Not commenting on the statue, but on the purpose of dark, scary fairy tales in our culture.
All good Fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, etc. serve a developmental psychological function for small children. They love and crave these stories. All of these classic stories show children or weaker people entering the scary woods, facing danger from ogres, monsters, wolves, witches, etc, meeting helpful animals or spirits along the way, and eventually overcoming the bad guys. The primitive mind is in us all, and these tales help children develop the inner resources to overcome, not the outer scary things, but the scary monsters in their own hidden mind. The inner world in children is chaos, difficult to express or understand, and tales of monsters help them come to grips with that chaos, tame it, organize it and contain those wild energies.
Previous generations told these stories to children instinctively, yes to keep them from wandering into dangerous places, but also because children love these stories.
In our age of reading Goodnight Moon to kids, rather than Hansel and Gretel, is it any surprise that teens watch the most hideous horror movies out there? They need these scary stories, where a hero overcomes the dark monsters.
I’m beginning to think it’s bad for us to promote this whole good hero vs bad evil thing…..it makes us wrongly think some form of superiority, justification, retribution, vengence, etc. is the answer. It’s very deceptive….
Not commenting on the statue, but on the purpose of dark, scary fairy tales in our culture.
All good Fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, etc. serve a developmental psychological function for small children. They love and crave these stories. All of these classic stories show children or weaker people entering the scary woods, facing danger from ogres, monsters, wolves, witches, etc, meeting helpful animals or spirits along the way, and eventually overcoming the bad guys. The primitive mind is in us all, and these tales help children develop the inner resources to overcome, not the outer scary things, but the scary monsters in their own hidden mind. The inner world in children is chaos, difficult to express or understand, and tales of monsters help them come to grips with that chaos, tame it, organize it and contain those wild energies.
Previous generations told these stories to children instinctively, yes to keep them from wandering into dangerous places, but also because children love these stories.
In our age of reading Goodnight Moon to kids, rather than Hansel and Gretel, is it any surprise that teens watch the most hideous horror movies out there? They need these scary stories, where a hero overcomes the dark monsters.
I’m beginning to think it’s bad for us to promote this whole good hero vs bad evil thing…..it makes us wrongly think some form of superiority, justification, retribution, vengence, etc. is the answer. It’s very deceptive….