Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Dark Origins of Fairy Tales, Part I

Starting point is 00:00:00 Modern fairy tales often conclude with the protagonist achieving their dreams and a simple happily ever after. This popular image, often promoted by studios like Disney for family-friendly consumption, only scratches the surface of these classic narratives. In reality, many of these beloved stories boast far darker origins feature unsettling themes and grim endings that would be entirely unsuitable for children's movies. Learn more about the true stories behind popular fairy tales on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison.

Starting point is 00:00:49 Then your yoga teacher says that sex traffic children are being sacrificed by satanic liberals, but it's all okay. The Great Awakening is coming. What is happening? Every week on Conspirality Podcast, we explore the fever dreams that suck friends, family, and wellness gurus down the right-wing cult spiral in a certain. for salvation. Most people's knowledge of fairy tales comes from popular media, especially movies, and in particular, Disney movies. Disney's goal isn't to create an accurate telling of the original

Starting point is 00:01:29 fairy tales. They just want to create something entertaining and family friendly and are willing to sacrifice the original text to achieve this. As such, most people really don't know the original stories. They only know the sanitized version that Disney has provided. The goal of this episode is to explain the original fairy tales and how they differ from the Disney versions. And it's only fair to start with Walt Disney's first animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The inspiration for Snow White comes from a collection of stories called Grimm's Fairy Tales. This book was compiled by two German brothers, Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm in 1812. Many of the stories written by the Grim brothers do not originate with them.

Starting point is 00:02:14 Instead, they were passed down orally for generations. The Grim Brothers contribution was compiling these stories into the form of a single book. The original Snow White and the Disney version are among the more faithful adaptations with the story following similar beats. The evil queen's motive stay the same, she tries to kill Snow White, the princess eats a poisoned apple, and she eventually wakes and lives happily ever after. However, there are a few key differences. In both the film and Grimm's fairy tale, the queen wants to kill Snow White for being the

Starting point is 00:02:46 fairest in the land. To do so, she hires a huntsman to kill the young girl and bring back her organs. In the movie, he's told to bring back her heart as proof of death. However, in the Grim Brother version, the desire for organs is a bit more nefarious. In the grim version, the evil queen wants the huntsman to bring back Snow White's liver and lungs, not her heart. She wants the organs to consume them, believing that this will give her Snow White's youth and beauty. The organs, the Huntsman give her are not human, but she eats him anyways, thinking that they are. Additionally, in the Grimm's tale, the evil queen tries to murder Snow White three separate times. The first two attempts fail, and the third attempt to kill Snow White is with the Apple.

Starting point is 00:03:29 But her determination to kill Snow White and the princess is naively much more on display in the Grimm version. Another major change between the Grimm and Disney versions of Snow White is the Evil Queen's death. In the Disney version, the Dwarves find the sleeping Snow White and chase the Queen's queen to a cliff. The queen tries to drop a boulder on them, but lightning strikes the cliff, and she falls to her death. In the grim version, the queen lives far longer. In this version, Snow White is awakened by the prince, who asks for her hand in marriage. She agrees, and the couples are to have a wedding. Simultaneously, the evil queen asks her magic mirror who the fairest in the land is, and the mere replies that the fairest is the prince's bride.

Starting point is 00:04:12 The evil queen still thinks Snow White is dead and goes to the wedding. to see the new fairest person. She's shocked to find Snow White. Before she can act, however, hot iron shoes are put on her feet, and she has forced to dance until she dies. Many of the original elements of the Snow White story have the same

Starting point is 00:04:29 rough theme as the movie. The Disney version makes the film more concise and kid-friendly by removing the cannibalism and the Queen's Hidious Death. While Snow White largely follows its source material, many other Disney tales diverge significantly to create magical happy endings. One example of a story that heavily deviates from the source material is Sleeping Beauty.

Starting point is 00:04:52 There were several versions of Sleeping Beauty written before Disney made the film. The three most popular variants were written by John Battista Bacillet, Charles Perrault, and the Grim Brothers. As Basile's version of Sleeping Beauty, known as Sun Moon and Talia, is believed to be the first published version of the fairy tale, it'll be our comparison to the Disney story. Basile was born in Italy in 1566 and died in 1632. His sister published his works after his death. One of the posthumously published works was the original Sleeping Beauty, which appeared in a collection published in 1634. In this version, the princess is named Talia.

Starting point is 00:05:32 At Talia's birth, a group of astronomers predicts that the princess will be put in danger from a splinter of flax. This results in the king removing all spinning materials. from the kingdom. In the 1959 Disney version, the princess is named Aurora. At her birth, the fairy maleficent curses her. On our 16th birthday, Aurora will prick her finger and fall into a deep sleep. Only true love's kiss can break the spell. The king removes all spinning wheels from the kingdom. In Basile's version, Talia visits an old woman spinning flax, tries it, and falls asleep after a splinter lodges under her nail. In the Disney version, Aurora pricks her finger on a

Starting point is 00:06:12 a spindle and sleeps. The stories diverged dramatically after the princess falling asleep part. In Basili's version, the king, who was distraught, leaves his daughter's essentially lifeless body in a country manner and proceeds to abandon the home forever. Years later, another king discovers the manner, finds the beautiful sleeping princess, and after failing to wake her, rapes her before leaving. Tully becomes pregnant from this encounter and gives birth to twins, sun and moon. Fairies put the children at her breast to feed.

Starting point is 00:06:45 One twin accidentally sucks the flax from her fingernail and wakes her. The king who fathered her children later returns, finds Talia awake and tells her what he did. They stay at the manner together for a while, but eventually the king must return home to his wife who becomes the story's main villain. The king's wife learns about Talia and the twins from his sleep talking. She writes to Talia pretending to be the king and requests that the twins come to the palace. After the twins arrive, the queen orders a cook to kill the children, cook them, and serve them to the king. The cook hides the children instead and serves the king lamb. The queen then summons Talia intending to burn her alive.

Starting point is 00:07:27 The king learns of the plot, burns his wife instead, marries Talia and they live happily ever after? In the Disney tale, Aurora is betrothed to a prince named Philip. The two had met before, but Philip didn't know her. identity. When he learns the truth of her being put to sleep, he uses a magical weapon to fight and kill Maleficent. He then finds Aurora, kisses her, breaks a spell, and they live happily ever after. Both stories open similarly with a spinning-related material cursing the young princess and their family trying to take measures to prevent this tragedy from occurring, and with a tragic finger-related accident putting her to sleep. However, what occurs after the finger injury is

Starting point is 00:08:09 very different. The magic of true love is to be. taken away, the princess is no longer raped, and the love interest and the villain arc are completely changed. The final tale that we'll discuss is The Little Mermaid. The original story The Little Mermaid was written by the Danish author Hans Christian Anderson in 1837. It was part of a collection of fairy tales Anderson was publishing. The central plot of a young mermaid princess desperate to be human remains the same across both tales, but how it plays out is very different. Both tales start the same way. The young mermaid is fascinated by the world beyond the ocean. She swims to the surface, falls in love with the prince, and saves him from drowning.

Starting point is 00:08:51 The prince does not know who saved him. The original Danish tale then differs. The mermaid asks her grandmother about life as a human versus life as a mermaid. She learns mermaids live longer, but turn into seafone when they die. Humans live shorter lives, but their souls live forever. The desire for an eternal soul and to be with the prince leads the mermaid to seek out a sea witch, a plot element similar to that of the Disney tale. In both Disney's and Anderson's versions, the exchange for becoming a human is to trade their voice. However, the exact terms of the deal differ based on the media.

Starting point is 00:09:29 In the Danish version, the mermaid will never be able to return to the sea, and every time she takes a step, it will feel as though a sword is cutting through her body. She will feel like she is walking on knives and will never forget the cost of losing her tail. However, it's not all bad as she will dance more beautifully than any human before her. Additionally, she won't obtain a soul unless the prince falls in love with and marries her. If he marries someone else, the mermaid will die and become seafone. The terms of the deal in the Disney version are quite different. The sea witch Ursula offers Ariel the voice deal, giving her three days to receive love's true kiss from the

Starting point is 00:10:08 the prince and keep her legs. If Ariel were to fail in this mission, she would become Ursula's property. From there, the Disney version goes off with stereotypical Disney hijinks. Ariel meets the prince and the two spend time together. Before they can complete true love's kiss, Ursula must come to the surface pretending to be the prince's savior and the two are to be married. Ariel's voice gets restored through animal-related chaos and the prince and Ariel defeat the witch. Ariel keeps her legs, and the couple lives happily ever after. This is completely different from the Danish version. After the mermaid takes the deal, she is found on the shore by the prince. He is enchanted by her beauty and loves to see her dance, which the mermaid does for him, despite feeling like knives

Starting point is 00:10:52 are stabbing her feet. The mermaid and the prince begin to bond, but the prince does not love her. Instead, he marries a young princess whom he believes saved him earlier from the shipwreck. The princess and the prince Mary and the mermaid's heart breaks, just as the witch promised. She's given a final chance at survival. If she kills the prince, she will become a mermaid again and be happy. The mermaid is unable to do so and instead jumps into the sea and dissolves into seafone. However, because she did not kill the prince, she is offered an immortal soul. The original story of the little mermaid is full of pain and sacrifice.

Starting point is 00:11:31 The mermaid does not achieve her. dream of marrying the prince and her life is full of suffering. While one of her major wishes, having an immortal soul is achieved, you can't say that her life was particularly a happy one, whereas in the Disney film, it gives Ariel all she could ever want. Overall, the original stories behind Disney films are often much darker and explore complex themes and ideas that the studio often removes in favor of happy, simple, family-friendly stories. The stories covered in this episode are not the only ones whose original versions are much darker than what most of us know. There are many more fairy tales with disturbing origins that will be covered in future episodes.

Starting point is 00:12:14 The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research and writing for this episode was provided by Olivia Ash. My big thanks go to everyone who supports a show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. This is where everything happens that's outside of the show. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Dark Origins of Fairy Tales, Part I

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.