2014-10-13

GRIMm Fairy Tales: 2014 Edition

October is my favorite time for story telling. I enjoy the bounteous benefits Fall has on fables during the season of the witch. Something about the anticipation of the Day of the Dead, puts an especially sensational scary spin on spinning yarns. 

When we don’t take the happy ending element for granted, but instead sit at the edge of our tree stump and wonder just what will happen.
Will the hero prevail?
Will there be a happy ending?
Will some mysterious other-wordly force keep the princess from riding into the sunset?
When will the evil undead monster appear out of nowhere and donk up this boring love story already?!
More than princess-flavored fairy tales, the famous fables of such literary geniuses as the Brothers Grimm were always favorites of mine. So many writers have put their own spin on the classic tales. I feel they would be flattered by yet another homage. 
Plus even they can’t sue me from their graves, or can they? *cue terrifying music* 
Even if someone claims to own the rights to these ancient tales, the odds are ever in my favor that those people won’t come across this blog.


What if some of these tales took place today? They might look something like this:


Hansel & Gretel
A very different fairy tale in 2014. The woodcutter and his wife don’t actually have to set their children out into the woods, unable to feed them. Thanks to the advances in increasingly scary food additives, originating from people complaining to the government just how expensive it had become to feed their families, boxed and prepackaged food can be purchased at very low prices. They last and last forever thanks to the powers of the added space-aged polymers.
from healthywyse.org
The family stay together and daily enjoy low-priced meals of Ramen Soup, boxed macaroni and cheese, and even ‘real fruit’ juice, made affordable by adding High Fructose Corn Syrup. They never do get trapped by a witch in a candy house! Thanks to the chemicals in their food, it becomes far too painful for them to walk more than 20 feet from the safety of their house.


They live long-ish, happy lives with their parents thanks to their surgically-implanted diabetes pumps regulating their glucose, after their internal organs become unable.


If you listen carefully, when you eat a candy bar with nougat you can still hear the
*squish*
*squiish*
*squiiish*
echoing the sounds of their soft-shoed footsteps, waddling through the house to mount their rascal scooters in the garage. Which they ride to the end of the driveway to catch the bus to Wal-Mart.

Rapunzel
The beautiful Rapunzel in her high tower, never let any princes up to see her on a ladder made of her own hair because she has an empowering, stylish pixie hair cut. That no one ever sees. Because: Locked in a tower.
from fanpop.com
However, her tower did have internet access which she used to educate herself about everything from engineering to Magical Curses Law, which no one told her she couldn’t learn because she was all by herself in the tower. She learns to build herself an ACTUAL ladder, and climbs down.


She finds a good doctor to prescribe her something for social anxiety. Then Rapunzel runs a background check to locate the enchantress who originally sentenced her to the tower, ILLEGALLY, because of something her mother did before she was ever born, and brings litigation against her ending her reign of magically tyranny. She lives happily ever after, all by herself, because she knows first hand you don’t need a prince to be happy. You only need the internet.



Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
The story is similar, charming tale that it is, except in 2014 the Wicked Witch poisons Dopey instead of Snow White. Dopey was the only one who was home in the cottage, after being talked into the home care-taker role while Snow White worked in the diamond mine, earning just $.78 for every dollar the male dwarves are paid. Minus the cost of her more expensive work garb, which is priced higher for some reason because it’s for females.
This is her on Casual Friday. from dotshoplet.com
All goes well, until she hits the diamond mine glass ceiling. Then Snow White is forced to train a much younger, much more stupid recent college graduate who can do 40% of the same job she does, at just 20% of the pay. But the owners of the diamond mine “really appreciate everything she’s done for the company over the years.”


They live happily ever after. By 'they' I mean the owners of the diamond mine. As rich white men always do.

Disney's Frozen
I think this one would be almost exactly the same in 2014. Women are unfortunately often forced to "conceal don't feel, don't let it show" when they're struggling with something painful. They hide it as long as they can until they have to Let It Go, and explode causing an eternal winter, while singing a catchy, annoying pop song.

THE END

from picturequotes.com

P.H.E.A.S.

Post Happily Ever After Script
I wish I had time to ponder more modern day fairy tales, but alas I must return to my fairytale dwarves in my own Comfily Ever After castle.

I hope you enjoyed my spin on these tales, and didn't find them 'too bitchy' as my Prince Charming did.

21 comments:

  1. They aren't bitchy fairy tales - they're sarcastic ones.

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  2. Terrifying!!...and yet satisfying as well....

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    1. I thought so. Not as horrifying as I usually like my tales, unless you've been in Snow White's position and I know TWO real-life princesses who were put in that exact position. Nightmare.

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  3. These are all fantastic. Well freaking done. The Hansel and Gretel one is my own personal nightmare. I wake up one day. I'm sitting in a scooter. I can't see my penis anymore, and there's insulin pens all over the place. Also, I'm reaching for my fourth Twinkie... box. AHHH, WAKE ME UP.

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    1. MINE TOO! Like the movie Wall-E, I feel like I could be in that movie some days. Between the stress of all these kids and stocking junk food for the teenagers, it could get ugly fast.

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  4. I am excited that you are getting ready for the holidays by starting us off with Halloween fractured fear-y tales. I have always thought that Hansel & Gretel should have been eaten by the witch. After all, they trespassed and destroyed her property. Could you imagine sitting on the jury of the trial of the witch for murder? I would call it justifiable homicide.

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    1. Ha, exactly! Trespassing IS a crime and I would imagine at the house of a witch? There would be a zero tolerance policy.

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  5. MORE!!
    My favourite twisted fairy tale is Roald Dahl's Little Red Riding Hood, where Red pulls a pistol from her knickers and shoots the wolf.

    This was brilliant Joy. Fairy tales with a grim, no pun intended, slice of reality. Absolutely loved it!

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    1. Oh that sounds awesome! I love Roald Dahl. He's delicious. The BFG is my favorite book of all time. I read it around 5th grade, again in 8th grade, sometime in high school and again several times as an adult, to my son and anytime I need a chuckle. I love his little terms like "nose holes" for nostrils, we always say nose holes in homage to Dahl. I wish I could let my mind go and write as he does. With such imagination and reckless abandon. Super jealous of his writing style.
      I hope to get time to do some more, these are fun to think about. How badly our modern world, in America anyway, has donked up everything good and magical with it's harsh not-quite-reality. It was fun to write. Even if my husband hated it.

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  6. How did you come up with this? I love getting a glimpse into the imginations of others--especially when it's as awesome as this. Such a cool concept, and you executed it perfectly!

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    1. I saw someone pin something about Hansel & Gretel and IMMEDIATELY thought how lame that would be if written today, with all the horrors of High Fructose Corn Syrup and whatnot. I saw that picture of Rapunzel in one of the many Buzzfeed lists about Disney princesses awhile back and had to search through a ton of those to find it. I suck at graphics, so I didn't even try to make one myself!
      Thanks for reading, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

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  7. These have a gripping history. Red Riding Hood was a particularly scary, sexual tale, it seemed!

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    1. The Grimm tales are all pretty scary! Especially if you only know the story as Disney or children's books tell them. Some of those nursery rhymes too, "ashes, ashes, we all fall down" and remember Mary Mary Quite Contrary? The "pretty maids all in a row" were the beheaded pretty maidens buried in her garden!

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  8. I'll never be able to eat a nougat-filled candy bar the same way again....

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  9. That's what I thought! Though I am a big fan of the season of the witch! Glad you liked them.

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  10. Great spin on the fairy tales! My favorite is Rapunzel!

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    1. I'm glad you liked them. I feel Rapunzel would be much more fierce 2014-version.

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  11. Brilliant!! Hungry Man is my fave. Can't you just hear Frankenstein now? "AAAAHHHH!!!GRRRR!!!!HUUUNNGRRRYYYY!!!"
    I wanna see him get all pissed when he burns his tongue on the sad-ass tiny cherry cobbler dessert.

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    1. hahahahaha that is HILARIOUS! I want to see that as a SNL skit now! All the fairy tale characters trying to talk on their bent iPhones and worrying about Ebola! That would be hilarious.

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