5. Pinocchio
Original: Pinocchio Kills the Cricket, the Fairy is a Walking, Talking Corpse and Pinocchio Dies
In the very first version of Pinocchio, the marionette is punished by death for being such a naughty boy. Pinocchio teases Gepetto mercilessly and runs away, Gepetto chases him but is caught by a police officer who throws the old man in prison, believing he is abusing the puppet. When Pinocchio returns to Gepetto’s house he meets a hundred year old cricket who tells him naughty boys turn into donkeys. Pinocchio throws a hammer at the cricket and kills it. Pinocchio ends up also getting burned, he then bites off an evil cat’s paw and meets a beautiful blue haired fairy who tells him she is dead and waiting for people to take her body away. Pinocchio then gets hung from a tree by the cat with the mutilated paw and the cat’s companion the fox, and they watch as Pinocchio suffocates to death. The End.
The editors weren’t too happy with this ending, so the author added a second part to the story. Here, the beautiful dead fairy rescues Pinocchio and they start living together, but Pinocchio takes up his wicked ways again and eventually turns into a donkey. He is sold to the circus, where he goes lame. Pinocchio is then brought by a musician, who desires to kill him, skin him, and turn him into a drumhead. The musician ties rocks to the donkey’s neck and lowers him into the ocean to drown. As he drowns, fish eat the flesh off his bones, and the wooden marionette skeleton is left. Pinocchio swims away, but is swallowed by a giant shark, in whose stomach he finds Gepetto sitting at a table trying to eat live fish which keep wriggling out of his mouth. After they escape, Pinocchio busies himself with caring for Gepetto, and eventually as a reward for being a good lad, looking after his father and working hard, he is rewarded by being turned into a real boy.
4 Cinderella
Original: Cinderella Kills Her Step-Mother
The Grimm’s version of Cinderella, where the Prince spreads tar on the palace steps in the hopes that Cinderella will get stuck as she tries to run away. His plan fails, however only her shoe is left sticking in the tar. Her sisters, who are “beautiful but cruel” both attempt to fool the Prince into marrying one of them. One sister scut off her big toe so that she can fit into the slipper, and the other cut off her own heel. Their evil deeds got found out when Cinderella’s enchanted birds point out the blood on their stockings to the Prince. The sister’s eyes are pecked out as punishment for their cruelty and deeds.
Though this is an excellent version of Cinderella, but this is not the version Disney actually based their movie on. Disney’s Cinderella was based on a very tame story by Charles Perrault, published 1697. Perrault’s version plays out almost exactly like the Disney version. However, both Perrault’s and Grimm’s versions contain elements from The Cat Cinderella, published in 1634, by Giambattista Basile. Though tame for a Basile fairy tale, it is worth noting that in this version, Cinderella confides in her seemingly kind Governess about the cruelty of her step-mother. The Governess tells Cinderella that to fix her problem she will need to kill her step-mother by slamming the lid of a large wooden chest down on her step-mothers throat, which will break her neck. Cinderella must then convince her father to marry the Governess. Cinderella kills her step-mother and the marriage goes ahead. It turns out though that the Governess was hiding her own seven beautiful daughters out of sight, and when she produces them, Cinderella’s father loses interest in his own daughter. They all start to mistreat Cinderella, abusing her and calling her names, and she is sent to the kitchens to work as a servant (she is now given the name ‘Cat Cinderella’. previously her name was Zezolla). The rest of the story carries like a traditional Cinderella tale, and actually has a happy ending all round, but it’s nice to know that Cinderella wasn’t always so innocent.
3 Sleeping Beauty.
Original: Sleeping Beauty
In the Brothers Grimm tale of Briar Rose, a wise woman curses the baby princess so that in her fifteenth year she will prick her finger on a spindle and fall down dead. Another wise woman weakens the curse so that, instead of dying, the princess will fall asleep for a hundred years. Surely enough, in her fifteenth year, the girl pricks her finger and falls into a deathlike sleep, which quickly spreads throughout the entire kingdom until even the flies on the wall slumber. A briar hedge grows up around the castle and, over the years, hundreds of young men from faraway lands try to make their way through the brambles to ‘gaze upon’ the sleeping princess. However the brambles are so thick that the young men get trapped in the thorns and die slow miserable deaths. On the hundredth year a prince rides by and the brambles turn into flowers and open for him because the curse has finally run out. The prince finds the Sleeping Beauty and kisses her as she awaken.
As mentioned the Brothers Grimm took inspiration for Briar Rose from Sun, Moon and Talia, written by Giambattista Basile. In this tale, a king rapes the princess as she sleeps. She is impregnated and gives birth to twins. One of the babies sucks the enchanted splinter from beneath her fingernail and she awakens. The queen attempts to have the babies slaughtered and fed to their father, and attempts to burn Talia alive, but the king saves the day just in time, the queen is burned in Talia’s place, and they all live happily ever after.
2 Little Mermaid
Original: The Little Mermaid Kills the Prince
In the Hans Christian Andersen story that Disney based their movie on, the little mermaids tongue is cut out. She has to live in horrific pain and her feet bleed all the time, but the prince marries another woman anyway. The little mermaid has a choice; she can kill the prince and turn back into a mermaid, or throw herself into the ocean and die. Unable to kill the prince, she commits suicide.
1 Pocahontas
Original: Pocahontas was Kidnaped, Raped and Murdered
The two Disney movies about the curvaceous, scantily-clad Native Indian beauty are based on sterilized and falsified English accounts of the early history of the Virginia Colony. Pocahontas was only around ten years old when Smith first made contact with the Powhetans. It is true that he was captured by the tribe, but in his original account of the event Smith relates that he was treated very kindly. It wasn’t until many years later, when Pocahontas’s name became known in England, that Smith fabricated the story about her rescuing him from execution.
When Pocahontas was seventeen, she was captured by the English and held for ransom. Her husband Kokoum was killed and Pocahontas was raped repeatedly and consequently impregnated. She was forcefully converted to Christianity, baptized Rebecca, and quickly married off to an English tobacco farmer named John Rolfe to make the pregnancy appear legitimate. In 1615 the Rolfe’s travelled to England and Pocahontas was laced into a corset and presented to the public as a ‘symbol of the tamed Virginia savage’.
After two years in England the Rolfe’s had begun their journey home to Virginia when Pocahontas suddenly started to vomit violently after dinner, she then began to convulse. Before they had even sailed off the river Thames Pocahontas had died, horribly and painfully. English historical accounts are ‘unsure of the cause of death’, speculating that she may have succumbed to pneumonia, tuberculosis, or even smallpox. However, in their book The True Story of Pocahontas; The Other Side of History Linwood Custalow and Angela L. Daniel postulate that during her time in England, Pocahontas learned of the English intentions to obliterate the Native Indian Tribes and forcefully take their lands. Afraid that Pocahontas might reveal their political strategies, her murder was swiftly plotted and she was poisoned before she could reach home and report what she had learned. Pocahontas was only twenty-two years old when she died.
*note*
I found about 15 of it. but I will post it up another time. That's all for tonight. Good night.
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