NOCC: Kenny Klein Tells the Tales
Company: Wizard World Product: New Orleans Comic Con 2013 Coverage
This might be a shock to you, but if you’ve gotten all your knowledge of Fairy Tales from Disney, well Disney lied. If you were lucky enough to catch the panel hosted by Kenny Klein titled Grimm Fairy Tales: What Your Mother Didn’t Tell You at Wizard World New Orleans Comic Con, then you would know more about the original tales of Snow White, Little Red Ridinghood, and Cinderella in depth. Kenny Klein is a fascinating man of many talents including wring, singing, acting, and more. This panel covers some of the stories told in Kenny Klein’s Fairy Tale Rituals. The Grimms were fascinated with folklore, so they devoted their lives to collecting these stories. They weren’t the only ones, and they weren’t even the most popular at the time, but they are the ones that have become the most well-known. Real fairy tales are horrid and gruesome and sexual. The zombie movies of today "want to be fairy tales when they grow up." If you go read these original tales, you’ll be shocked at the differences from current versions. Kenny mentioned that you need to remember that in all but one of these fairy tales. there never were "step-mothers." In every tale except for Cinderella, it was really the mother that did the horrible things that were blamed on a step-mother. Take Snow White for example. Snow White is a tale that contains a lot of traditional fairy lore elements, especially in the origins of Snow White. There are a few different versions on how Snow White came to be, but in all of them, you end up with a 9-year-old girl who is so beautiful that she enchants anyone who is anywhere near her. The queen (her mother) is full of jealousy and sends a huntsman to kill this child. Of course, as we all know, the child is so beautiful that the huntsman can’t kill her even though he knows that his own life will be forfeited when the queen finds out. This leaves Snow White alone in the forest where she ends up at the home of the dwarves. Now, you need to know that no one lives in the forest. That’s the scary place in the wild so only crazy people, witches, and people like that live in the forest. Snow White lives with these seven men, cooking, cleaning, and living essentially as their wife, at 9 years old. Of course, as you know, there is more to the story, but for now we’re going to skip on over to Little Red Riding Hood.
Once again, in this tale we have a young teen going into the scary forest, this time to visit her grandmother. On the way, she meets the wolf, who she tells exactly how to get to her grandmother’s house. When she gets there, instead of her grandmother she finds the wolf. In this tale, the wolf is a werewolf, which means that he is also a man, a dangerous man, the kind that you know you shouldn’t go out with but due to the danger-seeking element, you do anyway. In this tale, the wolf feeds Red her grandmother’s teeth, but she still eats because he tells her to. He makes her drink her grandmother’s blood hiding it as wine, but she still drinks it after finding out the truth because the wolf tells her to. She even ends up in bed with the wolf, because he tells her to. Unlike some of the other heroines in Grimm’s tales, Red manages to escape this wolf, with her newly learned experiences.
Cinderella is probably one of the most changed stories. She doesn’t go to the ball in a pumpkin and she doesn’t have a fairy godmother who gives her a dress. The ball actually goes on for three different nights, so the birds from a tree that grew out of her mother’s grave give her a gold dress one night, a silver dress the next, and a multi-colored dress on the final night. In the tale, the prince knows who her father is, so he goes to her father but doesn’t know which of the daughters is the right one. Cinderella’s first two sisters cut off part of their feet just to make the shoes fit. The birds tell him that he has the wrong girl twice. You’d think that the blood on the shoe would give it away but it takes the birds to make him see the truth.
Kenny Klein was truly fascinating to listen to. I have yet to read his books, but as soon as I have a copy, I will get to find out the truth of the rest of these tales. If you get the chance, you should most definitely listen to Kenny and go pick up his books.
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
Related Links: Game Vortex's Wizard World New Orleans Comic-Con 2011 Coverage Game Vortex's Wizard World New Orleans Comic-Con 2012 Coverage Kenny Klein's Official Site Kenny Klein's Fairy Tale Rituals Kenny Klein's Through the Faerie Glass
NOCC: TNG Cast Cracks Up NOCC: John de Lancie - From Q to Bronies