3 Classic Fairy Tales Reimagined for the Modern World

by Lucas Witherspoon

Goldilocks and the Three Bears
The story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears as we know it involves a young girl, Goldilocks, who happens upon the home of three bears, who have gone out for a walk as their porridge cools inside. While they’re away, she proceeds to break in, eat their food, destroy furniture, and pass out in one of their beds…so basically a typical night out for Robert Downey, Jr. in the 90s. Once she’s discovered, she runs into the woods never to be seen again.

The modern retelling:
Goldilocks had better hope her misadventure didn’t go down in Florida, because they won’t hesitate to shoot an unarmed child for much less than breaking and entering.

Sleeping Beauty
Most of us are familiar with Charles Perrault’s version of Sleeping Beauty, in which a beautiful princess is seduced into a comatose state by an evil witch and awoken by a handsome prince with as kiss. What a lot of people don’t know is that Perrault actually based his version on Giambattista Basile’s Sun, Moon, and Talia. The synopses are essentially the same, only Basile’s original telling of the story is much grizzlier. Among one of the most significant differences is that in the original story, Sleeping Beauty (Talia) isn’t so much awoken with a kiss as she is flat-out raped while she’s still unconscious (she also manages to give birth while still asleep as well). So there’s that.

The modern retelling:
A pretty, unconscious girl is raped, but since the guy happens to be rich and white, it’s written off as a consensual interaction because, after all, “she had it coming.”

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White: a girl born with “skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony” who becomes the subject of her evil stepmother’s envy-based wrath and homicide attempts. It’s a poison apple that finally subdues Snow White, thus making her evil stepmother the fairest in the land once again. Eventually a prince comes along, rouses Snow White back to life, and her evil stepmother dies. In the Disney version, she falls off a cliff, which is already a pretty gruesome way to die, until you consider the original Grimm version has the evil stepmother dying after she’s forced to dance in glowing-hot iron shoes. That, however, isn’t even the most fucked up part of the story; in the original, Snow White is only 7-years-old when she’s sent out into the forest and runs across the dwarfs, meaning that, while no specific timeline is given, it’s safe to assume Snow White was definitely not even close to being of the accepted modern-day age of consent when she and the prince hooked up (not to mention the Prince fell in love with a girl he presumed to be dead).

The modern retelling:
Cut to Chris Hansen lurking out from behind a tree once the Prince arrives at Snow White’s glass coffin and asking, “Why don’t you have a seat?”