In keeping with this week’s theme of love, whether it is love of the New England Patriots, movies or Shaquille O’Neal, I’m looking at what those stories and plenty of others hint at: fairy tale love.
Live Science reported on theoretical studies about fairy tales, the purpose of these being to find out if their plot devices are physically possible.
- A prince could scale Rapunzel’s tower, so long as she tied her trusses to a support beam first.
- Ariel (a.k.a. the Little Mermaid) could have her voice blocked with a transplant that bends sound waves, rendering them inaudible.
- A carpet can fly if air vibrates at the right frequency.
The article closes with these thoughts:
“Perhaps some fairy tales are more grounded in reality than others. Or maybe these precious stories are exactly what we thought they were. An idea is fertilized by the imagination and expanded beyond what seems possible. Or maybe science has come so far over the years that scientists are looking beyond the problems of the physical world and into the imaginations of children for their inspiration.”
I’ve noticed that we devote a lot of time and energy into “mythbusting” our fairy tales, the idea being that if certain elements of the story are possible, then the story is true.
The Naked Archaeologist on History International searches for evidence of stories from the Bible. In stark contrast, 9-11 truthers (the irony of this title not lost on this post) examine eyewitness accounts and stunted physics knowledge to prove our government staged the attacks. Every celebrity is judged based on a few incidents in their lives: “Angelina Jolie is a saint because she adopts children,” or “Amy Winehouse is an addled crackwhore.”
But let’s not turn this into a lecture on nuance. I don’t want to jeopardize the employment of your favorite Liberal Arts professors.
What these stories all have in common is the element of fairy tale love: love of fairy tales and love (and hate) in fairy tales.
Fairy tales, whether factual or fantasy, are always morality tales, though we may disagree with their morals (see: having sex with a fish-girl/girl-fish). Their characters are rewarded for traits we covet and punished for our sins.
When Snow White is poisoned by accepting snacks from a stranger, she’s punished for naiveté. When she’s resurrected by Prince Charming, she’s let off the hook for “true” love. Of course, she has to marry a pompous royal with a nasty streak of entitlement because of a pre-marital necrophiliac kiss, so I’ll let you decide if she was actually rewarded or not.
Based on studies of actual zombies, we know that drugs like that poison exist. Does that mean that one of the various inbred European nobles might be a direct descendent of Princess Snow Charming? Sure, why not?
Based on this same reasoning, I can also conclude that Star Wars is in fact, um, fact.
Every episode in the series begins with the setting of “a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away.” Although faster-than-light travel and communications is possible in the Galactic Empire, none of that was transmitted exclusively to Earth. Therefore, it would take an untold number of years (possibly millions) for information from that galaxy to reach ours. George Lucas could then pick up the feed on his ham radio, a common hobby of geeks in the 1970s, and pass the story off as his own fairy tale.
(This is why the prequels were so off-base from the original series: he missed receiving the first three installments because he didn’t get his radio until his 18th birthday. The Fresh Prince was right: parents just don’t understand.)
By proving a few fairy tales plausible, then we can (and often do) decide that all fairy tales are based to some extent on fact. You hear this sentiment echoed whenever people justify stereotypes.
If the fairy tales we love are true, then fairy tale love-or True Love-must also be true. The best I can define it is as a love that is predestined and constant in passion and loyalty. (For the sake of modern conventions, I’ll add that nobility and necrophilia are optional but not necessary.)
We uphold fairy tale love in sports by praising lifelong fans and denigrating the casual fair-weather, or bandwagon, fan. We also try to determine who the hero is and who the villain is, because we need to decide whether fate punished the Patriots’ hubris or was defied by the machinations of the killer Giants.
We categorize movies as “timeless,” as if their appeal will withstand the cultural changes that are inevitable. This is another form of fairy tale love, which assumes that our future alien overlords will agree that, although we are inferior lifeforms, Kane’s search for his childhood sled represents every sexually-mature creature’s yearning to return to an innocent larval phase.
We examine our relationships to decide if we’ve met “The One,” that One being our soul mate or something. Since it’s almost Valentine’s Day, I know better than to state whether or not soul mates exist; but, it’s very possible that many relationships change over time or end, leaving us to decide that fairy tale love does still exist, but we choose the wrong person. Fairy tale love, though, exists intact.
In light of these studies and examples, I’ve determined that fairy tale love is true, in that people who believe in it will always claim it exists. However, truth is not fact (i.e., truth to all), so we will continue to experiment and prove the stories about it are true. It’s not a strong argument, but no argument for behavior and opinion ever is.
Longest. Wedding vow. Ever.