Reply To: Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire

Once Upon a Wonky Morality Tale.

Arguably, the tale of how the Evil Queen became a black widow or how the imp killed his first wife are in keeping with more grisly and grim traditional fairy tales such as Bluebeard. Here is a link to 9 Fairy Tales with Sinister Morals. Despite how A&E like to brand their show, I don’t think OUAT could qualify as a family show by Disney  standards (known as the “Disneyfication” of fairy tales), but perhaps the stories could pass for children’s stories in the nineteenth century. If it weren’t for the censorship laws of the twentieth century, then what passed for “family-friendly” Disney films might have been very different. Maybe what we’re witnessing with the post-modern way of storytelling in OUAT isn’t just a rejection of twentieth-century modernism, but also a “return to family values” as put forward by 19th century writers of children’s stories like Hans Christian Anderson.