Why The World Needs Musical Numbers: A Commentary on Modern Folklore and the Deceit of Love’s First Kiss

In my ever so tantalizing Children’s Literature class, we are learning some pretty interesting things. K, I lied about the tantalizing part, it’s really excruciatingly boring, but I blame that on the prof, not the texts. The subject matter we are studying is, in fact, thoroughly enlightening. I feel like so many of my problems, so many of my deep-seeded Freudian issues, have been truly uncovered and their sources revealed. I no longer have to blame them on the ambiguous terms of “society” and “America”, now I can pinpoint them down to the specific time, nay the specific lines, in which I turned from a rosy-cheeked youngster to a ruffled-up graduate from the School of Hard Knocks (you know, I have always wanted to make that joke but for some reason I dreamed it to be a lot more satisfying. Shucks.)

Why you ask? Because of fairy tales. The bane of childhood innocence. The curse of the naïve. The blight of the wide-eyed halflings. We are reading through many classic fairy tales in their original form- the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson sort- and comparing them to the modern concepts we know and love. I must say I give a massive hurrah to political correctness and its undeniably immaculate ability to shine things up. For those of you who know where I’m going with this, congratulations on having your eyes previously opened, and for those of you who don’t, let us join arms and weep for our misguided juvenescence.

Case Study 1: The Serious Incident of Misconstrued Vernacular

Take the wonderful tale of The Frog Prince (like the original one, not the newly feminized, racially acceptable Disney version from last year). The beautiful story of a lovely girl who locks lips with a frog only to open her eyes to the flowing locks and chiseled chin of Prince Charming. Indeed, how charming! Or not. In the real story, it is not a smoldering kiss that unlocks this fine fellow, but an enraged hurl at a thick, brick wall. It is only after the girl flings the frog as hard as she can against said wall that her true love is revealed. I guess it is easy to see how “thrown violently against stone with the intent of murder” was accidently translated into “true love’s kiss”. Romantic, right?

Case Study 2: A Lovely Lip Lock or an Accidental Drop

Snow White. The girl everyone loves to hate. She goes through the motions, living life as a drop-dead catch and is then hunted after and poisoned by her not-so-well-off step-mother. She bites the apple, gracefully falls to the ground in slow motion, and is knocked into a seemingly never-ending coma. Typical. Her main squeeze approaches, hoping to release her from the grasping tendrils of perpetual sleep. Does he lean down and offer her the sweet morsels of his infatuated lips. NOPE! He takes her coffin and carries it off and, while carrying it, accidentally drops it which results in her lifeless corpse tumbling out and hitting the ground. The impact dislodges the half-digested apple chunk from her throat and miraculously she awakes.

Case Study 3: Bippity-Boppity-Blood

The tale of Cinderella and her magical glass slipper. Wrong already. It’s actually Ashputtle and her golden clogs. Not quite as dreamy of a ring to it, eh? We press on. The story continues along roughly the same format (minus the fact that there’s no fairy godmother, just a tree that grants wishes. Now how is a tree supposed to sing one of the catchiest musical numbers known to mankind?) She goes to the ball, falls in love with the man, drops the footwear, etc, etc. But now it’s time for the prince to find his bride to be. He goes to the ugly stepsisters and they attempt to put on these overpriced pumps. Do they push hard and then give up? No sir-ee. The stepmother convinces them that this is their last shot to become queen so she gives them a knife to saw up their feet. The first sister slices off her toes, the second hacks at her heels. The prince almost made the mistake of marrying these girls were it not for the ever-so-charming warnings of a passing bird:

“Roocoo, roocoo,

There’s blood in the shoe

The foots too long, the foot’s too wide,

That’s not the proper bride.”

Nothing like rhyming verse to make self-mutilation sound magical. In the end, the prince smartens up and finally puts the shoe on Ashputtle and, lo-and-behold, there was "no blood spurting from her shoe and staining her white stocking all red.” Tell me if that’s not the most romantic thing you’ve ever heard.

I think you are getting the picture. These delightful stories that mark out the standard of true love for our generation are really not romantic at all. I am not even going to go into the obscene amount of grotesque murder and torture that accompany these love stories.

So we are left with this; a fragmented deconstruction of the dearly beloved fairytales we once held so near to our hearts. People say chivalry is dead, but perhaps the modern concept of chivalry is just gleamed behind pretty princesses and ice-cream frosting and catchy songs that you cannot help but whistle despite the fact that you are sitting on public transit and being stared at by fellow university students. The cynic in me would like to point out how scarily realistic it is that when people go looking for a life-fulfilling, perfectly-redemptive, eternally-liberating true love’s kiss, they find instead a blundering fool or a passionate rejection. I wonder if the Grimm brothers or Hans Christian Anderson realized that their seemingly realistic albeit unnecessarily gruesome texts would be transformed into the powdery puff that they are today.

But, despite Disney’s attempt to soften the blow, there is still an ironic justice in this revelation. Just as my generation is finding out that their childhood romance stories are in fact not romantic at all, the dejected girls off of The Bachelor are realizing that one kiss is not going to solve everything despite their being irrevocably, undeniably, and indubitably “in love”. The illusion is shattered in fable and in fantasy. Maybe people are realizing that “happily ever after” is in fact not “happily ever-ignorant” and more “happily pushing through trials and hard times and frustration and pain only to persevere and realize that beneath it all there is still support ever after”.

I’m not that harsh of a cynic, honest. I do believe in love. I do. This is not so much a commentary on today’s social expectations as it is on the fact that I will never be able to watch the Little Mermaid again without thinking of bloody feet and love affairs. This makes me sad, so in order to console myself I making myself feel better by ruining it for all of you as well.

So what does this look like for the next generation that did not grow up with a line up of Disney princesses displayed proudly on their backpacks? The next generation is looking up to Edward Cullen as the epitome of love and self-sacrifice. This is concerning not only because of the now massively unattainable and false expectations that litter young girls’ hearts, not only because true love and chivalry are once again obstructed by gimmicks and magic, but mostly because of the serious lack of musical numbers. “Someday My Prince Will Come” may have misguided an entire generation into a dissatisfied love life, but at least we can go out singing.