Lurid descriptions of beheadings & oil-boiling (Mikado), incest (HMS Pinafore), witch burning (Ruddigore), and black magic (Sorcerer).
Auto-eroticism and pornography (Oklahoma), Nazi salutes (The Sound of Music).

Let's face it, there are precious few "classic" theater works that pass muster for today's standards for kid-friendly fare.

Aside from the cartoon violence aspect, don't these cartoons simply teach a lack of respect for authority? I mean, the tortoise(s) in "Rabbit Transit" practically glorify cheating. Yosimite Sam? Serious anger management issues. Foghorn Leghorn and Pepe le Pew would both be nailed for sexual harassment.

Oh and then there's that whole cross-dressing thing.

Clearly the only acceptable musical (and the only one I really tolerate well) is "The Music Man", in which wayward, pool-playing teens are encouraged not to use the word "swell" through participating in public music programs.

You think?

Close, but it's actually their stepmother who wants to get rid of them. There is no such thing as an evil mother in a common fairy tale, you know, only witches and stepmothers and very rarely a distant aunt.

Stepmothers get the shaft.

Actually, I remembered it being the MOTHER, and I agree this is quite odd for a fairy tale. I thought perhaps I was getting childhood memories of the Momster mixed up with the story, so I checked to make sure. Turns out the brothers Grimm wrote two different versions of the story. In the first one, which was the one I read as a child (no doubt the Momster gave me that one on purpose to keep me in line), it is indeed the Mother who persuades the kindly father to leave the two children alone in the woods to die. Later on, no doubt due to protests of outraged mothers all over Germany, the story was changed to make it the STEP mother. Learn something new everyday, eh? ;)

Don't let the father off too easily. Henpecking only excuses so much.

The children who were "traumatized" by Faust are probably the same ones who go home and play GTA: San Andreas and Doom3.

HEH! Well, in the first version, anyhow, Hansel and Gretel scoop up all the wicked witche's money and jewels after they bake her and return home to find their Dad happily and mysteriously single. Co-incidence? I think NOT! :D

I saw in a program about the Middle Ages recently that the Hansel and Gretel story originated from actual practices of that time. Starvation was rampant in parts of Europe at almost any given time, and it WAS the practice for parents to abandon small children in the woods because they could not feed them anymore. The woods of a thousand years ago were much darker and denser and wolves and bears were twice the size that we know today, so this method neatly disposed of the extra mouths without causing pesky problems of confessing infanticide to your priest. So yes, it was the mother who took Hansel and Gretel into the woods to abandon them, and the other half of the story, about an evil witch who ate children, was an expression of still another horror of the Middle Ages. Starving people feared being reduced to canabalism in order to survive and these frightening stories were also their attempt to take the stand "I'M not like that but I know there are some people who would". And maybe there were such cases, which after being spread by rumor until nobody remembered the original source became the grandiose characters of fairy tales.

Makes you wonder what chilling fireside tales will be told to children about the 20/21st century....?

If there are still chilling tales.... and firesides.....

Probably something about how the children were forced to play organized sports, participate in extra-curricular activities, etc. till they died of exhaustion.

I watched Oklahoma! last nite, and Steve was right. The Peddler selling racy post cards, the one female charecter being slutty with the peddler. The dream sequence with Shirly Jones extreamly erotic, and evil. Even the opening scene with Curley and the Aunt slow stroking the butter churn.

Whats a mother to do, Kermit the Frog is fucking Miss Piggy, thats just wierd. Then you have Barney, I don't even want to go there.

This maybe the oppertunity for somebody to rite some thing kid friendly. :brikwall: