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[d_aulnoy]

Aaaaaaaaaaand, today, I teach Deerskin.  I'm starting us off with a few cultural referents (helloooooooo, Purity Balls!) (also, Marilyn Monroe's "Daddy," of "Let's Make Love" fame: I remember watching that movie as a kid with my father, and thinking, even at age 7, "Okay, I know from daddies, and that?  Is creepy") before carrying us into statistics and Terri Windling's astonishing, heart-breaking, beautifully honest essay, "Surviving Childhood."  These two works, Deerskin and "Surviving Childhood" are two of the most compelling arguments that I'm aware of for the continuing prevalence of the fairy tale, no matter how many issues I have with Princess Industrial Complex.  Here's hoping my students agree ....

Comments

[fireriven.livejournal.com]

A woman after my own heart! I really wanted to use materials like this in my Monday class on Fairy Tales & Folklore last year, but I teach at a Christian high school and it was Not Okay to bring up some of the, y'know, actual issues engaged by fairy tales.

Plus, I only had two students who were bright and mature enough to handle such discussions. The others were rather ignorant on fairy tales in general, so we spent a large portion of the class just reading and discussing the basic tales from around the world.

Not a loss, certainly, but not as much as I'd hoped!

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Mine seem pretty terrific this term: it's a grad class, which helps, and a lot of them have a focused interest in the topic, coming from a variety of topics, from Disney to the Grimms.

And, yikes ... I am trying to imagine what we'd talk about if we pussy-footed around the sex and violence (or, as Tatar puts it, the heart of the fairy tale). Grr to censorship, however well-intentioned ....

[kayselkiemoon.livejournal.com]

I think I've said it before, but I think you and your job rock. if I'd had courses like the ones you teach at my college, I would've been in heaven. (as it was, I crammed as much English, Clcv and med/ren as I could and was quite content, *g*) I wish I could go about finding universities with classes of my heart and auditing them. of course, I could get more disciplined about my studious reading on my own... ^_^ how did the Deerskin class go?

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Heh - thank you! I tend to love it myself, except for the rare days when no one does the reading, which, mysteriously, tend to coincide with the days when papers are due ....

The class went nicely on the whole, despite the fact that today was one of those days when papers were due. Ah, for the days when I, too, could slack according to whim ....

[heathencorp.livejournal.com]

deerskin is one of my favorite books.
it's also one of the keystones of my 'fantasy literature has a built-in deathwish' arguement that i will turn into a full book before the end of the year if it kills me.

~:)

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Okay, now, this is a theory I HAVE to hear more about ....

[heathencorp.livejournal.com]

okay, starting back in the begining of what is currently called fantasy literature, it's always solved by killing the problem--
dracula: kill the vampire, hill his slaves, victorian life is saved.
poe: die at the end, you folly no longer matters, normal society is saved.
later, tolkein: everyone dies or as good as dies to fix the problem-- and this is also where modern thinking starts subverting the deathwish; frodo doesn't die, but is traumatized his whole life and 'goes into the west' which is a kind of death without dying.
modern stuff: lyssar dies and is reborn a new person, but has to symbolicly die again because in the modern world, we know that death itself just leaves the problem for others-- and mckinley's books often do this. aerin was 'no longer quite human', harry all but gave her life. that one based on sleeping beauty (and maybe the other one, which i haven't read yet), but i can't remember the details just now...
modern interpretations of the stories, like in snow white, blood red and the others after it, take the weird ways around death, but it's still there, having to be dealt with, standing as the easy way out of the problem.
movies, too: donnie darko, which isn't really scfi, matrix, which is but functions as fantasy, all the 80's fantasy movies...

my hypothesis is that the deathwish comes from fantasy being so closely associated with the subconscious, the un-logical-- there, away from science and progress, it makes sense to solve the unsolvable problem by killing it or yourself.

it needs work, refinement, but that's it in a sort of big nutshell. a coconut shell.

~:)

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Oooo ... intriguing. I might argue that it's due to either increased modern life-spans providing a different perspective, or alternately, to the modern desire to leave room for sequels ... but I'd be arguing out of sheer orneriness. You should do this at ICFA!

[heathencorp.livejournal.com]

i did, two or three years ago, and it's still sitting in my head, so i'm turning it into a book for all to enjoy and use as research!

~;)

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

And I MISSED IT? Grr, paneling conflicts. But at least I can look forward to the book ....

[heathencorp.livejournal.com]

this is all true. everyone misses my papers, apparently, so it's no big.

i was thinking that the longer lifespan of the average person might be the start of the idea that death can be got around... previously, death was everywhere, what with disease and injury and childbirth and so on, so it was innevitable, the natural thing. now, with cures and medicine and stuff, people who wouldn't have lived before continue to live and things that were unstoppable are now prevatable, and everyone everywhere is living longer, so death is more of an inconveniance, something that can be handled and moved beyond and negotiated with. but, it's still a fear, still something down there in the subconscious where all this stuff comes from to begin with, so it still requires dealing with and it's still one of the main drives of the genre...

but you know, the idea is pervasive, too. when i'm writing, i try to NOT give in to the deathwish that i feel there all the time, and it makes for interresting writing, let me tell you!

~;)