Proto-Indo-European (PIE) religion and mythology:
belief in a world tree, which in Germanic mythology was an ash tree (Norse Yggdrasil; Irminsul), in Hinduism a banyan tree, an oak tree in Slavic mythology, and a hazel tree in Celtic mythology. In classical Greek mythology, the closest analogue of this concept is Mount Olympus; however, there is also a later folk tradition about the World Tree, which is being sawed by the Kallikantzaroi (Greek goblins), perhaps a reborrowing from other peoples.

read things from here:

http://www.jrank.org/cultures/pages/5603/Indo-European-mythology.html

Genres of Folktale Literature
Myth – In the study of folklore, a myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind came to be in their present form. As sacred stories, myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and closely linked to religion. …many societies have two categories of traditional narrative—(1) “true stories”, or myths, and (2) “false stories”, or fables.

Closely related to myth are legend and folktale. Myths, legends, and folktales are different types of traditional story.[18] Unlike myths, folktales can take place at any time and any place, and they are not considered true or sacred events by the societies that tell them.[11] Like myths, legends are stories that are traditionally considered true; however, they are set in a more recent time, when the world was much as it is today.[11] Also, legends generally feature humans as their main characters, whereas myths generally focus on superhuman characters.[11]

myth, legend, and folktale is meant simply as a useful tool for grouping traditional stories. In many cultures, it is hard to draw a sharp line between myths and legends. … some cultures divide them into two categories — one that roughly corresponds to folktales, and one that combines myths and legends. Even myths and folktales are not completely distinct: a story may be considered true — and therefore a myth — in one society, but considered fictional — and therefore a folktale — in another society. In fact, when a myth loses its status as part of a religious system, it often takes on traits more typical of folktales, with its formerly divine characters reinterpreted as human heroes, giants, or fairies.

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1873-1961) and his followers tried to understand the psychology behind world myths. Jung argued that all humans share certain innate unconscious psychological forces, which he called archetypes. Jung believed that the similarities between the myths from different cultures reveals the existence of these universal archetypes.

Following Jung, Joseph Campbell believed that insights about one’s psychology, gained from reading myths, can be beneficially applied to one’s own life.

Like Jung and Campbell, Claude Levi-Strauss believed that myths reflect patterns in the mind. However, he saw those patterns more as fixed mental structures — specifically, pairs of oppositions (for example raw vs cooked, nature vs culture) — than as unconscious feelings or urges.

In his appendix to Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, and in The Myth of the Eternal Return, Mircea Eliade attributed modern man’s anxieties to his rejection of myths and the sense of the sacred.

Mythopoeia is a term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien for the conscious attempt to create fiction styled like myths.

In the 1950s, Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book Mythologies.

Fairy-Tale – I have read lots of history here… interesting that there’s not any mention of the French aristocracy coining the phrase conte du fee and was a kind of literary game for French women in their salons.

The fairy tale, told orally, is a sub-class of the folktale.
The oral tradition of the fairy tale came long before the written page. Tales were told or enacted dramatically, rather than written down, and handed down from generation to generation. Because of this, the history of their development is necessarily obscure.The oldest known written fairy tales stem from ancient Egypt, c. 1300 BC (ex. The Tale of Two Brothers)

How they’ve been modified…

In the modern era, fairy tales were altered so that they could be read to children. The Brothers Grimm concentrated mostly on eliminating sexual references. On the other hand, in many respects, violence – particularly when punishing villains – was increased. Other, later, revisions cut out violence; J. R. R. Tolkien noted that The Juniper Tree often had its cannibalistic stew cut out in a version intended for children. The moralizing strain in the Victorian era altered the classical tales to teach lessons, as when George Cruikshank rewrote Cinderella in 1854 to contain temperance themes. His acquaintance Charles Dickens, protested “In an utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.”

Psychoanalysts such as Bruno Bettelheim, who regarded the cruelty of older fairy tales as indicative of psychological conflicts, strongly criticized this expurgation, on the grounds that it weakened their usefulness to both children and adults as ways of symbolically resolving issues.[65]

The adaptation of fairy tales for children continues. Walt Disney’s influential Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was largely (although certainly not solely) intended for the children’s market.[66] The anime Magical Princess Minky Momo draws on the fairy tale Momotarō.[67] Jack Zipes has spent many years working to make the older traditional tales accessible to modern readers and their children.[68]

In Waldorf schools, fairy tales are used in the first grade as a central part of the curriculum. Rudolf Steiner’s work on human development claims that at age six to seven, the mind of a child is best taught through storytelling. The archetypes and magical nature of fairy tales appeals strongly to children of these ages. The nature of fairy tales, following the oral tradition, enhances the child’s ability to visualize a spoken narrative, as well as to remember the story as heard.

Legend (Urban Legend)
A modern folklorist’s professional definition of legend was proposed by Timothy R. Tangherlini in 1990:

Legend, typically, is a short (mono-) episodic, traditional, highly ecotypified historicized narrative performed in a conversational mode, reflecting on a psychological level a symbolic representation of folk belief and collective experiences and serving as a reaffirmation of commonly held values of the group to whose tradition it belongs.”

Fable
A fable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a “moral”), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.

Four Major Directions of Folktale Research (and their contributions)

continued….

Jungian method of interpretation

example of pit falls that interpreters fall into according to MLvF:

“I would nevertheless like to express a very personal opinion here. In many so-called Jungian attempts at interpretation, one can see a regression to a very personalistic approach. The interpreters judge the hero or heroine to be a normal human ego and his misfortunes to be an image of his neurosis.” … “But such interperters ignore what Max Lüthi found to be essential for magical fairy tales, namely, that in contrast to the heroes of adventurous sagas, the heroes or heroines of fairy tales are abstractions — that is, in our language, archetypes. Therefore, their fates are not neurotic complications, but rather are expressions of the difficulties and dangers given to us by nature. In a personalistic interpretation, the very healing element of an archetypal narrative is nullified.” (viii) ex: hero child is abandoned. “If one then interprets his fate as the neurosis of an abandoned child, one ascribes it to the neurotic family novel of our time” but if we leave it general, then it takes on a deeper meaning “leaves it embedded within its archetypal context”…the abandoned and ignored becomes important from humble beginnings (ex: birth of Christ in a stable)

ix She also makes the point that it’s not the archetype that defines a story. If two stories have the same archetype encounter but the motifs are different, say one has a character that is obedient and the other story has the same character only disobedient and cheeky, the stories are different. “one cannot interpret both fairy tales in the same way, despite the fact that both stories circle around the same archetype of an encounter with the Great Mother” MLvF speaking of Russian fairy tale “Beautiful Vassilissa” (ends positive note, kind obedient) and the German “Frau Trude” (ends on negative note, cheeky character)

In philosophy, archetypes since Plato at least, refer to ideal forms of the perceived or sensible things or types.

… “mother figure” may be considered an archetype and may be identified in various characters with otherwise distinct (non-generic) personalities.

Archetypes are likewise supposed to have been present in folklore and literature for thousands of years, including prehistoric artwork. The use of archetypes to illuminate personality and literature was advanced by Carl Jung early in the 20th century, who suggested the existence of universal contentless forms that channel experiences and emotions, resulting in recognizable and typical patterns of behavior with certain probable outcomes. Archetypes are cited as important to both ancient mythology and modern narratives, as argued by Joseph Campbell in works such as The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

The origins of the archetypal hypothesis date back as far as Plato. Jung himself compared archetypes to Platonic ideas. Plato’s ideas were pure mental forms, that were imprinted in the soul before it was born into the world. They were collective in the sense that they embodied the fundamental characteristics of a thing rather than its specific peculiarities.

Jungian archetypes

The concept of psychological archetypes was advanced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, c. 1919. In Jung’s psychological framework archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype is a complex, e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype. Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological constructs that arose through evolution.^[3]

Jung outlined five main archetypes;

• The Self, the regulating center of the psyche and facilitator of individuation
• The Shadow, the opposite of the ego image, often containing qualities that the ego does not identify with but possesses nonetheless
• The Anima, the feminine image in a man’s psyche; or:
• The Animus, the masculine image in a woman’s psyche
• The Persona, how we present to the world, usually protects the Ego from negative images (acts like a mask)

Auto translated from German:

Max Lüthi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bruno Bettelheim
Born	August 28, 1903 Vienna, Austria
Died	March 13, 1990 Silver Spring, Maryland, United States, (aged 86)
Citizenship	United States
Nationality	Austria
Fields	psychology

Bruno Bettelheim (August 28, 1903 – March 13, 1990) was an Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer. He gained an international reputation for his views on autism and for his claimed success in treating emotionally disturbed children.

[...]

Among numerous other works, Bruno Bettelheim wrote The Uses of Enchantment, published in 1976. In this book he analyzed fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychology. The book won the U.S. Critic’s Choice Prize for criticism in 1976 and the National Book Award in the category of Contemporary Thought in 1977. Bettelheim discussed the emotional and symbolic importance of fairy tales for children, including traditional tales at one time considered too dark, such as those collected and published by the Brothers Grimm.

After Bettelheim’s suicide (1990) it emerged that he had falsified some of his academic credentials. At the same time, a number of his former patients came forward with accusations of neglect. Bettelheim’s posthumous personal and professional reputation suffered considerably as a result.^[2]

Background

[...]He earned a degree in philosophy, producing a dissertation on Immanuel Kant and on the history of art.

In the Austrian academic culture of Bettelheim’s time, one could not study the history of art without mastering aspects of psychology.^{[citation needed]} Candidates for the doctoral dissertation in the History of Art in 1938 at Vienna University had to fulfill prerequisites in the formal study of the role of Jungian archetypes in art, and in art as an expression of the Freudian subconscious.

Though Jewish by birth, Bettelheim grew up in a secular family. After the merging of Austria into Greater Germany (April 1938), the authorities sent him with other Austrian Jews to Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps for 11 months from 1938 to 1939. In Buchenwald he met and befriended the social psychologist Ernst Federn. As a result of an amnesty declared for Hitler‘s birthday (April 20, 1939), Bettelheim and hundreds of other prisoners regained their freedom. Bettelheim drew on the experience of the concentration camps for some of his later work.

Life and career in the United States

[...]

The University of Chicago appointed Bettelheim as a professor of psychology and he taught there from 1944 until his retirement in 1973. He had trained in philosophy, but stated also that the Viennese psychoanalyst Richard Sterba had analyzed him.

Bettelheim also served as Director of the University of Chicago‘s Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, a home that treats emotionally disturbed children. He made changes and set up an environment for milieu therapy, in which children could form strong attachments with adults within a structured but caring environment. He claimed considerable success in treating some of the emotionally disturbed children. He wrote books on both normal and abnormal child psychology and became a major influence in the field, widely respected during his lifetime.

In The Uses of Enchantment (1976), Bettelheim suggested that traditional fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms. If they could read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, he believed, they would get a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Bettelheim thought that by engaging with these socially-evolved stories, children would go through emotional growth that would better prepare them for their own futures.

[...]

At the end of his life Bettelheim suffered from depression. He appeared to have had difficulties with depression for much of his life.^[1] In 1990, widowed and in failing health, he committed suicide.^[2]

Controversies

Political controversy

^[...]

[edit] Theoretical controversy

Initially Bettelheim believed that autism did not have an organic basis, but resulted when mothers withheld appropriate affection from their children and failed to make a good connection with them. The most extreme expression of this concept suggested that mothers literally did not want their children to exist. Bettelheim also blamed absent or weak fathers. One of his most famous books, The Empty Fortress (1967), contains a complex and detailed explanation of this dynamic in psychoanalytical and psychological terms. He derived his thinking from the qualitative investigation of clinical cases.^{[citation needed]} He also related the world of autistic children to conditions in concentration camps. In A Good Enough Parent, published in 1987, he had come to the view that children had considerable resilience and that most parents could be “good enough” to help their children make a good start.^[6]

Personal controversy

In addition to reassessment of Bettelheim’s psychological theories, controversy has arisen related to his history and personality. He had a prominent reputation as a compassionate man who had made a career of healing others and as an expert on the dynamics of the concentration camps.

After Bettelheim’s suicide in 1990, detractors^[who?] claimed that Bettelheim had a dark side. They alleged that he exploded in screaming anger at students, and went beyond firm treatment to corporal punishment or child abuse.^{[citation needed]} Three former patients^[who?] questioned his work and characterized him as a cruel tyrant. Other former patients^[who?] wrote or spoke publicly to tell how much Bettelheim had helped them, so there seemed to be no consensus.^[7]

Two biographies published in the 1990s revealed evidence that Bettelheim had lied about or exaggerated many parts of his background. These included wartime experiences, family life, academic credentials and the use of corporal punishment at the Orthogenic School. While Richard Pollak’s biography^[8] expressed a strongly negative view of Bettelheim, that by Nina Sutton^[9] offered a different interpretation of some of the material. Gaps emerged between the public reputation Bettelheim had established in the US and some of the facts revealed during this controversy, but some commentators made charges that related to Bettelheim’s personality.^[1][7][10]

The resulting discussions and controversy called into question^{[citation needed]} whether the University of Chicago had screened Bettelheim closely enough, although appointments to administrative positions such as director of the school do not require an academic appointment. Many parents^[who?] who had children at the school claimed that his treatment had helped their children and continued to consider him a compassionate man.^{[citation needed]}

Bettelheim on the impact of bodily experience

According to Bettelheim, children — when treated with loving care — will internalize the care and love experienced in childhood respecting their bodies and their own person.^{[citation needed]} The loving attitude of the parents towards the body of their child and its actions will transform into the child’s holding its own body in high esteem, wishing to care and protect it.^{[citation needed]}

Popular culture

In 1974 a four-part series featuring Bruno Bettelheim and directed by Daniel Carlin appeared on French television — Portrait de Bruno Bettelheim.

Woody Allen included Bettelheim as himself in a cameo in the film Zelig (1983).

A BBC Horizon documentary about Bettelheim was screened in 1986.^[11]

Two former patients wrote about their experiences at the Orthogenics School, one in a novel and one in a memoir. Tom Lyons’ novel The Pelican and After appeared in 1983. Stephen Eliot’s brought out his memoir, Not the Thing I Was: Thirteen Years at Bruno Bettelheim’s Orthogenics School, in 2003.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maria Tatar is a American academic whose expertise lies in children’s literature, German literature, and folklore.^[1][2] Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Chair of Folklore & Mythology at Harvard University.^[2] She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[3]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jack David Zipes is an American retired Professor of German at the University of Minnesota, who has published and lectured on the subject of fairy tales, their linguistic roots, and argued that they have a “socialization function”. According to Zipes, fairy tales “serve a meaningful social function, not just for compensation but for revelation: the worlds projected by the best of our fairy tales reveal the gaps between truth and falsehood in our immediate society.” His arguments are avowedly based on the neo-Marxist critical theory of the Frankfurt School.

Zipes enjoys using droll titles for his works like Don’t Bet on the Prince and The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Ridinghood.

He completed a PhD in comparative literature at Columbia University. Zipes taught at various institutions before heading German language studies at the University of Minnesota. He has retranslation of the complete fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.

Marie-Louise von Franz (January 4, 1915 – February 17, 1998), the daughter of an Austrian baron and born in Munich, Germany, was a Swiss Jungian Psychologist and scholar. In her native Switzerland, she was known by a pet form of her Christian name, Malus ^[1]. She worked with Carl Jung, whom she met in 1933 and knew until his death in 1961. It was Jung who encouraged her to live with fellow Jungian analyst Barbara Hannah, who was 23 years von Franz’s senior. When Hannah asked Jung why he was so keen on putting them together, Jung replied that he wanted von Franz “to see that not all women are such brutes as her mother,” and also stated that “the real reason you should live together is that your chief interest will be analysis and analysts should not live alone.”^[2] The two women became lifelong friends.

Von Franz founded the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich. As a psychotherapist, she is said to have interpreted over 65,000 dreams, primarily practising in Kusnacht, Switzerland. Von Franz also wrote over 20 volumes on Analytical psychology, most notably on fairy tales as they relate to Archetypal or Depth Psychology, most specifically by amplification of the themes and characters. She also wrote on subjects such as alchemy, discussed from the Jungian, psychological perspective, and active imagination, which could be described as conscious dreaming. In Man and his Symbols, von Franz described active imagination as follows: “Active imagination is a certain way of meditating imaginatively, by which one may deliberately enter into contact with the unconscious and make a conscious connection with psychic phenomena.”^[3]

Von Franz, in 1968, was the first to publish that the mathematical structure of DNA is analogous to that of the I Ching. She cites the reference to the publication in an expanded essay Symbols of the Unus Mundus, published in her book Psyche and Matter.^[4] In addition to her many books, Von Franz recorded a series of films in 1987 titled The Way of the Dream with her student Fraser Boa ^[5].

Carl Jung believed in the unity of the psychological and material worlds, i.e., they are one and the same, just different manifestations. He also believed that this concept of the unus mundus could be investigated through research on the archetypes of the natural numbers. Due to his age, he turned the problem over to von Franz.^[6] Two of her books, Number and Time and Psyche and Matter deal with this research.

I wish I could buy the”executive decision maker” with the pendulum that randomly falls on Yes and No…

I especially like the dream sequences inside Lowrey’s head. He imagines himself a great winged god-creature who fights against… a giant samurai? Very interesting. No dialogue, just his crazy dream. The movie delves into his subconscious several times and it gives the main character richness and depth. The movie has many layers which is why I enjoyed it.

and his dreams come back to haunt him…

(as a side note, wow! Why go to all the trouble designing a prison for Magnito in xmen, when you can just copy Brazil)

I was thinking today, after reading some books mentioning that pictures in a fairy tale story limit your imagination… I do agree with that, and it would seem to be an argument for not making a movie out of a fairy tale. Most people who fall in love with a book are disappointed by the movie made from it, since it never captures what they imagined. But if you activate your imagination from images without words (or few words), your imagination fills in the details and then it speaks to you personally. You become part of the creation and an active participant. The imagination has to be engaged in some way!

I think books-to-movies often fail because the translation is too concrete…The Golden Compass was such a disaster. Why not focus on the feeling you get from reading the book, not cramming in all the plot details. If it’s too wordy, you are crippling your story by putting images to the words that were designed to invoke the images you’ve already made. (!)

I love this scene in Edward Scissorhands with Edward’s inventor. There’s no dialogue but the meaning is so clear.

Max Lüthi says fairy tales are “simbolic poetry”, art in its beautiful simplicity, and fairy tales “transform everything internal into something external, to portray the intimate relationship between two people in an image.” pg 74, 66, 56 . Tim Burton did just that.

Abstract

The fairy tale has the strongest ability to reach the subconscious and speak to the mind in the language of dreams. Dark fairy tales heighten awareness and focus on the fragility of life.

This thesis focuses on a small subset of fairy tales – stories designed to be enjoyed as feature length movies with uniquely crafted, wondrous elements, with particular emphasis on the “not-so-happily-ever-after” ending, and stories containing dark, frightening, or dangerous elements. This thesis seeks to analyze the current role of imaginative stories for children and adults, identify successful ways the creators of dark fairy tale stories communicate their work of art,  and forms a rebuttal against two popular views:

1) children should be protected from fairy tales that have dark, frightening, or dangerous elements
2) To reach healthy adulthood, children should leave behind imaginative and fanciful stories in exchange for real life.

As adults we have not grown out of the need to exercise our imaginations and experience the wonder of fairy tales. And as children, the dark and frightening tales are important for personal growth.

I. Introduction

Reason for writing this thesis: What is the importance of creating stories? How are fairy tales special?

1. Define a fairy tale, its rich history as an art form

Supernatural wondrous elements, symbols and abstraction, microcosm of the individual, mortal hero… Its history spans the dawn of civilization and language itself, begins with oral tales in illiterate society, to the birth of the printing press and literary history, to present day toys, books, movies, ballet, opera, TV, comics, theme parks, theater… etc…

Subject of controversy throughout history – used to promote as well as undermine social norms and political trends. Traditionally written and created for adults by adults. Recently, fairy tales have been confined to only entertaining children, and tales are often stripped of their dark elements or avoided altogether.

2. Dark fairy tale movies for children and their success/failure/parental reactions:

Labyrinth (“box office failure”), Nightmare Before Christmas (not allowed release under Disney for scary elements), Dark Crystal (box office failure), Last Unicorn, The Secret of Nimh (rejected by Disney for dark content), Harry Potter (banned by religious groups), general backlash against movies that might scare children…

3. Dark fairy tale movies for Adults:

In America, animation is immediately considered children’s material. Comedy seems to be an exception: The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park. A dark animated tale for adults would not do well at present.

Fairy tales for adults have found success in live action: Edward Scissorhands, Star Wars, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Lord of the Rings (book/movie/animation)

Movies created from comics are gaining attention and acceptance: Batman, upcoming Watchmen, Hellboy, Ninja Turtles.

4. Artistic Intent:

1. Research the views of literary critics/psychologists/artists on why is the fairy tale format so powerful and why it is important to humanity

2. Make a case for the continued importance of fairy tales for adults, and stress the importance of strong content in the growth of children

3. Study a memorable story from my own childhood, Unico, and how it successfully uses the elements of a fairy tale

4. Analyze the features of fairy tale movies that make lasting impressions

5. To create my own story, Pimu.

II. Analysis: The Role of Fairy Tales in Modern Society

Significance of fairy tales as artwork and a necessity, identify elements found in fairy tales/Myth/Legend/Epic, analyze its current place in modern society and how it finds success and/or controversy.

1. Where does the fairy tale fit in modern society? Why is it important? – critics analysis

A.Why do we create and enjoy stories – critics analysis

a) communication of feelings or experiences
b) catharsis
c) present a problem in simpler symbolic form in order to solve it
d) entertainment
e) to teach or promote awareness to a cause
f) spontaneous creation of the subconscious (joy in creating a work of art)
g) cultural expression/preservation
h) financially advantageous

2. Fairy tales for children need the danger to help them grow

Examine the harm in sterilizing tales for children, robbing them of their chance to use the fear and danger in stories to strengthen their ability to cope with adult life. Historical examples of repression of fantasy in order to control the violent/passionate nature of children. The sad results of a stunted imagination…

3. Characteristics of fairy tales  – a study of my favorite animated dark fairy tale from childhood, Unico

A. Its origins and why it is both familiar and unique:

Originally from Japan and created by an admirer of Disney fairy tales. Concepts are borrowed from Western culture which results in a collection of themes from fairy tale, legends, and myths, presented through a uniquely Japanese perspective.

As a story that originating abroad, it was free to exhibit the spirit of the classic Grimm’s European fairy tale without restriction on dark or frightening elements.

Osamu Tezuka’s Message:
What I try to appeal through my works is simple. The opinion is just a simple message that follows: “Love all the creatures! Love everything that has life”! I have been trying to express this message in every one of my works.

B. Themes common to Western/European Fairy Tales:

a) Strong Dark vs Light, Good vs Evil polarity
c) Dark and frightening elements
b) Hero battle and adventure
c) Meek shall inherit the Earth
d) Maturation and development of characters
e) wondrous, fantastic elements of transformation and magic
f) microcosm of the individual

C. Themes from Greek Myths, Epics, Legends

a) All-knowing gods interfere and influence, exhibit jealousy
b) wandering isolated hero
c) Hero destroys evil of epic proportions
d) Hero remains unchanged, a catalyst of change in others
e) Tragic ending

D. Unique elements not normally present in Western animated fairy tales:

a) swapped gender roles
b) Strong connection with Nature (not Man vs Nature, but Nature is a reflection of Man), an expression of Oriental myth
c) Art style an imitation of Disney, but uniquely Japanese

4. Fairy tales are for adults as well as children.

A. Fairy tales are often misunderstood as simple stories for children.

Imagination is necessary later in life as well as when we are developing. As Del Toro says, our world is completely fabricated – politics, religion, the value of money, geographic boarders, war… these are all societal constructs. These concepts are real because we make them real.

B. Directors’ comments on the fairy tale, and how their creations are inspired by them, from biographies and interviews of famous creators/directors:

Guillermo Del Torro, Tim Burton, Jim Henson, Walt Disney(?), Michel Gondry

III. Methodology

What makes a story worthwhile?

1. Critics analysis -

a work of art should communicate to each person in a different unique way. Inspire, change… delve into the person’s subconscious so that even after the movie has ended, the images and power of the story has been committed to memory. That which leaves an impression, not forgettable.

2. Personal experience – features of successful story

A. The Inner soul of the creation– resonating on a subconscious level

The artwork speaks to you as a person. The more abstract, the more the imagination is engaged, and the greater chance of reaching the subconscious. It can accomplish this with any number of techniques: art direction, atmosphere, dialogue, pacing, characters, plot, soundtrack, anything that opens a communication between the audience and the creator contributes to the soul of the piece. The fairy tale world is a strong way to communicate in abstract symbols, stimulates the imagination, drawing you in as an active participant.

B. The Outer beauty – technical appreciation

overall quality and appreciation of any of the techniques used to create the soul of the piece. Even if a particular element does not succeed in speaking to you personally, admiration is still possible of the artistic craft involved.

C. Other categories?

intellectual stimulation, emotional intelligence, using fear to heighten awareness, connection with genre – drama, scifi, comedy, horror, action, adventure

IV. Implementation and Results

1. How was Pimu created and how does it strive to be a memorable work.

a. autobiographical elements
b. extra care in developing the artistic look
c. character uniqueness
d. non happy ending
e. musical score

2. Evaluation of Results (hrm…)

a. audience reaction?

V. Conclusion and Future Work

1. Conclusion

This thesis focuses on the power of the fairy tale. Its goal is to make a strong case for its continued importance on the imagination by highlighting opinions of literary critics, directors, as well as a vehicle for sharing my own conclusions developed from personal experiences as a child and young adult. I would like to see more fairy tales that find success in adult audiences, and I hope the dark tales of danger that I loved as a child find a young audience that is given the chance to appreciate them without censorship

2. Implications for Future Research

This study could be a spring board for any number of fairy tale related studies…

References…

Jack Zipes, Max Lüthi, Maria Tatar, Bruno Bettelheim, Joseph Campbell, Stephen Swann Jones…