Bluebeard and the American Movie Industry

While reading the story of Bluebeard I was struck with a very interesting view of how the plot of this story is in so many ways directly related to many of the movies we know of today. First off, the fact that this is called a fairy tale is really loose. When I think of fairy tales, I think of the stories that we've been reading this whole time, up until now. This story, however, seems more like a thriller. The plot centers around this relationship between the man and his wife, with hardly and magic or other stereotypical fairy tale type additions.It's a new and different way to analyze and define the term Fairy Tale, because term can be used to describe a story about a wolf trying to eat a child, or a man killing his wife for no real apparent reason, other than she entered a room she was forbidden to enter.

This can correlate excellently well to many of the movies we see out there now. One that comes most to mind is "The Skeleton Key," in which a girl is given a job to care for a sick old man in rural Louisiana. One of the only things that the wife instructs her, after giving her a key which can open any and every room in the house (hence the title), is to not enter into this one particular room. Of course she does enter. While she doesn't die, she does discover something very unpleasant, and that something eventually ends up capturing her soul. Another variant, and this is quite a variant, can be seen in Willa Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Throughout the entire movie, while Willa Wonka is giving this tour, in which he is always instructing the children to not touch anything, or something bad will happen. It does. Even the hero, Charlie, succumbs to temptation, but eventually learns the wrongs of his ways and ends the story happily ever afer.

The plot to Bluebeard seems so movie inspired, and it makes for a really imaginative and exciting read, albeit rather morbid. Still, though, it was meant to have all the action, excitement, danger, and everything, and I think this rendition captures that well.