I enjoyed reading Zipes’ article “What Makes a Repulsive Frog So Appealing” because it offered an extremely thorough analysis of a fairy tale we all know well: “The Frog Prince”. I feel like most children in the Western world have heard this story at least once during their childhood. Zipes focuses on why this particular story has been told and also modified over many years, placing a strong emphasis on its themes of mating, love, and the search for one’s identity.
Personally, I remembering hearing this story when I was younger and had never seriously considered its true meaning and moral. I simply thought that a young girl stumbled upon an ugly frog one day, who told her that he was really a prince and that the only way to break the spell was to kiss him. Therefore, the girl kisses the frog, and he immediately turns into a handsome prince and the two live happily ever after. Honestly, I never thought about the main argument that Zipes makes about the frog choosing the princess as his mate and how the story is intended to show courting and mating strategies. Zipes believes that this story is a meme, which he explains is a term used to describe something that becomes well known and relevant to humans or a particular culture through the process of storing the knowledge and later passing it on to others.
Because this tale has been told and retold, the story has evolved and adapted to fit particular cultures. Like we discussed before, often fairy tales will change to address the problems of a particular culture or time period, thus making the story more relatable and memorable. Zipes argues that it is in this way that tales like “The Frog Prince” have become memes and will continue to be told for years to come. I loved how he discussed numerous different versions of the story and how the tales adopted new modern ideas, like the prince’s search for identity taking precedence over his finding a mate, over the years. His examples were effective in that we could see the changes taking place, like the gender reversal or the change to make the story more kid-friendly. I have to say my favorite story that made me actually laugh out loud was “The Horned Toad Prince”, about the cowgirl that lost her sombrero and had to make a deal with a horned toad in order to get it back.
One final note: Every time I think of this tale, I think of Keane’s song, “The Frog Prince”. The song opens with, “An old fairy tale told me / the simple heart will be prized again. / A toad will be our king / and ugly ogres are heroes.”
I’m not really sure what Keane intended for listeners to get out of this song (I still love it though!), so if any of you are familiar with it, what are you thoughts?!
It is interesting to decipher through the mixed messages of folktales, especially when comparing the frog prince vs other tales. It seems as the old moral of "don't judge a book by its cover" seems to be at work. Metaphorically speaking, if a beautiful maiden should encounter an ugly toad in a pond and he speak kindly to her, she should listen and obey, for his inner beauty will one day reveal itself. However, I have yet to read a story (and if it does exist, it is not nearly as famous) where a prince stumbles upon an ugly maiden, and falls in love with her "pure heart", ultimately leading a life of fulfillment because he found her inner beauty. This has been a disturbing discovery, however this relates to my post for this week on the mentality we have all been raised to believe is the standard. The older women get, the more worthless they become, and the older men get, the more "mature" and "attractive" they become. Of course some will dispute that they feel the opposite, but popular culture has beaten your opinion as this is unfortunately how the world works.
ReplyDelete