Fairy Tales and Their Effect on Today's Society

Fairy tales such as Snow White and Cinderella have evolved to fit the values of certain societies. For instance, in the past, fairy tales were a means to express and teach children about the rights and wrongs of everyday life. They usually included an innocent and airheaded main character that gets into a great deal of trouble and instilled an incredible amount of fear into children to scare them away from wrongdoing. They reflected issues that were of importance back then, and provided the right ways to solve these problems for the time period. The original version of Snow White for example taught children not to talk to or accept things from strangers, and if they did, they could be poisoned with a poisonous apple.

This illustrates how back in the day people had a concern for strangers, which is similar to present day society and their fear of strangers as well. What can we take from this? Society is and always will be afraid of the unknown and unexplored. There is a certain “fear” factor in approaching and dealing with things that we aren’t familiar with. Strangers are the definition we have for people that we don’t know. If we don’t know these people, we don’t know what they are capable of doing, and that’s what society is terrified of.

Other recent and emerging versions of popular fairy tales have accepted the darker elements back into their stories. This includes witches, monsters, evil beings and the dark. These renditions contain much of the magical components present in the original versions, if not more. Due to help from technology and special effects, movies can accommodate a more fantastical setting to their plots, which helps maintain the essence of the original message and setting of the fairy tale. These versions though are usually targeted at a mature audience as opposed to the traditional 4 and 5 year olds yearning to see what trouble the princess will get into next.

Fairy tales portrayed by the media play an important role in the upbringing of today’s children - Disney especially. Disney and other wonderfully animated versions try to polish the fear out of most fairy tales to protect children from harm and “bad, bad things”. The princess’ life is in danger but that’s okay because Prince Charming will come to rescue her on a galloping stallion and they’ll get married the next day, have many children, and live happily ever after. That’s all good and well if young children didn’t take it to heart.

Young girls grow up believing they’ll meet Prince Charming one day and their lives will be complete. They grow up expecting their boyfriends and husbands to be these perfect men because that’s what they were raised to believe. They compare their man to Prince Charming and when he doesn’t cut it, they give him the heave ho. The truth is nobody’s perfect. Men and women alike all have their flaws, so what makes a relationship last? Patience, care and lots and lots of work. That’s the reality, and because of these modern day magical fairy tales, Walt Disney, and others like him, society forgets to acknowledge the reality in approaching relationships and other issues.