Did Fairytales Fail Today's Society

Fairy tales have always grown rapidly over the past centuries.

Each one taking a different shape and being retold in a different context to serve a purpose. Fairy tales are an imaginative way of telling a story with a lesson or moral to learn with in it. Fairy tales are everywhere, books, tv shows, movies, even on tee shirts and Halloween costumes. Children all over the worlds are instilled with the ideas of fairy tales at a very young age. However, the tales told today are not the same as they were originally written. Fairy tales have been altered to the idea of a happy ending. Children and Adolescents are being told that the guy gets the girl, the bad guys always lose and that they live happily ever after. More and more millennials are growing in this era believing that life is like a fairytale. An altered idea of a fairytale has completely changed the way millennials grow up and transition into adults leaving them unprepared for the “real” world.

As society changes, so do fairy tales. For starters, the language changed. Key phrases like “Once Upon a time” and “happily ever after” were added into the begging and ending of the story.

Amy Weinstein wrote a book on the Illusion created by fairy tales. Within that book she mentions how the adolescent mind is very imaginative. Children create pictures and other worlds inside their heads just by thinking of it (Weinstein 2005). If you think about it, the phrase “once upon a time” literally means a time before this one. A world that can only be found by those who believe it exist. Fairy tales such as Peter Pan and the lost boys is a prime example of a made-up world. Places like “Neverland” and the dream of never growing up became real. Neverland was this island that was in the stars, where pirates, mermaids, fairies and giant crocodiles with ticking clocks.

In Neverland people can fly and do just about anything if they believe. In the “real” world people don’t fly, mermaids aren’t real, I think, and pirates don’t have hooks for hands. Reality isn’t always happy and magical. If someone shows up in the window in the middle of the night, you should call the police.

Not only does the beginning change the story, but the ending as well. The idea of a happily ever after was one of the biggest changed to fairytales in the 20^th century. The Disney version of the fairytales became more popular than the original. One of the easiest examples to follow is the story of Little Red Riding hood. Anna Duggan, co-editor of Marvels and Tales and Wayne State University describes the difference in the details of the story. One of the earlier stories was written in Europe about a wolf who encountered a young woman walking home to her grandmother house. The story was originally designed to pose as a moral for young women not to trust a stranger.

The wolf in the story symbolizes a smooth-talking aristocrat that can seem harmless but might have other bad intentions. The context may be interpreted as a counter look on a rape story. The wolf being a harmless young man follows little red home and does as he wishes (Duggan 1997). This story changes about 150 years later in France. Another story like the first is written but the ending is different. When little red riding hood come to her grandmother house the wolf has chopped her up into pieces and fed her to Little red riding hood. The new version include cannibalism as well as manipulation. Red Riding Hood realizes it’s her grandmother and the wolf ate her too (Duggan 1997). The mention of cannibalism seemed disappeared in the Disney version of red riding hood.

The “Disney” version ends with red riding hood killing the wolf and saving her grandmother. Once Red and her grandmother are saved, and the wolf is dead everyone lives happily ever after. The evolution and additions to the same story are similar yet entirely different. One story is telling one of manipulation, another adds in cannibalism and the last is that a little girl can overcome her ignorant mistakes and kill the big bad wolf. The version with the happy ending ironically seems to be the version that sticks the most in modern day society.

To understand how fairy tales effected modern society look at millennials. The term millennial has been used more often to describe a generation of individuals who do seem to fit in with the surrounding world. Simon Sink had a cognitive interview that went viral online. His topic was regarding millennials and their lack of work ethic. Sink goes on about how they simply what to make a difference but lack the discipline to do it. The desire for instant gratification is too overwhelming to be suffice the needs of a millennial minded person. While Sink may be on the right path, his background might be slightly off. Sink mentions that the idea of a participation medal was one of the driving causes for the lack of gratification. The same idea come with fairy tale. Think about it, the participation medal is like a happy ending. If everyone lives happily ever after, then there really is no need for hard work.

In wrap this up, fairytales have such a massive impact on society that the lines between “reality” and “fantasy” become blurred. As these children become adults, they quickly realize that there is no “happy ever after” for everyone. There is no prince charming coming to save them, there is no magic ruby slippers, there is no frog prince. 

Happy endings do not happen to anyone, they happen to those who make their own ending a happy one. Happy endings are made when hard work and dedication is put into place.