Violence In The Brothers Grimm

Fairy tales typically display hardships that need to be defeated by the story’s hero. The 2005 fantasy adventure “The Brothers Grimm”, is no exception (1). However, unlike the tamed interpretation of fairy tales (2), this film has the protagonists overcome violent and considerably gory obstacles. In light of the overdone violence, the movie itself earned a PG-13 rating (1). Although this violence doesn't come across as a surprise (considering the fact that the original fairy tales recorded were intended for a more mature audience (3)), the off-putting element is that it is omnipresent throughout the entire duration of the film. The film’s director, Terry Gilliam (1) did an impressive job referencing and integrating different Grimm fairy tales,

This particular scene refers to the tale of the ‘Gingerbread man’. A young girl looks into a well whereupon her facial features disappear. Shortly after, a mud monster pursues the child engulfing her in what appears to be magic mud. Once it hardened, she took the form of a gingerbread monster and ate a part of herself. Essentially, this unusual scene enacts one of the greatest taboos in society, which is cannibalism. More specifically, considering the fact that she ate herself, this scene expresses self-cannibalism. This part of the film was by far the most provocative and shocking, as it combined the innocence of a child with a horrific act that is eating oneself.

In sum, “The Brothers Grimm” contains a lot of unnecessary violence, gory imagery, and displays unsettling subject matter like animal cruelty, torture and cannibalism. And although fairy tales were initially not intended to illustrate a perfect and happy world, the level to which the ‘darkness’ was taken has escalated far too much. The tone of the film was set from the very beginning, and although there was a ‘happy ever after’ the obstacles set to achieve it were far from fairy