Essays

Fairy Tales

By Johnny Beloved ⋅ January 23, 2007 ⋅  forward to friend ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

I miss fairy tales.

That might sound like a strange statement, but I do. The older I get, the more I realize that I, for lack of a better word, abhor the world in which I live. And before you start, my dear reader, to lecture me about my cynical thoughts and Donny Darko outlook on life, let me explain that the world holds no mystery to me. This world, and the time in which we live, seems to be a tired relationship. Like when a boy meets a girl and quickly “falls in love” and then subsequently rushes like a fool to jump in bed with said girl, only to discover (gasp!) that the mystery is gone and well, he didn’t really love her at all. But alas, the girl is pregnant, so wanting to do the right thing, Mr. Boy stays in a dead-end relationship with Mrs. Girl (”for the children”), a life he never wanted and now is stuck with because–”she looked like fun.”

In the same manner, I blame my soul for going to God and pointing at the earth in anticipated ecstasy, all the while, begging like a man with two weeks of constant blue balls, holding himself, almost doubled up with pain while pleading, “There! There! It’s so beautiful!! Send me there! Oh, Sweet God, it looks like fun!”

The Labyrinth

Guillermo Del Toro’s latest film, Pan’s Labyrinth, is a great fable worth watching. This movie isn’t for kids, due to the bloodiness of the film in certain points, but like any great piece of children’s literature, it is a story about disobedience and choice. What’s interesting is that Del Toro was originally asked to direct “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” but he turned it down because, as a lapsed Catholic, he couldn’t see himself bringing Aslan the lion back to life. Nevertheless, the story is riddled with universal morals and values that any Christian will find plainly obvious.

Now, am I encouraging you to see this movie because of the so-called Christian spin points of the movie? No. I’m telling you to go see this movie because it’s a fairy tale told correctly. And let me be perfectly frank about this, the second monster is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my frigging life.

What was convincing about the movie was that during the entire length of it, when the world surrounding the characters was at its worst, magic was only a moment away. You wanted to believe that an ordinary praying mantis was actually a fairy, or that great trees died because of giant frogs, that you could take a piece of chalk and draw a door which would take you anywhere. Maybe I wanted to believe it because it was just more cinematically raw. Maybe I wanted to believe it because it was filmed entirely in Spanish and foreign languages seem to add a hint of possibility somehow. Whatever the case was, this is a fairy tale that makes you want to believe in fairy tales. Unlike Narnia or Mordor or Tatooine, this fantasy is convincing to the point of realism, up to the very end.

And Then I Grew Up

In both C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and Pan’s Labyrinth, the world represented is magical and unexpected. By walking into a wardrobe or following a fairy, a child can escape from the perils of life to find a magical place where she (or he) is royalty, an alternate reality where values like self-sacrifice and trust are honored and in a strange way, life makes more sense. But in both of these stories, only children can escape; the thought being that adults do not possess the faith it requires to discover these fantasy realms (a sentiment echoed by Jesus himself when he talked about the Kingdom of God). In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, or Lucas’ Star Wars, one must be born into the story. In Rowling’s Harry Potter, one has to be born with powers. To be a superhero like Batman, one has to be filthy rich and slightly crazy. Superman was an alien. Spiderman’s genes are altered by pure luck and scientific technology that doesn’t exist.

But I’m in love with these stories because they give me hope that the universe in which I live isn’t just working 8-5, seven days a week, or arguing with your spouse or paying off credit card bills. I believe in angels and demons and ultimately God, for the same reasons–because I couldn’t stand the fact if all of this was pointless. And you couldn’t either, if God truly wasn’t in the world; none of us would be able to stomach this life. I have to believe that I was created by someone, for something. That I live for a reason.

I believe in the stories and am probably a writer myself because I need them.

There isn’t any shame in that. Who wouldn’t want such a place to call home? To have fauns in the forest, fairies in the trees, a nemesis to battle, wizards and magicians, a place where the consequences of your actions are almost immediately felt–whether they be for good or bad. Atheists look at faith itself like nothing more than a fairy tale, condemning Christians for being stupid and whimsical; all the while, echoing their reality like overgrown parents who have come to accept life for what it is, instead of what it could be. But if my choice is whether to believe in what I can’t see or to believe in what is in front of my face, give me fantasy and thereby, salvation. Because I can’t make it through this life without the hint of something beautiful just around the corner, the hope of a lion in my closet, the fear of something unknown lurking just beyond a baby’s breath.

Fairy-tales, and subsequently, hope, keep us from putting guns to our heads. It doesn’t matter what you hope for, but that you hope for something. Maybe that’s the trick. Maybe that’s the point of it all. We hope for that better job, or for that place in Europe, we hope for success and justice and salvation. We hope for a better life for our kids.

We hope that we’re right when everyone laughs and condemns us as being wrong. For being whimsical. For being childish.

Some of us have hope in Saviors. And for some of us, hope is a Savior unto itself. For everyone else, they hope we’re wrong. But it all comes back to fairy-tales and the childish question of whether you believe or not.

Give me fairies or give me death.