Incorrect Guide of Life Fairy Tales
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AN INCORRECT GUIDE OF LIFE:FAIRY TALES
The fairy tales, which almost all people were paying attention when they were told in their childhood, certainly have effects on people's life. In general, fairy tales can be described as fantastic tales of miraculous, supernatural things and events, aim at giving messages about the world life to the audience by stimulating the imagination in a very vivid method: fairies, ghosts, sorcerers, witches, fabulous animals and unanimate things endowed with miraculous powers appear as actors in them(Oppel, 82). After fairy tales were beginned to criticize, arguments mostly have concentrated on how fairy tales affect the audience. One aspect is that most of them attract attention about supernatural beings and events more than given message and they maintain incorrect traditions like gender roles in the society. Therefore, this viewpoint supports and it is true that fairy tales should be avoided because they cause negative effects on the individual and society as well as several positive influences.
Fairy tales have a clear effect on society about determination of the gender roles. The privileged situation of men, which was assigned in the very past times of the history, perpetuate itself by using fairy tales as one of its tools; radical feminists assert they prevent the development of women treatment. Exactly, according to fairy tales, female and male characters have definite and separate roles: Desired females should have passive status than males and be obedient like Cinderella when her stepmother and stepsisters always behave her as the maid of the house whereas male characters are acceptable when they are active. Although Zipes, a fairy tale critics, thinks fairy tales have positive effects on people, he confirms they maintain the sexual traditional roles:
"Undoubtedly there is a dark side to the tales, and both Moore and Dworkin are emprically correct in demonstrating the sexist and racist aspects of many traditional fairy tales."(Zipes, 98)
In this idea, Zipes indicates also another negative effect of fairy tales: Racist thoughts of children are shaped by way of them...