There’s a new genre floating around out there and it goes something like this: Remember that thing you were taught was really really bad and really really scary and really really evil? Well, guess what? It’s just been misunderstood! It’s not bad or scary or evil. It just needs a hug. It just needs understanding. It just needs to “be seen.” (Whatever that means; are we all blind or something?)
A recent example of this in our family is “Going On A Bear Hunt.” We have the board book, and it’s great, but we got the audio version and it’s… different.
In the book the family goes on a bear hunt, as you might expect. And they find the bear, and he’s terrifying! They run back to the house with the bear chasing them, almost forget to lock the door, and hide under the covers. Then there’s a final page of the bear wandering forlornly back to his cave.In the audiobook version, however, the bear has a cold and the little girl puts her scarf around him and they all become friends.
Wut?
You can see this same kind of thing in Dragons Love Tacos and the recent Disney films Cruella and Maleficent. Keep your eyes open and you’ll see it everywhere.
Now, I don’t think this is all bad. There are very old stories of taming dragons and riding dragons and all this is about coming to terms with and taming the unknown. But that’s the distinction. In stories like Beauty and The Beast and How to Train Your Dragon, the beast and the dragons do in fact have claws. They are in fact malevolent. They aren’t good on the inside. They need to undergo a conversion of some kind.
In the stories I’m talking about it’s the person who believes the dragon is malevolent who undergoes the conversion when they discover they were wrong – the dragon was good the whole time!
Personally, I don’t like it.
Yes, we do misjudge and we do have prejudice and these things should be overcome, but there are also dragons out there and they need to be slain.