Book: Once Upon a More Enlightened Time: More Poltically Cor

[Oss Rae]

Full title: Once Upon a More Enlightened Time: More Politically Correct Bedtime Stories (1995) by James Finn Garner

I picked this up at Adobe Books, a collective-run and owned bookstore in San Francisco. It's a sequel to a 1993 book of politically-correct fairy tales. This volume features eight of them. Some of my favorite parts occur in Hansel and Gretel. After being abandoned by their father ("a tree butcher by trade"), Hansel and Gretel come upon a cottage made of carob, carrot cakes, and sugarless gingerbread. The door is opened by a lady "in her golden years," who assures the siblings she's not a child-eating witch. "No, no my dear I'm not a witch, I'm Wiccan.," she says. "I'm no more evil than anyone else... I worship nature and the Godess, and mix herbs and natural potions to help people." She then invites them in for coltsfoot tea.

The Wiccan's pagan friends radicalize Hansel and Gretel, who change their names to Heathdweller and Gia and devote themselves to protecting the forest--and as it turns out the forest is in danger of being clear-cut...

Another highpoint for me is Sleeping Persun* of Better-Than-Average Attractiveness. Shortly after the princess of the story is born there's a grand celebration, and several "magickally accomplished womyn" present blessings. However, one disgruntled practitioner of magick curses the baby: "May you grow up thinking you can't be complete without a man, put unrealistic hopes of perfect and total happiness on your marriage, and become a bored, dissatisfied, and unfulfilled housewife!"

Eventually, other circumstances cause the princess to go into a deep sleep (as does the rest of the kingdom). In the ensuing 100 years, nature reclaims the castle grounds, creating a wondrous, unspoiled eco-system. Of course, many men, privy to rumors of a "beautiful" sleeping princess, try to force their way through the growth. However, despite their ruthless determination (and callous disregard for the flora), they fail to get in. One day, however, a prince shows up, excited about this "environmentally-friendly castle and its REM-enhanced inhabitants," and successfully enters...

I also enjoyed The Little Mer-Persun. On her 15th birthday, Kelpie, a princess mer-persun, is finally permitted to visit the upper world. As she nears the surface of the ocean, she encounters substantial pollution in the water and then a Russian ship downing a raft of activists protesting environmental degradation. She rescues a male from the raft as it's being sunk by the ship, and while she finds his activism laudable, she has little interest in him otherwise--she has no interest in leaving her home--and spurns him. His only hope to be with Kelpie is to find a way to adapt to living underwater. He must also learn to abandon archaic protocols like asking the king of the sea for his daughter's hand...

In The Tortoise and the Hare, an animal community learns a lesson about competition.

I'm probably going to seek out the first volume of these fairy tales. In some ways, the book seems to ridicule political correctness, although I think of it as self-depreciating humor. There are ways of updating fairy tales without self-deprecating or ridicule. Recent movies like Shrek, Brave, Frozen, and especially Maleficent exemplify this. Also, here's a much older modern fairy tale that I heard in my childhood. It's from the record and TV show Free to be You and Me produced by Marla Thomas in the early '70s.

(I'm pretty sure that's Alan Alda as the voice of the king. He was involved in this project in various capacities (e.g., director and voice actor). And the narrator, I think, is Marla Thomas.)


*Persun is deliberately spelled this way.

[Oss Rae]

P.S.

Actually, as funny as I found the book, I agree with most of the "politically-correct" wording in it. I've long felt that the English language is badly out of date. For example, because some jerk thought the Bahamas was India in 1492, we still refer to the original inhabitants of this hemisphere as Indians (which can make it awkward/cumbersome when a person wants to refer an actual Indian from India). It's 524 years later, and this was never corrected!

In college, one of my teachers insisted I write "humankind" rather than "mankind." That made sense to me, and I assumed that in ensuing years it would catch on. But if anything, "mankind" or just "man" is being used as much as ever.

There also was a time I thought that, in this ostensibly secular society, references to Christianity would gradually disappear from our calendar (i.e., B.C.E -- Before Common Era -- would replace B.C., and C.E. -- Common Era -- would replace A.D.), but I almost never see these secular terms. It seems like they're fringe.

English has always been a changing, evolving language, but in many ways, it's really stagnated as it's continued to reflect patriarchy, theocracy, and racism*.

If English were to evolve, I would hope it would happen in more organic and spontaneous ways than some of the awkward phrases that are the subject of so much humor in the above-mentioned book (although, even these awkward phrases/rewordings are a big improvement over what we now have, in my opinion). Maybe new words could be invented?

But can this even happen in the English language? There seems to be resistance to change (again, after 524 years, we're still referring to Indigenous people as Indians and using more complicated terms for Indians from India. Alternatives to B.C. and A.D. have been with us for a long time but are seldom used). Maybe it's time for a new language?

*Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about the many negative connotations of black/dark in the English language and the numerous positive connotations of white/light. However, a few months ago, I came across a positive use of the word "black." Zeke the Sheik, who created a 30-foot tall compost pile, about 100 feet in diameter, in Pasadena that lasted over 30 years, once held a clump of very rich, very healthy black dirt in his hand. He said, "Everything goes back to black. Sooner or later we're all going to be black powder." This black powder replenishes life.