For many years people have been ignoring Grimm tales and only acknowledging the jejune and child friendly versions, versions though watered down by the authors themselves, watered down, nonetheless. This is taking away the major themes of the stories, ownership and recognizability, as well creative aspects, and has been going on since the 18th century and continued to the modern century.
Grimm tales should stop being watered down and forgotten.
The Grimm tales were written by a set of brothers, the Grimm brothers, in 1812. They started off as adult tales, including adult themes like violence, conflicts of good and evil to the extreme including morally gray characters, the importance of virtue, and several other more explicit topics that were not meant for children. The whole point of writing these stories was to dive deep into dark topics, topics that nobody wanted to talk about, let alone write stories about. By rewriting these stories into fairy tales, it takes the core meaning of each story, not following the original theme at all.
Turning Grimm tales into simple, mundane fairy tales also takes away the creativity behind both the original founders of the Grimm tales, older writers, and modern writers. Rewriting these darker stories as something happier takes away the whole originality of them. On the other hand, it takes away creativity from modern writers, who just rewrite everything they see. One of the oldest works, Hansel and Gretel, has been written hundreds of thousands of times instead of making new ideas. Other works such as Cinderella have thousands of rewrites as well, making it lose its creativity. Now, while all noted to be rewrites of old German tales, it still lacks creativity.
Later, within a 45-year gap, between the years 1812 to 1857, the Grimm brothers ended up rewriting their works into more childlike stories, taking out the more violent endings as well as the sexual intents, note the story Rapunzel. They may have done this out of their own accountability, but the original ‘Grimm’ tales were still present yet not spoken of. People do not speak about the more so original tales as much as they should, and most do not even know about the Grimm tales nor who wrote them. It takes away the complete ownership of the stories and often does not give credit to the darker versions that is the main reason so many fairy tales are known and remembered today.
Some will say that since the authors of the Grimm tales rewrote it from other stories, it is the same intent, and they should not need to be recognized but that is simply not true. The Grimm brothers were only trying to keep Germanic oral tales alive while putting a small spin on it themselves, a spin that has become iconic to the past of the world and deserve ownership for the way they write.
Grimm tales should start being introduced to younger adults and older teenagers. While the content is a tad explicit and violent, it is important for people to learn about things that happened to people, terrible things, so they not only are they aware and prepared for themselves but to offer sympathy to others. If second graders can learn about big events and horrible disasters, then mature young adults can learn about darker topics.
Grimm tales should be acknowledged. There is reason behind each gimmer tale, and the Grimm brothers deserve acknowledgement for saving so many Germanics oral tales so they may not be forgotten.
