Snow White – Breadcrumbs

By Luke Ridder

Fairytales are known to be universal. Their appeal extends beyond age or nationality and the tales themselves reflect emotions, dilemmas, and characters that anybody can relate to. The same is often said for art, the universal language. Therefore, it is no wonder that art and fairy tales have become so inseparably intertwined. A union of two ubiquitous forms of human expression, creating one beloved experience. In other words, a symbiotic relationship in which each partner elevates and benefits the other. In order to demonstrate this relationship, we will explore the transformative effects of illustration, highlight art and artists that have benefited from fairy tale inspiration, and detail how fairy tales transformed the animation industry.

The oldest and most common fusion of art and fairy tales is found in illustrated stories. A staple of nearly every childhood and for good reason, as the benefits of illustrations and fairy tales themselves in developing literacy, creativity, and emotional expression among children are widely documented. As said by Einstein, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales”.Words on a page to a child do not have sound or meaning, it is only through memorizing the definition given by another where they can extract anything from them. This can be an arduous process for everyone involved, and it requires the child to draw knowledge from an outside source. However, illustrations are able to expedite this process dramatically, for while the letters of the word “ice cream” mean nothing to a child they will undoubtedly recognize a drawing of a bowl of ice cream. Allowing a child to draw on their own knowledge in this way will significantly strengthen and expedite their literary abilities. As is described in the article How illustrations affect parent-child story reading and children’s story recall, “Exposure to information both verbally and pictorially may result in the construction of memory representations in both modalities that then provide redundant retrieval routes” (Greenhoot et al.) This benefit applies especially to fairy tales, as their fanciful topics may initially leave a child lost. An illustrated tale however will not only aid their understanding of major plot points, characters and setting, but greatly increase their retention and enjoyment of the tale itself. Having the visual aspect to the tale stimulates the mind further, making the experience more engaging for a younger audience. This will ultimately foster a greater love for reading as well as an active imagination. An important factor in a child’s development that often gets overlooked is imagination. A child’s imagination is not merely their source of entertainment, it is often their reality and method of reacting to and experiencing the world around them. This is visible especially in kindergartners and preschoolers as their most common form of social interaction involves role-play or pretending. This is suggested in a Journal titled Emotions in Imaginative situations where it states, “Vygotsky (1925/1971) discussed emotion and imagination not as two separate processes but, on the contrary, as the same process” (Fleer et al.) If a child’s ability to express themselves is closely linked to their imagination, one must supply ample stimulants to strengthen that ability. The mind is often called a muscle, and like any other muscle it must be trained in order to keep it strong and healthy. With the emotional appeal of fairy tales and the inspirational powers of illustration, these illustrated stories serve as a perfect exercise for children to develop their emotional literacy in order to maintain healthy relationships in the future.

With the influence illustrated fairy tales have had on countless young minds, it is no wonder that so many artists eventually draw inspiration from these beloved tales. There are so many works of art that greatly benefit from their fairytale roots, however two in particular stand out. Over the Garden Wall, a short animated series created by Patrick McHale, and The Witcher, specifically the video game adaptations based on a series of novels by Andrzej Sapkowski. Over the Garden Wall features two brothers who are seemingly lost in the woods, trying to find their way home. The series originally aired throughout October up to Halloween, and for good reason because it is chock full of spooks and scares. In this lies both the show’s genius and its relation to fairy tales because, considering it is technically a kids show, it pulls no punches with its dark themes and violent insinuations. Examples of this are Adelade the witch who attempts to transform the brothers into her slaves by stuffing their heads with wool or The Beast, a very clear anthropomorphization of death, who feeds on despair of those lost in his woods. While one might think this would deter younger audiences, it is in fact quite the opposite. As has been proven by the Grimm’s fairy tales, children love scary stories. Children often connect with the vulnerability of the protagonists of these tales and are able to experience the harrowing encounters vicariously through the characters. Kids are attracted to this experience as it is a way for them to process fear in a safe setting. It is also this attraction which allowed the show to exist in the first place. Because while the show is quite dark for younger audiences, the precedent set by scary fairy tales and how successful they are with children allowed the show to push through the sterilization of Cartoon Network.

The Witcher series on the other hand is set in a fantasy world, one which is immensely inspired by fairy tales. The story follows Geralt, a monster hunter for hire who travels from place to place trying to earn a living. The monsters and creatures of this world mainly come from folklore and legend, like the Striga, a creature directly inspired by a Roman Zmorski fairytale in which a cannibalistic, monstrous prince is born of an incestuous union between two siblings. The author even creates his own renditions of popular tales such as Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. These versions are more gritty and offer more mature and realistic morals and interactions. This realism is only amplified by the video game adaptation of the story, as the interactive elements allow the audience to be one step closer to experiencing the world’s first hand. Immersion is something that is often strived for in fairytales, visible through the non specific characters and settings that allow readers to place themselves in the shoes of the characters. Video Games are the logical next step, you are in direct control of the adventure.

Over The Garden Wall and The Witcher both utilize animation for storytelling, an artform whose success can be directly traced to fairytales. Specifically, Disney’s first full length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which revolutionized the animation industry. The choice to depict a fairytale was effective for numerous reasons, the first and most important was the previously discussed universality of the tale. Especially during the thirties, every generation was familiar and fond of fairy tales. This made the film appeal to an audience of all ages. For children it would be a more engaging version of the tale they loved, for adults they could be transported back to their childhood years if even for a moment. This began the family movie tradition that is the backbone of animated films to this day. Prior to Snow White, Disney was producing mainly slap-stick style shorts geared towards a younger audience. While these shorts were impressive in regards to the animation, it was not enough to engage a large audience. They lacked the drama and serious tones that Snow White brought to the table. In a recounting of Snow White’s Hollywood premiere, provided by the article Wow, We’ve Got Something Here, the effect of such a tone shift becomes evident:

As the film deepened to darker tones–the Queen transforming into a hag–the atmosphere changed, as though individual audience members were wired together, experiencing the film through a series of shared emotions (Pierce).

Giving the film a serious tone was key to engaging the audience. It created a story with stakes in which the audience could root for the characters. The emotional moments with Snow White were particularly moving thanks to the expressiveness the animation captured. Regular films at the time would have to be carried by the realism of their actors, animation however requires no such realism. The separation from reality ironically allows the audience to be fully absorbed in the moment as they are not thinking about the nuances of the performance. While the film benefited greatly from it’s serious tones, it is also important to mention how its light hearted nature also added to the film’s success. At the time of its release, the country was in the midst of the Great Depression. With the spirits of the masses at an all time low, the whimsical and comedic moments offered by Snow White were the perfect medicine. It not only served as a distraction from the harsh realities families face, but the fairy tale promise of a happily ever after inspired hope. Something desperately needed by many at the time. All in all, Disney undoubtedly revolutionized the animation industry with the success of its film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. A success that was gained with the aid of the universality, drama, and hope provided by the fairy tale source.

Works Cited

Fleer, Marilyn, and Marie Hammer. “Emotions in Imaginative Situations: The Valued Place of Fairytales for Supporting Emotion Regulation.” Mind, Culture and Activity, vol. 20, no. 3, 2013, pp. 240–59, https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2013.781652.

Greenhoot AF, Beyer AM, Curtis J. More than pretty pictures? How illustrations affect parent-child story reading and children’s story recall. Front Psychol. 2014 Jul 22; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4106274/

Pierce, Todd James. “Wow, We’ve Got Something Here: Ward Kimball and the Making of ‘Snow White.’” New England Review (1990), vol. 37, no. 1, 2016, pp. 123–36, https://doi.org/10.1353/ner.2016.0022.

Grob, Virginie. Aurora, Belle, and SnowWhite. 2011, Deviant Art.

By: Katelin Dunagan

Fairy tales are so popular because of their similar themes, tropes, and character types. Readers feel comforted knowing who the real heroes and villains are, unlike in the real world. They root for princes to save their passive, delicate maidens and despise evil queens for being wicked. However, these classic fairy tale archetypes can affect more than just a person’s grasp of a story being told. Fairy tales have distinct psychological effects on those who read them; they affect people’s personalities and interactions with others, expectations and expressions of behavior, and even views on social status and class.

Fairy tales affect readers through each story’s characters. These characters maintain roles that are easy to understand. Each character serves a specific purpose to either aid or obstruct the heroine in the story. Russian fairy tale expert, Vladimir Propp, classifies these character types as dramatis personae. The dramatis personae types include the following: a villain, donor or provider, helper, princess (sought-after person), and her father, dispatcher, hero, and false hero. Using the Grimm’s “Cinderella” to demonstrate this model, characters can be organized into their dramatis personae with the main villain being the stepmother, the princess being Cinderella, the donor or provider being Cinderella’s father, the helpers being the birds, the hero being the prince, the dispatcher being the king’s announcement, and the false heroes being the stepsisters (Tatar 160-166). Essentially, every fairy tale contains character types that fit into the dramatis personae framework, and “Cinderella” is just one example of this.

Cinderella. Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske, RKO Pictures and Walt Disney Productions, 1950.

Propp’s dramatis personae structure is also a just singular representation of the many classifications of fairy tale characters into types. Based upon these different structures of classification, psychologists have been interested in the connections between character roles and human behavior. Psychologist Carl Jung contributed to these ideas, “proposing that it was primarily unconscious fantasies and symbols that steered human actions,” (Moxnes & Moxnes 1522). Inspired by Jung’s archetypal views, Paul and Andreas Moxnes created a study that examined the connection between fairy tale roles and group work.

Their study involved developing fourteen roles representing, “14 fairy tale characters” (Moxnes & Moxnes 1526). These roles are based upon seven archetypal roles, with a good and bad version of each role. The good and bad versions or “deep roles” are “a subset of seven instinctual archetypal roles split into antithetical components portrayed as four primary family roles plus three supplementary roles, each split into a good and bad part” (Moxnes & Moxnes 1525). For example, under the archetypal role of “Mother,” they created the deep roles of “Queen” and “Witch” (Moxnes & Moxnes 1525). The “Queen” corresponds to the good part of “Mother” and contrasts perfectly with the bad part, the “Witch.”

Moxnes, Paul & Moxnes, Andreas. “Are We Sucked into Fairy Tale Roles? Role Archetypes in Imagination and Organization.”Organization Studies, vol. 37, num. 10, 2016, pp. 1519-153.

After developing the fourteen roles, Moxnes & Moxnes had each participant assign everyone in their group to one of the roles. They determined how similar each person’s assignments were to the rest of the group. They found that their “quantitative observations strongly suggest that group members attribute fairy tale roles to fellow group members in a non-random fashion far more often than would be expected by chance alone” (Moxnes & Moxnes 1535). The study surpassed the threshold of chance and found that many participants identified a group member as the same character type chosen by other members of their group. While this is not confirmation that every person in a group identifies others as fairy tale characters, it supports the idea that people are affected by fairy tale character types, even if it is on a subconscious level.

This is important information for those involved in fields where teamwork is key. Character types can parallel stereotypes that brand people as one thing or idea. It can be difficult to share or contribute high-quality work if someone is branded as the “Witch” on their team. That person becomes controlled through “projective identification” (Moxnes & Moxnes 1534). This is a psychological concept where the stereotyped person, “becomes a character in the group that is created by the group and controlled by the group” (Moxnes & Moxnes 1534). They can subconsciously mirror the behaviors that their peers project onto them and act as the group sees them. Understanding how fairy tale roles impact a group can help keep harmful stereotypes from causing negative consequences such as projective identification.

It has been determined that there is support for fairy tale characters influencing people’s views of one another but how does this apply to people’s views of themselves? For young women specifically, fairy tales often set unrealistic expectations of purity and selflessness. In both “Cinderella” and “Snow White,” the heroine, “endures her plight virtuously, seemingly without hostility or even complaint. Her salvation and happiness rest on winning the love of a prince, who has the power to rescue her” (Bassen 238). This communicates the idea that women shouldn’t have autonomy or express their negative emotions towards others.

This is problematic for young women facing coming-of-age conflicts comparable to those portrayed in these tales. These stories perpetuate unhealthy standards of emotional expression for a group that already, “consciously or unconsciously equate asserting themselves with being selfish and unlikeable” (Bassen 248). Women shouldn’t be afraid to be advocates for themselves or to strive for success. Unfortunately, this issue stems from conflict in relationships between mothers and daughters as well as patriarchal influences. Bassen describes this saying, “Unconsciously, many women believe that the only way they can retain their mother’s approval and love is to remain dependent, a carbon copy or a narcissistic extension who denies any wish to separate, compete, or surpass” (249). In essence, to keep their mother’s approval, daughters believe they must not be more successful, desirable, or free-thinking.

Through recognition of the mother-daughter opposition, one can prevent harmful habits from seeping into other relationships as well. An imbalanced mother-daughter relationship can affect that daughter’s eventual interaction with a partner. Bassen notices this behavior in some of her psychological patients as they became afraid of their partner’s anger, stemming from their relationship with their mother (249). Fairy tale readers must understand that “Snow White” and “Cinderella” handle coming-of-age and mother-daughter conflict poorly. They dismiss natural emotional responses to situations and reinforce outdated concepts of how women should behave. However, they do demonstrate that mother-daughter conflict has occurred for centuries and that it is an issue most women will face at some point in their lives. With the appropriate lens, one that highlights the shortcomings of these tales, there is a lot to be gained from reading these stories. As long as one is not negatively influenced in their perception of themselves.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Directed by David Hand, Perce Pearce, Larry Morey, Wilfred Jackson, William Cottrell, and Ben Sharpsteen, RKO Pictures and Walt Disney Productions, 1937.

The last way fairy tales psychologically influence readers is through ideologies and social structures. In “Beauty and the Beast” by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, there are very distinct social classes present that play a major part in the tale’s wish fulfillment. Beauty’s family, “are an upwardly mobile merchant family,” that has fallen upon hard times and is forced to farm and lower their status (Rucki & Ortiz 43). Eventually, Beauty meets the Beast, and throughout the story, they form a partnership that leads to marriage. Notice, that Beauty’s family do not start as peasants or farmers originally, which makes Beauty’s eventual rise in class more acceptable. She was once close to the class she would rise into, so it is more acceptable for her to marry into nobility with the Beast.

Beaumont is using his 18^th century, aristocratic perspective, to structure his tale according to the class system he wants to uphold. He does this by incentivizing the virtues he deems appropriate. For example, Beauty, when compared to her sisters, is, “…neither prideful nor social. She is kind, loyal, self-sacrificing…” (Rucki & Ortiz 42). She contains the virtues Beaumont believes women of status should have and therefore she is rewarded with a rise in nobility. He is influencing his readers to accept and understand this structure as the social rule.

Beauty and the Beast. Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 1991.

This tale is a very effective piece of persuasive propaganda because it will be read by the exact demographic Beaumont intends to reach. The upper aristocratic women he believes should embody more virtuous, selfless behaviors. It can also be dangerous; it is an example of conditioning readers to do as the author wishes. They may not realize this is what is occurring because it is in the form of a fairy tale. This kind of conditioning influences readers and familiarizes them with a “correct” social structure, in this example, it is the structure Beaumont supports.

It is evident that fairy tales have profound psychological effects on readers. Through their archetypal characters, fairy tales shape perceptions of self and others and reinforce outdated behavioral expectations. They influence readers concepts of social structure by leveraging happiness and wish fulfillment. Only through critical examination of these tales, can valuable insights be pulled from the stories without negative consequences. While fairy tales continue to enchant and captivate audiences, it is essential to approach them with a discerning eye, mindful of their ability to shape beliefs and attitudes in both subtle and significant ways.

Works Cited

Bassen, Cecile R. “Happily Ever After: Depictions of Coming of Age in Fairy Tales.” Psychoanalysis and Women Series, edited by Tognoli Pasquali, Laura & Thomson-Salo, Frances, Karnac Books, 2014, pp. 237-254.

Beauty and the Beast. Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 1991.

Cinderella. Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske, RKO Pictures and Walt Disney Productions, 1950.

Grob, Virginie. Aurora, Belle, and SnowWhite. 2011, Deviant Art.

Moxnes, Paul & Moxnes, Andreas. “Are We Sucked into Fairy Tale Roles? Role Archetypes in Imagination and Organization.”Organization Studies, vol. 37, num. 10, 2016, pp. 1519-153.

Rucki, Shelia M. & Ortiz, Lisa. “Hegemonic Systems and the Politics of Happiness: The Fairy Tale as Ideology.” Perspectives on Happiness: Concepts, Conditions, and Consequences, vol. 121, 2019, pp. 1570-7113.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Directed by David Hand, Perce Pearce, Larry Morey, Wilfred Jackson, William Cottrell, and Ben Sharpsteen, RKO Pictures and Walt Disney Productions, 1937.

Tartar, Maria. The Classic Fairy Tales (Second Edition) (Norton Critical Editions). W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.