Who Killed the Seven Dwarves?

Who Killed the Seven Dwarves?

Has Disneyfication destroyed the traditional folk tale and damaged children’s illustrated literature?

Art & Design BA Hons. ILLUSTRATION

Contents

3. Introduction

4. The Death of the Seven Dwarves

5. Folk Tales

6. Rant #1

7. Input ~ Laurence Anholt writes...

8. Beauty and the Beast

9. Cartoons, Capitalism, Commerce and Conjecture

13. Walter Elias Disney

18. Forum

21. I Relent

22. Sycophant

24. Rant #2

26. Tex Avery

27. Cutting Edge and Contemporary with Typographical Twists

31. Conclusion

33. Bibliography / Reference

Introduction

Having decided to produce a children’s book as part of my Degree course, I initially considered writing a contemporary version of one of the old folk or fairy tales, possibly a story by Hans Christian Andersen or a tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. I narrowed my selections and decided tentatively on a reworking of the classic folk tale ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’. I immediately tried to blank all thoughts of ‘Happy’, ‘Dopey’, ‘Sneezey’, ‘Bashful’, ‘Sleepy’, ‘Grumpy’ and ‘Doc’, but this proved harder than expected. How do you go about renaming, individualising and illustrating characters that are so firmly ensconced in the memories of children all over the world? Disney’s monopolising of the fairy/folk tale genre and mass marketing of the characters as toys appeared to limit my options of adapting the ‘Snow White’ story to...

a. Mocking the Disney version in the tale itself.

or

b. Radically departing from the original story and imagery....both of which seemed quite appealing.

I finally decided on a subtle combination of both options, but resolved to look further into Disney’s domination and desecration of folk tales, myths, fables and classic children’s literature.

The Death of the Seven Dwarfs

“On a high plain between Brugg and Waldshut, near the Black Forest, seven dwarfs lived together in a small house. Late one evening an attractive young peasant girl, who was lost and hungry, approached them and requested shelter for the night. The dwarfs had only seven beds, and they fell to arguing with one another, for each one wanted to give up his bed for the girl. Finally the oldest one took the girl into his bed. Before they could fall asleep a peasant woman appeared before their house, knocked on the door, and asked to be let inside. The girl got up immediately and told the woman that the dwarfs had only seven beds, and that there was no room there for anyone else. With this the woman became very angry and accused the girl of being a slut, thinking that she was cohabiting with all seven men.