Fairy tales or scary tales: Should we sanitize stories for our kids?

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An armour-clad Snow White wages war against her wicked stepmom. Hansel and Gretel are witch-killing bounty hunters. Little Red Riding Hood has undergone a Twilight makeover and is torn between two men, one of whom may be a werewolf terrorizing the village.

Move over, Disney. Snow White and her fairy tale mates are trading their shiny castles and glass carriages for cold, unforgiving landscapes filled with revenge and violence in upcoming films such as Snow White and the Huntsman and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. On TV, the tributes include Grimm, a show about a Grimm descendant, a detective who battles age-old fairy tale villains.

With this surge in dark and brooding modern fables, it seems as if entertainment execs have drunk the same magic potion. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the first collection from the best-known purveyors of the genre, the Grimm brothers, and their tales continue to fascinate us.

Over the past two centuries, each generation has refashioned the collection of Germanic folk tales for their times. The sanitized Disney versions, with their focus on pretty princesses and happy endings, dominate our collective memory, but even Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm edited out some of the more unsettling elements in their later editions. So its no surprise that many grown-ups find themselves conflicted: While we eat up these sexy updates in the theatre, we can be repelled as parents.

Fairy tales are thousands of years old, says scholar Jack David Zipes, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota who has translated the Grimms. And they were told in different social-cultural contexts as warning tales, initiation tales, celebration tales, ritual tales, worship tales and so on. The fairy tales or wonder tales were derived from all sorts of storytelling. They could be amusing and edifying at the same time.

Were certainly not sure if theyre edifying for children any longer. Many parents blanch when they stumble upon alarming scenes in volumes they havent vetted. Cinderella's stepsisters slice off their toes and heels to try fitting into the slipper? Red Riding Hood and her grandma actually get eaten by the wolf and a huntsman slices the wolf open?

A recent British study found that 50 per cent of parents pass on Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel due to kidnapping themes. Fifty-two per cent dismissed Cinderella as outdated because its based on a woman doing housework all day (presumably theyre referring to the less bloody versions). A wolf eating a grandmother disqualified Little Red Riding Hood.

The attitude toward children was somewhat different, says Prof. Zipes of 19th-century parents. They didnt think children should be protected,

Writer Libby Copeland thinks todays children should be shielded, arguing forcefully in Slate magazine that Grimms-inspired tales are past their prime. Theres a tendency to jump to the conclusion that because modern parents are squeamish about violence in fiction we must be wussy and overprotective. But is it also wussy that we dont spank any more, or tell our children that theyre wicked?

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Fairy tales or scary tales: Should we sanitize stories for our kids?