So You Want to Be a Dragonslayer:
Fairy Tales, Video Games, and Primal Desires
With the sterilization of fairy tales, a new media has been forced to step up and serve as an outlet for the fantastic needs of not just children, but adults as well. It is no longer possible for the fairy tales of today to satisfy the human need to violently oppose evil, to be self-sacrificially heroic, or to explore foreign lands that are rich in magic and wonder. The fairy tales we have grown up with have been systematically stripped of their true assets, and in response video games have been systematically exploring and reinventing the very areas erased from fairy tales. Going above and beyond that, video games have begun breaking new ground in the methods of telling stories, and in the past twenty years have created multiple new means to weave increasingly immersive and powerful tales that have even more meaning to the audience than the original fairy tales. How fairy tales have been sanitized, how video games have taken over their former role, and how games will extend beyond the role of fairy tales is a subject that will be of great consequence to the growth of the current and next generations.
The sanitization of fairy tales began when they were first written down, starting with the Brothers Grimm and Perrault, and continuing on for centuries as countless authors imposed their personal views upon the stories. Two significant areas were specifically targeted and eliminated over the years: sex and violence. The sexual content was reduced first, and then much later the violent content was distilled from the genre.
Before Perrault and the Grimms began writing down fairy tales into literary compilations, fairy tales contained massively more sex and innuendo. Unfortunately, the scribes decided to edit most of the socially unappealing material out. As Maria Tatar pointed out in her Classic Fairy Tales, "Perrault worked hard to craft a tale that excised the ribald grotesqueries from the original peasant tale and rescripted events in such a way as to accommodate a rational discursive mod and moral economy" (4). Tatar also comments on the Grimms' willingness to edit out sexually explicit material, such as the material present in the "Frog King or Iron Heinrich": "The Grimms' transformation of a tale replete with sexual innuendo into a prim and proper nursery story with a dutiful daughter is almost as striking as the folklore metamorphosis of frog into prince" (368). The time-honed tales that satisfied their audiences for centuries were purged of what made them so appealing in the first place, sterilized for an audience that was tremendously underestimated. Examples of changes range from Little Red Riding Hood, to Sleeping Beauty, to Rapunzel. In Little Red Riding Hood, the original girl was eaten, after stripping down for the Wolf: by contrast, the version scribed by Perrault still results in the girl's death, but the striptease is entirely eliminated, never to resurface.
While the sexual side of fairy tales has been erased almost completely, removing the violent side of fairy tales has proved much more difficult. Walt Disney made the conscious decision to water the violence of fairy tales down, so they would contain no gore to speak of, and therefore be more "kid friendly". These omissions gave an entirely different meaning to the stories, and reduced their depth and emotional power. As Jack Zipes puts it, "In fact, the fairy tale is practically infantilized, just as the jokes are infantile" (Zipes, 11). And just as Disney toned down fairy tale violence for his movies, others have reduced as well, such as Joseph Jacobs in his short story "Catskin". Though it is directly based on the Cinderella tale type, Catskin has no reference to the torturous deaths of the heroine's antagonistic family, but rather has a very artificial happy ending tacked on (Jacobs 4).
One of the best illustrations of the changes to fairy tales can be seen in the modern usage of the phrase "fairy tale ending." As it is used today, a "fairy tale ending" is a flawlessly happy end to a narrative, often to a ridiculous and unbelievable extent, rendering the tale hollow and somewhat unsatisfying to a mature listener. The same term, if applied in the context of the original fairy tales in their oral versions, would mean something entirely different; it would refer to an ending that probably involved death, though which party (innocent or offending) experiences it is somewhat hard to predict. While the main character might get the girl, like Prince Charming in Rapunzel, they might also get eaten, like Little Red Riding Hood. This reflects very clearly the reduction of violence in fairy tales, brought about by many authors, but most heavily by Walt Disney and his movies.
The loss of violence in the Disney movies stems from many sources, but chief among them is the complete lack of viewer interaction. The audience of a movie cannot give feedback to the storytellers, demanding that the hero be more proactive or heroic, which means that an integral part of the storytelling process is lost. Where once a storyteller could embellish aspects of a tale to please an audience, or perhaps accelerate or even skip a part that the audience is disinterested in, movies are going to be exactly the same every time, just like a book. This implacability, while very useful for many things, does not make for truly compelling stories. A really great story has to adapt to its audience in real time, often in minor ways, but depending on the situation, some times in very significant ways. When a story is being told in a culture that is unfamiliar with it, the tale must be adapted to the culture to make sense. Gestures must be changed, phrasing and word choice has to be completely redone in most cases, and sometimes entire characters must be dropped or heavily modified. This kind of flexibility is frankly impossible for a movie: as hard as a translation team may work on adapting a film, there are countless details that simply can't be altered to fit the audience.
As video games become more sophisticated and responsive to the input of the audience, they become more and more successful at delivering customized stories that genuinely adjust with the player in real time. A well designed game can now have a story that is compelling to a wide range of people with a wide range of needs, because they are able to individually influence the game as they progress through the story. It becomes possible for the protagonist to engage the enemy heroically or turn tail and run, depending on the desires of the player. A compassionate player can see their good deeds rewarded in the very same tale that can reward a tireless and vengeful warrior. Perhaps the most well known example of this kind of game is "Fable", a fantasy game released in 2004 for the Xbox, PC, and Mac OSX by Big Blue Box. Depending on the actions of the player, the protagonist could become dangerously evil or practically a saint (Big Blue Box). The tradition of telling stories around a campfire after sundown has died, only to be succeeded by video games: each game disc is a different story, told by a storyteller living in the game engine.
There are many ways in which video games are expanding beyond the limitations of fairy tales. Citing good examples of these aspects of gaming is very difficult, primarily because of the newness of it all. Where fairy tales have centuries of works to cite, and movies have decades of releases, video games are barely half a century old, depending on how the reckoning is done. The NES, often regarded as the beginning of modern gaming, was released in the US in 1985, making modern gaming barely two decades old. However, despite the newness of the area, there are a number of compelling examples. The famously popular "Legend of Zelda" series began with a game that allowed players to explore the world freely, doing dungeons out of order, the gaming equivalent of allowing Propp's functions to be juggled freely by an endlessly curious audience. "The Sims," released in 2000 by Maxis, allows players to create entire families and alternate personalities, which engage in a mundane but somehow fulfilling life under the direction of the player. "World of Warcraft," published in 2004 by Blizzard, allows players to create avatars and engage in a fierce war between two opposing factions: as a story without end, it has captured the minds of literally millions of people.
Critics such as Jack Thompson frequently decry video games as moral-less killing simulations, claiming that all games are warlike and bloodthirsty. He never seems to mention the video games that are apparently hero simulations, nor does he mention the fairy tales that cover countless different methods of regicide. A massive segment of the adult population today seems to be in agreement with Mr. Thompson; video games are simply killing practice, and all spoken or written literature is spotlessly clean. This remarkable opinion has to ignore almost all of the original fairy tales, with their vividly gruesome sense of justice, and also has to remain close-mindedly ignorant of all the video games that carry rich and meaningful stories without forcing people to violate natural law. Games such as "ICO" and "Portal" explore unique storytelling methods that do not force the player to go about slaughtering people, as Mr. Thompson would have you believe. Instead, the two games immerse players in different worlds where they can be a hero or rethink how reality works, respectively.
Fortunately for all of us, not everyone in power shares this opinion. Federal Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner has noted: "Violence has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low. It engages the interest of children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware" (Posner). While Judge Posner acknowledges that many games are quite violent, he notes that this is not something new, and trying to hide violence from children "…would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it" (Posner).
Because of people like Judge Posner allowing video games to develop naturally, some remarkable new stories are being told. "Shadow of the Colossus" is a game centered around the killing of 16 majestic colossi, which is a deeply violent premise and process, but the actual story of the game revolves around the nameless hero who does the slaying to save the life of a girl who never named in the body of the game. The game successfully imparts a tale that is exciting and sorrowful at the same time, by making the player valiantly struggle against beings that are hundreds, sometimes thousands of times their size. By locking the player in combat with these Colossi, the game forges a bond between them and the player, a rueful respect and deep awe. When the player succeeds at defeating a colossus, it is simultaneously elating and depressing, a feeling that runs far deeper than could be conveyed by means of a book or movie. The player was not just observing the battle- they were in the battle, gasping for air, straining their arms, and feeling their adrenaline flow.
Games can, and will, go places that have not been touched in centuries. As the technology advances, a lost aspect of fairy tales will be recovered: the aspect that allows them to variate to match the audience. Though fairy tales have been sanitized to the point that they are shallow and meaningless, their legacy in video games is adding depth and meaning to the imaginations of children across the world. Just how far the technology can take them is a matter of great anticipation.
Bibliography
Note: Video games are a rarely cited source, and lack some of the defining traits that are used to cite books (page numbers, single authors, etc). I found no consistent, pervasive solution for how to cite a video game, either in the bibliography or inside the body text. As such, I have used the below style for the bibliography, and in the body text I have just used the publisher name.
Title of game. Version number. Date of version. Name of the company that publishes the game. Date of access.
Fable. 1. September 14, 2004. Big Blue Box, (Lionhead Studios). March 22 2008.
Jacobs, Joseph. (1890). Catskin. London: English Fairy Tales.
Pozner, Richard (2001). U.S. Court of Appeals, AMERICAN AMUSEMENT MACHINE ASS'N, et al., Plaintiffs – Appellants v. TERI KENDRICK, et al. as quoted at http://www.fepproject.org/courtbriefs/kendricksummary.php
Tatar, Maria. (1999). Classic Fairy Tales. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Zipes, Jack. (1995). Breaking the Disney Spell. Bloomington: Indiana UP.