Seeking glitches & Discovering them.

I began looking for explanations and for glitches.

The whole idea of fairy tales randomly blew onto my desk once again – the wind always brings in one thing or another.

Random? No…Nothing is random, nor is this tangent, lol.

And so, I began to examine fairy tales…and I suddenly saw a glitch…

I saw it NOW…I certainly didn’t see it THEN…way back in the day when I devoured fairy tales like many other children. I loved them, was never ‘frightened’ by any of them. BUT. I just saw this glitch and it has me wondering.

The subliminal messages fairy tales carry between the lines are atrociously toxic.

If these tales were written for children, well, the underlying evil or frightening themes that are not only center stage but also zoom straight into their subconscious as ‘message received’ and at the very least have the potential to shake a child’s sense of security, not nourish them.

Most fairy tales are built upon the idea that children are not safe anywhere, detailing how children can be kidnapped, imprisoned, abused, and ‘spellbound’ easily. The idea that you, as a child, are not ‘safe’ anywhere is not an ideal subliminal notion.

The fairy tale, for generations considered to be a carefully chosen bedtime story, has been stamped as ‘suitable’ by society.

And then it occurred to me:

Reading such tales to a child at night is like tucking in your child along while planting a nightmarish seed in the subliminal garden of the subconscious, and then kissing the child good night.

And this is something we take for granted – we accept fairy tales without really examining what they’re really saying. We normalized evil lurking everywhere, putting children in danger even in their own ‘safe zone’ – like most fairy tales depict. And they are extremely sexist – the woman is either a damsel in distress, a prisoner, an abused victim, an evil queen, a good queen that dies very young, a fairy or a witch.

But obviously, our subconscious has been nourished with these very ideas from a young age. And we normalized it.

But then again, I ask myself why bother wondering what the young generations are ‘thinking’ about these issues today?

Young children today may get a dose of fairy tales here and there – but they live in a completely different world than my generation experienced.

While we were listening to fairy tales being read to us, or eventually reading them ourselves, these children today are scrolling away on their phones from toddlerhood – exposed to who knows what. What they may have ‘normalized’ from the screentime alone by the time they enter school is beyond my imagination.

So, of course, I ignored my realizations about today’s kids and the state of society they are growing up in, sipped some coffee and moved on.

I continued to look at the messages woven into fairy tales in greater detail…and examined the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and a few other tales…All cloaking prevailing themes of abandonment, deception, victimization, and abuse.

“…One Google search for “fairytale villains” generates a slew of sadistic female “baddies”: Cinderella’s evil step mother, her “ugly sisters”, Ursula, the wicked witch of the west.
These women are vindictive towards one another and negate any concept of sisterhood.
…
They represent what literary scholar Ruth Bottigheimer called an “apparent inner drive to incriminate females” in her book Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys. …”

Five reasons to stop reading your children fairytales now
from independent

Ugh. But before I totally abandon that topic, I will add this bit. I came across something interesting while digging into the themes of fairy tales.

I found this interesting BBC piece about Beatrix Potter, pointing out that her tales were laden with social and political commentary relevant to her experiences at that time.

The excerpt from this article refers to a book, Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code by M Daphne Kutzer.

“…As M Daphne Kutzer writes in Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code, “She never attempted to write a novel, but it is fair to say that a number of her small children’s books are in fact novels: their characters and their plots are as complex and open to interpretation as any novel published at that time.”…
…”In Beatrix Potter it seems the personal and the political, the private and the public are perfectly joined. Perhaps that’s why her animals don’t just talk, they have something to say.”

The hidden adult themes in Beatrix Potter

Okay…”…In Beatrix Potter it seems the personal and the political, the private and the public are perfectly joined.…”

Beatrix Potter had her views and experienced many social and political situations that fueled her opinions. And it makes sense that the sharp woman, skilled writer, an experienced person that she was would be able to merge and meld her views and stands and weave them consciously or maybe subconsciously in her writing.

And I asked myself, “Today, do we even have personal, political, private and public stands that can be woven into children’s literature?
As individuals do we even have any thought out individual opinions on issues? Or do we adhere to blurting out spoon fed truths and memes that condition our perspectives (or numb us out). Do we have individual voices and ‘stands’ or do we simply vocalize knee jerk reactions?’Do we simply echo the opinions of the powers that be or of the group that would serve us best? Are we encouraged to be empowered sovereign individuals with our own perspective on things – backed by our logic and rationale?’

–

Now that took me down another rabbit hole.

The rabbit hole that leads to the issue of the individual and the herd.

I came to the conclusion that one can’t voice their own thoughts and opinions – backed by their individual stance – while being part of a herd and functioning within the herd mentality in society. One needs to be empowered, fully aware of themselves, know themselves, and disregard the need to adhere to the herd mentality views.

And I looked for the glitches in these trenches, dugouts, and rabbit holes.

Glitches that have been dangling in front of our faces.

This is what I have been focusing on lately at ‘my writer’s desk’.

How can one expect to know themselves, to have an identity, if they have latched themselves into this collective interconnected hivemind web of memed mediocrity?

Should that be a podcast? To swim in the sea of podcasts that rant and rave about this very topic?

This herd-like mentality, this contemporary social setup does not allow for ‘the individual’ to thrive. What a vicious circle.

Herds? Herd Mindset? Don’t get me started…More ranting follows…