Dec 14th: Drama

On December 14^th, we were set the task as homework to research a social or political issue.  I chose to study what political correctness was and based it upon politically incorrect children’s stories.  I chose this because politics affects children as well as adults even though they may not even realise it, even if it’s in a story book.  I thought that choosing this topic could maybe bring more awareness to children about politics, and also to adults about how politics affects their child/ren.

This is a front cover to one of the
 Grimm Brothers' books

First of all, I looked for a definition of ‘political correctness’ which is, a term which denotes language, idea, policies, and behaviour seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, disability and age-related contexts.  Source: Wikipedia.org.  So now I knew what political correctness was, i could now look at what i had decided to study within this area.  I learnt that the earliest forms of fairytales were extremely gruesome and not appropriate for children though they were wrote for them.  I looked at an early version of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, a modern version and a ‘Politically Correct’ version.  I then compared them with each other and there is a massive change from the early version to the modern and an even bigger one to the ‘correct’ version which I will post a link to.  I also found a website called cracked.com that had a small article for each main fairytale i.e. Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rumpelstilskin, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.  There was a small piece about what had changed from the early version to the modern version we know now for example, in Rumpelstilskin, at the end of the story when he gets really mad he has a bit of a hissy fit so much that he stamps the floor and his foot gets stuck.  He then tries to pull it out so had that he tears himself in half.  There is an even earlier version of the story where he launches himself at the girl in rage and gets stuck in her ‘lady parts’ and the guards have to come and pull him out and remove him from the castle.  Both these versions are oral versions which are why there is some variation in them.  As you can see, there is a massive change from stories then and stories now, this version of Rumpelstilskin and the other fairytales mentioned before were actually published in Germany by Brothers Grimm.  They wouldn’t even be allowed to be published nowadays and its surprising back hen that they were allowed to be available to children, even if policies have changed over time.  I kept seeing the name ‘Grimm’ come up while researching the beginnings of the stories so I decided to do a little research on them.  I found they were 2 of 9 children who wrote sick children’s stories together.  Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born on 4^th January 1785 and 24^th February 1786 in Hanau Germany.  When the eldest brother Jacob was 15, their father died and two years later, so did their grandfather.  This left their mother to support them in difficult circumstances.  They were often neglected and hungry due to lack of food and the fact there was 9 of them to feed so this is said to be the reason that the evil stepmother character crops up in a lot of fairytales and also the fact that the birth father is dead or unmentioned.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

I decided to include all the research about children’s storied and Brothers Grimm because I wanted to find out what effect children with politics and that would be their book or stories and I also wanted to know where they originated from.   I didn’t think there was much point finding out the roots of where the stories came from but then ignored by whom which is why I decided to include all the Brothers Grimm research.

http://www.cracked.com/