Fairy tales date back at least to medieval Germanic cultures, and probably date back much farther.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, fairy tales had been relegated to the realm of children’s entertainment, but the century would see them used in wholly new ways.
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Fanfare
Opening Theme
Les carnaval des animaux
Composed in 1886 by Camille Saint-Saëns.
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Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.
Interesting entry, it’s good to talk about considering the genre’s impact on modern culture. I had so many thoughts while listening to it.
On Snow White, its just an absolute masterpiece, a genre defining work of art. My grandma told me she saw it in theaters when it came out too. At one point I went back and rewatched all the Disney animated features, and it holds up, though perhaps a little rough around the edges. Pinnochio is technically the most advanced animation until perhaps Cinderella, maybe even being its equal. I agree that it has a pretty dark subject matter though. Its a wonder Fantasia was even made, though it was still something of a “Wild West” period in animation, its failure, and the strike seemed to cow the company, while they still produced great art, they never really pushed against the boundaries of the genre in the same way.
One of my favorite Jazz albums is Miles Davis’s Someday My Prince Will Come. Its neat to think that some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century would just riff to a song in a well known movie. There’s a million examples to people doing the same on YouTube today.
Another way that fantastical elements were a part of culture were through the “Pulp” magazines and universal monster movies. Pulps covered several genres of course, adventure, noir, westerns, sci-fi. I’m a particular fan of the Lovecraftian stories, and the various games based off of his work.
As for monster movies, you of course mentioned Dracula, and Bela Lugosi in previous episodes. But this is also the era of Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, and all their iterations. King Kong is of course another big monster movie of the era. I forget if you’ve mentioned these movies in previous episodes though.
I didn’t know that Dr. Seuss almost didn’t publish his first book, nor did I know that it was “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street”. Funny that it was in the news recently after the publisher decided to pull it for some outdated racial imagery, and it became a point of contention in the “culture war”