As one does these days, I asked an LLM to help me detect if I had a bowdlerized version, and while I'm sure the stories were already softened in translation, they're still far more 'rowdy' than stories you can easily find today. In the old folk tales, things just happen. Fairness isn't guaranteed; and sometimes a guy makes a deal and gets eaten anyway; and sometimes someone dies for no reason.
I wonder if the changing narrative structure of modern stories is a result of our improved civilization. In a world where you're probably reaching adulthood with your brothers and sisters without encountering any sibling death, a story with 'unfair' death and destruction probably feels out of place. Nonetheless, I sometimes am saddened when I read people talk about stories in media and how they 'glorify' bad behaviour or 'send the wrong message'. A thing I really treasure from childhood is the breadth of storytelling: not all stories were an Aesop's fable.
But perhaps that's not true. I suspect the truth is that with lowered barriers to publishing there are just more stories told. The ones from the past that we know are twice selected: once for cultural value, and once because the writer himself was selected. Today, anyone can write, so it's the same problem as we encounter when we look at personal websites today. Sampled randomly in 2004 you would get interesting ones easily. Today, that is not so easy.
This is most easily visible with foreign media. The Chinese stories I've read are alien and strange and interesting; and the Japanese ones take unexpected turns. But they're going through that selection process as well. So it's probably just a boring selection effect.
Still, I've got the old Grimms. I'm keeping that one as an heirloom.
We have a child carved of wood, a flesh and blood child burns off their feet is a tragedy, but carved of wood we make new feet, hah hah!
Not saying this particular incident is to be expected exactly, but events of this type are to be expected from any competent writer who has taken up the premise. Especially as it is structured as a picaresque fairy tale, it would be weird if this kind of thing didn't happen.
Also - The fairy, originally a corpse - why is a dead revenant of some sort bringing a puppet to life any weirder than a magical fairy? That's not weirder, just different than we've been told.
It has some highly entertaining scathing reviews on Amazon of not being family-safe and faithful to "the original" from people who think Pinocchio was invented by Disney and use the animated movie as a reference for their critiques.
As hilarious as it is sad.
Remembering my dad reading us Pinocchio as a kids and visiting Tuscany around that time, too, with my family, this movie is as close to what I can remember imagining it, as it gets.
Children are capable of understanding cruelty, pain, death, suffering, in young age, overprotectiveness is why we have many >20 y/o people who can't speak for themselves and are overly shy.
In 19th century Italian (but maybe also other countries') children had to grow quickly to cope with life and work brutalities. They often had no mother, died while giving them birth, and started working at 7 or 8 to help their families.
In 20th century, instead, they have been constantly exposed to either real life violence and harshness (like war) or fiction brutality from movies, cartoons and video games.
Nope, Pinocchio is not that weird. It is when compared to an idyllic and peaceful world that has never existed but in our wishful thinking minds.
Also, definitely likely you will remember some abridged version or Disneys'.
I'm not convinced of the argument that it's making fun of contemporary children books: Pinocchio regularly misbehaves and gets punished for it, which seems pretty much in line with contemporary books.
We decided at some point that these themes were no longer fit for children despite generations having been raised with it. That’s probably the Victorian era, when childhood is said to have been “invented.”
Dogfish in Turkish, “köpekbalığı”, also literally means shark.
The good Tom and Jerry episodes are completely devoid of tact and care, yet marvellous as entertainment .
Hm, that gave me an idea... sounds like a fun way to learn Italian if you already have some basic knowledge?
[1] https://liberliber.it/autori/autori-c/carlo-collodi-alias-ca...
I have no idea if this stayed only in Italy or if it has been translated to other languages.
He may have run out of ideas and tried to fill in a story with a dark mood in mind (speculation). The thing is that this is not that uncommon in many fantasy novels. Anyone remembers "The Color of Her Panties" by Piers Anthony? I read it, it is very cheesy (also silly, in particular when you as target audience are, say, 10 years old or something like that) but not necessarily mega-creepy either. But then you also begin to wonder ... is it just "good fun" to pick such a title? But then it is not the only instance and you begin to find more oddities. Naturally this depends on the author; some authors never run into such issues, others run into such issues.
I only saw the Pinocchio cartoon, that anime-style animation, on TV. That version was harmless from what I remember. Never read the books, but I am not so surprised about books being darker. Anyone knows the Grimm brothers? They lived from 1785–1863 and 1786–1859 respectively. I clearly remember that some of those drawings were really dark. It's a bit like dark horror stories if you look at it today - here is a summary:
https://discover.hubpages.com/literature/Grimms-Fairy-Tales-...
It starts with "There are some fairy tales that are just not meant for kids.".
Some of the pictures by Grimm or illustrators are quite scary, such as the bleeding or weeping out of eyes ... is gross. Possibly these were more for adults, or adults who did not care, such as Pinocchio - perhaps. A puppet that has a growing body part ... that in itself is already super-weird. Are we certain the nose was meant? Is Pinocchio ... a prison item???
