[junto]

I’ve never seen the Disney film. As a child I hated that story. My own children have no love for it either. If I was to guess, I’d say that there isn’t much of a character in that story to get behind and to empathize with as a child. Pinocchio is a selfish little shit. I can’t like him. As an adult I feel for his father’s desperation but even then I could never understand the story’s popularity appeal.

[byteface]

He's is selfish. Also cruel but funny, very gullible, often impulslive... alive.

He was ported to Russian too but they called him Burattino (Italian for 'puppet').

The image of burratino goes back hundreds of years before the story was ever written. He was one of the Zanni characters alongside other lower-class mischevious, comedic 'naughty' (anti-authority) characters like Harlequin.

[gobdovan]

As a Romanian child, I saw both Pinocchio and Burattino plays, but somehow never made the connection! This is quite interesting. Burattino was akin to a comedy to me, Pinocchio was like a drama.

[s_dev]

Did you watch Guillermo del Toro version? I'm enchanted by it.

Pinocchio is a selfish brat and that's a central tenet of his redemption arc.

[gobdovan]

I love exactly what you hate about it. I would not read it to a small child, but I would dearly recommend it to a 10- to 15-year-old. I reread it as an adult and loved it.

Pinocchio is mean, undisciplined, hedonistic, disrespectful, naive, and, of course, a liar. As soon as he is created, he runs away and behaves selfishly and impulsively.

Then he pays for each flaw with scars. The story shows him learning these lessons on his own wooden skin.

It is a moral story in the deepest sense. It shows what feels to me almost like "forbidden" knowledge. There is no magical thinking in it; it is not trying to preach "Doing bad things is bad, full stop". Instead, the author shows realistic consequences and the full messiness of being in the world. It shows exactly how naivety can result in exploitation (the Fox and the Cat stealing from him after promising him easy riches), laziness in humiliation (skipping school and ending up forced to perform for strangers; he loses his agency and is released only by Mangiafuoco's arbitrary mercy), vanity in manipulation (he is steered by praise, attention, and promises of fame), dishonesty in isolation (his lies literally disfiguring him in front of others, making him ridiculous and impossible to hide), and hedonism in literal dehumanization (Pleasure Island turning boys into donkeys).

It is quite rare for a children's book to be so honest about all the vile things in the world, and to show so directly that these things exist and that their consequences are not clean or neat either.

It also shows how we learn as humans. We do not start out good or bad and stay that way; we are not born "finished". We start as little monsters, full of impulses and feelings we cannot control or do not yet know how to interpret. Yet we learn by acting on them and seeing where they lead us. We are messy creatures, and Pinocchio makes it visible. I believe reading it made me a more robust person with a more sophisticated view of the world.