Scary fairytales and films tap into the real fears that children and adults share on the exhilarating, bloodcurdling journey of childhood – with or without Wild Things
WHAT HAPPENED to Humpty Dumpty? If you’re a regular CBeebies viewer, you’d be forgiven for thinking he took a tumble and got up unscathed, thanks to the horses and his men, who made him “happy again”.
The BBC argues it made the change "purely for creative reasons", not to soften it. But then, what's the point of the story? In a modernised Rumplestiltskin, instead of stomping through the floor and disappearing, the bad guy simply goes away mildly irritated. In contemporary renderings of classic fairy tales, it doesn't matter whether you're good or evil, everyone just goes home somewhat numb.
Earlier this month, US magazine Newsweekinterviewed author Maurice Sendak about the film adaptation of Sendak's classic story Where The Wild Things Are. When asked what he'd say to parents worried the movie might be too scary, Sendak said, "I would tell them to go to hell." Childhood is an exhilarating and bloodcurdling journey, and Sendak has no tolerance for parents who would pretend otherwise.
It might frighten children, but that could be because the monsters are based on Sendak’s relatives, who visited every weekend when he was a child.
“They grabbed you and twisted your face,” he said, “and they thought that was an affectionate thing to do.” The fear that they might “eat you up”, was real either out of love, or because his mother’s cooking was terrible. He was at an age to take things literally, and his aunts and uncles didn’t distinguish affection from cannibalism.
So his terrifyingly ambiguous monsters tell naughty Max that they might just eat him up.
American author Michael Chabon has lamented the erosion of “the wilderness of childhood”, where kids once explored dangers and delights without constant surveillance. Children are filled with fears of strangers, and then, paradoxically, subjected to stories with the danger edited out.
“Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be,” says Chabon, “the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity.”
Jonze wanted Where The Wild Things Are to be about childhood, not just for children. A story that is about childhood provides common ground for kids and our sympathetic inner children.
But no stories are more terrifying than those children tell each other. There is no cinematic or storybook villain to match the terror of the anecdote, told in hushed tones, of The Boy Who Swallowed His Chewing Gum And His Insides Stuck Together And He Died.
Irish director Conor Horgan spoke with more than 150 people about what scares them for his film Fear. Many of the children were afraid of global warming. "But mostly," he says, "it was the classic stuff: the dark, being trapped under the bed, the time they got lost and couldn't find their mother. When kids hear a scary story that resolves well, it can reduce their fear," Horgan says. Especially true when it's another child conquering fears and vanquishing "evil".
“The world will terrify all of us,” but trying to keep every fear at bay is, Horgan suggests, “the psychological equivalent of overly sanitised kids whose immune systems don’t work as well as the kids who are let out to play.”
Sometimes it's not the kids we're worried about. Stories such as Where the Wild Things Aretap into the real fears shared by children and adults: disproportionate punishment, dislocation, feeling unloved, and, worse than being ignored, saddled with the responsibilities of leadership without any proper training. It's similar to what happens upon reaching adulthood: after commencing the wild rumpus, it's hard to know what to do.
Turning the wilderness of childhood into a pretty garden doesn’t make it any less forbidding. Cut down the trees – the flowers take on a sinister hue. Remove the canopy from which spiders drop on to unsuspecting shoulders – you open the landscape where gusty winds set the scene for The Girl Whose Face Really Did Stay That Way.
If there is no haunted house on the street, be sure the children will invent one they will hurry past in abject, giggly fear.