The delicious terror of the big bad wolf under the covers, of the evil queen in disguise as a hook-nosed witch offering Snow White a poisoned apple, of a freakish little bundle of malevolence known as Rumpelstiltskin, or the recurring nightmare of Maleficent (thank you Disney) hovering threateningly around a spinning wheel.
When I think about fairytale characters, I wonder if these stories might be children’s first foray into the ambiguous thrill of the horror genre, a kind of ‘Friday the 13
th’ for toddlers? Locking a girl with beautiful long hair in a tower and then shearing off said hair upon the arrival of a boyfriend always did seem excessive.
Not to mention the mass drowning of children by a cheated flautist-exterminator. Hmmm, might want to rethink that bedtime story…
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