The Final Blog (Reflection)

I really enjoyed this class! And I learned a lot, even though right now I’m drawing a blank. But I really enjoyed reading all the different tales, and even seeing the movies—I think I saw Disney’s “Snow White” and “Cinderella” once upon a time, but I barely remembered them. So it was cool to watch them both from a, “Oh so that’s what happens in these movies” perspective, as well as comparing them to the original tale(s). It was also really cool just to see how different versions of the tale compared with each other (including stuff like "Sonne" and "Pretty Woman"), and learning about the different cultures of the tales we were reading. So I guess the answer is yes, I did like all of the material covered, except for a lot of the Bettelheim stuff, cause I have personal beef with Freud. 

 

I don’t think reading the materials was really challenging for me, in the sense that the tales weren’t dense academic papers or wordy purple prose novels. The harder parts of the class were when we analyzed the works, because they required more thinking than just reading the tales and analysis is my weak suit. If someone asked me, “Why is Little Red Riding Hood’s riding hood red?” I would say “I don’t know! Because it’s red!” Suffice to say I was always very confused how Bettelheim drew the conclusions he did. (Have I mentioned I hate Freud? I hate Freud. Jungian analysis is much more intuitive for me, and I’m glad we spent more time doing that.)

 

I don't know why my first thought was Hairspray,
but we're going to pretend it's relevant because "Bluebeard".

All in all, I had a lot of fun! Eating eggs and chocolate, listening to Dr. Ochieng tell us stories (I think he was my favorite guest speaker, cause he was the most fun), watching different videos, hating on Disney, and discussing all the tales. I never realized how many fairy tales there were, or that there were multiple versions of the same story. I also never knew Oscar Wilde wrote (really sad) fairy tales, or that the stories by The Brothers Grimm so heavily reflect the time period they were living in. So I'm really, really glad I took this class, and I'm happy non-Honors students got to enjoy it as well. And now anytime someone says not to do something, I’m going to immediately think, “Ah, a prohibition!”