Fairy tales serve a vital role in our culture. Their purpose is to entertain while surreptitiously teaching lessons intended to guide kids to grow into good people. The traditional fairy tales are filled with messages like be kind to those less fortunate, your wits can help you out of a bad situation, or find courage when things are at their darkest.
Now we live in an age where the telling of fairy tales isn’t just through oral tradition. It’s done through TV shows and movies, video games and toys. But the role is still the same. We’re still instructing our children as to who they should grow up to be.
We’re expecting a child. Maybe this is just making me a lot more sensitive to things I wouldn’t have noticed before, and once our child is born all this stuff goes out the window. Now I’m seeing things through the lens of, “What will this be teaching my child?” and you know, there’s a whole lot out there that makes me scratch my head.
Barbie is the first thing that springs to mind because she’s so ubiquitous and so clearly targeted at kids. Barbie sends a message of superficiality and materialism. A woman’s only value is looking pretty, and the most important thing is to have lots of stuff. The imagination level they inspire is, “Let’s pretend we’re going shopping!” or “Let’s pretend we’re getting ready for a date!” To top it off, she’s made in sweatshops by children who are often younger than the kids who play with them.
The Protos are a kind of anti-Barbie. They’re all about learning to look past the surface to see the goodness within, and about finding the strength to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges. We hope we’ve given enough of a story to start a narrative that audiences will continue in their imaginations. We hope they will spark more worthwhile questions than, “What’s it like to shop for expensive clothes?” The questions we hope the Protos raise are more along the lines of, “What is it like when people hate you because you look different?” or “What’s it like to be abandoned?” But maybe I’m just old fashioned in thinking that things like empathy and compassion are worthwhile things to develop.
