Tale of Tales or the subversive potential of fairie
I believe Tale of Tales recovers the subversive potential of fairy tale. The synopsis for the movie in Germany presented it as "Fantasyfilm". It may be useful to know
that the German word for fantasy is actually spelled "Fantasie", whereas
the English word has come to be used by Germans what the rest of the
world tries to make sense of as "high fantasy" or "swords and sorcery",
thus covering the wide range from Conan to Harry Potter. But should
this cover fairy tales as well? Opinions may differ. Although professor
Tolkien would argue that all folk narratives, from Beowulf to Briar Rose, have a particular though anonymous author, some poet, behind them, I prefer to believe in collective creation (as posed by, for example, Levi-Strauss) that shapes a tale bit by bit like the ocean shapes a round stone.
Of course, such unconscious processes can't be considered to be fantastic. I'd rather follow Stephan Frings, who claims that fantasy as such is only visible as a reaction against an established, rational frame, thus starting with romanticism, which spawns its own form: the Kunstmärchen. A fairytale as such, therefore, is not fantastic. A film about fairy tales, on the other hand, might have to be.
Frings points out that the probably greatest visible difference between fairy tale and the fantasy story, is that fantasy tends to create a secondary world and enrich it with detail, history and diversity. Fairytale, on the other hand, works in big chunks, all of them rather imprecise. In the land "far far away" there is only "the castle" and "the wood", none of them have names, and nobody wonders whether there could be more than one wood. The same thing applies to characters who, in the best of cases, have generic names but no individual traits or development.
When transporting tales into visuals, Garrone cannot be generic or unspecific. Characters have faces, and these even tend to express emotions and consciousness. Instead of trying to evade the evident, the director choses the richness in detail, the colorful and diverse which outsports the imagination of anyone hearing an oral tale and rather underscores the awe and wonder that the plot of those tales achieves with so much less. It would still be unfair to group these images with those produced by Peter Jackson or Guillermo del Toro. The bizarre and grotesque is ever present in both extreme and subtle ways, in the unusual bodytypes, in the proximity of the animal and the human, which flow into each other. Garrone is no doubt still within line of Italian cinema with Fellini and Pasolini.
I have not come across much analysis on the role of animals in the fairy tale, but I believe to observe that the general absence of speaking animals from high fantasy is one more thing that sets it apart from fairy tales, achieving a more evident seriousness, but losing a dimension of meaning which Garrone ably exploits. Actually, animals don't talk in Tale of Tales either, but they transform, as the witch that subtly takes the shape of the black hog. The sea monster is, in a magical way, mate to two human women, who give birth to two almost human boys. Are these boys human? Are they animals? They swim without breathing like their animal father and act driven by instinct (as every fairytale hero somehow does). They are often seen in proximity of animals, Elias is close to his horse, but Jonas appears among dead animals when death follows on his heels within the pantry. Even the giant flea is metonymically replaced by the ogre, who becomes the outgrowth of the monster the moment he touches its dead skin. For a common fantasy film, the ogre looks quite human. For a human, he looks quite bestial. His primitive lifestyle also suggests animality. All this reminds us but the fact, forgotten by rationalism, that humans are but another animal, mostly undistinguished from other species.
Garrone's film thus approaches the forgotten, lower region of consciousness, that have kept expressing through the impersonal, collective tale. Levi-Strauss concludes that fairy tales have a common structure with myths, but cannot be a transformation of these since they coexist simultaneously within every society. The actual difference between the two is the circumstance in which they are told. Fairy tales are not told in temples and sacred books. They are by and about the dispossessed, the women and children, the orphans and handicapped. True fairy tales look up to kings and princesses from the view of those who suffer their consequences. They are low mythology not because they are less important, but because they come from below: subverting, denouncing, revealing.
This has too long been forgotten, especially in film. If one is to blame a particular person, it's obviously Walt Disney, but trends don't happen if the whole of society doesn't participate, and Disney's heirs have certainly complicated the matter even more. Even now, as Disney Studios and other fairy tale films are desperately trying to be "modern" more than thirty years overdue, they do it by further disrupting the structure of the oral folklore, producing disasters like Maleficent, among many others. Not only do these films try ridiculously hard and kill the magic and wisdom in the process, they also fail to tackle the themes they attempt to criticize, representing woman as someone whose best possible role is that of a martyr.
Garrone, on the other hand, returns to the gruesome tales that can't be told to children, but are a crucial part of the lore. Like all evil queens, the queen does away with the patriarch, but is still an even more radical expression of patriarchal law. She cannot value her own happiness but only sees her own realization in motherhood. The sisters that betray each other for following a womanizer end up destroyed. Of course it is unfair that the man will not suffer any form of punishment - but has the punishment of Don Giovanni not been staged again and again in so many cultures? This is not poetic justice, but a cautionary tale. Finally, it is the irresponsibility of one more patriarch, one more king, that lets a flea grow enough to become a monster, that lets all matters get out of hand, and is quite indifferent when this means he has to sacrifice his daughter. In the end, it is the responsibility of the lowly to right the wrong of the high and mighty. However, before coming to action, they need to believe in themselves, and this may not happen until the moment when they find themselves in the face of death.
The happy ending is not whole and sound. It is dredged in the memory of those who didn't make it and full of open questions. It is reopening the play to a tradition that was never about giving a single moral, but about uttering the many impersonal voices of rebellion.
Sources
Antonsen, Jan Erik. Poetik des Unmöglichen. Paderborn, Mentis, 2007.
Frings, Stephan. Alte Götter, neue Welten; Religion und Magie in der deutschsprachigen Fantasy-Literatur. Wetzlar, Phantastische Bibliothek, 2010.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. "Le structure et la forme" in Antropologie Structurale. Paris, Plon, 1985.
Lüthi, Max. Es war einmal. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.
Tolkien, James Ronald Reuel. The Monsters and the Critics. London, Allen & Unwin, 1983.
Of course, such unconscious processes can't be considered to be fantastic. I'd rather follow Stephan Frings, who claims that fantasy as such is only visible as a reaction against an established, rational frame, thus starting with romanticism, which spawns its own form: the Kunstmärchen. A fairytale as such, therefore, is not fantastic. A film about fairy tales, on the other hand, might have to be.
Frings points out that the probably greatest visible difference between fairy tale and the fantasy story, is that fantasy tends to create a secondary world and enrich it with detail, history and diversity. Fairytale, on the other hand, works in big chunks, all of them rather imprecise. In the land "far far away" there is only "the castle" and "the wood", none of them have names, and nobody wonders whether there could be more than one wood. The same thing applies to characters who, in the best of cases, have generic names but no individual traits or development.When transporting tales into visuals, Garrone cannot be generic or unspecific. Characters have faces, and these even tend to express emotions and consciousness. Instead of trying to evade the evident, the director choses the richness in detail, the colorful and diverse which outsports the imagination of anyone hearing an oral tale and rather underscores the awe and wonder that the plot of those tales achieves with so much less. It would still be unfair to group these images with those produced by Peter Jackson or Guillermo del Toro. The bizarre and grotesque is ever present in both extreme and subtle ways, in the unusual bodytypes, in the proximity of the animal and the human, which flow into each other. Garrone is no doubt still within line of Italian cinema with Fellini and Pasolini.
I have not come across much analysis on the role of animals in the fairy tale, but I believe to observe that the general absence of speaking animals from high fantasy is one more thing that sets it apart from fairy tales, achieving a more evident seriousness, but losing a dimension of meaning which Garrone ably exploits. Actually, animals don't talk in Tale of Tales either, but they transform, as the witch that subtly takes the shape of the black hog. The sea monster is, in a magical way, mate to two human women, who give birth to two almost human boys. Are these boys human? Are they animals? They swim without breathing like their animal father and act driven by instinct (as every fairytale hero somehow does). They are often seen in proximity of animals, Elias is close to his horse, but Jonas appears among dead animals when death follows on his heels within the pantry. Even the giant flea is metonymically replaced by the ogre, who becomes the outgrowth of the monster the moment he touches its dead skin. For a common fantasy film, the ogre looks quite human. For a human, he looks quite bestial. His primitive lifestyle also suggests animality. All this reminds us but the fact, forgotten by rationalism, that humans are but another animal, mostly undistinguished from other species.
Garrone's film thus approaches the forgotten, lower region of consciousness, that have kept expressing through the impersonal, collective tale. Levi-Strauss concludes that fairy tales have a common structure with myths, but cannot be a transformation of these since they coexist simultaneously within every society. The actual difference between the two is the circumstance in which they are told. Fairy tales are not told in temples and sacred books. They are by and about the dispossessed, the women and children, the orphans and handicapped. True fairy tales look up to kings and princesses from the view of those who suffer their consequences. They are low mythology not because they are less important, but because they come from below: subverting, denouncing, revealing.This has too long been forgotten, especially in film. If one is to blame a particular person, it's obviously Walt Disney, but trends don't happen if the whole of society doesn't participate, and Disney's heirs have certainly complicated the matter even more. Even now, as Disney Studios and other fairy tale films are desperately trying to be "modern" more than thirty years overdue, they do it by further disrupting the structure of the oral folklore, producing disasters like Maleficent, among many others. Not only do these films try ridiculously hard and kill the magic and wisdom in the process, they also fail to tackle the themes they attempt to criticize, representing woman as someone whose best possible role is that of a martyr.
Garrone, on the other hand, returns to the gruesome tales that can't be told to children, but are a crucial part of the lore. Like all evil queens, the queen does away with the patriarch, but is still an even more radical expression of patriarchal law. She cannot value her own happiness but only sees her own realization in motherhood. The sisters that betray each other for following a womanizer end up destroyed. Of course it is unfair that the man will not suffer any form of punishment - but has the punishment of Don Giovanni not been staged again and again in so many cultures? This is not poetic justice, but a cautionary tale. Finally, it is the irresponsibility of one more patriarch, one more king, that lets a flea grow enough to become a monster, that lets all matters get out of hand, and is quite indifferent when this means he has to sacrifice his daughter. In the end, it is the responsibility of the lowly to right the wrong of the high and mighty. However, before coming to action, they need to believe in themselves, and this may not happen until the moment when they find themselves in the face of death.The happy ending is not whole and sound. It is dredged in the memory of those who didn't make it and full of open questions. It is reopening the play to a tradition that was never about giving a single moral, but about uttering the many impersonal voices of rebellion.
Sources
Antonsen, Jan Erik. Poetik des Unmöglichen. Paderborn, Mentis, 2007.
Frings, Stephan. Alte Götter, neue Welten; Religion und Magie in der deutschsprachigen Fantasy-Literatur. Wetzlar, Phantastische Bibliothek, 2010.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. "Le structure et la forme" in Antropologie Structurale. Paris, Plon, 1985.
Lüthi, Max. Es war einmal. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.
Tolkien, James Ronald Reuel. The Monsters and the Critics. London, Allen & Unwin, 1983.
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