They WERE for kids. They were how kids were taught that world was a scary place that played for keeps. Don’t go into the forest alone, don’t talk to random traveling, stop sucking your thumbs. Those were, and in ways still are, lessons for kids.
For the record, they ARE saccharine crap. There’s hints at bad stuff, but they never dwell on it, and pretty soon there will be singing rats to make it all better. Not only are they saccharine crap, they’re the template for saccharine crap, if somebody wants to take a “scary” story and make it “safe” they Disney it.
They ARE significantly different. I’ve seen the saccharine crap movies and I’ve read the stories. The movies are vastly different, vastly inferior, and frankly suck.
“They WERE for kids. They were how kids were taught that world was a scary place that played for keeps. Don’t go into the forest alone, don’t talk to random traveling, stop sucking your thumbs. Those were, and in ways still are, lessons for kids.”
No, they were not for kids at all. Anything that shows rape is NOT kid friendly, PERIOD. Even people back then did not do those kinds of things.
“For the record, they ARE saccharine crap. There’s hints at bad stuff, but they never dwell on it, and pretty soon there will be singing rats to make it all better. Not only are they saccharine crap, they’re the template for saccharine crap, if somebody wants to take a “scary” story and make it “safe” they Disney it.”
Never dwell on it? Last I checked, Snow White nearly got killed, and it was a very near villain victory near the end. Same deal with Cinderella where Lady Tremaine not only locked up Cinderella in her room specifically to ensure she cannot get the glass slipper on, or how Maleficent tried to outright MURDER Aurora, not just put her to sleep, and even made every effort to sabotage any chance at the curse being removed. In fact, with Sleeping Beauty, it was made very clear that Aurora was constantly in danger of the curse, to the extent that when it seemed as though the curse was going to be outright averted, the narration even stated they rejoiced at the possibility. The Little Mermaid had Ariel have a time limit just to get the prince to kiss her, the sea witch actually sabotaging her attempts at success, and nearly losing her soul and actually working to redeem herself by fighting Ursula AND her minions. And Ursula and Maleficent, for the record get on-screen, very much family-unfriendly deaths (the former died from having a sword thrown straight into her heart, and the latter had a ship rammed into her, electrocuted, and disintegrated, with our even seeing the body parts on-screen immediately afterward). I can tell you this much, you certainly can’t see that stuff in Barney or Teletubbies.
You want real “saccharine”? Try Barney and Friends, or even Teletubbies. When do they actually ALLUDE to bad stuff, let alone show it? All of the stuff I mentioned in the Disney versions WERE bad stuff (in fact, in the case of Maleficent, it was arguably even WORSE than the original tale, since the original tale didn’t have the wicked fairy actually try to kill the child, while in the Disney version she explicitly attempted to do so).
“They ARE significantly different. I’ve seen the saccharine crap movies and I’ve read the stories. The movies are vastly different, vastly inferior, and frankly suck.”
I gave you a listing of how the films turned out in general, and also even stated just how similar they were to the original tale. Those were bit by bit, so yes, they WERE similar, not significantly different. You want significantly different, try comparing Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid to, say, PBS Super Why’s rendition, that was significantly different. Or how about “Naked Lunch”’s film adaptation or Eragon’s film adaptation.