Fairy tales are timeless, this much may be true. "Once upon a time" has survived the ages and heralds the commencement of a new adventure even after several hundred years. However, being timeless is not the same as being constant; like the difference between a candle and a bright neon Vegas sign, fairy tales now are much flashier and "streamlined" compared to their old, archaic forms.
Of course, the very epitome of modernization is the world wide web, where mass e-mailing has replaced telemarketing and the FCC has little to no control. Everything from stock tips to discussions on the color of the President's boxers can be found on the web, so why not introduce fairy tales into this medium as well? The means are easy enough to come by--a computer and a modem, at the very basic level. It's interactive, so it will keep people interested for as long as they get to do something. And best of all, the web has the labels of "new" and "improved" stamped all over it, pulling computer junkies and newbies alike into its lure.
While it may be a little difficult to find "How Children Play at Slaughtering" on the web, "Rapunzel" is by no means uncommon. As a piece of common culture, any mention of "tower" and "tresses" in the same sentence starts people thinking on maidens and witches and forests.
So Enough Blabber Already, What did I Find?
All right, all right. So here's what a not-so-brief search turned up:Visuals
Images are powerful. There's no way around it--once someone
has a vision of
what something looks like, it becomes almost impossible to change it through
any means short of concrete, direct proof. Even then it becomes difficult. So,
here are some visions of what "Rapunzel" should look like according to various
people around the net:
(And of course, there are the less presentable items of art. Click on this prepositional phrase to see a truly fightening side effect of modernizing a fairy tale.)
Texts
Of course, there has to be some basis for images to spring from. Anyone who
doesn't know the classic tale of Rapunzel must be living in an isolated cave
(although obviously a cave with network support). This is
a version fo the Grimms "classic" Rapunzel tale. As a nice contrast, here's a shorter, more
modern
version of the tale.
Even despite the relative youngness of the web, elementary school children have put their own versions of Rapunzel on the web. Three examples are Denise's artistic (expedited) version, an excerpt from Catherine's version, and Kristyna Allsop's version of the tale from the witch's viewpoint.
A Head of Lettuce by any Other Name....
Although images and texts are the two most common forms of media, there are yet some other places where Rapunzel crops up in the modern era. For instance, there is an entire opera devoted to her. (Also on the musical front, she crops up in an Engineers' Drinking Song, but I wouldn't dare put a link to that in here, now would I? No, of course not.... ;)