Gingerbread and the fairytale genre?

Xin Rong

Xin Rong

Killed by Dissertation
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Give a critical comparison between a traditional version of a well-known fairy tale and a modern adaptation of it (book, film/video, or computer game).

Ok, so I am currently in my third year of an English degree, and I am doing a module in children's literature. I have decided to tackle the above question for my assignment, and I originally wanted to use the gentleman fairytale that Joss created for the show, but as it's not an adaptation of a specific fairytale then I've been told that I'm not allowed.

However, at this point I had become so excited about combining Buffy with my education that I refuse to be deterred. Instead I am going to do a comparison between Buffy's 'Gingerbread' and the Grimm version of the same fairytale.

I was thinking of doing a little comparison between the two in terms of plot and structure, which means I can describe 'Gingerbread' without sounding like I'm describing it.

But, I want to focus on the overall 'message' of each story, basically comparing what the original intended to say, and what the adaptation intends to say.

I've created this thread to try and get some ideas from people, who may know more than me, but also so that I can post my ideas and get feedback from people as I'm going along. I always find it helpful to discuss my assignments with friends whilst I'm doing it, but none of my friends have both literary and buffy interests, so I though the boards would be a better alternative 🙂
 
I don't think "Witchhunt 3ABB11" was based as much on a fairy tale as on real life. The Salem witch trials of 1692 are a cantral core of American history and the McCarthy witchhunts of 1952 were based on the same hysteria. It is easy to compare some of modern history to the darker fairy tales, but as you have said, it is not a direct dramatization of a Grimm's story, so you may be out of luck using this as an assignment. Even in recent times, the shadow of the McCarthy witchhunts remained when Elia Kazan was given an honourary Oscar in 1999 and people of principle such as Nick Nolte and Ed Harris refused to applaud. Kazan, the man who made movies about courageous men with principles, had thrown numerous people, mainly screenwriters, under the bus in the McCarthy era to save his worthless hide.

There is a great theological question of whether God can save you if you come up with an insight that your professor never had in an English Literature course. There is no doubt, however, that He has never done so, so beware. English Literature is not like mathematics where you have the freedom to create spaces with properties that have no real-world counterpart or like science or engineering where innovation is common. The dirty secret of the "creative" arts is that they are far more regimented than science and mathematics.
 
Ethan Reigns said:
I don't think "Witchhunt 3ABB11" was based as much on a fairy tale as on real life. The Salem witch trials of 1692 are a cantral core of American history and the McCarthy witchhunts of 1952 were based on the same hysteria. It is easy to compare some of modern history to the darker fairy tales, but as you have said, it is not a direct dramatization of a Grimm's story, so you may be out of luck using this as an assignment. Even in recent times, the shadow of the McCarthy witchhunts remained when Elia Kazan was given an honourary Oscar in 1999 and people of principle such as Nick Nolte and Ed Harris refused to applaud. Kazan, the man who made movies about courageous men with principles, had thrown numerous people, mainly screenwriters, under the bus in the McCarthy era to save his worthless hide.

There is a great theological question of whether God can save you if you come up with an insight that your professor never had in an English Literature course. There is no doubt, however, that He has never done so, so beware. English Literature is not like mathematics where you have the freedom to create spaces with properties that have no real-world counterpart or like science or engineering where innovation is common. The dirty secret of the "creative" arts is that they are far more regimented than science and mathematics.
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I'd agree with you in parts, but I don't think that the creatives are that regimented in general, it seems to me it depends on who your learning it from, some universities/lecturers appreciate ingenuity, whereas others appreciate innovativeness and new ideas, so long as they aren't ridiculous, like if I approached a Thomas Hardy novel and tried to say it was inspired by mexican poetry.

Also, I think I'll be ok doing the comparison with gingerbread, considering the episode's title and plot, but thanks for all the historical info, I would not have thought of including that, but it is an interesting tangent that I can investigate so I'm very grateful 🙂
 
For starters your profile states your location to be Bolton, to me the means Bolton UK.
Is it Bolton USA, as depending on which country you live in your lecturer might prefer any references to a witchhunt to be pertaining to that country in which you live. Also consider the country of birth of the Grimm brothers, was it Germany? European at any rate so any mentions of Salem would be specific to Buffy but not the fairy tale.

And that is if you delve into the witchhunts at all as the reasons why the reasons why the witchunts happened are still open to conjecture. Also any mention of witches could easily take over the assignment.
Having said that the little disturbance at Salem would be the easier to talk about as, A/ it is about a fixed town B/ took place over such a short period of time. In comparison to the witchhunt in the UK that involved virtually all of the UK and took place over 2 to 300 years. The last one I read about being in Scotland in the late 1770's.
So personally I'd try to ignore the demon/witch angle, I dare say that angle would have been covered by many people. Can you do the paper using the demon talk in Buffy and the old woman in the gingerbread house being a witch as metaphors?

It would be beneficial to know from what perspective you were writing the assignment for people like Ethan Reign and myself to offer constructive ideas, as opposed to us making guesses about what aspect of the story you are intending to do.

If you have access to the 'actual' original story, doing the comparison between the Grimms version and the Buffy version to the original story might hold more literary weight than just a comparison to two variations.
 
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ILLYRIAN said:
For starters your profile states your location to be Bolton, to me the means Bolton UK.
Is it Bolton USA, as depending on which country you live in your lecturer might prefer any references to a witchhunt to be pertaining to that country in which you live. Also consider the country of birth of the Grimm brothers, was it Germany? European at any rate so any mentions of Salem would be specific to Buffy but not the fairy tale.

And that is if you delve into the witchhunts at all as the reasons why the reasons why the witchunts happened are still open to conjecture. Also any mention of witches could easily take over the assignment.
Having said that the little disturbance at Salem would be the easier to talk about as, A/ it is about a fixed town B/ took place over such a short period of time. In comparison to the witchhunt in the UK that involved virtually all of the UK and took place over 2 to 300 years. The last one I read about being in Scotland in the late 1770's.
So personally I'd try to ignore the demon/witch angle, I dare say that angle would have been covered by many people. Can you do the paper using the demon talk in Buffy and the old woman in the gingerbread house being a witch as metaphors?

It would be beneficial to know from what perspective you were writing the assignment for people like Ethan Reign and myself to offer constructive ideas, as opposed to us making guesses about what aspect of the story you are intending to do.

If you have access to the 'actual' original story, doing the comparison between the Grimms version and the Buffy version to the original story might hold more literary weight than just a comparison to two variations.
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I am comparing the Buffy version of the Hansel and Gretal with the original Grimm fairytale.

I was going to discuss the way in which 'Gingerbread' subverts the original traditional telling of the story, and focus on the different themes that are present within each one, and how their genre/audience etc has resulted in the themes being different in each narrative.

I was also going to investigate the reversal of the 'bad' guy, as rather than the witch being the archetypical villain, instead it is the children who are villainous, which harkens back to the pre-Grimm version of the story.

I was also thinking about discussing the way in which the original fairytale and gingerbread portray different aspects of the 'mother'.

The history of witch hunts will not be a major part of my assignment, I would only include them as a tangent to potentially explain certain choices that were made in 'Gingerbread'.
 
I am definitely regretting my decision to undertake this task now...
 
Xin Rong said:
I am definitely regretting my decision to undertake this task now...
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What aspect of the comparison are you doing? There may be some things we can discuss in this thread. My original comments were about what would have motivated the American writers who were working on Buffy.
 
Xin Rong
Xin Rong
Thanks :) I hadn't found those on slayage
I'm comparing the way that maternity is portrayed in both versions of the tale, although I'm limited to 2750 words, which is the main source of the problem I'm having, as I have gathered so many sources and so much information on the buffy part of it, that I'm really struggling with the selection process. Also, throughout the course of this comparison, I'm actually falling down on the side of Whedon being particularly sexist within this episode, which I don't like, but it really is unavoidable.

My general conclusion is that due to the way that Joyce is doubled with the monster, and is shown to be childish and rash, then the adaptation actually endorses the negative female stereotype of maternity that is evident in the traditional version, particularly in the way Gile's as a paternal figure is shown to be the better option, just as the father in H&G is... I just want to get it done 🙂
 
Presenting a negative stereotype is not the same as endorsing it. Joss always goes for the shock value - having Joyce and Sheila turn against Buffy and Willow is not beyond the realm of believability, expecially since there is a spell involved. This allows Joyce to be judged by the same standards as Angel and Spike not being judged for things they did before they got souls.

The interesting thing is that no further mention is made of any of it in subsequent episodes other than Willow's mother knowing Willow is dating a musician.

Inability or unwillingness of parents to listen to children is a fact, not a negative stereotype. I don't see Joss saying that this is the way it has to be, but the characters he creates have to be understandable. I don't see anyone saying that no mother has ever acted against her child's interests, although usually not as extreme as burning at the stake. Sheila's reduction of Willow to a pigeonholed category in her knowledge of psychobabble is also a negative, but again, a recognizeable character.

I am not entirely sure Joss can be judged as either sexist or feminist because the characters he creates serve to resemble characters everyone can be expected to have met and to move the story along. This is the same sense that Harmony is a negative stereotype right from the first episode of Buffy to the last episode of Angel (and she is the only character to span the full timespan of the Buffyverse), playing a shallow, stupid girl both before and after being sired - but we have all met a Harmony archetype.
 
Ethan Reigns said:
Presenting a negative stereotype is not the same as endorsing it. Joss always goes for the shock value - having Joyce and Sheila turn against Buffy and Willow is not beyond the realm of believability, expecially since there is a spell involved. This allows Joyce to be judged by the same standards as Angel and Spike not being judged for things they did before they got souls.

The interesting thing is that no further mention is made of any of it in subsequent episodes other than Willow's mother knowing Willow is dating a musician.

Inability or unwillingness of parents to listen to children is a fact, not a negative stereotype. I don't see Joss saying that this is the way it has to be, but the characters he creates have to be understandable. I don't see anyone saying that no mother has ever acted against her child's interests, although usually not as extreme as burning at the stake. Sheila's reduction of Willow to a pigeonholed category in her knowledge of psychobabble is also a negative, but again, a recognizeable character.

I am not entirely sure Joss can be judged as either sexist or feminist because the characters he creates serve to resemble characters everyone can be expected to have met and to move the story along. This is the same sense that Harmony is a negative stereotype right from the first episode of Buffy to the last episode of Angel (and she is the only character to span the full timespan of the Buffyverse), playing a shallow, stupid girl both before and after being sired - but we have all met a Harmony archetype.
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I'd agree with you2, I don't think that portraying something realistic can be termed as an endorsement, there are obviously mothers who are interfering etc... but this episode only portrays mothers negatively, yes they explain their actions via the influence of the demon, but they completely leave fathers out of the equation, which is just strange to me... I know Buffy's father isn't around, but that shouldn't mean no ones fathers are. It seems like we're expected to believe that only mothers would respond to the tragedy of child murder.

Also, the fact that Giles is presented as the superior parental figure, seems to reproduce the superior image of the father in the traditional version of the tale. I don't think any of this was wholly deliberate, after all the H&G element was something added to the original script, and wasn't meant to be part of the episode. Personally, I think that the reason the negative image of mothers etc is recycled in this episode is somewhat coincidental, rather than deliberate, the episode was more focused on different themes and ideas and I think that these take precedence over maternity vs paternity, but unfortunately the tyranny of the word count means that I can't really get that point into my thesis.
 
As far as I'm concerned Joss was sexist a lot of the time, take his Gingerbread story. Feminists were originally about getting equality between the sexes, yet how many witches were men?
If you have only 2750 words to play with maybe you could state what the relevants of the witch in the gingerbread house was, to get a victim, to keep them quiet then have their wicked way wwhich sounds more like The Gentlemen. Plus with them not being witches you would have more scope with comparisons and as such I'd be easier to impress your tutor. The Gentlemen isn't an adaptation of that fairy tale but it could be implied that it is.
 
VisionGirl said:
[MENTION=5421]Xin Rong[/MENTION], this is an interesting essay that touches on how Whedon deals with female characters who reach maturity and motherhood. In short, it's not good. 😉
http://slayageonline.com/essays/slayage29/St_Louis_Riggs.htm
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[MENTION=10354]VisionGirl[/MENTION] I read the essay and was surprised that there was no mention of Faith or Sineya at all. But that would have expanded it into a book. The description of Cordelia also fails to mention the mystic pregnancy in the first season of Angel, "Expecting 1X12".

The article also does not address the issue of whether portraying a character that is quite recognizeable such as the negligent, controlling mother is a denial of feminism or simply recognition of a real-life character that a lot of people have met and would have no trouble recognizing. All characters get subordinated to the story, not just the female ones. In the end, the stories had to be realistic and not the feminist equivalent of the Waltons, where "father knows best" would be replaced by "mother knows best".
 
Ethan Reigns said:
[MENTION=10354]VisionGirl[/MENTION] I read the essay and was surprised that there was no mention of Faith or Sineya at all. But that would have expanded it into a book. The description of Cordelia also fails to mention the mystic pregnancy in the first season of Angel, "Expecting 1X12".

The article also does not address the issue of whether portraying a character that is quite recognizeable such as the negligent, controlling mother is a denial of feminism or simply recognition of a real-life character that a lot of people have met and would have no trouble recognizing. All characters get subordinated to the story, not just the female ones. In the end, the stories had to be realistic and not the feminist equivalent of the Waltons, where "father knows best" would be replaced by "mother knows best".
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I accept your point, in fact Joss Whedon pretty much defends Buffy with a similar argument, but that still doesn't mean that it can't be criticised through a feminist lens, it's just one of many potential interpretations, and it means that such an argument is intrinsically flawed but there's still an argument for it to be made.
 
Ethan Reigns said:
[MENTION=10354]VisionGirl[/MENTION] I read the essay and was surprised that there was no mention of Faith or Sineya at all. But that would have expanded it into a book. The description of Cordelia also fails to mention the mystic pregnancy in the first season of Angel, "Expecting 1X12".

The article also does not address the issue of whether portraying a character that is quite recognizeable such as the negligent, controlling mother is a denial of feminism or simply recognition of a real-life character that a lot of people have met and would have no trouble recognizing. All characters get subordinated to the story, not just the female ones. In the end, the stories had to be realistic and not the feminist equivalent of the Waltons, where "father knows best" would be replaced by "mother knows best".
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No one expects every female character to not get subordinated (well, maybe some feminists do, I don't), but for every adult/mature female to get subordinated- yeah, it strikes me as a pretty obvious pattern.

And I'm not asking for mother/father knows best (blech!), but I would like some more complexity in mature women characters, or, at least for them to live to see that complexity and maybe some growth! But this is not just a Whedon problem, it's ubiquitious in the filming industry. I once heard Meryl Streep say that of course she had a ton of roles when she was younger, and now that she's older filmmakers love the "lioness in winter" stories, but good roles were hard to come by as a middle-aged woman.
 
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