[troupe]

I agree with the overall idea of the article, but it is important to recognize that our modern assumptions make us think there is a particular version of a fairy tale that is the "correct" or "original" version. Stories handed down orally are likely changed in each telling to better fit their audience, so in that sense, the way fairy tales were told almost always included some type of sanitization or embellishment depending on who was listening.

[jonahx]

You're technically correct, ofc, but I feel this is a red herring.

Sure, all fairy tales have oral origins, and with Grimm you even various translations over the years.

Nevertheless, me, my parents, and their parents were all reading basically the same thing, and often the exact same book. That is, the books have been around over 150 years and have become canon in their own right. It is the sanitization of those books that people are objecting to.

So you can't just say "hey these things come from an ever-evolving oral tradition and this is just one more evolution". That doesn't accurately describe what is happening.

[pyrale]

> So you can't just say "hey these things come from an ever-evolving oral tradition and this is just one more evolution". That doesn't accurately describe what is happening.

On the other hand, why should people stop doing what they've done for cenuries because some guy wrote something down at some point? Part of what keeps stories relevant is that parents adapt them to the current context. Stopping their evolution is the best way to kill their transmission. Whether the transmission is oral or written is kind of irrelevant.

[schneems]

I think in an ideal world they come with some kind of a diff. Maybe an activity guide with prompts for parents.

I picked up “Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves” from naeyc and that’s more or less what they propose. They suggested that when you see a problematic representation in your kids media not to hide it, but note it “That doesn’t seem very fair to be judged only by <blank>” and if there’s time engage the kid “what do you think?”

It gives a natural way to talk about the problems while also showing good examples of how they might come up in the kids life.

You can also do the inverse. Remove the gnarly reference and then introduce a surrogate conversation with possibly easier to understand plots or themes. Later when they are older you can, and should, talk to them about how the differences and ask what they think. Ask them to come up with a different change and think how that might influence the reader.

Now not only did they get the changed and original they get a healthy dose of media literacy to understand how changing narratives can change how we view the world.

There are challenges and difficulties of course, but it’s certainly possible to do well in my opinion.

[onlypassingthru]

>I think in an ideal world they come with some kind of a diff.

I've got a couple annotated editions of famous books that do just that by way of marginalia and extended footnotes. It's a great way to learn about a story's evolution or context.

[magicalist]

Saying "my book is the canon because I've had it a long time" is a type of censorship itself. Having more than one version of a story is not the type of sanitization this article is talking about.

[relaxing]

I’m missing the point where that’s not happening. Is it that a book is not oral transmission?

[jonahx]

Correct it is a book. The analogy to what's going on now is not "oral evolution" but the OG bowdlerization of Shakespeare by Bowdler himself, and we (rightly) see that today as ridiculous.

[taberiand]

I don't think it's a question of the correct version, just a question of the most appropriate for what our children need. The article also mentions modern series and YA novels that have in some ways even bleaker themes, and I think there's nothing wrong with a feel good Disney story either.

I think there is a tendency for parents to excessively avoid letting their children be afraid, instead of providing a safe place to experience fear, and these older stories didn't shy away from those themes and so can be useful for bringing some of that safe fear back for children.

[slg]

You don't have to go back that far to fairy tales and oral traditions for this to be true. For example, when people complain about the recent edits to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the canon version that people tend to want to return to is an edit from the 1970s. People rarely advocate for going all the way back to the original version in which the Oompa-Loompas were more directly African pygmy slaves.

[roywiggins]

Even the Grimms' original versions weren't meant for children at the time!

[noodleman]

This is actually an interesting point. There's a tendency to assume that the core of a story is the same, even if the way it's told is different. I wonder how many generations of retellings it takes for us to notice significant differences.

[crooked-v]

I think stories about King Arthur would be a good comparison. They fit a similar cultural niche, but we have lots of different versions that were written down over the centuries.

[thaumasiotes]

> I wonder how many generations of retellings it takes for us to notice significant differences.

That's not really a sensible question. Compare the 17th-century European story of Cinderella to the 9th-century Chinese story of Ye Xian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Xian

The story stayed nearly identical for a period of many centuries. Significant differences could have been introduced at any point, but they weren't.