Pardon My Rant

Are monsters scary?? Hell, yeah! Should children be shielded from the very idea of monsters? Hell, no!

Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, the Big Bad Wolf?

The Three Little Pigs is an iconic fairy tale. Sure the wolf is threatening. But the little pigs defeated the wolf, and built houses at the same time! (Even though only one of them was made strong enough to withstand the huffs and puffs of the wolf. But that's a rant for another time.)

There is a movement afoot to protect young readers and TV and movie viewers from the threat of monsters in their midst. When did our children become too fragile and dainty to be told stories with monsters.

"Monsters, Inc."--please. Cute movie, but those were not monsters. "Finding Nemo"? The shark was a neurotic creature and the monster was the dentist's child, for goodness sake. (The real moral of that story, in my view, is "just keep swimming".) Oh, don't forget Shrek. The most lovable ogre ever. And, I understand Cookie Monster has been made to eat vegetables.
Oh, I like every one of those movies. But all the monsters are cute and non-threatening.
There used to be real monsters. The witches in Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. The evil stepmother in Cindrella.

"Fairy Tales don't teach children that there are such things as monsters. Children already know that there are monsters. What Fairy Tales teach is that monsters can be killed."

I consider the de-monsterization of monsters to be a disservice to the truth of things. You know, editing all the scary stuff out of stories and nursery rhymes, and replacing it with “Mr. Floppy Bunny Goes Recycling".
To refuse to recognize monsters is not to improve the world, but to partially blind ourselves, and our children. To misunderstand human nature, and to be at a loss when confronted with evil. Not everybody is nice, nor are all endings necessarily happy.
Stories with monsters were meant to show children that there are, indeed, monsters in the world. But, also, that they were able to be slayed. That there was a protector, i.e., the fairy godmother, the knight, and when guided properly, their own parents to watch over them.

Okay, I'm done.