I’ve studied writing for quite some time now, and have recently tried writing my own fiction more as an extension of my love for the printed word than anything else. Early in my life, I was exposed to fairy tales and nursery rhymes and often wonder the effect those have had on me as an adult: my concept of morality, the decisions I make and my view of the world. I imagine where I would be today had I not been exposed to these things as a child.
” The prevalent parental belief is that a child must be diverted from what troubles him most: his formless, nameless anxieties, and his chaotic, angry, and even violent fantasies. Many parents believe that only conscious reality or pleasant and wish-fulfilling images should be presented to the child-that he should be exposed only to the sunny side of things. But such one-sided fare nourishes the mind only in a one-sided way, and real life is not all sunny.”
This quote, from a book by Bruno Bettelheim, a noted child psychologist, shows us just how important good fairy tales can be to the upbringing of a child. Bettelheim himself authored a book, “The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales“, which still contains many valid points on how mollycoddling our children by denying them exposure to the important moral lessons in fairy tales actually puts them at potential psychological risk.
The Woody Allen movie, Zelig, is a film that deals with the discovery of identity; a common theme in Allen’s movies, and features an appearance by Bettelheim himself. The film deals with the perils of fame and success and how having some sense of oneself can help in situations of moral conflict; when everything in the world seems to be turned on its head. It’s no surprise that movies take their cues from literature, whose greatest function perhaps, is to talk to us about life in its many phases.
I love this particular quote from the film:
“My brother beat me. My sister beat my brother. My father beat my sister, my brother, and me. My mother beat my father, my sister, my brother, and me. The neighbors beat our family. The family down the street beat the neighbors and our family.”
It shows, in rather absurd terms, how certain behaviors, like violence for instance, are universal and, to put a comedic spin on it, handed down from generation to generation, even from potential strangers around us, who we seemingly have no effect on, but yet their violence gets heaped on us nonetheless. It’s the effect that “love thy neighbor” would have in a completely inverse world. Good fairy tales do exactly this: not sparing us the gory details of life (and death) but showing us that despite their existence, these are things that we can deal with.
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Tags: Fairy Tales, George Panayotou, Movies, Screw You Recession, Story, Woody Allen, Zelig
