THE ABJECT AND FAIRY TALES AN ANALYSIS BY TARA
From the Brothers Grimm to Disney, fairy tales have traditionally taught and reiterated the morals and beliefs that society deems important. Within fairy tales, girls and boys and women and men are taught to traits. Indeed, the current trend in (re) with their enduring ability to entertain, norms within patriarchal society. Nevertheless, many authors and artists have attempted to unhinge the patriarchal principles found within fairy tales, by revising, adapting and challenging the structures that have been deemed “normal”. One way authors have sought to negotiate the patriarchal terms set out by traditional fairy tales is through utilising the abject. The abject refers to feelings of repulsion (vomit) and horror caused by the breakdown of meaning and order within reality. Abjection, as theorised by Julia Kristeva, is ‘what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite’ (4). The abject is triggered when there is a lack of distinction between the object and subject or between the self and Other. This usually occurs when the subject is reminded of its own materiality, for and corpses. Indeed, the corpse is ‘the utmost of abjection’ (Kristeva, 4), because of the horror one experiences, when faced with its status as neither object nor subject. The abject’s ability to disturb identity and order makes it a powerful device to
unhinge the reality depicted within fairy tales. An excellent example is Pan’s Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno) (2006), directed by Guillermo del Toro. Pan’s Labyrinth is a a fairy tale world and the everyday world. girl, who is living under Francisco Franco’s fascist regime in Spain in 1944. In order to escape the horrors of the violence surrounding her, Ofelia embarks on her very own happy ending. fairy tale world undermines normal fairy In one scene, the viewer sees Ofelia kill a magical toad. Crawling through the tree’s underground roots, Ofelia becomes covered in slime, mud, and, eventually, the toad’s slimy dead innards. The audience’s revulsion in this scene is produced by the abject. As part of death. There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being’ (3). The mud and slime repulses the audience, because it forces the viewer to be reminded of the body’s materiality and closeness to death. Through bringing the viewer to ‘the border of’ one’s ‘condition as a living being’, it blurs the boundary between the subject and the object and this ambiguity is unsettling for the viewer. Here, Del Toro’s use of the abject is enhanced, because of its stark contrast to society’s normal conception of