The Malicious Mouse

The Homogenizer of Worlds and 5 Creepy Original Endings of Fairy Tales

A little noticed anniversary passed on the 25th of October -- an anniversary that marked the hold of corporations on the very culture of our country. The date marks the 15th anniversary of Congress passing the Copyright Extension Trademark Act (CETA) --also known at the time as the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act."

CETA extended the length of time that a copyright or trademark could stay in effect. This meant that cultural icon Mickey Mouse remained out of the public domain.

From the Facebook page "Beware of Images":

The terrifying story of a giant mouse that devours all culture. After feasting on the flesh of ABC, ESPN, Miramax, Marvel, Pixar, The Muppets and Lucasfilm, it has become unstoppable. The monster is well known for its Public Domain Massacre of 1998.

A spine-chilling tale of greed and monopolization. Muahahahaha...

 

 

 Victory of the Thief

Well, why is this an issue? After all, Disney operates many modern franchises whose profitability at least somewhat relies on their signature mouse.

Well, first of all, public domain is the reason that your high school could perform Macbeth without having to pay royalties; that the orchestra could play Bach's Fugue in D minor or Beethoven's Fifth without taking money from the football program just to be allowed to play a song.

The second reason that it is a problem that Disney gets to keep "its" characters out of the public domain is because that is where most of Disney's highly profitable animated features originated.

 From the blog, Roar of Wolverine:

Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and many other princess stories, were based on age-old fairy tales that Disney was not required to pay license or royalties for.  Later works would include children’s literature like: “Pinocchio”, “Alice in Wonderland” , “The Jungle Book” (released just one year after Kipling’s copyright expired),– All in the public domain!   Disney didn’t pay a cent for story license, yet reaped many millions.  The “Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Aladdin” and all features made under the reign of Michael Eisner, would be from public domain.  Of course, Disney touted “The Lion King” as an original story.  Not!   Besides being an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” told through a pride of lions, there are way too many similarities between The Lion King and a 1960s Japanese animated series called “Kimba the White Lion”.  Though Disney claims these a coincidence, they would sue anyone else into oblivion if they came half as close to one of their properties.

What's worse is that not only did Disney take the tales and characters from the public domain, but also completely watered down or just plain excised the whole point of most of the stories.

What we refer to fairy tales were more along the lines of cultural fables; they warned children about actual consequences, provided a context for real-world lessons.

What would happen if Disney made a tale of the fable of King Solomon's wisdom (the one where two women approach him, both claiming to be the child's mother and the king tests them to see which one actually cares for the child)? Likely there would be a fairy godmother or the Tinkerbell of the desert guiding a stork with a second child needing a home and both mothers would be happy, the greedy one would be so moved by the gift that she would become a perfect mother, wasp-waisted and all bedecked in princess regalia.

Mickey Mouse - Like Cthulu, a devourer of worlds.

In homage to the Anniversary of CETA and Disney's success telling the world that it will all end "happily ever after-- you don't even need to bother learning any lessons" here are a few of the original plots from my favorite tales (there a actually quite a few variants of each, these are my favorites):

Cinderella:

In one version, Cinderella kills her first stepmother, allowing her father to marry the housekeeper. The housekeeper then brings in her brood of children who proceed to make Cinderella's life miserable. Cinderella is rescued by the Prince who finds her crying. The stepmother knows what Cinderella did to her first stepmother and threatens to expose her, so the now-princess has them all killed. Cinderella lives a long life full of guilt. 

In another version, the stepmother tries to make her stepdaughters fit into the glass slipper. By cutting the first ones toes off, and the second ones heels off (the prince is informed of the duplicity by a bird because he apparently doesn't notice the profuse bleeding in a glass slipper on his own). Enraged by the attempts to deceive him, the Prince has all of the step-family beheaded. 

Rapunzel: 

The "innocent" princess is locked into the tower because she kept trying sneak away with young men. She wasn't running away from an evil stepmother, just trying to be alone for an evening....
When the "prince" sneaks into the tower - and sneaks back out alone. Rapunzel's secret is outed a few months later when she innocently asks why her dress doesn't fit anymore (because her belly is getting bigger).

The moral here: the f-ing you get isn't worth the f-ing you get (or why abstinence only sex-ed doesn't work). 

Sleeping Beauty:

In another warning to young ladies about what men really want, the term "Sleeping Beauty" takes a sinister turn. She isn't awoken by a prince kissing her, but by the twin babies in her stomach. That's right, the evil, old king found the beauty asleep, and well.... I guess technically since he was a king, the babies that woke her up were, in fact, princes.

The Little Mermaid:

Young Ariel could walk on land to visit her prince, but the potion that allowed her walk made walking feel like treading on knives. After she suffers through this to be with her prince charming, she finds out that he is already married. She is told that the only way to reverse the curse of her pain (the walking and the heartache) is to kill the prince. She can't bring herself to kill him, so commits suicide instead. 

Little Red Riding Hood:

Arguably the most disturbing fairy tale ever, the original tale of little red riding hood will change how you view Red Riding Hood Halloween costumes forever.
In most versions of this tale, the young girl is accosted by the wolf. What they don't always mention is that the wolf is a metaphor for a sexual predator (in certain areas, when girls lost their virginity, they were said to have "seen the wolf").

In some versions, she gets away by telling the wolf that she needs to defecate and runs outside (of course, she is naked first, which makes the wolf think she won't be going anywhere).

In other versions, she performs a striptease --even going as far as, shall we say, preparing herself-- and escapes when the wolf gets too worked up.

And in some versions, she is eaten by the wolf -- meaning that if you tell a sexual predator where you are going, there is no happy ending. (And it makes the sexy red riding hood costume very darkly ironic).

These fairy tales are replete with rape, sexual predation, broken promises, and people having to live the consequences of their actions.

How did any child ever benefit from learning about those things? Thankfully, Disney provided us with pumpkins, and reformed, good-at-heart evil stepmothers, and doe-eyed princesses who could triumph against impossible odds, as long as they were skinny and beautiful.

Those are the kinds of morals that should stay out of the public domain.

Note: Many of these tales are precursors to even the "originals" we know from Hans Christian Anderson, Charles Perrault's "Mother Goose Tales," and the Brothers Grimm. They were told in small towns and villages across medieval Europe, hence the many variations.