Pull out your book of Hans Christian Anderson tales and Brothers Grimm and let's dive in. Let's see what Disney made more pleasant for the sake of children.
Disney, that great monopoly we know and love, has toned down so much that when we read the original tales themselves we find ourselves horrified with the violence and darkness of it. Children of the time of Grimm and Andersen were told tales that we wouldn't read to our own children, let alone ourselves. Usually, each tale had a moral to it. Frankly, after volume I was out of Brothers Grimm, even the Grimm brothers toned down tales. Some of these dark stories were told verbally and then edited by the brothers Grimm, who collected these tales to put in a written volume. Disney got a lot of material from here. Without any further ado, we go on. They are not all Grimm, but they are close enough.
Elsa
Yes, you Frozen fans, Elsa is not a hero in the Hans Christian Andersen story of The Snow Queen. She
The main storyline of The Snow Queen goes like this. An evil troll (the devil) made a mirror that distorts everything it reflects, magnifying their flaws and ignoring their beauty. This falls to earth and shatters, hitting humans below in fragments, when the trolls try to take it to Heaven to make fools of God and the angels. Two kids, Gerda and Kai, become friends, hear of a "snow queen" who is present where frost is, and then Kai sees her. He draws back in fear, then later gets splinters of the troll mirror in his heart and eyes. He literally follows the snow queen and hates everyone else after this. The people think Kai died in the river, but Gerda looks for him and finds a sorceress, who wants Gerda to stay forever, so she makes roses (which remind Gerda of Kai) disappear. One rose reminds her of Kai and talks to her, saying Kai is alive. A reindeer named Bae eventually leads her to Lapland, after more talking animals and a royal family help her. The Lord's prayer allows her to get past the snowflakes in the palace. Gerda's tears save Kai (in a complicated way) and the whole story ends with Matthew 18:3 being recited. The moral? You must become like an innocent child (like Gerda).
To be clear, Frozen did get some of it right, but it was not the story Andersen wrote - it was a new storyline that Disney developed from an old storyline. And they are still making money off of it like crazy. It is not a bad storyline, given what they left out.
Peter Pan
This is not a Grimm or Andersen story, but I wanted to include it. It was written by JM Barrie, who lost his 13-year-old brother and couldn't cope with the loss. So he wrote Peter Pan. He had an unhealthy obsession with young boys due to his brother's death. It is not one cohesive book, but several stories, all of a boy who never grows up and has endless adventures with pirates, mermaids, fairies, and Native Americans.
Peter Pan ran away from his parents, returned to find a new baby, and came to the conclusion he was no longer wanted there. He never returned. He has no ability to love and no empathy. The storyline is pretty close to the cartoon movie, except that the lost boys end up in the Darling household. Tinkerbell is no angel, either, and out of jealousy tries to kill Wendy (but to be fair she can only have one emotion at a time). She is redeemed by her loyalty to Peter, who unfortunately doesn't show much loyalty for her. He comes to Wendy years later, finds she grew up, and then takes her daughter with him on his adventures, then when Jane grows up he takes her daughter....and so on. Did I mention he killed the lost boys when they couldn't fit in the treehouse? No? Well, you might want to consider that.
We could be cheering for the wrong hero when we watch Peter Pan. He may or may not be a sociopath (I'd need an expert's opinion on that), but we know he didn't care what his followers wanted, only what he wanted. In the TV show Once Upon A Time, he is portrayed as evil. Consider that for a second. Is hook trying to save the lost boys from Peter? If we learned the story backward, that means we look at the story from the villain's point of view, and we believed it. He can't tell the difference between real and fantasy, so he didn't always feed the boys, and he killed them when they were growing up - because growing up is against the rules. If you take Neverland, don't think of it as a fantasy, and think of the people Peter is around as real you get a nightmare. Basically, empathy is an adult trait and Peter never developed it. So, kidnapping kids from their homes and forcing them to live in Neverland is actually the stuff of serial killers. "Pretend meals" are not real and he is starving the lost boys and making them fight pirates because Peter doesn't understand what he is doing - they are playthings to him. Do you understand now? I thought so.
Captain Phoebus from The Hunchback Of Notre Dame
If you read the real book by Victor Hugo, you find that Claud Frollo had problems, but Phoebus nearly
Compared to the Disney cartoon of this classic, we see a vastly different picture of this officer, who is clearly less than a hero. Claude Frollo did lust after Esmerelda, yes, and he did try to rape her, but he took in Quasimodo out of his heart and cared for him. Read the book, or at least a summary online. Frollo was not as monstrous as you would actually think. Lustful yes, but not cold toward Quasimodo, at least not until Quasimodo protected Esmerelda. Frollo is still a villain, but there was more than one villain from Esmerelda's point of view.
Conclusion
When I researched this I did not consider antiheroes, but instead heroes that have been loved and idolized as heroic. I did it this way because antiheroes have their flaws laid out for us (example: Deadpool), but heroes that we are more inclined to ignore the faults of don't have that. I almost put Tinkerbell on here, but one, I like Tinkerbell, and two, Peter Pan caused some of her issues. What I will say on her behalf is that she can only have one emotion at a time and the Faerie lore is not something that would put you to sleep at night, despite the happy pictures of Pixie Hollow you see in her movies and games.
Faerie lore says this about the pixie creatures:
They are unique to Britain, specifically in Devon, Somerset, and Cornwall in Southern England. Fairies and pixies are not the same and fought a battle in that area, where the pixies won. It is debated whether they have wings or not and are supposed to be uncommonly beautiful, or distorted (depends where you look). They have green slanted eyes and pointed ears. They are generally unclothed, most of the time. Their size is debated and some say they can change size at will. They like to sing and dance, and thus can be heard in some places (some said). They love humans and can take them for mates. They are supposed to be helpful, but can be malicious tricksters. They steal horses, legend says, and return them. They have stolen children and led people astray (and this can be prevented by turning your coat inside out, for some reason). If you follow a pixie you often vanish without a trace. Contact with metal harms them. Farmers used to leave buckets of water for pixies, a pitcher of milk out, and clean their chimneys for them. They are immortal.
Pictures:
D23
Carbon Costume
Tumgir
Digital Literary Analysis - CUNY
Sources:
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/peter-pan/summary
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/7/27/16021572/peter-pan-became-evil-jm-barrie-llewelyn-davies
http://celticanamcara.blogspot.com/2009/03/pixies.html
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