Fear Feasts

What would you do if your horrible mother married a dude with a beautiful daughter and made you and your plain sister feel terrible about yourselves? What would you do if your beautiful stepsister became the house servant and went around in ugly clothes with ashes in her hair and no shoes? What if your mother tried to make you pretty and didn't allow you to eat? What if you found out there was a ball in your village and a handsome prince would be choosing a bride from the local young ladies? You'd probably starve yourself by swallowing a tapeworm and allowing your nose to be broken and reshaped, right? We'll be exploring these ideas and discussing the connection between food, fairy tales and horror in the classic story Cinderella and some more recent iterations, including the highly visceral The Ugly Stepsister film as well as others, so please join us!
Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
Cinderella - 1950 film by @Disney
The Ugly Stepsister - 2025 film by Emilie Blichfeldt
Into the Woods - 2014 film by Rob Marshall
Ashputtle by Peter Straub

What would you do if you were a young lady with hair black as ebony, lips red as rubies, and skin white as snow? You'd probably be called Snow White, right? What if your father married a woman who hated you and she tried to have you killed so she could eat your heart and absorb your beauty? What would you do if you were rescued by dwarves and a wicked witch tried to kill you AGAIN by making you eat a poisoned apple? You'd probably be off apples for awhile after that. We explore these fascinating questions as we analyze the connection between food, horror and fairy tales in the classic tale Snow White and some of its modern iterations, so please join us!
Links to references below:
Snow White: A Tale of Terror Dir. Michael Cohn https://share.google/bXj2R16ezdcSzaW1S
The Grimm Reader: The Classic Tales of the Brothers Grimm
by Maria Tatar: https://archive.org/details/grimmreaderclass0000unse
The Young Slave by Basile, Giovanni Batiste. Il Pentamerone, or The Tale of Tales. Sir Richard Burton, translator. London: Henry and Company, 1893.
https://surlalunefairytales.com/s-z/sleeping-beauty/stories/youngslave.html

This week, we dive into Tale of Tales (dir. Matteo Garrone, 2015) and explore the rich tapestry of fairy tales by Giambattista Basile on which the film is based. Drawing from Basile’s 17th-century collection Lo cunto de li cunti (also known as The Pentamerone), we look at how the film adapts these dark, fantastical stories for a contemporary audience- examining themes, imagery, and the enduring power of early modern fairy-tale tradition.
At the core of our discussion is the deliciously unsettling intersection of food and horror in both Basile’s tales and Garrone’s film: the heart of a sea monster, a mountain of struffoli, and even a royal feast built around a flea. These bizarre, macabre acts of eating reveal just how deeply food shapes the film’s dark fantasy world… and it gets very weird.

Link to Giambattista Basile's fairy tales Stories from Pentamerone: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2198/2198-h/2198-h.htm

What would you do if you and your sibling kept being kicked out of the house by your mean and starving mother and were left to find food on your own? What if you came across a house made of candy, gingerbread and sugar? You'd start eating it unless you were dumb. What if the house was owned by a witch who wanted to fatten you and your sibling up so she could eat you? Gross, right? What if the breadcrumbs you used to track your way home got eaten by some greedy birds? We are discussing the connection between food, horror and fairy tales this season and we really get into the weeds with Hansel and Gretel, so please join us!
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What would you do if you were a young woman running through the forest in a red cape, taking cake and wine to your dear grandmother, and were surprised by the big bad wolf? What if you found out that your grandmother was actually a wolf herself? What if the wolf turned out to be a man who could shapeshift? What if the wolf ate you and your grandmother for lunch? What if the wolf loved sausages and maggoty cheese? We are discussing these age-old questions and analyzing the connection between food in horror in the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, and several modern iterations of the story, so please join us!
Works mentioned
Little Red-cap by By Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm (1812)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2591/2591-h/2591-h.htm#link2H_4_0023

The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter (1979)
https://ieas-szeged.hu/downtherabbithole/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Angela-Carters-The-Company-of-Wolves-Story.pdf

The Company of Wolves dir. Neil Jordan (1984)

Wolfland by Tanith Lee (1983)
https://www.sweetstudy.com/files/wolfland.pdf

Red Riding Hood dir. Catherine Hardwicke (2011)

Wolf Border by Sarah Hall (2015)
https://www.bookscumbria.com/product/cumbrian-books/arts-and-literature/fiction/novels-set-in-cumbria/the-wolf-border/

Mrs Fox  by Sarah Hall (2019)
https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571351961-mrs-fox/?srsltid=AfmBOooW-gOyvyCZ_ZjcKcOwlfh13NRYzVtkWb0sRNbrglwOE7Uarit1