Can fairytales be feminist? | Erin-Claire Barrow | TEDxCanberra
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 พ.ย. 2018
- Artist, illustrator and author Erin-Claire Barrow loves fairytales. Her project, Feminist Fairytales, combines art, social justice issues, a feminist perspective and the desire to change the narrative of story-telling to a format that all can engage with. Erin-Claire Barrow is an artist and illustrator originally from the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. She paints in watercolours to create whimsical scenes, storybook illustrations, and bring to life some of the strange creatures of fairy tales and folklore. Erin-Claire is always on the lookout for ways to combine her passions for art and social justice and is particularly interested in how art can be used to raise awareness of human rights issues. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx
I never viewed Cinderella as a damsel in distress. I rather viewed her as a girl who is optimistic, patient, courageous, kind and caring. And also the girl who never lost hope. She is an inspiration to me!! She is really classy and ladylike!! I love her!!
Agreed! She grew up being abused but she never lost hope and was still kind to everyone, even after all the trauma
EXACTLY LADY LIKE
mary poppins: baddest b*tch
And the prince never rescued cinderella
@@nejirehado7158- I’m afraid he did though.
Tale Summary
“An abusive stepmother and two stepdaughters are invited to a royal ball, leaving behind their daughter and sister whom they call Cinderella. Her fairy godmother appears and grants Cinderella’s wish to go to the ball, magically providing a coach, servants, a dress, and perfectly fitted glass slippers. The first night, Cinderella returns before the spell is broken at midnight. On the second night, she leaves in haste as the bell chimes at midnight, dropping one of her glass slippers and having to run all the way home. The prince sends a herald to every house with the slipper to find its owner, and Cinderella is finally discovered. She marries the prince and lives happily ever after.”
I suppose you could say the fairy godmother had a large part, but the end result was that the prince found her, married her, and took her out of her abusive home.
There is something she missed: fairy tales always contain a bit of anxiety, a spark of magic and a deeper meaning, and that's what fascinates us about them. I don't think that if you retell them in a way that's almost entirely built around messages about gender roles and self-confidence, you will create quite the same charm about them.
But, I have to admit that my opinion is only based on this video as I haven't actually read any of her books.
While I'm skeptical about her idea of rewriting fairytales, I'm not at all skeptical of the basic concept: Creating stories that are empowering for girls and women. I just think that they still need that bit of anxiety, magic and deeper meaning to make them really interesting.
Fairytales are for meeting our fears inside our comfort zone and building up hope that everything will be fine after all. She doesn't talk about this in her speech, which makes me think that she didn't build her stories around that but around the ideas she wanted to get across.
Hi Juliz, I like your comment! You are completely right that fairy tales do need that hint of menace, of something deeper. It's something I really thought about when writing my book that I talk about in this video, because I didn't want it to be boring or moralistic, but rather to keep the sense of magic and possibility we find in earlier fairy tale retellings. The stories in my book have more of a humourous twist rather than a dark one, although I appreciate both those ways of retelling the stories. One thing I think you might like to take away though is that traditionally told fairy tales are also built around messages about gender roles. That's one of the things I talk about in this video. It's not new to tell stories that have messages about gender roles, it's just that stories have always had messages that aligned with the beliefs and values of their time, so our stories today can look a bit different to the versions you might have grown up with. The French salons and the Italian court were telling stories that aligned with their values and worldview (and that were subversive and highlighted the topical issues of their time!) so why wouldn't we tell stories today that align with our values and beliefs, and try to highlight the issues of our time? Thanks very much for engaging with the video 😊
the original Mulan story was empowering.
You’re thinking too narrowly. Snow White persevered despite being manipulated and shined through the struggles with her friendliness.
Cinderella had such a strong inner strength that she did not let the abuse take away her kindness for others. She never let them wavered her love for life itself.
Sleeping Beauty woke up from her unconscious life because she bonded with a prince, and through a strong human connection with him, she was saved.
Stop ruining our princesses who paved the way for the future princesses, for the Elsa who had to deal with depression basically, for Moana who had a dream to venture the ocean, for Rapunzel who wanted to escape a trapped family.
If you keep showing little girls about how a prince is going to come and save them, that is stunting their imagination. literally, all fairytales are monotonous. haha so empowering. leave us alone we just want to be us.
This talk breaks my heart. Like lots of people, Erin-Claire’s taking myths literally when they’re meant to be read symbolically. :/ She’s so focused on her shallow (mis)reading she sees “consent” and “gender roles,” but is completely blind to the deeper meanings hidden below the surface. She has no idea she’s telling us to change these thousands-of-years-old teaching tales in a way that damages their power to guide our psychological and emotional development.
I just want to give her a hug and say, somewhere along the line, someone or something’s misguided you… let me show you what this means so you understand: there’s a symbolic reason for the way the original tales were told… that kiss, that marriage, that beauty saving the beast, that prince rescuing the princess - MEANS something! Modernity’s just forgotten what it all symbolizes.
And she’s right, stories HAVE been retold throughout time! But once upon a time, it was only the wise people who did so. And unfortunately, it’s PRECISELY because unwise people retold stories that many tales have been corrupted: by insisting on unrealistic “happily ever after” endings and removing/changing elements vital to our understanding of the story.
This young lady hasn’t “received her kiss” from the “prince” that would “wake her up” so she’d have the wisdom to understand there’s something she doesn’t understand about fairy tales. ****And people who don’t understand what fairy tales and myths ARE, what they’re FOR, and what they MEAN - shouldn’t be retelling them. That includes her, as well as Disney, AND Hollywood.****
It’s not fairy tales, it’s people (mis)interpreting fairy tales that’s the problem. But it’s not totally the reader’s fault, we ALL need to reacquaint ourselves with the symbolic meanings in our mythology and relearn how to unlock their long lost secrets!
I know where the keys are! I’m in the middle of making videos to explain fairy tales/myths and their deeper meanings, right now!
there is no deeper meaning like you say, she is right in her reading
@@kimkitsuragi17 You say, “There is no deeper meaning like you say, she is right in her reading.” There’s levels of meaning behind every story, whether it’s a movie, myth, fairy tale, or novel. Fables have underlying meaning. Everyone knows this, right? What we don’t always understand is WHAT it means. Look up the VERY short story, “This fable is meant for you” by Hans Christian Andersen to see why we put wisdom into stories.
hansel and gretel
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
No....because no little girl dreams of going to work in a pantsuit
FU x2 haha right on
I did
Why not
@@nicolevallis4326 same
does terry pratchett count as fairy tales?
very important work and analysis done here. TED has been a joke for some time.
THIS GAME DOODOO
Amazing! Such a boss idea and beautifully told story.
I got hungry half way threw so I had my wife make me a sandwich.
I feel that the og fairytale's are better not because wimen don't have the right but because these were the old days and wimen didn't have as many rights then as they do now. Now they have the same rights but want more. (My thought)