Last Tuesday, Maltese artist Michelle Gialanze (also known as Mixa) exhibited a series of paintings to accompany a talk at Dunhill House in London’s Mayfair. Both the talk and paintings were thematically related to fairy tales. 

On reaching the safety of adulthood, one may debate on the nature of these much-loved stories that often conceal very complex narratives and dark underlying substrata. Does their pedagogical perspective, usually delivering a lesson to be learnt as their redemptory conclusion, trump the fright from the latent evil that smoulders on in the narrative?

Little Red Riding Hood

“One argument pro fairy tales is to allow our young to master the psychological problems of growing up – overcoming narcissist disappointments, oedipal dilemmas, sibling rivalries becoming able to relinquish childhood dependencies, gaining a feeling of self-worth, and a sense of moral obligation,” Gialanze says. 

She asserts that children need to understand what is going in within their conscious self so that they can also cope with that which goes on in their unconscious. 

"Fairy tales offer a new dimension to children’s imagination"

The artist continues: “Children can achieve this understanding, and with it, the ability to cope not through rational comprehension of the nature and content of their unconscious but by becoming familiar with it through the spinning out of daydreams – ruminating, rearranging and fantasising about suitable story elements.

Cinderella

“An example of this is that children believe in witches, which are often seen as symbols of their anxieties; in fairy tales, these are always overcome and winning over evil,” the artist reflects. 

“By doing this, the children fit the unconscious content into conscious fantasies, which then enable them to deal with the content. Fairy tales have unequalled value because they offer a new dimension to children’s imagination, which would otherwise be impossible for them to discover as truly their own.”

Gialanze believes that the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child through which they can structure their daydreams and thus give better direction to their life. 

Red Riding Hood

Snow White

She adds that, however, parents, guardians and educators need to know what we are feeding children, “the stereotypes we are setting, what we are leaving out and how these messages are being interpreted.”

Fear

"The event explored the viewpoint of innocent children still getting to grips with the world around them"

Through her paintings, Gialanze shared her thoughts about some of the main characters in fairy tales with her audience in London. This allowed the audience to recall what they had originally perceived these characters to portray and how they were influenced by them as young children.

The event explored the viewpoint of innocent children still getting to grips with the world around them, while rationalising the make-belief world of fairy tales and presented by adult role models as a ‘truthful’ and possible alternative.