ABSTRACT
In reviewing the revival of interest in balletic and operatic performances of old-fashioned fairy tales for the New York Times in 1987, Bruno Bettelheim restated his optimistic view that we are drawn to fairy-tale performances and fairy tales because they give the child in us a chance to fulfill childish wishes for what is experienced as a perfect world of enchantment. 1 Most adults would probably agree with him. Don't we always talk primarily about the happy end or the Utopian aspect of the tales? Don't they all end in triumph for the tormented, lovely girl like Cinderella or the little guy like Tom Thumb? Certainly today's remakes of the Grimms' tales proclaim their faith in eventual resurrection or the triumph of the underdog. Films like The Princess Bride or The Neverending Story, TV series like Beauty and the Beast or Jim Hensons The Storyteller, Broadway musicals like Into the Woods, video tapes like Shelly Duval's Faerie Tale Theater, Disney films like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin—they all focus on the resolution of conflicts, or what Bettelheim cavalierly refers to as the positive reorganization of sexual drives that enables children to overcome oedipal complexes and sibling rivalries.
