Lecture 17

Grimms’ Fairy Tales

  • It’s dubious whether nail-studded barrels as torture devices actually existed, but lynching did really happen.
    • Usually lynching was a black man being hung by a white mob because the man was accused of murder or rape (particularly of a white woman).
      • 1880s - 1940s
  • Ancient Greeks wanted to justify having slaves.
    • Aristotle came up with: Greece has a great climate, so Greeks are superior to “Ethiopians” (“burnt faces”) to the south and “Slavs” to the north (where the English word “slaves” comes from).
    • After spending enough time in Greece, you stop being inferior because of the climate.
      • Kind of the American beliefs of “racist assimilationists” - “If Black people spend time around American white people they’ll become ‘better.’”
  • Systems of ideas, like white supremacy or misogyny, need to constantly be passed on and acted on in order to be kept alive.
    • The Grimms’ Fairy Times were the way to disseminate ideas.