Fairy Tales

Humans tend to perceive things differently at different ages. A five year old is not going to understand as much as you would expect a 12 year old to, even something as simple as a fairy tale. In a way you can sort of say that fairy tales "come of age" with us. As we grow, they grow. We begin to notice the realistic parts of the stories as we age and the morals that they are trying to portray. It's not just a cartoon to us anymore. Its something we based our childhood on. Looking back, it's hard to believe that I never really understood what these movies were really trying to teach us. The movie Beauty and the Beast, isn't the same movie that I watched when I was six. When I was younger Beauty and the Beast was about a pretty girl who ends up with prince charming. When I got a little older I learned not to go into the woods alone because there is a good chance you will get attacked by wolves. Today, I know that the moral is beauty is skin deep, something that may have sounded like gibberish to me 12 years ago. As we get older, we achieve a sense of wisdom and actually start to learn what these classics are trying to say. Have you ever wondered why we go see action movies, or comedies, or love storiesÐ'...but not fairy tales? The truth is we do. Fairy tales are everywhere but we are so accustomed to the fact that we also watched them as cartoons, that we don't even realize that almost all of America's culture is based on these timeless stories.

Some things about fairy tales we know to be true are that they begin with "once upon a time", they end with "happily ever after," and somewhere in between the prince rescues the damsel in distress. Since most movies don't start of by saying "once upon a time" or end with "happily ever after" we completely brush off even the slightest idea of it being a fairy tale. However, many movies today are based on that idea, without the audience even recognizing it. One of them happens to be my favorite movie, Pirates of the Caribbean. Your classic good guy saves the girl from the bad guy movie. The simplest way to compare and contrast the similarities of Pirates of the Caribbean to other fairy tales is to rip it apart and look at it in pieces. First you have you characters and foreshadowing, then a specific item that is dangerous which causes conflict, and finally a resolution.

Like in all movies you have your antagonist, and protagonist. In fairy tales there is usually a damsel in distress. In Sleeping Beauty you have Prince Phillip who is the protagonist, Maleficent who is the antagonist, and Princess Aurora, the damsel. After falling under Maleficent's spell Princess Aurora is trapped in a dead sleep for all eternity. Until one day prince Phillip came to her rescue, fought off Maleficent, and broke the spell with a kiss. Sounds like a fairy tale. Now Pirates of the Caribbean is categorized as an adventure, but if we look at the same way we look at Sleeping BeautyÐ'...there is no difference. Will Turner and Captain Jack Sparrow (protagonist) are on a quest to find Wills love, Elizabeth Swan (damsel), the governors daughter. They must fight off the evil Captain Barbossa (antagonist) in order to make there rescue a success. In fairy tales we also see the foreshadowing of who is likely to end up with each other. On the day of Aurora's birth, Prince Phillip brings her a gift, but is unhappy to see that the baby is a girl, and makes a face in disappointment. On the governors' ship one day, a young Elizabeth spots a boy in water. They have a few casual words, after her father instructs her to take care of him. The boy was Will Turner, her future hero. A lot of times in fairy tales the women are usually forced to do things they don't want to do. For example, in the movie The Swan Princess, she is being forced to marry a prince who she does not love. In Pirates of the Caribbean, Elizabeth is suppose to marry one of her father's men, the commodore, someone who she does not love either. She is admired by Will Turner, a poor blacksmith, who as no idea that she actually