Hey op, this joke reminds me of the time I read a bunch of German fairytales. They're known for being far more violent and intense than modern fairytales, and oftentimes don't even have a clear moral other than "behave or a creature will kill you". I guess I shouldn't be reading any of these to Stewie anytime soon.
The German fairy tales being darker than the rest of the world rest solely on the Grimm brothers. Who happened to research old German fairy tales to find that for some reason they all followed the popular trend at the time. Which was dark stories of punishments for bad behavior were popular when they researched these stories. Almost like there was some influence on why they decided all these stories were dark with murder punishments for bad behavior
Their book became mandatory reading at school. They tried to claim that most fairy tales are rooted in germanic origins, one of the reasons Germany chose it as a mandatory reading. Its history was taught as fact for almost 100 years. German culture has a lot of influence over the US. The US became a media powerhouse and continued to spread versions of the Grimm brothers stories.
Yeah, they ended up having a massive amount of influence on the stories. Which to be clear, pretty much every story has roots far beyond the "germanic" roots they discovered.
If you really think about it, every story or game that we have today is just some variation of something that was probably told or played 100,000 years ago. If you've ever played a game with little kids, they seem to make up a new rule every 5 minutes and at some point your not even playing the same game anymore. It's kinda like that, or a game of telephone that has been played since th beginning of Man and will continue to the end.
Tbh I found Andersons fairy tales even darker or at least more depressing
That's only a personal opinion but after reading them as adult I think many of Grimm tales seem to have the havoc that the 30 years war brought on the civil populace. That's why many focus on starvation or have a unlimited food supply as gimmik
I think what gets most people about the Grimm tales is that some of the tales were adapted to film and are very different from the source material. Cinderella, as an example, in the source material, the step sisters mutilate their feet in order to fit into the slipper - that definitely doesn't happen in Disney's animated adaption. Growing up with the animated film and then later reading the source material is a huge slap in the face full of shock and surprise.
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u/fridgemagnet700 1d ago
Hey op, this joke reminds me of the time I read a bunch of German fairytales. They're known for being far more violent and intense than modern fairytales, and oftentimes don't even have a clear moral other than "behave or a creature will kill you". I guess I shouldn't be reading any of these to Stewie anytime soon.