A Counterpoint to the Argument Against Fairy Tales (I)

"I’ve been asked in interviews, in classrooms and by audiences, if I think fairy tales are feminist. I think they are, but not by our modern definition of feminism. Traditional fairy tales were created long before any such notion existed, and I’d say they help women, rather than lift up women. They warn, rather than extol. They’re useful, which is a much older kind of feminism.

That said, there are many modern writers who’ve taken traditional fairy tales and made something more explicitly feminist of them, in part by simply subverting expectations. Angela Carter and Kelly Link come to mind, as does Helen Oyeyemi, Molly Gaudry, Kate Bernheimer, and Matt Bell. These writers aren’t creating explicitly feminist fairy tales in the way that, for example, the film Frozen does. Instead, they take a hard look at the problematic nature of the stories they’ve laid open, and give us new perspectives, new ways to see. Often their retellings are even darker than the originals, in part because they invite a modern, feminist gaze, while pulling back the curtain to reveal the appalling lack of options our protagonists are faced with. There are no levers or buttons; just modern readers, seeing clearly (and uncomfortably) the parallels between the lives of these protagonists and women in our own time."

Full essay from Amber Sparks: The Useful Wisdom of Fairy Tales: Because Sometimes the Wolf Shows Up Uninvited

- F 

The Death Of A Symbol: How Western Writers Exploit The Tiger - A Brief History of Gross Fascination"

I read this moving article from Literary Hub on civilization's "gross fascination" with tigers: https://lithub.com/the-death-of-a-symbol-how-western-writers-exploit-the-tiger/ I highly, highly recommend reading it:

Tigers live secret lives, tucked away in forests and mountains, and avoid contact with humans at all costs. They hide when they need to, engage when they need to. They require large swaths of land to call their own, and they mark their territory by scratching trees with their claws, writing their names. The Siberian tiger needs the most land, almost 4,000 square miles. That’s almost 20 times the size of Manhattan.

You’d want to help a newborn. They’re born toothless and sightless, and when their milk teeth grow in, they’re thin, like pins. A mother becomes engaged in the ruthless conundrum of survival: if she leaves her cubs for too long, they’ll die, and if she doesn’t leave them at all, they will surely starve.

You can hear a tiger’s roar two miles away, but that’s for the best, because their bite is worse. Their canines can get as long as your middle finger. One chomp of their 30 teeth renders a pressure of 10,000 pounds per square inch. They could snap your back in half.

Do you want to kill them because you are afraid—or because you covet their power?

These first three paragraphs describe the sheer power of the carnivorous, massive, feline mammal.

My question, similar to Kini's, is this: why would anyone want to kill such a thing? Why not respect it instead? That kind of power: why would one want to vanquish it? Out of fear? Out of some struggle for competition? Why create such a persona (you must read Kini's words to understand the "persona" I speak of: an unreliable beast, as if all tigers were like the lion Scar from the animated film The Lion King - a stereotype of the worst kind) for this creature who lives side by side with us on Earth? Why create an "other"? Why does anyone ever create an "other"? 

Fear is understandable. I, despite my attempts against it, fear snakes. But I wouldn't go out into the world trying to conquer snakes. I respect their odd, mysterious way of life. I am in awe of the power they have over me: the power to make me stand back, to be curious yet tentative about their origins and way of life. To be aware that they want me to leave them alone. Or, on the other hand, to be with them yet to leave them undisturbed.

So what is this desire for conquering? Where does it come from? Does it come from one feeling threatened by another? Why does one act on a threat - only a threat - with bloodshed rather than an intentional "rising up" of the self, knowing and understanding the threat as only the will to survive, all the same. 

I will not delve into Orientalism, and I will not tear down the colonizer or "white man". Here I walk away from Kini's argument. Only here. All of that, for me, is just a vague generalization of the showcasing of evil: for many the colonizer has a specific face. For me, the colonizer is faceless, and the word itself abstract. Here it means those who need to make a show - an almost ridiculous one - of their ability to conquer a beast only by the sheer pointless killing of that beast for monetary capital. What would be more impressive would be one's ability to conquer through cohabitation. Or even, through some kind of alliance. 

When a human being is not killing but torturing for the sheer gratuitous glut of it - not to learn anything but only to weaken what s/he has already made inferior - that is when a human separates itself from humanity and further, begins to draw itself away from the family of creatures.  

- F