The Brave Little Tailor, Original Text

For my project I have decided to work with the brothers Grimm tale “The Brave Little Tailor”. In a nutshell it is about a naïve, bravado tailor who goes out into the world to seek his fortune; however when he finds himself in sticky situations his naivety comes across as shrewdness and his bravado courageous. He owes his success as much to good luck as to his quick tongue. The first half of the tale we see the tailor overcome physical adversity such as out witting giants, and in secound half over come social adversity by overcoming class boundaries and eventually becoming king.

The tale is morally ambiguous; on the one hand it could be pointing out the usefulness of being witty and agile, on the other it could be saying that to be successful in this world one must resort to cheating and trickery. The Brave Little tailor is as much a comment on the world as a moral guideline.

Above is the 1938 animated short by Disney of the brave little tailor, sadly in this moralistic version the ambiguity is replaced by definite guidelines. The morally vague tailor is replaced by the typical good guy (Mickey mouse) who unwittingly finds himself in a perilous confrontation with a giant. Any commentary on classist society restraining the protagonist is done away with in favour of the conventional love story between Mickey and Minnie.

What is interesting when comparing the Grimm adaptation with the Disney is that they both use this folk tale as a vehicle for the different moral objectives of their time. However I would like to point out a key difference, the brothers Grimm collected the story from the people of the time, granted editing of the diverse range of folk tales did take place, but the moral objective was decided by the people who told and retold the story over generations. The Disney version however was produced by Walt Disney himself, the moral objective was decided by him and a handful of his peers. In a sense we have top down versus bottom up, something which after all these years is becoming relevant again. So a possible direction for my own project might be what moral objectives would a modern, internet driven bottom up culture push through this old story? What medium(s) would it be in? Would it be told in one way or many ways? Hopefully I will be able to answer these questions and incorporate these elements into my own take on the narrative, art style and presentation.