Andersen lived and wrote his tales in the 1800s, therefore it is only natural for the famed author’s work to be referenced, parodied, and reinvented as fellow writers and appreciators approach Andersen’s tales from changing, modern standpoints. The text of Andersen’s that is most popular in media revisions is quite obviously the tale of The Little Mermaid. Adapted by the Walt Disney Company with their ubiquitously popular animated film in 1989, The Little Mermaid is easily the most widely known tale of Andersen’s. However, both before and after the popular animated film adaptation, the tale has been popularized and adapted in many different mediums. The Little Mermaid has spawned several operas such as French composer Germaine Tailleferre’s La Petite Sirène in 1957. Aside from the Disney film, The Little Mermaid was adapted in
several other film formats with Russian animated shorts (1968) and live actions shorts (1976) entitled Rusalochka (The Little Mermaid). In ’61, however, Shirley Temple had already played the part of the Mermaid in a TV movie version of The Little Mermaid during Shirley Temple Theater. While animated, live action, and theatrical versions of the tale have become wildly popular, The Little Mermaid also appeared in a variety of illustrative formats. Illustrator Vilhelm Pedersen, gained a lot of acclaim in the mid-1800s for illustrating a full volume of Andersen’s tales. The 125 illustrations featured in the volume skyrocketed both Andersen and Pedersen’s popularity. Pedersen's illustration of the mermaid is pictured to the right.
Illustrated and animated versions of the tale have become the most popular because it is the easiest way to portray the tale’s supernatural elements. Aside from animation, another form of illustrating fairy tales is the growing medium of comic arts. The first mainstream comic book appearance of The Little Mermaid was in issue #525 of Classics Illustrated Junior. The Little Mermaid has also appeared in the most recent issues of the popular comic book series, Grimm Fairy Tales, which takes old classic tale types and puts a horror-comic spin on it. Each story arc focuses on a different tale; the most recent arc, consisting of issues #25 and #26 interpret Andersen’s The Little Mermaid through a horror comic lens.
The Snow Queen, one of Andersen’s longest, consisting of seven smaller stories, tells a story of a boy and a girl, Kay and Gerda and their experience with the struggle between good and evil. The story has also been successfully adapted in a wide array of mediums, making the story and its themes more relevant to audiences of today. The story inspired a popular Hugo Award-winning 1980 science fiction novel of the same name by American novelist Joan D. Vinge. The sci-fi novel takes Andersen’s classic love story tale type and adds a fantastical space element, featuring space travel and exotic alien creatures. American short story writer Kelly Link also adapts the tale, but portraying the protagonists Kay and Gerda as romantically involved adults, rather than children. There have also been several international theatrical films. The American versions include an animated adaptation of the tale narrated by Sigourney Weaver as well as an updated made for TV movie with special effects and starring Bridget Fonda. HBO also featured a popular animated series entitled Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child airing from 1995 to 1998 (http://www.hbofamily.com/programs/happily-ever-after.html).
The series was highly popular and featured voice talent from many popular actors (ranging from Samuel L. Jackson and Will Smith to Cyndi Lauper and Sharon Stone) on animated tale renditions of HC Andersen works, including The Snow Queen. The TV series would retell the popular tales but update them by setting them different cultures such as episodes animating Andersen’s Thumbelina in the Amazon Rain Forest, The Princess and the Pea in an ancient Asian setting, and even the lesser known Andersen tale, The Empress's Nightingale, told with a new-age feminist approach.
Another important series of adaptations that included several of Andersen’s works was a live-action television series for children called Faerie Tale Theatre and was produced by actress Shelley Duvall. The series, consisting of 27 films in all and airing between 1982 and 1987, adapted several Andersen tales, including the ever-popular Little Mermaid and The Emperor’s New Clothes. In his book, Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller, Jack Zipes says of the series:
As might be expected, the films are uneven, largely because the fairy tales are means for the actors to show off their talents and to tweak the tales in titillating ways. Some manage to be series and artistic and endeavor to offer relevant observations on the Andersen texts for contemporary audiences. (Zipes 115)Through animation like Disney’s, Andersen tales have repeatedly been adapted for younger contemporary audiences, however the form of the parody allows new creative approaches to take the tales and transform them into something new and more entertaining for today’s viewers. During the first season of The Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show from 1959 to 1960, the show featured an animated segment called Fractured Fairy Tales. This segment parodied various famous fairy tales, including many of Andersen’s like The Princess and the Pea.
The Princess and the Pea is yet another of HC Andersen’s tales that is often adapted and parodied. The most popular parody of this tale is the musical comedy entitled Once Upon a Mattress, which opened on Broadway in 1959 and was written by Mary Rodgers. The musical, which was adapted to film in 1972 and again in 2002 satirizes Andersen’s classic tale. The tale is also parodied, along with several other notorious fairy tales in the popular children’s parody book, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith (http://www.jsworldwide.com/yeah_he_wrote_em.html). The two are a very successful creative team in creating children’s literature. In The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales they’re version of this tale is entitled The Princess and the Bowling Ball. The satire pokes fun at the ridiculous nature of this particular tale. In the tale, the prince replaces the pea with a bowling ball to ensure the king and queen approve of the princess he wishes to marry,
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales also pokes fun at Andersen’s incredibly renowned story The Ugly Duckling, telling the story in a very similar way, yet makes the duckling sillier and slightly stupid as well. The other ducks consequently antagonize the duckling, yet the ugly duckling is arrogant about growing up into a beautiful swan. The arrogance turns against the duckling when he instead grows up to just be a very ugly duck.
Another avenue of reinvention of Andersen fairy tale characters--a new and unconventional method, is the highly innovative graphic novel series entitled Fables by Bill Willingham . The series takes an all-new unique approach to fairy tales and fairy tale mythos. Unlike the comic book series Grimm Fairy Tales, Fables does not shift focus every few issues from tale to tale. Instead, Fables creates a universe where all fairy tale characters and creatures, Grimm or Andersen, coexist as real inhabitants of one fairy tale universe, a community in New York City called Fabletown. The series is told in a noir-like setting and feature various story arcs focusing on different fairy tale characters. Many of the characters included in Fabletown are adaptations of Hans Christian Andersen’s beloved characters. The Snow Queen is an important villain of the series and there is even an Andersen Street located in Fabletown, paying homage to the creator of many of the characters.
While many have made very successful attempts in bringing Andersen’s characters and dreams to life in film and other adaptations, in Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller, Jack Zipes approaches the adaptation of Andersen’s tales to film from another standpoint. In the book, Zipes has a negative outlook on adapting Andersen’s tales for film, saying that the many creators have attempted dumb down Andersen’s work too much to make it acceptable for younger, more mainstream audiences. Zipes worries that by adapting all of these tales to movies and television, “people, young and old, are reading less and less, and even their reading is influenced by movies and TV” (Zipes 106). This “aliteracy” is growing problem today and very unspecific to the work of HC Andersen.
As previously discussed, many have adapted Andersen’s work in other literary way, using his stories for science fiction novels, plays, musicals, and even graphic novel art forms. One of Zipes’s main concerns is with the mass marketing of The Little Mermaid following the Disney film’s success. He argues that the Disney film robbed many aspects of the story by adapting it for children in the mode and formulaic framework of their previous films. Disney then went on to create a cartoon series spin-off of their hit airing between 1992 and 1994 and even spawned a sequel, The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. Zipes reproaches Disney for capitalizing on their unfaithful adaptation of Andersen’s tale, feeding it to mass markets of children to gobble up and give them large profits.
Hans Christian Andersen created a realm of wonderful characters with his fairy tale collections. The characters and stories he brought to life have obviously been extremely influential on the modern media we experience through everyday pop culture. The characters and their tales are evidently timeless, only needing slight tweaking and adjustment to be relevant and equally entertaining for today’s audiences, viewers, and readers. Andersen’s stories are adapted so often for the richness and magic he instilled in each tale. The stories evoke imagination and fantasy and as technology, intellectual curiosity, and artistic talent expand with time, it allows new artists to take Andersen’s creations and bring them to life, more so than anyone had ever been able to before and for any type of audience. While some may argue that these endless adaptations are stealing the magic of Andersen’s work and not doing the tales justice, using elements from his work can also act as a great way for fans, readers, and viewers to get interested in the original source material, sparking a new interest in reading Andersen’s original renditions of the tales.
Work Cited
Zipes, Jack. Hans Christian Andersen: the Misunderstood Storyteller. New York: Routlage, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. 105-142.
1 comment:
Edvard Collin? I'm skeptical out this bit of information. Either way, it sounds like he had some bad luck in romance... as do many of the brilliant and creative minds of our planet.
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