Keesha sees her classmate Sunny in the common room of their dorm.

Keesha: Hey, Sunny! How was your friend’s wedding?

Sunny: Oh, it was like a fairy tale!

Keesha: Really? That’s too bad! What happened?

Sunny: What do you mean, “too bad?” I said it was “like a fairy tale.” Fairy tales are sweet and beautiful!

Keesha: No they are not!

Sunny: They are not?

Keesha: No! They are full of violence and sex and really disgusting things.

Sunny: Keesha, what are you talking about? Haven’t you seen “Snow White” or “Sleeping Beauty?” Or the more recent “Tangled?”

Keesha: Sure. But have you actually read the Brothers Grimm?

Sunny: Oh, those German guys who collected fairy tales? Yeah, I think I had a children’s book with some stories...

Keesha: Children’s books. Right. Well, when the brothers published their first edition — 200 years ago this year — with 86 stories, they were criticized.

Sunny: Because?

Keesha: Well, not only were the stories too scholarly — the Grimms were philologists collecting to preserve folk traditions — but also there was too much sex and violence in the stories for kids!

Sunny: So what did they do?

Keesha: They toned them down, a little. But Disney and other filmmakers have really taken the bite out of them.

Sunny: For example?

Keesha: Let’s see: You know the Frog Prince?

Sunny: When the princess kisses the frog?

Keesha: Uh-uh. She doesn’t kiss him. She throws him against a wall!

Sunny: Really?

Keesha: Yeah. And you mentioned “Tangled,” about the girl Rapunzel?

Sunny: Yes. It’s so romantic.

Keesha: Kidnapping? Imprisonment? Not so romantic.

Sunny: I guess you are right. What about Snow White?

Keesha: A stepmother who wants the girl killed because she is beautiful? And she wants to eat her heart?

Sunny: I see what you mean.

Keesha: The stories are really horrifying. Still, in a way, they are great, because they address some deep psychological issues. Freud, Jung, and others have used them in studying human psychology.

Sunny: In what way?

Keesha: I do not have time to tell you now. Maybe another day.

Sunny: I’m looking forward to it. See ya!

Keesha: Bye.

Notes on the dialogue:

— Philologist: someone who studies language, especially the history of language as found in written sources.

— To tone something down: to soften something.

— Freud: Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian doctor who founded the science of psychoanalysis.

— Jung: Carl Jung (1875-1961), Swiss psychiatrist and a student of Freud.

— Folk traditions: the stories, art, music, and so on of “the people.”

— To take the bite out of something: same as tone something down.

*****--Uh-uh: “No.”