The Emperor’s New Clothes – a fairy tale for our times?
- Written by Nicola Welsh-Burke, Sessional Academic in Literary and Cultural Studies, Western Sydney University
In mid-March, an activist group in Rutland County, Vermont, held its usual weekly rally protesting the actions of US president Donald Trump. One protester, Marsha Cassel, led the crowd, dressed as a naked Trump wearing a crown and holding a staff. Cassel was followed by another protester holding a sign proclaiming “THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!”.
This is not the first time Trump has been compared to Hans Christian Andersen’s bumbling emperor, who marched naked through the streets while claiming to be dressed in finery – a fiction many of his subjects willingly indulged.
Who was Andersen, what aspects of his life informed this particular story and why might this be useful to know in the age of Trump?
Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, in 1805. While his grandfather supposedly claimed noble origins for the family, Andersen’s father was a cobbler and his mother an illiterate washerwoman.
Once the “outfit” is finished, the emperor dons it and parades naked through the town. The townsfolk compliment the garments, until a small child bursts the bubble, yelling out that the emperor has no clothes.
Unable to admit this, the emperor continues on his way. But the townsfolk now laugh.
This simple tale powerfully criticises rulers who tell untruths, performing intelligence and leadership, as well as those who uncritically allow this.
An outsider looking in
Like many fairy tales, the origins of this one stretch back centuries. Older versions date to medieval times. All feature people in power being duped by conmen who play on their vanities about their own intelligence. Literary scholar Hollis Robbins suggests Andersen’s version reflects a newly-emerging working class culture where “professional competence” was “quickly overtaking legitimacy and heritage as a source of aristocratic anxiety”.
In his book The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films, fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes claims Andersen was “embarrassed by his proletarian background” and “rarely mingled with the lower classes” once he found success as a writer.
Andersen never married and more recently, has been understood as a bisexual man. He had infatuations with both men and women, including Edvard Collin (the son of his patron Jonas) and Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind. After a fall in 1872, from which he never recovered, he died in 1875.
Hans Christian Andersen in an 1836 portrait.
Wikimedia Commons
Andersen’s lower class background, argues Zipes, meant he was particularly well suited to biting cultural commentary about the difficult path for those escaping poverty.
In one translation of The Emperor’s New Clothes, the child who proclaims the nudity of the emperor is called “the voice of innocence” by his father. This voice spreads through the crowd, leading to the comical image of the naked emperor’s aides striving to lift the invisible train of his outfit even higher.
Regardless of one’s position in life, this story suggests you cannot escape “suffering, humiliation, and torture,” writes Zipes.
Indeed, many of Andersen’s tales feature characters (often frail, young women) who suffer immensely before dying nobly. The Emperor’s New Clothes, with its child character as the voice of reason, has an ending that, while not “happily ever after”, is as lighthearted as Andersen gets.
The power of fairy tales
The fairy tale is one of the most recognisable literary genres. We hear them from such a young age it is almost like we were born knowing them. Beginning as oral folktales, many of the tales we know today were first written down in 16th and 17th century France, Italy and Germany as social commentary and educational stories.
It is difficult to identify the “originals” of many tales, given their folkloric origins. Still, while it is almost stereotypical now to note that the “original fairy tales” (before contemporary Disney adaptations) were surprisingly dark Andersen’s are noticeably, and notably, bleak.
The Emperor’s New Clothes has been retold many times, with print, screen and musical adaptations. As Donald Trump, in the words of one pundit, continues to “construct a narrative, declare it to be true and relentlessly force the world to submit to it”, the story resonates today.
Indeed, literary academic Naomi Wood has argued that in a post 9/11 world, a “terrifying possibility” emerges in readings of the tale.
The truth of the fairy tale is not its glorification of the voice of innocence, free from corruption and untruth. Rather, it is that adults will continue to believe their own lies, even when they are clearly revealed. As a result, we allow the parade to continue, even while knowing it is farcical.
Authors: Nicola Welsh-Burke, Sessional Academic in Literary and Cultural Studies, Western Sydney University
Read more https://theconversation.com/the-emperors-new-clothes-a-fairy-tale-for-our-times-279558
