Bill Earngey

All cultures have these kinds of interesting stories meant to engage children's attention while teaching the facts of survival in a world that isn't fair.

  In 1812, the Grimm brothers published their collection of German Fairy Tales, which were really grim but truly good advice.

  Hansel and Gretel, for example, has valuable morals: don't stray off the path, don't talk to strangers or take their treats, don't trust something or somebody based just on looks, keep your wits sharp, and pay attention to what's around you.

  Walt Disney, Inc. has pretty much trashed the core morals of these stories, leaving us with sugar-coated characters acting like demented adults.

  The most unforgivable perversion of a cautionary tale is Disney's version of The Little Mermaid. Not only were talking, singing, dancing critters inserted but the moral of Hans Christian Andersen's 1836 tale was demolished, sunk in a gob of feel-good gibberish.

  The original story, briefly. Mermaid saves air-head prince from drowning. He goes back to his castle. Moonstruck, she wants to follow but has a fishtail. A bargain was struck. She could have feet but every step would feel like walking on glass, and she could never be a mermaid again.

  Mermaid takes the bargain, and gets to the castle just in time to see the prince getting married. Devastated she returns to the seashore, where she's stopped. She can't go back. There is some mercy. The mermaid is turned into sea foam, and we see her still today.

  The moral: Sometimes we try as hard as we can, but we fail. Failing is not bad. Not trying is.

  In the Disney version she marries the prince.

  On the somewhat lighter side, in J. M. Barrie's 1911 Peter and Wendy about teenagers' growing pains, Mrs. Darling walks into Wendy's bedroom, sees Peter Pan, and he looks at her and then "gnashes his pearly teeth."

  Sound familiar? Disney doesn't think so.