Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Once Upon a Time: Faery Law and Economics



By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.
 
What is your favorite fairy tale?  Which character do you relate to most?  Is it a hero, or a villain?  I am quite serious, and the answers might surprise you.  You may scoff, but fairy tales are among our oldest and most venerable stories, many predating recorded history.  Each generation continues to retell them to the next because they encode some fundamental life lessons—important enough that they survive the ages.  However, not all retellings are equal.

According to my students, my own favorite tale and character should be Rumpelstiltskin, as portrayed in the modern retelling of old fairy tales, Once Upon a Time.  They claim he is my doppelgänger in both style and substance.  It is not every day I get compared to a faery imp, so when unrelated people started to make that comparison weekly, I grew alarmed enough to sample the series—and I am glad I did.  Once Upon a Time is an adorable and addictive family show that will delight Disney fans of any age.  Like the original fairy tales it draws upon, the show tries to present moral lessons to its audience.  However, as may be emblematic of our society in general, its portrayal of the heroic and villainous is sometimes confused, if not entirely reversed. 
 
For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of seeing it, Once Upon a Time is an ABC television series about classic fairy tale characters (especially those from Disney) whom have been sent into our world via a curse, and are unaware of their fairy tale origins.  Rumpelstiltskin, played by Robert Carlyle, is a powerful sorcerer who, in our world, is a meticulously polite attorney, always impeccably dressed in a suit, sporting long hair, a walking stick, flashy jewelry, and ever willing to offer his considerable services—both legal and magical—with the understanding that everything comes at a price.  After seeing his character, I decided that I quite liked such an apt comparison.
 
What began to disturb me, though, was that the show portrayed him as a villain. Yet, in virtually every episode, he ends up saving whichever hapless characters manage to get themselves into trouble, usually due to their own ineptitude or foolish attempts to hide unpleasant truths from one another.  That would normally warrant heroic laurels.  However, it seems real heroes fly to the rescue with no expectation or thought of reward; they dedicate their power and efforts to the good of others simply because other people need them.  Rumpelstiltskin, on the other hand, has the temerity to demand payment for his aid.  The other characters inevitably run to him at the first sign of difficulty, each claiming that they have such deep needs and he has such enormous power, that it is his moral duty to help them.  He invariably refuses, and offers instead an exchange of value: a favor for a favor.  Although they usually accept, the other characters hate this, and spend most of their time attempting to weasel out of their side of the bargains, and vilifying him for expecting payment in the first place.  Perhaps even more offensive to the other characters is the fact that the few people Rumpelstiltskin does help without demanding payment are those few dear to his own heart—not those deemed most important to the greater good of the community. 

It seems strange that the ideas of individual liberty and free market exchanges, once the very foundations of the United States, would today find themselves representing villainy, whereas utilitarianism and communitarian obligation now stand for heroics.  Is this really the lesson the old fairy tales have to teach us?  I returned to the original source material to find out. 
 
There are many versions of the “Rumpelstiltskin,” story in just as many cultures.  It is widely thought to predate recorded history, with origins back in the oral tradition.  Like all such ancient and enduring cultural stories, it is meant to convey a few fundamental life lessons, as well as a few warnings. 

In most versions of the story, an arrogant miller boasts that his daughter is better than all others, as she can spin straw into gold.  The king or chief, hearing this, calls the miller’s bluff.  He seizes the girl, imprisons her in a room full of straw, and tells her that she shall either spin it into gold by the next day to prove her father’s boasts, or face execution.  Devastated, she falls to weeping at her impending demise.  It is at this point some impish creature out of Faery enters the room and inquires at the cause of such distress.  It then offers to help, and promptly spins all the straw into gold, then leaves before dawn.  The next day, the flummoxed chieftain insists upon another demonstration with yet more straw.  The imp once more returns, and repeats its earlier miraculous performance.  Now thoroughly impressed, the king offers to marry the girl and make her his queen if she can but repeat her feat once more.  Again, the fay appears and, this time, offers a deal: he will gladly repeat his transmutation of straw into gold provided she consents to let him raise her first born child.  Giddy at her imminent status elevation, she quickly agrees.  When the new queen gives birth, though, and the fae creature comes to collect, she balks, and asks to be freed from her contract obligations.  Moved to pity, the imp gives her three days in which to guess its name in order to be freed from the bargain.  Just before the third day, a woodsman overhears the creature boasting of its own strange name, one the queen will never guess, and kindly makes haste to inform the queen.  When the queen thus guesses correctly on the third and final day, the creature disappears, never to be seen again.   
     
The tale is meant to be cautionary.  It warns against the dire consequences of arrogant boasting.  It also warns that nothing comes free, and that one must be careful and very clever in negotiations—or else dependent upon luck and the kindness of others.  While the faery is certainly the adversary in these tales, it is by no means villainous.  Rather, it is actually rather generous.  First, it offered miraculous help no one else could have provided.  It offered its services for a fair and honest bargain, to which the girl agreed.  Even when she tried to wriggle out of her obligations, rather than simply enforce the contract it had, it generously granted her a new bargain—and it always remained true to its own word.  The warning in this tale is not aimed at the wily fay, but at the arrogance and impulsiveness of humans—an enduring truth that may explain the story’s universalism and longevity.  

Rumpelstiltskin is not the only ancient faery with lessons to teach humanity, but his behavior is emblematic of most faery interactions.  In all the old fairytales, whenever the fae enter, they represent idealized concepts of either good or evil, but always an aspirational step above mortal humans.  Through their divine blessings, curses, and contests, we frame our own struggles for perfection and illustrate important concepts of ethics, morality, and sometimes just practical advice.  This might be clearest in stories from the Celtic tradition, in which the faeries are nothing short of old deities finding new form in a Christian culture—but still teaching important lessons.
 
In Celtic tradition, the fae all seem to follow a few universal rules, to which Rumpelstiltskin, and his more Celtic incarnations of Tom Tit Tot or Whippitie Stourie, are no exceptions.  It is easy to dismiss these rules as mere cultural fantasy.  However, if one keeps in mind that the fae represent an idealized divine aspect to our cultural stories, the rules that govern such divine beings take on new importance: they represent a culturally enshrined vision of the divine.  How we think the gods interact tells us a lot about how we think our own societies should behave—and indeed, there is much to admire.

Perhaps the first, and most easily recited rule of Faery is that faeries never lie.  Given that they are all practically immortal, this makes sense.  In such a society of eternal beings, anyone dealing dishonestly would quickly find themselves permanently distrusted.  This is not to say the fae are completely honest; they are quite selective with how much truth they reveal in order to gain advantage, and thus favor cunning and cleverness.  Certainly, this is borne out in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.  Both the human miller and his daughter lie about her abilities, and she lies again in making her contract for aid—but the fae never lies.  His mistake is one of arrogance, in thinking he would not be overheard in his gloating—another important lesson.

The second rule of Faery is an absolute respect for individual sovereignty.  Despite their incredible power, the fae never use force in their mortal dealing unless directly attacked or trespassed upon.  To fall under fae power, one must either enter into their territory or consent to it in negotiation—either way as a result of one’s own will.  The fae might use glamour and clever language to influence that choice, but it remains free all the same.  As in the case of Rumpelstiltskin, a fae may appear with an offer in a time of desperate need, but as they do not create the circumstances of that need, the bargains they offer remain freely chosen opportunities, not forced impositions.  Even in attempting to regain their own property, such as the seal-skins of a selkie, the comb, mirror, or hat or a merrow, or any number of other enchanted items from an endless variety of fae creatures, despite the clear ability to smite a human with their power, the fae are inclined to negotiate rather than use force.

Even so, the concept of property, and negotiations over it, is integral to all fae interactions and fundamentally connected to their idea of sovereignty.  Indeed, even the monarchs of Faery exercise such authority only within the bounds of their own sidhe or hill.  Go but a little further on and some solitary fae crone in her hut will negotiate as shrewdly and exercise all the same authority as a king in his court. The lands of Faery have no discernable government or overarching authority.  Rather, each exercises sovereignty over his own property and labor.  As a semi-divine and immortal bunch that, in various tales, has the power to transmute gold, create bountiful foods, or spawns any number of other objects out of sheer will, money holds no great value for them.  Rather, their currency is in their property, time, and service.  Hence, the ubiquitous favor for a favor that all fae creatures seem to delight in negotiating.
  
What is remarkable about this is that, unlike human reality, the fae never break their contracts.  Indeed, doing so would amount to dealing in bad currency, a dishonesty that would be ruinous in  such a society.  Neither, though, do they resort to theft or force when they cannot get what they want through negotiation.  They seem to recognize that all value must be exchanged for value.  Even in the occasional story of the fae making off with some household item, unless they are recovering what belongs to them in the first place, they always leave something of equal or greater value in exchange. 

For Rumpelstiltskin, a being able to appear and disappear at will, taking a child to raise would be no great feat.  Yet, rather than force his way, he negotiated a miraculous service for the miller’s daughter in exchange for her parental rights.  When she then met his further terms for dissolution of the contract, he departed in peace.  This reverence to individual sovereignty, property interests, and free negotiation is truly astonishing in an entity portrayed with such terrifying power—and something I fear few humans equally equipped would emulate.

Perhaps the strangest and most foreign idea out of Faery is its treatment of gifts.  In almost all stories, the fae give and accept gifts with great caution.  Unlike a contract, whose terms are well defined and finite, a gift caries unspecified and open obligations to the giver.  It imposes a debt burden that must be repaid similarly.  As a result, simply thanking the fae for a gift is a great insult, which frequently results in their abrupt departure and withdrawal of all favors.  It diminishes and dismisses the effort of the gift with mere words.  Instead, the fae demonstrate gratitude by repaying something of value in kind.  Thus, a gift, far from being free, stands as an invitation to an open and ongoing exchange of debt obligations—the fae expression of a relationship, and perhaps more honestly expressed than our own.

All of this should be encouraging to any lover of liberty.  It means that deep within our cultural psyche is a libertarian (and maybe libertine) paradise called Faery.  Many of these ideas could have as easily come from Immanuel Kant, or Adam Smith.  As we discern the shadows of law and economics the old stories reveal about such a place, we can also perceive the outlines of the free society the Western World has attempted create to since the Enlightenment.  Apparently, we have been planting the seeds of it into the minds of our children for many centuries—through the faeries of fairytales.  

All in all, Faery seems to be a vibrantly free land, full of anarcho-capitalists who all govern themselves according to Kant’s categorical imperative in a state humans have always aspired to but have never quite achieved.  Yet the fae exist in our tales to remind us of that ideal.  Rumpelstiltskin, certainly represents this, both in his fairy tale and in Once Upon a Time, but the show vilifies him for it. 

Contrary to the principles of the old stories, ABC presents the wild freedom represented by the fae as exactly why such beings should be feared.  For the characters of Once Upon a Time, any power and ability exercised for one’s own benefit is evil.  Instead, all such ability should be limited to serving only the needs of others—freely.  Concepts of sovereignty, property, and compensation are selfish obstacles to the greater good of the many—and should be set aside to meet their needs. 
 
To this end, the heroes it casts display an unrelenting and ruthless tendency to break any bargain, take anything they need, violate any sovereignty, and even sacrifice any life--so long as they think it serves the greater good—as defined by them.  After witnessing the callous disregard of all rights practiced by heroes such as Prince Charming and Princess Snow White, one can easily see the dangers of monarchs and dictators of all stripes.  Yet their incessant justifications for such vile deeds do not draw upon royal right, but rather sound remarkably close to the old communist creed: from each according to his ability to each according to his need.  If anyone gets hurt along the way, well, the needs of the many outweigh the injuries to the few.  The intent is good, and for that, sacrifices must be made. 

That particular story was told by the USSR and its satellite states.  Although they lasted for less than a century, they used it to justify mass murder and bloodshed on a scale never before seen in human history.   It is not a tale that should be told again as anything but a dire warning.  For ABC, however, it still seems to hold some appeal.  Consequently, Once Upon a Time frequently suffers from an inability to make any clear principled distinction between good and evil at all.  As the final song warns in another modern retelling of old fairytales, Into the Woods,Careful the things you say, children will listen.”  Despite my initial aversion to being compared to the fay imp, Rumpelstiltskin, I now take it as a great honor.  It seems these strange creatures of our cultural psyche have been trying to teach us about liberty for millennia.  I would much rather children hear that tale than the one of dreary sacrifice and subjugation to the neediest offered by the modern retellings. 

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”
—William Butler Yeats

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