“Every time I think I can rest,” said the feminist professor at our department meeting, “I see a television program or a movie, and suddenly I know, they're back,” alluding to the little girl's wide-eyed fascination in Poltergeist, when the spiritual horrors return.
So, since they're back, she has once more to teach the course in Women's Studies that she wanted to cross-list in the English department. It is a course in fairy tales. Her aim was to expose their evil. We might consider her a feminist exorcist, driving the demons of sanity out of the heads of pliant and unsuspecting young women.
After she had made her pitch and left, I remarked that I found it odd that someone would teach a course in works of art which she held in contempt. And I insisted that fairy tales were works of art, folk art in fact, and that we should treat them with the respect with which we treat art in general. I asked the department to disapprove. Of course I was voted down. It is wrong for a boy to hit a girl, and that's that.
They're pretty common, these feminist courses taught not for appreciation of fairy tales, but against them. (more...)
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