News from the Fourth Dimension

Fairy Tales

Parental Advisory:
The following article is of the kick in the balls kind. So, if you want your children to still believe in fairy tale endings, restrict them from reading the same.

Here is something from ‘Fight Club’ (arguably one of the all time greatest guy movies).

All (of us have been) been raised on television to believe that one day we’ll all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t, and we’re slowly learning about that. And we are very, very pissed off.

I want to say the same thing, but about fairy tales. Brought up on a steady dose of happy endings, we believed ourselves to be the undisputed princes and princesses of the land, but the truth is slowly dawning on us. Then why are we misled by these tales?

Take ‘Sleeping Beauty’ as an example. All this time we got the fable of Sleeping Beauty wrong. The prince didn't kiss her to wake her up. No one who slept for a hundred years is likely to wake up. That means that she wasn’t sleeping, but just waiting for the ‘right one’ to come to her. But then, what about other ‘princes’ who had come to look for her, to unravel the mystery behind her legend, in the past hundred years? Their bodies lie strewn near her resting place. Their kisses wouldn’t wake her; rather she had decided that they weren’t the one for her. Then what gave her the right to put up this façade and lure these unsuspecting souls to her?

And talking about ‘living happily ever after’, would the prince be able to forget that he had to tread on corpses of other suitors before ‘reviving’ the princess?

These tales account for more questions than answers. Best left untouched. Turn off the lights. Sleep for another one hundred years.

Phi says: When you're waking up, the world is a blur. What was clear in a dream, suddenly makes no sense. No surreal rescues. No easy, magic way out.
But you are awake.