[arjie]

When I was a child in India, the fairy tale books that you could get easily were a bunch of Eastern European ones: Russian, Karelian, that sort of thing. And they were full of crazy stuff, man. The cossacks were constantly getting their heads cut off and this and that. I went back to India a year ago, and one of the things I made sure to bring back were my copies of those books (and the Journey to the West translations that I read as a child - also easily available at the time) along with the stories by the Brothers Grimm.

As one does these days, I asked an LLM to help me detect if I had a bowdlerized version, and while I'm sure the stories were already softened in translation, they're still far more 'rowdy' than stories you can easily find today. In the old folk tales, things just happen. Fairness isn't guaranteed; and sometimes a guy makes a deal and gets eaten anyway; and sometimes someone dies for no reason.

I wonder if the changing narrative structure of modern stories is a result of our improved civilization. In a world where you're probably reaching adulthood with your brothers and sisters without encountering any sibling death, a story with 'unfair' death and destruction probably feels out of place. Nonetheless, I sometimes am saddened when I read people talk about stories in media and how they 'glorify' bad behaviour or 'send the wrong message'. A thing I really treasure from childhood is the breadth of storytelling: not all stories were an Aesop's fable.

But perhaps that's not true. I suspect the truth is that with lowered barriers to publishing there are just more stories told. The ones from the past that we know are twice selected: once for cultural value, and once because the writer himself was selected. Today, anyone can write, so it's the same problem as we encounter when we look at personal websites today. Sampled randomly in 2004 you would get interesting ones easily. Today, that is not so easy.

This is most easily visible with foreign media. The Chinese stories I've read are alien and strange and interesting; and the Japanese ones take unexpected turns. But they're going through that selection process as well. So it's probably just a boring selection effect.

Still, I've got the old Grimms. I'm keeping that one as an heirloom.

[michaelscott]

I had a partner who was a teacher in very rough areas; the school principal was routinely called by the local gang leader to let school out early because rival gangs planned to have a shootout in the afternoon. Kids there were abused in more ways than I want to remember or recount, babies were sometimes found in dumpsters, and the whole thing had this constantly oppressive and hopeless atmosphere.

My partner did her best to help the kids in her class, and part of this included reading them stories so they at least got a glimpse of the world outside of what in my opinion was hell on earth. The stories the kids always loved most were the Grimms, the violent ones. I think they allowed them to process and in some weird way make sense of what was happening in the real world around them, if such a thing is possible in that environment. I agree, I think the environment most kids grow up in today necessitates a "sanitizing" of story content in order to make it relevant.

[kombookcha]

It's important to remember that these stories are orignally an oral tradition that only fairly recently began to be written down. They would have had a myriad of differing versions depending on the preferences of the storyteller, their community and the intended effect on specific audiences.

In a way, retelling these stories in a way that's meaningful to the listeners is the way it always has been. We just have to remember that the darker versions also served a purpose of sense-making, and they can come to serve it again if we need them.

Good on your partner for trying to help those kids.

[ffsm8]

Isn't that the other way around? People back then had more contact with the darker reality we live in - hence it was more relatable.

Current generation of people in the west have been completely sheltered and protected by the establishment for all their life and have completely forgotten that isn't something natural. With every generation since WW2 this has gotten more pronounced, and at this point people unironically go onto the streets to demonstrate for counties with "less then clandestine governments". They cannot comprehend the reality of living as a powerless victim in a world which will callously destroy them- for no reason whatsoever - because they've been protected from it all their lives.

Or maybe I'm just reading your comment wrong and you meant the same, idk

[isityettime]

> Or maybe I'm just reading your comment wrong

Yes, you are. Their point is orthogonal to whether people in other times or places typically have/had it worse in terms of agency, fairness, safety, etc. Their point is about the flexibility and natural variation of the original oral medium as opposed to the crystalization of written text.

[47282847]

Is that really true? I find that more and more TV series have a lot more gruesome elements in there nowadays, also ones aimed at not-only-adults like Stranger Things for example. And horror movies moved from being a niche thing to Hollywood.

[ffsm8]

I guess I was too unclear with my comment... Because I can see were you're coming from.

Eg. BBCs Black Mirror - which is obnoxiously turning out to be more of a prediction then a cautionary tale - is definitely in the range of "darker content" in the vain I was talking about. But the target demographic is adults.

The old stories are meant to relate to you. The whole reason they were being told to very very young kids (<6yo) was to make them understand the unfairness of the world in order for them to hopefully be on guard against it when it matters.

They also weren't really fantasy in nature, even if we consider them to be fantasy nowadays. And that's a big part of why a series like stranger things feels inapplicable here - unless I miss remember it's setting. Wasn't it fundamentally just entertainment? More about spectacle then actually relating to the viewer?

The young adults/teenagers are both 10+ years older then the target demographic of the old tales, and won't relate the story to themselves because it's too disconnected from reality? At least that's my impression.

[pwdisswordfishq]

Black Mirror was on Channel 4, not BBC.

[aardvarkr]

If stranger things ended with everyone dead and no happy ending then sure but no, everything is fair and the heroes always win. Horror has always been mainstream fyi, it’s not a recent invention

[sillywabbit]

What? Eddie and Alexei were the heroes of that story, and they got screwed.

[smelendez]

I would say just the opposite.

Think about all the serial killer and urban crime movies in the ‘80s and ‘90s, or the film noir of the postwar period.

TV is more complicated, but cop shows like the early seasons of Law and Order and all of SVU, NYPD, and then later The Wire and The Shield were pretty gritty.

Video games have always been a mix of squeaky clean Mario and Zelda and gory content: Think Doom, Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto, Postal, etc.

[ahazred8ta]

There's a gallery of variant versions of Cinderella from different countries, even China. In many of them she has an enchanted cow. http://www.365cinderellas.com/

[theturtlemoves]

> The stories the kids always loved most were the Grimms, the violent ones. I think they allowed them to process and in some weird way make sense of what was happening in the real world around them, if such a thing is possible in that environment.

I once read somewhere that after an earthquake, the children who drew pictures of the injuries and catastrophe, later showed fewer symptoms of stress and anxiety than the children who drew happy happy sunshine butterfly rainbows after the event. Seems like it's more beneficial to acknowledge the bad stuff than to encourage positive thinking.

[ordu]

> Seems like it's more beneficial to acknowledge the bad stuff than to encourage positive thinking.

Psychologists are sure it is. You should get all your traumatic experience and deal with it. You'd better learn how to remember these things without panic attacks or whatever. And the methods they use is replaying the traumatic memories multiple times while controlling the emotional state. The controlled emotional state sticks to the memories and replaces the one that was remembered before.

Well, that's the theory at least. I tried it and it kinda work but not perfectly, it may require some recurrent sessions over time if the effect fades. Though if you practice it a lot, it becomes a habit, an automatic response to traumatic memories, so any memory replay reduces the strength of the memory.

It is like a positive thinking (you get your negative reaction to the memories and replace it with a positive one... well, maybe just less negative), but it is definitely not burying unprocessed memories deep inside your mind.

> the children who drew pictures of the injuries and catastrophe, later showed fewer symptoms of stress and anxiety

I believe it is easier for kids, they are more focused on "here and now", and just replaying a memory in a safe environment has much stronger therapeutic effect than for adults. It is easier for adults to ignore the present safety and to dive deep into their past memories with all the associated emotions, so replaying memories can easily make them worse by intensifying remembered emotions.

Adults have crystallized worldviews, which were probably shaped by their traumatic memories, and it shapes their automatic emotional response, and makes matters worse, harder to change. Children are more fluid, they have more plasticity.

[culebron21]

I guess, there's another set of tranformations in stories.

At least in European culture, stories lost their religious part in the modernity. Probably people stopped understanding it earlier, but they were transformed in the XIX century. For example, a knight didn't serve a lady in medieval literature -- he served the god. Some story had a knight standing on his knees in lady's sleeping room, of course, having no sex, nor kisses -- not because of "romantic" self-denial, as we would think -- but just because they were praying. They were busy saving their souls before the judgement day. In the Enlightment age, people stopped understanding this, and replaced it with purely romantic motivation.

The other stories, that villagers told their kids, were probably to scare them, about the dangerous world around. The characters were motivated purely by the need to survive, and minding their own business, no high moral goal. In XIX century, with steam locomotives and boats, people could travel to unthinkable places, and many moved to cities, so you couldn't scare kids with a witch or a werewolf living in that forest beyond that lastmost house. So, storytellers invented the adventure genre. So, instead of trying to survive, characters go far away on purpose, where they need to fight to survive. Or there are some unknown human villains, who the good character has to fight.

In late XX century, this story becomes unconvincing too. Big villains and monsters are unimaginable, so stories start breaking this pattern, often demonstratively: here's a monster, ugly and huge, the little boy is scared of him, but suddenly the monster turns out nice, and loves dancing walzer or makes sweet pancakes, and they become friends. Soviet cartoons in the 80s were 100% postmodernist, whilst what I saw of the American ones, were still like 80% modernist -- the bad guys, danger, the righteous main character.

[anthk]

>. For example, a knight didn't serve a lady in medieval literature -- he served the god.

Uhm, 50/50. Bear in mind Don Quixote made fun on the old farts from the Middle Ages saving "damisels" in distress. Sancho Panza was the simple, new man but far more grounded than Alonso Quijano which could be depicted as the last living "priest" because since 1492 no one gave a shit about kingdoms, local lords or whatever; everyone wanted to go to The Americas for a quick fortune (either by selling goods, or getting many more times food than in Spain).

>So, storytellers invented the adventure genre.

The adventure genre was what people liked before the mentioned Don Quixote, not by reading, but from folk tales, which are older than dirt, especially if you lived by the coast and met sailors around.

>this story becomes unconvincing too. Big villains and monsters are unimaginable,

Cosmic fears replaced big, concrete monsters (the rapist from the woods) with abstract fears under Lovecraft.

Nietzche depicted the old pre-Industrial values as obsolete. Lovecraft was scared of the new times. Cervantes just made a good laugh on both the "mythical, glorious times" but also on the "dumb, clueless future man". In the end both idealistic/realist roles learnt from each other across the adventure, which is what happens IRL in societies.

Cervantes was wiser, the laughted at the old fart seeing dangers everywhere against its outdated values, but so did on the new man with no "elevated" purposes.

[culebron21]

> The adventure genre was what people liked before the mentioned Don Quixote, not by reading, but from folk tales, which are older than dirt, especially if you lived by the coast and met sailors around.

Well, maybe. I meant the genre like Jules Verne, Robert Stivenson.

Actually, I checked facts and found out that Daniel Defoe (I thought he lived in the same epoch), in fact lived in XVII-XVIII, much earlier.

[anthk]

Well, Verne was half adventure and half science fiction. You might call them "expedition books" with a purpose, because adventure papyres predate Rome.

The Oddysey, Gilgamesh and basically every tribe in the Earth ever. has its own lore about some hero doing an incredible quest

[holgerschurig]

If you have a collection of children tales from the Grimm brothers... then this is already watered down.

These brothers traveled in Towns and collected the tales that the adult told to each other, e.g. when spinning wool or whatever boring but necessary winter job they had. They called their first collection "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" (children and house tales). The children aimed ones where ... more or less ... okay. Being on the cruel site, of course. But the ones not aimed children could be quite explicit or sexy-hexy --- at least for the times. Small kids probably didn't get most things.

The german wikipedia e.g. writes "Die Texte wurden von Auflage zu Auflage weiter überarbeitet, teilweise „verniedlicht“ und mit christlicher Moral unterfüttert. " which I translate as: the texts were edited from edition to edition, belittled/diminished and bolstered with christian morality" --- the latter probably because most of the editorial work happened in Kassel, which at the time was hugenotic evangelical.

Since the Grimms played a remarkable role in the german language, there is LOTS of academic literate on then, their german words dictionary, their tales collection. So you dive as deep into it as you want.

[dashdashu]

I think I remember that the original brother grimm stories were also much more violent, and dont forget german classics like the Struwwelpeter, gave me nightmares as a kid - especially the guy with the huge scissors cutting off the thumbs of a kid who sucked on them too much. Its in public domain if anyone is curious: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24571

[sunrunner]

Great timing, I was having trouble not getting to sleep and this looks like it will help.

[pseudohadamard]

There's more recent (relatively) stuff as well like Wilhelm Busch's "Max und Moritz", whose fate it is to be ground to a pulp in a mill after blowing the head off their school teacher, killing an old widow's chickens, and other cute children's pranks.

[the_af]

> In the old folk tales, things just happen. Fairness isn't guaranteed; and sometimes a guy makes a deal and gets eaten anyway; and sometimes someone dies for no reason.

Do you mean in Indian and Eastern European folk tales? Interesting! I should read more of those (I'm familiar with the usual suspects, but I'm sure I'm missing lots).

If I'm ever magically transported to a classic folk tale like Grimm's, this is my survival guide. Not fool-proof, but good enough:

- Always be kind to strangers, especially old men and women.

- Do not make promises lightly, but when you do, always honor them. Especially if you promised something to an animal that can, bizarrely, speak.

- Do not accept gifts from strangers, and do not follow strange old ladies into their homes.

- Always share what you have with others, e.g. food. If a stranger asks for a favor, always say yes and don't ask for anything in return.

- Do not go into the locked room / open the box they told you not to. You'll live a possibly ignorant but long and happy life.

- Do not mock anyone who looks strange or hideous.

- Always respect your parents and do not lie to them.

- (This is the hardest one) Always be the youngest son / daughter.

[loudmax]

Author Philip Pullman published a version of the Grimm fairy tales in 2012. These stories are intended for a modern audience, but in my opinion, Pullman does a good job of preserving a fair amount of the original scariness and general weirdness. Definitely rougher than the Disney versions of these stories. I recommend this volume to anyone with small children.

[kakacik]

The place I come from in eastern Europe has tons of similar dark folk tales for kids. Every single one had something properly dark. Brothers killing each other (or kids their parents, or reverse), canibalism, envy and greed getting the absolutely worst out of people. Since its historically very poor region the hero often prevails, but bad unfair shit happens left and right in between. Grimms were definitely not darker in comparison, in contrary, but their stories had more depth.

When encountering cca modern western kids tales (so not grimm for example), it was shocking how over-sweetened and dumbed down they were, emshittification in Disney style, but everywhere. Shallow naive predictable stories.

It didnt make us bunch of psychos, in contrary ot felt very enriching compared to shalow monotone sanitized storytelling western kids had access to.

[eps]

I can reciprocate -

When I was a pre-teen I found a book of Indian fairytales in a library. It was a translation, it was thick, the stories were few pages each, easy to read and beautifully illustrated. The content however was terrifying. So much violence, greed, poverty and suffering. The retribution when it was dispensed was as satisfying as it was over-the-top cruel. Eye-gouging was like an entry level option.

It was very long time ago, don't remember any details, but I still shudder remembering it.

[madaxe_again]

You’d love the original sleeping beauty. It’s got rape, infanticide, cannibalism, all of it.

Oh and of course little red riding hood before they got rid of the cannibalism. And the rape.

Oh and of course the Grimm tale - “How some children played at slaughtering”. Murder, suicide, child abandonment - just… good grief. We live in a safe world today.

[spacechild1]

You mean the versions of Charles Perraults? These are indeed interesting. According to wikipedia, the Grimm brothers did not even use the original sources for "Rotkäppchen" and "Dornröschen" and rather relied on second-hand retellings.

As a side note, there is also a fair share of cannibalism in Grimm's "Schneewittchen" (= "snow white"): the evil queen tells the hunter to kill Schneewittchen and cut out her lungs and liver so that the queen can cook and eat them. The hunter, however, has pity for Schneewittchen and kills a boar instead. The queen proceeds to cook and eat the boar's lungs and liver, thinking it is Schneewittchen's. Only after the meal the magic mirror reveals the truth.

The death of the evil queen is also pretty brutal: at the wedding of Schneewittchen and the prince, the queen is forced to wear shoes filled with glowing coals and dance until she faints and dies.

For some reason, the Disney version decided to omit these parts of the story :-D

[Terr_]

> In a world where you're probably reaching adulthood with your brothers and sisters without encountering any sibling death, a story with 'unfair' death

Two hot-take theories to add onto the pile:

1. In a traveling oral tradition, the teller doesn't want to memorize lots of different versions known in different towns or regions, and they also don't want people to get angry that your version doesn't have some key things from how they remember it. This leads to compromises that don't quite fit together.

2. If you can only store one version, you've got to decide between "fun" versus "faithfully honors the memory of our elders and how they told it", and maybe the latter wins. However with the printing press etc., now there's room to do a bit of both, and the fun version sells better.

[golemotron]

Those old stories may have been full of crazy stuff, but look at children's programming over the past 30 years. SpongeBob characters, under the ocean, jumping off a diving board into a pool, again, under the ocean. It isn't violent, but it is crazy.

I think that children's authors primarily amuse themselves knowing that it will pass right over the heads of their target audience. It sure seems true of Collodi.

[GJim]

> look at children's programming over the past 30 years. SpongeBob characters, under the ocean, jumping off a diving board into a pool, again, under the ocean. It isn't violent, but it is crazy.

A frog in love with a pig?

> I think that children's authors primarily amuse themselves knowing that it will pass right over the heads of their target audience.

I take it Sir is familiar with the British tradition of pantomime? (Where no entendre will be left undoubled).

[ourmandave]

Always wondered how they had campfires and lit torches underwater.

My wtf cartoon through adult eyes is Ren and Stimpy. Serious moments of not even trying to be for kids.

[jimbob45]

There’s just no reason to traumatize kids that early. It’s perfectly fine to be a happy Disney kid until 10 and then find the trauma gradually. It’s not like Bridge to Terabithia didn’t exist for the previous generation either.

[kdheiwns]

As a kid, I liked the "traumatic" stuff. The world isn't all sunshine and roses and a lot of the scary elements are there to instill kids with an awareness of danger so they don't become a victim of something horrible. Most of us today live in a world where we don't get eaten by wolves and kidnapped and sold into slavery anymore, but our society is fragile. All it takes is a few bad economic disasters, war, or a famine and things get rough pretty quickly. And right now there are kids enduring those realities.

[razakel]

Roald Dahl would agree with you. Fiction is the perfect place to explore complex emotions around the unsavoury parts of life, in a safe manner where the reader is in control.

[epolanski]

Why 10 and not 9? Or 11? Or 8? Or 12?

To me those seem like made up numbers.