Fairy tales usually bring to life a fantasy about far away lands, kings and queens, wizards, fairies and witches, trolls and talking animals. They take us to a place where the poor get rich and the weak gets strong. All fairy tales, (though not all have fairies, like Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood) include fantasy and unreal scenarios. The more unreal the idea, the more enchanting the story.



When you examine the classic children's tales you see that the real fascination with fairy tales is the comparison between fantasy and reality. Readers and viewers know the movies and stories are not part of reality. How many talking wolves do you know? And why would old women eat children? Who wouldn't want to be a princess? How easy it is to kill a dragon?

Imagination has been a great tool for humanity since the Stone Age. People have imagined things they have never seen before and progress has been sparked. When Jules Verne wrote “20 Thousand Leagues under the Sea”, his fiction, and imaginary underwater ship sparked an idea in people's minds to build the first submarine.

Fantasies, fairy tales and science fiction are all stories about an unreal world and are a wonderful stimulation for people's imagination, becoming a great source for joy and creativity.

In the beginning, stories were passed down from generation to generation or from one place to another by story tellers. The enthusiasm and accuracy of each story was at the mercy of the story teller and their sharp memory. In those days, every time the same story was told, details varied, characters and scenes changed to suit the audience. Later, written books helped keep the accuracy of the story. Acting became a great way for story tellers to pass on their messages and keep those stories alive.

The next stage of each tale was to add pictures. This was a great way to help people see creatures they had never seen and could not imagine: dragons, trolls, monsters, witches and fairies. Picture books opened a new era of imagination. One significant part of this evolution was the comic book.

The next stage in the evolution of fairy tales was the birth of Motion Pictures - animation. Walt Disney, for example was a great visionary who dreamed about times when all people, young and old would watch animation. Sure enough, not too long after his first creation, movie theatres are filled with people.

While animation was still limited to drawn pictures, advanced technology has made the movie creators advanced story tellers. With tricks of a camera, people can vanish in a cloud of dust, animals can talk, outer space can be re-created and fascinating creatures come to life. Some of them look so real the difference between fantasy and reality has faded.

Last week, we watched “Enchanted”, a movie in which fantasy characters have entered the real world. The movie compared the worlds. Surprisingly, characters from the fantasy showed the real people, that life can be so much better if they believed in good things.