BOOK REVIEW – JAMES FINN GARNER – POLITICALLY CORRECT
BEDTIME.STORIES. 1994 Souvenir Press
The
traditional tales told by Hans Christian Anderson & The Brothers Grimm get a
tongue in cheek PC make over here, and many of the classics are covered.
Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack And The Beanstalk, The Pied Piper Of Hamylin, etc.
The
idea is clever, but after you read a few stories the formula is so simple that
you could write the rest yourself – the stories and jokes are given very
straight treatment – Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs become vertically challenged
men, the Beanstalk is swapped for Jack’s cow as an argument in favour of
vegetarianism.
Princes
are not seen as rescuers, but as capitalist exploiters, sexist in their lust of
the ladies in the stories, The Pied Piper doesn’t evict rats but hippies,
gypsies and bikers – he doesn’t steal the children when left unpaid – he stirs
them to revolution in favour of a worker’s co-operative. At times, this reads like the very propaganda
the author makes fun of.
Nicely
illustrated, and a good idea, but for a short book, it gets quite tedious in a
very short space of time.
Arthur Chappell
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