamed them. But it's so funny that my sister who was, I don't know, like 10 at the time had known this story and had been so affected by it that she was like, we're absolutely not calling the cats. Hansel and Gretel, classically trained from an early age. Yes, exactly. So the story goes a woodcutter. Second wife decides she no longer wishes to be a stepmom.
Speaker 4:Is that, what is that important? That it was her second.
Speaker 2:Second. Yeah, because it's the kids step mother. It's not their biological mother. It's the idea again, of an evil set mother we've see in all these. Yeah. So she takes the children, Hansel and Gretel, which are again, her stepchildren into the forest and leaves them on their own. She claims that the children eat too much and that it's the only way for her and her husband to survive. Right? Because times are tough and there's not enough food. And though the woodcutter is not on board with this plan, she sort of does it anyway and kind of convinces him and pacifies it for now. The clever children had actually overheard the conversation though, leading up to this Hansel, sneaks out into the night and collects white pebbles. And the next day, when they're taken out into the woods, he's able to leave the stones leading the path so that they can find their way back home. We know we're all pretty familiar with that. The stepmother is filled with rage as the kids returned because food again becomes scarce. And so this time she locks the children in the night before so that they can not go out and gather pebbles. So this time around Hansel leaves a trail of bread, clump breadcrumbs. So this time he leaves a trail of breadcrumbs. So this time, so this time he leaves a trail of breadcrumbs as they are taken out into the woods for a second time, the birds though heavy in their clues. And they are unable to find their way home. After a few days, the kids are starving and they encounter a gingerbread cottage in the woods and they start eating it. You know what luck? However, there's an evil witch who lives there and she lores the children inside and she promised them bed and food, but actually she intends to eat them because she's a cannibalistic, evil witch. You
Speaker 5:Can have bed and food. Is she human?
Speaker 2:She, I mean, I don't. Who can, I mean, there's different versions. You know, I know that I, yeah,
Speaker 3:I thought about this. Like, is she human? Like, is it cannibalism? If she's not human and how human is she? And I, this is I've thought of this before, too. Like,
Speaker 5:What is this? Like,
Speaker 3:Why are there so many monsters eating children?
Speaker 2:There's, there's one version that we're, it's actually portrayed as the devil, but I would make the case that if she's a witch, which is our human, they're just like supernatural humans. I would agree with you there. I think. Yeah. Um, so once again, Hansel demonstrates his cleverness. He is being kept inside a metal cage at the witches at the witches cabin and the witches feeding him in order to fatten him up right before putting him in a stew or whatever, a meat pie, a meat pie, Gretel, uh, has been enslaved. And she's still starving, but she's only being fed crab shells, which I thought was a grotesque detail to include. You just don't like crab. I don't like crab. And I don't like shells. I love crab. I think that's the norm. The, which tries to check Hansel's finger to see if he's fat enough. But he instead offers a finger bone. He finds in the cage. So he buys himself a few more weeks. Right. Cause he it's a bone. She's like, oh man, she just, she can't see really well. She's like, oh yeah, you're not ready. What a ploy. So finally the witch kind of catches on. Right. It's been too long. She's enraged. And she declares that no matter what, she will eat him, it is just out of spite. Yeah. She's extra hungry. She's hungry. So she decides she's going to eat cradle too. Right. Cause like screw these kids. Yeah. So she asked the girl to open the oven door and to check, to see if the fire is hot enough and Gretel claims. She doesn't understand what the, which demonstrates. So she, she, she's kind of like, I don't get it. Can you show me how? And the witch finally is like, oh my God. Yeah. This is how, and so in the, which opens the oven door, Gretel shoves her inside, boom. She pulled the bugs bunny. I was just going to say, we literally watched a bugs bunny this morning with the same exact plot. And so the children discover after the witch dies, the children discover some treasure in her house. And as they return home, they find that their stepmother had passed away and that her father had been grieving their loss. So it's a joyous reunion, right? Oh, worked out the father all along, had regretted this whole thing. And, and you know, they come home with a bunch of money and the stepmother has gone. Yeah. It all worked out. So the fairy tale is brutal and its core is about cannibalism. Again, it, depending on if you call Humana, which is as human and an earlier version called the lost children, the, which is actually the devil who wants to bleed the children on a saw horse
Speaker 5:Bleed. That's pleasant. Yeah. Bleed
Speaker 4:Children on a saw horse. Yes. Hell yeah. It's great. Let's just hang them over it. Yeah. Yup. Yup. Okay.
Speaker 2:The moral here is an interesting one. The tale demonizes all the adult female characters, the stepmother and the witch, and also celebrates the maternal home quoting from a reputable source. Wikipedia zips also argues that the importance of the fairytale and the European oral and literary tradition may be explained by the theme of child abandonment and abuse due to famines and lack of birth control. It was common in medieval Europe to abandon unwanted children in front of churches or in the forest. The death of the mother during childbirth sometimes led to tensions after remarriage and zips poses, that it may have played a role in the emergence of the motif of the hostile stepmother. It kind of changes the brutalness. When you think about which we could obviously pick up on the context clues of famine and you know, overpopulation kids. We know that kids had a super high death rate in medieval Europe, especially when Pete was food is so scarce. So it doesn't like, you know, I don't think like forgive some of it, but it does help you contextualize it and understand it a little bit more from the society that it came from.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's what comes to mind for me because, um, in that period of time, like, you know, a lot of women died in childbirth that ha that happened. It was a thing that happened. So, okay. Here's, here's a bit of a personal context, which is where I kind of where I approached this from. Cause I w so when I was a kid, my, uh, my parents were divorced and my mother left when I was maybe six. And then at the age of nine, I got a step-mother and a stepsister. Now things were, things went pretty well for us. Like we ha I've got a great family. Like initially, I mean, I claimed my sister as a sister, like, you know, it's fine. Everything worked out really well, but even we had that moment of adjustment where like learning to families, learning to live together and that kind of thing. But if you compound that with actual famine and the idea that, um, inheritances are super important at the time, you know, you know, the family wealth would travel with so-and-so, but, but the idea of someone coming in who gets the heart of the person who's in charge of that, it's easy to demonize them. Um, and I'm not. And again, like, just like you said, I don't think that's right. I don't think we should say, oh, well of course, that's fine, man. But it does show us contextually what, where they were coming from and why it was such a big deal. I don't know. I read, I did one. Um, I read a story on the show photo and audio adventure into fantasy folklore and fairytales. I did one called little thumb, which is, um, related. And, and it, it, it, I believe it's even the same RN Thompson number. It it's, it's in there, but it's about seven brothers that get abandoned in the woods. It's the same story, but seven brothers and instead of a witch, it's an ogre and a, and the ogres wife. And interestingly enough, another thing that pops up, which I have yet to really figure out, um, the ogres wife, whenever there's an ogre and his wife, the owner, his wife, is Tim typically sympathetic toward the protagonist and hides them in some way or helps them in some way. And I can't figure that out either. I'm not sure how, because that doesn't really fit, uh, with, with, uh, you know, all, you know, like you said, most of the women are not hero figures. They are obstacles at best, you know? Um, so I'm not, I haven't figured that out either, but it it's interesting. And again, it's interesting that there are so many monsters in the woods trying to eat children. I don't know. That seems to be everywhere.
Speaker 4:Do two things. One, the ogre with the sympathetic wife, uh, is also a, uh, a bit of a common trope in north Smith because, you know, you go and, uh, they're on their adventure into the realm of the giants. And it's like, oh, well, if you, if you do this, when my husband is home, he's going to do this. But if I give you the secret help and you hide in this stew, you'll be fine. Um, yeah. And so, you know, that, that happens on a, of a few different occasions. Also. I can't remember what we were watching or reading or what it was, but it was about this society that was obviously quite destitute. And as they had children that they couldn't feed, there was this fake promise land off in the woods that they would just send their kids deep down inside. They knew that they were probably just starving their children. Yeah. But it was when it's a choice between you, they starve at home or there's this mythical place where they might just make it, that's what they were telling themselves. Right. Does that sound familiar at all to you?
Speaker 2:No. Okay. But you watch a lot of stuff. Thank you. I do watch a lot of
Speaker 3:Stuff. Can you say, I say that is, it sounds familiar, but not that particular story. It sounds familiar because I think there was a star Trek episode like that for that was that it might've, it might've been an original series episode or maybe next gen, but a story where they were being told that this is the place you go. And it's a, it's a promised land. And they stepped through a portal and it was just nowhere or something like that. I
Speaker 4:Oh my God. It was a, it was a Voyager episode.
Speaker 3:Maybe it was, you follow me. Right. Like, that's
Speaker 6:The thing was, that's so funny.
Speaker 2:That's why I have no idea.
Speaker 3:Are we going to talk about star Trek for an hour? Now
Speaker 2:You Bob and Alan should start a star Trek podcast.
Speaker 4:It would be a betrayal to Bob Dawn. Absolutely big star Trek conversation without him.
Speaker 2:We can talk on that to my friends. He's probably,
Speaker 4:If he's listening to this, he's just going to be screaming. It wasn't, he's screaming the episode number. Yeah. We'll get a text
Speaker 3:A minutes after like, we'll get a 10.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So another classically disturbing fairytale is Hans Christian. Anderson's the little mermaid, which I'm not going to summarize because it's actually a fairly long fairytale, but I would encourage everybody to go onto project Gutenberg and look it up because it really is, uh, interesting in that 90% of it, or maybe 80% of it is exactly what happens in the Disney version and then eight, and then 20% of it is like wildly disturbing.
Speaker 4:I would like to say one thing about the wildly disturbing aspect, just because I saw a very funny little mermaid meme the other day, about how you have Ariel in the ocean, right around all of her beautiful talking fish creatures. Yeah. Right. And then she's like, oh, I need some clothing. So she just takes a clam. That's like smiling, all happy, rips it open, which is basically ripping off his jaw and then just it on herself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Also, um, on a sad note, actually a little mermaid, I heard the other day that the voice actor who voiced Sebastian passed away. Oh no, very recently. Yeah. The recap of I'll just do this off the cuff. The recap of the original version of the little mermaid is very similar. Right? The mermaid, uh, culture is that once you reach a certain age, you can go to the surface one day, a year, she goes up kind of on a trial run, uh, sees the, the ship, sees the sailor, the PR or the prince on the boat. Right. Cut up on mermaid culture, mermaid culture. Yeah. You know, she sees the sailor on the boat, falls in love, storm hits. She rests, you know, he falls off the boat. She rescues him, brings them to the shore and brings him, I think, to like a church potentially, or, or like a priory or, and, you know, he starts to get taken care of. And he doesn't ever know that she saved his life. He just thinks that he is washed a shore. She falls in love with him though. Right. And so she starts trying to figure out what she can do to, to become human, to get to short. So she can have a life with him, the sea, which, uh, Ursula. I don't, I don't think she's called her, slept with the sea, which says, okay, if you trade me your voice, not just can you have legs, but you can have legs, but every time you step on those legs, it will hurt like standing on a thousand swords. So she's like, okay, I'm in why she's so in love. Right. It takes the deal. She goes up, tries to get the prince to fall in love with her. But he doesn't, he's in love with someone else. She dances for him, this whole thing on her feet. And it's like, excruciating. He still doesn't love her. And at the end, you know, I'm leaving out. He still doesn't love her. No, he's in love with somebody else. And I think he, I think she has to get him to marry her or something. And he marries, he married somebody else. And so at the end, she turns into seafoam. Like the end of the deal is like, if he can't get it to work out, you're going to turn into seafoam.
Speaker 4:I mean, turning into seafoam could be a ridiculously long and brutally painful process. It could be
Speaker 3:Well glossed over in the tail. But, uh, like this was, you know, the crazy thing is I've done this, I've read this one as well. This one's, this one is one that, uh, that is, is, uh, it's one. I forget which episode was in season one. So she turns into seafoam, but then she she's like welcomed into with like the air spirits or something
Speaker 6:Like that. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And
Speaker 3:They tell her that, uh, you know, she can in fact attain a human soul still, but she's going to have to, there's a whole bit about, it's a big moral at the end. It basically, it is a warning to children to be good because if you're not, then the little mermaid is going to be seafoam forever and ever, and it'll be your
Speaker 5:Fault. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:One quote about it. I looked at, so I looked it up because, uh, I was, uh, I remembered this. It sparked my memory of the episode. I looked it up. It's the author PL Travers who wrote Mary Poppins, a contemporary of Hans Christian Anderson. She says this final message is more frightening than any other presented in the tale. The story descends into the Victorian moral tales written for children to scare them into good behavior Anderson. This is blackmail. Yes. Yeah, exactly. But, uh, yeah, so he was fond of morals and some were not, uh, yeah, that's
Speaker 2:Fair. So he published that story in 1837 in Denmark. The, but the interesting thing is that the story is shockingly similar to Romeo and Juliet. And what I didn't include is that actually the little mermaid, uh, ends up killing herself and that's kind of how she comes about to, to the ending. So that is the part, I think that's kind of the shocking, besides dancing on a thousand knives, you know, these kinds of visuals, she ends up sacrificing herself in a very Romeo and Juliette esque way,
Speaker 4:Which came, I assume a little mermaid came first.
Speaker 3:No Romeo and Juliet was 16 hundreds. I think. Holy cow,
Speaker 2:Holy cow. I really had my timetable confused there puzzle, which we're just going to touch on really briefly is also of course shocking. So Rapunzel is exiled, she's pregnant and alone. And the prince is blinded after falling from the tower into the thorny brambles. So it's just like these things that, you know, are so specific, you know, it's not just like, oh, the prince was mine. It's like, oh, he fell off of this tower into thorny brambles, which it's like blinded his eyes. You know? Like how, why, why that way? So are you okay? Don't worry. I landed on my eyeballs walking off. It's fine. Yeah, exactly. So pro's version of sleeping. Beauty includes cannibalism and rape with a prince assaulting, sleeping beauty while she's asleep. And she wakes up nine months later. So it's sleeping beauty and it's, this farm is different where, uh, than what you might be aware of with the Disney version, where she gets like a flax seed stuck under her nail instead of pricking her finger. That's the thing that makes her faint.
Speaker 4:She just gets so off at the flaxseed under all that. She,
Speaker 3:That is pretty annoying. I think I'd pass out too. Yeah. Yeah. That's
Speaker 2:Almost like a torture device. So she passes out for indefinitely and the prince comes along. He sees her passed out and he's like, ah, he rapes her. She becomes pregnant. Nine months later, she gives birth to twins
Speaker 4:Or is she alive or away? She's she's
Speaker 3:Right. Yeah. One of
Speaker 2:The twin, lone of the baby sucks out the flak seat. She wakes up. Oh. After childbirth went. Yeah. Yeah. And she wakes up and she finds that the prince is already married. Oh
Speaker 4:Yeah. This guy.
Speaker 2:So when his wife finds out about sleeping beauty, she tries to kill and the children, she tries to kill an eat the babies. What? Yes. So then the prince who is now the king tries to burn, he burns his wife alive so that he can be with sleeping beauty, who he assaulted and her and the children. So there's a lot to unpack with sleeping. Can we
Speaker 4:Just reflect for a moment how different society would be if we all just grew up with Sesame street
Speaker 2:And we all just grew up with Jollyville. There you go. All right. You guys want some pizza rice. Yeah. The plots of these would be quite different. We did. We grew up with Walt Disney though. Right? We grew up with these stories in a very different way. You write these stories. No, no, I didn't. What does that mean?
Speaker 4:It means the people that did write these horrifically brutal stories did not have big bird telling them what was right and wrong.
Speaker 2:That's right. So anyway, yeah. Sleeping beauty is layer upon layer of the fact that she's like, well, he's the father of my kid. So even though he assaulted me to get here, like yeah, let's, let's get married. And the fact that the King's like, oh, I married someone else, but I'm going to burn her alive because I don't want to be married to her anymore. And oh, and the fact that his new wife is like, oh, my husband happens to have kids from another relationship or whatever, you know, not relationship another woman. I'm going to boil the babies and eat them. Not even just, I'm going to get rid of the babies. I'm going to leave them in the woods. I'm going to consume these children. What is going on with sleeping beauty, you know,
Speaker 3:Again, and see again, I think, I feel like I just must be missing something contextually I have to be right. Because it's makes no sense. It's all of it is just such a mess of messes. And I just, I thought the version I read is sort of related to it, but it's like, um, you know, there's a sort of attacked on version at the part at the end where the, the, I, gosh, what is it? There's always the prince. His mother is an ogress and uh, she tries to eat the children and Cinderella or Cinderella sleeping, beauty protects them. And, uh, his Cinderella flies in, out of nowhere. Um, but th yeah, and it's, I think it's a little more coherent than this version, but goodness, like, I, I feel like, I feel like it's somebody taking a bunch of parts of the tale and writing it down badly. Can I, can I say that? I feel like I could write it better. I feel is that, is that he brushes?
Speaker 2:I think you guys, I think you could, and you should, maybe I should. I don't know. I would love to hear Frodo episode where it's John's versions of,
Speaker 3:I suppose if the, if the Grimm's and Perot can do it.
Speaker 6:So can I literally the whole
Speaker 2:Nature of fairytale history is just taking it and making it yours. So you might as well, I'm pretty sure it's
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think it's part of the job. I think you have to do it exactly
Speaker 4:Wise. You're going to end up with like[inaudible], which was a great movie, but clearly glanced over some parts that were pretty crucial. The story. Well, you
Speaker 3:Know, story is secondary these days, I guess. So
Speaker 2:Special effects are king. Alright, nice wings. Finally, snow white, which includes similar themes, uh, with the addition though, of necrophilia. So in early versions, in early versions, the queen sends the Huntsman out to a tournament, snow White's liver and lungs so that she can eat her organs. And when the queen attends the wedding of finally snow white and the prince, she is forced into iron shoes that have been in the fire and dances around in them until she dies. Who does the evil she's forced into the shoes is so she, she boldly shows up at this wedding somehow, which like, after like demanding the organs of this woman, she boldly shows up at the wedding and they're like, no, like you can't be here. So they put her in these shoes that, that the iron shoes, I just happened to have a head roasting in the fire. They clamp her in and she dances around until she dies the way I, the
Speaker 3:Way I read it, it seemed to me like she almost tricked the, the, the queen into showing up at the it's almost like, it's almost like they had this huge announcement, snow white is getting married and she's like, what? Snow white. I killed snow white. So she shows up at the wedding and then they force her into these iron shoes and make her dance until she dies. Yeah. Got her. I looked, it's kind of a, that's quite, I read it, but like also, I, I looked far enough into it to determine that yes, iron shoes, hot shoes in fact were I think, or hot boots, I think is what, anyway, those were a thing, but that's, as far as it went, I'm like, I don't,
Speaker 5:That's fine. But then yeah.
Speaker 3:That's the weirdest, first dance at a wedding you've ever seen.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's really like medieval torture moment. It's very metal.
Speaker 6:It's very rock and roll.
Speaker 4:So before we move on to the next section, I'm just curious. Do either of you have a favorite fairytale
Speaker 2:Before this, like my exposure would be minimal, like, you know, like Disney versions and some, you know, you have a book of fairytales that we sometimes read from, uh, but not like, you know, a super academic understanding. So I would say from that perspective, the little mermaid was always a really fun story. I love, I love mermaid culture, if you will, on the other hand, now that I've dove more deeply into some of this, there's some very fascinating. And in the story episode, we're going to talk a little bit more too about some like exceptionally dark and twisted fairytales that we're, we're not talking about the history of, but, and there's one specifically called the traveling companion, which is a Hans Christian Anderson fairytale. And it's, it's, I'll just say it starts it with like grave in a graveyard and it ends with a murderous female protagonists. So that one is pretty, you know, so, so it's just kind of opened my eyes, I guess, to there there's all, there's a whole world of fairytales out there that we don't know. We don't necessarily, maybe aren't as familiar with, what about you, John?
Speaker 3:Probably one of my favorites is the pied Piper of Hamlin. Ah, yeah. And, and I like the pied Piper because well, for one thing, being a musical person and in fact, a Whistler, I like, I, I, you know, I play, yeah. Uh, well, not, not a Whistler. Um, but I ha I, I play penny whistle, like the Irish folk whistle and saxophone, but I've always been interested in that sort of instrument and things like that, but that's not really the important part, but it attracted me because of that. But I I've always loved the pied Piper because I don't know what it is about the PA first of all, it has some very solid, uh, historical roots and, and some really interesting facts about, you know, the history of the area and the, and the settling of the area and the way that people have sort of lived and moved that, and that could be a whole big conversation, honestly, but the pied Piper, I love because it's, uh, the, the, the consequences of taking advantage of other people is, you know, it can be very dire that the, the idea that you, you need to, um, make, make sure and pay your debts, make sure and honor the commitments you have on, or the agreements you have or whatever they can really come back and bite you. I just, I love the mystique of the pied Piper of Hamlin and the fact that it's got this historical thing, this art historical component to it, and like Hamilton is a real town in Germany. And if you go there, they have an old church that had a glass. They have, you know, Manya, they have mem Memorial memorialize this event. Um, there are, there are real records that show, uh, a sort of, um, a sort of Exodus of people like the idea that something happened. It obviously, it probably wasn't exactly what the story is, but the legend is there, like the real, almost like Roanoke, right. Kind of, oh my gosh, kind of, that's a pretty good comparison because the idea that of the pied Piper is kind of magical in nature, but there's, there's evidence that possibly a group of children left that village and resettled somewhere, possibly across a border in another country. And of course, this is all taken with a grain of salt because it was several hundred years ago, but the town of Hamlin still memorializes and honors that event as an actual historical event and not a, not a, not a made up story.
Speaker 4:I'm also just trying to think of another story that has your main protagonist as a semblance of an anti hero,
Speaker 3:Right? Yeah. Yeah. The, the antihero he's definitely is an anti-hero. I mean, this is cool. Yeah. The poem, uh, which I can't, I feel like I'm just on here. Like I did actually read the poem on my podcast, but like, it's funny. I keep being like, you know, you could go anyway, but it's over there in the, it's actually a poem. The version I read is the, uh, Robert Browning poem from 1842. Okay. And, uh, so yeah, check that out. It's a, it's a, it's a neat poem, but sort of encapsulates the whole story. But yeah. So in short, I think the pied Piper is one of my favorites just because of the historical context and the musical component. And the, and I think Alan you're right. The antihero is interesting. Everyone loves a good antihero. Everyone loves a good antihero. I mean, you pretty much, you put the pied Piper in a Deadpool costume and it's the same thing. Yeah. I
Speaker 4:Mean, I would love to watch a pied Piper remake, starring Deadpool. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:There's a, there's a modern film that it's not I'm, I'm trying to look it up and I can't find it. I'll try to find it before the episode comes out, but there's a modern film and it probably from like the early two thousands, maybe at the earliest, but it's, it's, um, it's fascinating now kind of having talked about fairytales this way, because there's like a pied Piper theme to it and it kind of has the same, you know, thing, but it's like a school bus of children, something happens and there's all these like crazy brutal themes in it, like incest among other things, which at the time when I was watching in college, I was just like, oh, this is one of those like annoying art films that like my professor, you know, but now I'm like, oh, I kind of get maybe what they were trying to do with it, because it's kind of like this fairy tale motif. Right. And then maybe they were trying to like bring some of that into it, but I'll try to look it up and, um, leave a link to it below because it wasn't a bad movie, but, but it's a very fascinating, like pied Piper in a total modern society, you know,
Speaker 4:In modern re in modern reconstructions of tales are usually interesting. Yeah, for sure. Uh, you
Speaker 3:Mentioned like art films, but have you guys seen, there's a, there's a movie. I, I looked it up and I, I hope this is the right one, but it's a movie called spoiled milk. No, it's a, it's a, it's a short film. Not very long at all, but it's, it's, I wish I took a, a sound engineering seminar. It wasn't a class, so to speak, but they showed it as a, to, to highlight the proper use and good use of a suspense like using sound. Right. That's cool. And so it's a, it's a little short film called spoiled milk. I, if I can find, I'm just going to link it to you because, because you got to see it it's and it's one of my favorite little artsy films. And so
Speaker 2:Yes, I would, we would love to see that. Yeah, please send it sounds cool. Okay. So now here we are at the infamous pop culture section, Merry tales in the modern world. You ready? She's smiling. So big. I'm ready. I'm ready. There are so many movies based on fairytales that it would be overwhelming to list them. All right. Now there are, however, some of the darker side that I'm going to start kick things off with, right? The first is Edward Scissorhands from 1990, which is based both on beauty and the beast and Frankenstein
Speaker 3:Edward Scissorhands. Yeah. It was my introduction to Tim Burton. Yes. So good. Right. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2:This is the first film. I think I kind of recognize, oh, this is to say another like annoying film school where like, this is an art tour. Like if you look at like all of the houses in this neighborhood, like everything is so stylized and Tim, Brittany, and it's such a specific, like, not like uncanny valley world that he creates where you're like, this is a whole experience. This is not, you know, this is not a normal movie.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I feel like every movie that Tim Burton shoots is in that little village in beetle juice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We also have Aronofsky is black Swan from 2010, which is based on the Swan lake ballet, which was inspired by Russian folklore. It's the story of a dad who was a princess that was turned into a Swan by an evil sorcerer. And then these are very rock and roll B horror movies that I have not seen, but, um, hit me, but have a lot of, of, uh, buzz on.
Speaker 3:I'm so glad that you just said that. Cause I was like, they've seen all these, I am so unprepared for the discussion. I'm glad you haven't seen them either. I'm going to have to yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's some that I definitely want to watch. The hollow is a horror movie from 2015 and you'll see that like most of these are from 2015, which is interesting, based on Irish fairytales because you Googled
Speaker 4:Fairytale, horror movies, 2015.
Speaker 2:No, I didn't. The lure, which I really want to watch is a horror musical from 2015. That is based on the little mermaid. So that's at the top of my list. That's cool. Yeah. A horror musical, which a, I love little mermaid B. I love I'm there. And then of course, of course we have Pan's labyrinth, which is not an unknown film by Guillermo Del Toro who creates his own fairytale. Right. So that is kind of like seen as he took fairy tale storytelling, but made his own kind of folklore out of it. Right.
Speaker 4:Cause there's a whole bunch of little fables throughout that movie. Exactly.
Speaker 3:And that, by the way that that movie is a practical effect, masterpiece boy, I love Pan's labyrinth.
Speaker 4:And I'm just so thankful that it was so successful because that just like let every studio let Guillermo Del Toro after that, just do whatever he wants.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I love the, uh, so the two, two, there's two things I discovered Doug Jones in that movie. That's the first time I ever realized. And I know he was, I know he was in Hocus Pocus, but I didn't know who he was then. Uh, but like I, I discovered him as a, as a performer and, and gosh, has it come in handy relating to him using in true dungeon when we need like to coax out a performance from an NPC, like expression and stuff under, under makeup is man. He's good. And that monster w the, the guy with the eyes at the table legitimately horrifying, and one of the Mo it's just a modern masterpiece of scary monsters. I
Speaker 2:Know. Why don't you tell us really quickly about true dungeon?
Speaker 3:Sure. I'd be glad to tell you about true dungeon. Yeah, it's a true dungeon is a thing that I stumbled into about 2009 and have been involved in ever since, but it, it it's born out of a, uh, first of all, I'm a huge Dungeons and dragons person I've played since I was nine. You know, I've been doing that forever and ever and ever. And, uh, I discovered this, this, uh, with my friends and I, we sort of discovered this live action Dungeons and dragons experience that, uh, that are now friends. You know, we became friends with the, with creators and owners, but it's essentially they go to conventions. It's a one to one scale Dungeons and dragons game more or less. Um, I tell people it's not a Lark because, you know, LARPing has this sort of you're in character and you, you have, you know, and there's very strict rules on that, but it's more, it's, it's more like Dungeons and dragons. You have a character that you, you, you do, but you don't have to embody the character, but it's, it's about, it's about one-third haunted house, walk through haunted house about one-third, uh, Dungeons and dragons, and about one third escape room,
Speaker 2:Which is I think right up our alley.
Speaker 3:Um, I, I definitely think you guys should try it and, you know, as much as we've talked about it, which, you know, not much at this point, but if, if you're into that sort of thing, I think it would be right up your alley. I think you'd
Speaker 2:Really need. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean, I just love D and D I love games. Abby is a huge, LARPer,
Speaker 6:It's huge. LARPer, she's a furry as well. It's,
Speaker 3:You know, it happens at gaming conventions. And so it, it goes on and there's a huge ballroom full of true dungeon, but then there's usually like a gaming hall and all sorts of things. And now that things are sort of rolling back into normal space, uh, I think you'll start to see it again, but our first one, our first one is coming back up in, uh, November. It said Madison, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2:Nice. Yeah. And that leads us perfectly back into our list of films because the next movie is November, which is a, which is a fantasy horror from 2017, based on an Estonian fairytale. This film actually looks really trippy. And it's also on my list because it's, it's like black and white and very stylized. There's like characters with glowing eyes. Uh, I'm not sure if any, but if you, either of you have seen it, but it looks very bizarre. What was it November? Yeah, that was that related to the hunt for red October, no tale of tales from 2015, which has an alias cast, including like John C. Riley tale of two sisters from 20 oh geez. A tale of two sisters from 2003, which we've seen, which is based on Korean folklore. That's a messed up one. That's a messed up one, just like a fairytale, right? Snow white, a tale of terror from 1997, starring Sigourney Weaver and freeway from 1996, based on red riding hood, starting Reese Witherspoon and keep her Sutherland free Willy free Willy king, outside of horror. Of course we have all of the Disney films. We have so many modern live action, remakes of Cinderella, beauty, and the beast red riding hood. There's a movie called the brothers Grimm from 2005. Just to name a few, but are there any others that you guys, you guys love? No,
Speaker 3:I know that that's, that is an entire list of movies that I like. The rest are terrible. No, I, I have, uh, I, I struggled to try and think of like specific ones that really stuck out, but like, if we're T you know, I, I couldn't come up with much. Most of the stories I like are legendary, legendary tales, not so much down to a fairytale level, but I know, I know there was, for a while, there, there was a huge influx of fairytale movies. Um, and when you had, like, I don't know, there weren't there like three or four, like snow, white movies there within a span of like a week. I, I feel like, and Chris Hemsworth was in one or something and had an act. He was the Huntsman or
Speaker 6:Whatever. And those were like the Hollywood
Speaker 2:Ones. Those were the Hollywood ones, but there was also like an IFC. I was interning at IFC at the time and they put out a series of riding hood films, like however many years ago, 10 years ago now, you know, more indie version. Sure.
Speaker 3:I'll bring up, I'll bring up this one thing. This one series that, that kind of was instrumental in making me interested in fairytales in general, but, but also just fantasy and things of that nature. Um, I bring it up occasionally on the show, but it's, um, there was, uh, a series that Shelley Duvall produced when I in the, in the, yeah. Yeah, she's great. And, and I, and previously I had known her from the show, or I knew her from the shining after I knew her from theater. So she did fairytale theater, uh, which was theatrical. It was, it was recorded theatrical versions basically of these fairytales. And it was like Shelley Duvall, but with all of her friends. And so it was like all these other popular actors and performers and musicians at the time, but they show up, I think Jagger was the, that was the big, bad Wolf. And he was also, he was also the emperor in, uh, the Nightingale. Uh, but like they showed up in, you know, it was whoever she could get to do it. It looks like these, these adaptations where they, they didn't really put a lot of the gritty details in, but the world that they created was this sort of very dark kind of theatrical stage version of, and it's real magical. I, I, I encourage you to check those out. I think they're even available online. I don't remember where, uh, but Shelly Duvall's fairytale theater. Amazing. Yeah. There's a bunch of them and, oh, and one of my favorites Pinocchio, right. Paul Reubens, AKA Pee-wee Herman placement Occhio and he pretty much is just, is just Peewee Pinocchio, like seriously. Anyway, uh, yeah, go ahead and check those out though. I recommend those highly. Perfect.
Speaker 4:Do you want to talk about a modern retelling
Speaker 2:Or are you going to say Diablo I'll think of something else.
Speaker 4:If you want to talk about a modern, brutal iteration of fairytales, there's a wonderful character from a show that you and I have been watching called queen of fables from Harley Quinn, who has her magical storybook, and just pulls out the characters from these storybooks and six them on her enemies. Um, and it's not really clear just how brutal she can be, uh, until she's six, the big, bad Wolf on a family reunion. And it, he just like dismembers and dissembles like 40 people, 40 people. Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This version of Harley Quinn is I know there's, there's multiple, this like animated series is so good though. Like it's very funny. And despite this specific scene being intense it's overall, I recommend it 10 out of 10.
Speaker 4:I mean, she makes the three little pigs eat the bones. Oh, right there in front of the green bean casserole,
Speaker 2:Oral fairytales of storytelling have preserved histories and acted as snapshots into cultures for thousands of years. It's incredible that stories that originated over 6,000 years ago are still being retold and transformed for modern audiences to this day, examining how the morals within fairytales and folklore have changed over different periods of time gives us insight into the values of people throughout our history and not just the values, but also the cultural context, right? Like what was going on in this, in society, the famines, the, you know, all of these things that we talked about, humans have always told stories and the mediums may change. Right. But they remained just as important to our society today. If you think about, I keep thinking about like game of Thrones, you know, for example, if everybody in the Western world gathering on Sundays, we still are so obsessed with, with media and, and storytelling just in a new way in consuming podcasts and consuming shows and film and TV. And you know, it, back then, and 6,000 years ago, it was the form of oral stories being told by the campfire. And now it's in the form of, you know, consuming things digitally, but it's still kind of the core basis of society. You don't
Speaker 4:See the brothers Grimm getting punched in the face for season eight.
Speaker 2:No, you don't. Thank you so much, John, for being here. It was such an honor. I'm so glad that we finally got to do this. We've been talking about it for so long. You know, so much about all of these things and we're big fans of Fido. I really do love kind of work I'm working through right now, your backlog, and it's been so fun to discover so, so much that way. So thank you for being here and, uh, tell everyone where they can find Fidel and where they can find you online.
Speaker 3:First of all, thank you. That's very nice of you to say I'm, I'm happy that even if it's just the two of you listening to my show, I, that makes me happy. Um, but, uh, so I can be found on, let's see, I have a page on, on Facebook and Instagram at Fidel podcast. You can find me that way. Look for the green dragon. Um, yeah. Uh, because if first of all, if you look up F a D O you're going to find a lot of Portuguese folk music. So it's not that it's not that, um, yeah, I'm on Facebook and Instagram. Uh, you can find the show on pretty much any podcast platform, apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon, everywhere. And you can also go to Fido podcasts.com. I do have a website that'll point you toward of, toward, uh, the show or toward my little merchandise shop that I have. You can buy photo the shirt, uh, or Fidel, the flame thrower. It's a great shirt. And I have recently, and I'll get these out there eventually, but I've got a local shop making for dark shirts
Speaker 6:For my, yeah, my,
Speaker 3:The, the illustrious Michael[inaudible] named, named my, uh, named my podcast or named my fan base, my FA my fan base, uh, the dorks. And so I'm, I'm working on that, but, uh, ultimately, yeah, I'm, I'm pretty easy to find, look for photo, look for the green dragon that does it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And if you also, if you like the show, John also has a Patrion and you get all kinds of you get beautiful calligraphy, welcome letter, you get stickers and early access to shows. So for$3,$3 a month, you can help support the show. So check out photo on Patrion as well. Yes.
Speaker 3:The rule of three, they are, they are an indispensable source of feedback and, and wonderful folks. And, um, there are a couple of exclusives on there too, that I haven't released, uh, you know, to anyone but them. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, it it's been, it's been fun doing all that. So I appreciate
Speaker 2:That. Yeah. And, uh, John also does live streams on YouTube. So follow photo on YouTube because, uh, it's fun. Even if you're not watching them live to catch up on, on them, which I have, I have been doing,
Speaker 3:I need to do more of them. I I've decided I need to do more frequently than once or twice a year. I think it would be fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think you did a great job with them. Thank
Speaker 3:You very much. My green screen worked. It was a miracle
Speaker 2:When technology works. Right. Thank you guys so much for listening and we will see you next time. Bye. Bye. See you later.
