Twistday Tea: Old-fashioned-childhoods nostalgia

First the Cookie Monster became a vegan and something inside of us died. This ontological aggression towards one of our childhood reference points is one of the indicators that the distorted and old-fashioned childhood, as we lived it, is over. The next thing is Big Bird coming out of the closet, but this of course we wouldn’t mind since we’ve been waiting since the 70’s.

This change is very visible in the field of our childhood fairy tales. These are as old as time, but – as cultural historian Robert Darnton points out – they haven’t always been told as we know them. They reflect the social views and mentalités of their time.

Originally they were transmitted orally and told by peasants at late evening gatherings around a fire. You might find the thought of the rough guys in town sitting together after a long working day to hear about Snow White or Little Red Ridding Hood a little disturbing, at least. The logical explanation to this is that, back then, these stories were very violent and bloody, full of amusing twists in the plot in which they basically all got killed in the end. So this was the 17th Century equivalent to Terminator.

You can still read these versions as they were collected in the earliest compilations. In Charles Perrault’s (17th Century) version of Little Red Riding Hood she and her granny were eaten alive by the wolf, while Sleeping Beauty’s step-mother was a cannibal decided to eat her (you can read a Spanish translation of the latter, here). In the Grimm brother’s (18th-19th Century) version of Cinderella her step-mother cuts off the toes and heel of her step-sisters to make sure they DID fit in the bloody shoe.

With the development of a more modern editorial industry in the past 200 years, together with the result of social changes, the growing importance of children and literacy and a shift in our views towards violence, these traditional stories were modified and sweetened to be made suitable for children. These “reward books” were a mayor hit, being used to incentive children and teach them to read. As things kept changing these tales continued being modified and shaped, ending in the Mother Goose-Disney stories we have today.

This leads us to the 21st Century A.D. with our new and peculiar changes and political correctness being forced into folk tales (and just about everything else).

Recently, the Daily Mail reported a religious school in West Yorkshire has changed the name of a play on the Three Little Pigs into “the Three Little Puppies” for fear of offending Muslims. Obviously, Islamic leaders have called the move “bizarre”, one of them remembered that “According to the Koran it's forbidden to eat pork or touch a pig, but there's no ruling about talking about them or singing about them”. He added: “"How far are we going to go? Are we going to change the seven dwarves because it's discriminatory towards people who are physically less able? Where do you draw the line?”.

This decision could cause even more problems for politically correctness, since, like most of these condescending actions, it’s based on an enormous amount of misinformation. Dogs are considered unclean animals for Muslims, while Koreans consider them quite a delicious treat, so if I were a Korean mom I would consider this a way of my kid playing with his/her food. And, well, pigs are all pink, but if we use dogs, what color would their fur be? Again this could be conflictive. We would need more that three to be more representative. Then our fairy tails would start to look like a Baskin Robbins or U. C. of Benetton commercial. Even then, future generations would be exposed to a discriminatory “beautiful-people” world. How about the elderly, the disabled, the un-operated transsexuals with a blond wig?

The apotheosis of this phenomenon has been carried out by James Finn Garner, who has written, among other things, the best-selling Politically Correct Bedtime Stories solving these doubts by going the whole way. Here you can find Little Red Riding Hood – whose mother once “asked her to take a basket of fresh fruit and mineral water to her grandmother's house—not because this was womyn's work, mind you, but because the deed was generous and helped engender a feeling of community. Furthermore, her grandmother was not sick, but rather was in full physical and mental health and was fully capable of taking care of herself as a mature adult” – telling the wolf: “I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop your own, entirely valid, worldview. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be on my way”.

Additionally, the word “black” has become a taboo. Some nurseries in England have changed the traditional nursery rhyme “Baa Baa Black Sheep” into “Baa Baa rainbow sheep”.

In Spain a curious euphemism has been coined to call those formerly “black” (most of which come from central or southern Africa): Sub-Saharians. Because of Spaniard’s intense contact with North-African Muslims, “Africans” (and by extension the prefix afro-) cannot be generically accepted to be applied to “blacks”. This creates very strange situations. How do you call a dark skinned fellow from, let’s say, Brazil or the US? A Sub-Saharian Brazilian??

Political correctness has gone as far as considering the term politically correct itself, well, politically incorrect (look here, you can also read about the racist lunatic in Glasgow who at a coffee shop dared say he wanted his coffee “black”, instead of “without milk”).

Mattel has been producing multiracial dolls for decades, yet it’s far from being politically correct. All the rest of us out of that anorexic Bay Watch world have reasons to feel discriminated. Where are the 600 kg couch potatoes Barbies? A blogger reflects: “Have you ever noticed how politically incorrect dolls and action figures are? Action man for example he’s spent over thirty years being a hard man, how about a new action man with push-chair, frying pan and SUV; can he get the kids to school on time before his game of golf with his old chum Dr X? Is it suitable for children to be playing with politically incorrect toys and growing up with sexist role models?”.

Disney on the other hand has announced a movie for 2009 featuring its first black princess (yes I know, they used the word). She would be the Frog Princess of New Orleans (!?).

Well, were does this leave us archaic mad-persons from the time when our WASP dolls were officially straight and cookie-vorous, and Barbie and Ken were still a couple, all of us who played mommies and daddies, instead of the fair trade activists and the successful yet humane business women? Well, I don’t have a clue, but it most certainty wouldn’t be politically correct to say.

On a final and optimistic or maybe discouraging note, I just want to mention the Jesus Christ has also just gone “correct”. A new Bible by 52 biblical specialists, “The Bible in a More Just Language”, with higher sensitivity towards women and homosexuals, has Jesus referring to God as “our Mother and Father who are in heaven”, instead of the troglodyte and plain formula of “Father”.

Yes, you can rest assure, the Devil is still macho. At least one thing stays the same! Its damning what has been left to hold on to.