Tag: Animation

C.S. Lewis, the Brothers Grimm & Snow White

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis & the Inklings, Cartoons with a Message, Classics Worth Revisiting, Films, G.K. Chesterton, History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Likely Useless Trivia, Literature, Modern Life, Narnia8 Comments

You may blame the recent cinematic debacle that is Snow White on a declining Film Studio or the Brothers Grimm, but C.S. Lewis is innocent.

That’s not to say the Grimms didn’t have an influence on the great Oxbridge professor, a subject we’ll explore momentarily. But it was the German folk tales published by academics Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm who published the classic fairy tales that Walt Disney mined so effectively. 

They also popularized Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, The Princess and the Frog, and Rapunzel. Disney began the transformation of these tales into visual treasures as early as 1921 when he founded Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri.

In addition to films, over the years Walt gleaned memorable Grimm stories for a multitude of cartoon shorts, including The Brave Little Tailor and The Four Musicians of Bremen.

Obviously, Walt Disney himself respected the source material for the stories and wielded his editorial prerogative in an appropriate manner. Tragically, the same cannot be said for his corporate heirs. Likewise, the Brothers Grimm bear no culpability in this area.

C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien & Snow White

The truth is, although Lewis and Tolkien appreciated literary fairy tales, neither of the preeminent Inklings were enamored with Disney’s animated treatment of the stories. Curiously, the two distinguished dons actually attended the theater together to view the trailblazing novelty that was Snow White.

They were particularly disappointed with the dwarves, seeing just how different they were from the genuine legends about them. Lewis even wrote “Dwarfs ought to be ugly of course, but not in that way.” Atlas Obscura has an entertaining article about their “movie date” and notes some of the elements they also enjoyed in the feature.

In his lectures published as A preface to Paradise lost, C.S. Lewis elaborates on his response to the Disney version of the tale.

That strange blend of genius and vulgarity, the film of Snow-White, will illustrate the point. There was good unorginality in the drawing of the Queen. She was the very archetype of all beautiful, cruel queens: the thing one expected to see, save that it was truer to type than one dared to hope for.

There was bad originality in the bloated, drunken, low-comedy faces of the dwarfs. Neither the earthiness, the avarice, nor the wisdom of true dwarfs was there, but an imbecility of arbitrary invention.

But in the scene where Snow-White wakes in the woods both the right originality and the right unoriginality were used together. The good unoriginality lay in the use of small, delicate animals as comforters, in the true Märchen [fairy tale] style. The good originality lay in letting us at first mistake their eyes for the eyes of monsters.

If you want to read more about the subject, you can do no better than read Joe Christopher’s article on the subject.

For an interesting argument that fellow Brit G.K. Chesterton would have loved Snow White for the very reason that moved the Inklings to criticize it, see “Tolkien and Lewis disliked Snow White. You know who wouldn’t have?”

C.S. Lewis & Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Like his friend, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis was a champion of classical fairy tales. Neither was apologetic for it, although Lewis admitted to being shy about it when he was young. In an essay titled “On Three Ways of Writing For Children,” he wrote,

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

In a great post called “Old Enough For Fairy Tales: C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” the writer describes this distinction to which Lewis alludes.

The Chronicles of Narnia are not children’s stories. They are fairy tales—but that is precisely why they are not children’s stories. If you can’t understand, you haven’t been listening. Go back and read the quote from Lewis’ essay again. Children are not the only audience for fairy tales.

In 1954, C.S. Lewis apologized to a German professor for being unable to understand the nuances of his volume on philosophy. In doing so, he referred to his youthful reading of the Brothers Grimm in their original German (available at Internet Archive).

I look forward to reading the book (when the translation arrives! My German is wretched, and what there is of it belongs chiefly to the libretto of the Ring and Grimm’s Märchen – works whose style and vocabulary you very possibly do not closely follow).

If you are in the mood for reading Grimm’s Fairy tales today, and your German is sadly lacking, Project Gutenberg has just the translation for you . . . as long as you can read English.

Addendum [added 10 April 2025]

The Brothers Grimm were far more than simply folklorists. They were respected professors at the University of Göttingen. They were devout Christians and worked with other prominent Germans. 

Goethe assisted them at a crucial moment in collecting their tales, and the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher provided copyediting assistance. Jacob’s work on German mythology had a pronounced influence on the composer Richard Wagner (World Magazine).

They also began compiling the Deutsches Wörterbuch (Germany dictionary) in 1838, with the first volumes published in 1854. It was the first dictionary to include historical usages of each word, preceding the Oxford English Dictionary, which was initiated in 1857 with its first edition published in 1884.

Bonus Trivia: The dwarves were unnamed until their debut on Broadway in 1912. And on that day they were christened Blick, Flick, Glick, Plick, Snick, Whick and Quee.

Clay Hearts

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, Family, Films, Marriage, Modern Life6 Comments

clay heartHonesty compels us to admit that we have clay feet. We are merely mortal, and our origin from the clay of the earth is a reminder that we are imperfect.

Stumbling due to our feet of mud is one thing. Far worse, we earthen vessels also have hearts of clay. Our affections are fickle, and too often we fail to fulfill our vows to those who have made themselves vulnerable by entrusting to us their own love.

I doubt any of us have been untouched by the pain of transient love. The ideal we long for . . . the vision we dream about . . . and the lasting intimacy we pray for often seem so very fleeting.

Saddest, to me, are those relationships that have lasted many years, where the once glowing light has dimmed and the comforting warmth has dissipated.

That is the story of a remarkable, Oscar-nominated animation I would like to commend to you. Head Over Heels is a unique 10-minute claymation film about a broken marriage and how it comes “unbroken.”

C.S. Lewis did not marry until late in life. The personal experience of marriage, of course, modified some of his bachelor perceptions about the holy estate.

Nevertheless, having been married for thirty-seven years myself, I continue to be amazed by just how perceptive Lewis was throughout his writing life. Consider the following from The Four Loves.

Lewis discusses the importance and glory of passion consecrated by marital vows, but he does not pretend that it does not wax and wane. Nor does he imagine that even between wife and husband, a focus on the passion in their relationship is without potential hazards.

Discussing erotic love (one of the four he describes), Lewis warns:

But Eros, honoured without reservation and obeyed unconditionally, becomes a demon. And this is just how he claims to be honoured and obeyed. . . . Of all loves he is, at his height, most god-like; therefore most prone to demand our worship. Of himself he always tends to turn “being in love” into a sort of religion.

Theologians have often feared, in this love, a danger of idolatry. I think they meant by this that the lovers might idolise one another. That does not seem to me to be the real danger; certainly not in marriage. The deliciously plain prose and businesslike intimacy of married life render it absurd. So does the Affection in which Eros is almost invariably clothed.

Even in courtship I question whether anyone who has felt the thirst for the Uncreated, or even dreamed of feeling it, ever supposed that the Beloved could satisfy it. As a fellow-pilgrim pierced with the very same desire, that is, as a Friend, the Beloved may be gloriously and helpfully relevant; but as an object for it—well (I would not be rude), ridiculous. The real danger seems to me not that the lovers will idolise each other but that they will idolise Eros himself.

I believe Lewis has identified something profound here. The utter familiarity, the nakedness of our souls, that is part of any genuine marriage precludes anyone sane person from idolizing their partner. We, after all, are more familiar than any other human being with their feet of clay.

However, if we succumb to the snares of Eros, cast wide across television, literature, cinema and internet, we doom ourselves. True love will not cohabit with this counterfeit.

An uncritical attention to the physical seldom results in happiness. As Lewis so accurately says, “For Eros may unite the most unsuitable yokefellows; many unhappy, and predictably unhappy, marriages were love-matches.”

The good news, celebrated by Head Over Heels, is that even when love fades away, there is still hope. Just as clay-footed human beings can experience resurrection, so too our clay-hearted relationships can be restored and blaze with renewed joy.