Sleeping Beauty.

pecs I agree in the main, but they have some good songs.

Bippity Boppity Boo!

Oh dear I don't remember asking the permission of the men I kissed in clubs in the 80s when full of alcohol and high spirits. Don't think I've ever been asked either it was just natural

They are works of fiction and that's what Keira Knightley's work is - bringing fiction to the screen.
Wasn't she in the ridiculous Disney film Pirates of the Caribbean?

how right you are all little ones love the fairy stories of disney and ms Knightley is in need of publicity ,and is using her children to do so ,,she wants to remember some of the films she has starred in ,

PECS, how I agree about the sheer dreadfulness of the Disney versions. They are vulgar, trashy and just generally in bad taste. I was appalled when I saw them. How can anyone do that to traditional European stories? Perhaps if they’d stuck to American stories they would have been more acceptable.

In today's paper I have read some sensible comments from the woman, Kristen Bell, who was the voice of Anna in frozen. She is supportive of K K in general but is quoted as saying she used the story of Snow White / Sleeping Beauty etc to discuss issues of taking food / sweets from strangers/ female passivity etc. in age appropriate ways with her kids. I support KK views in "do not wait for a man to fulfil your dreams get out there and do it yourself" I just don't think it necessary to ban watching films to achieve that!

I support KK views in "do not wait for a man to fulfil your dreams get out there and do it yourself"
Which is what Ana and Merida do!

I haven't watched any others, having been coerced into watching both of those I must say I enjoyed them.

I wonder if she takes her children to the pantomime? That's pretty well far removed from reality and the message we may want to give to our children.
As was Pirates of the Caribbean - now that's rubbish imo. Has she banned her children from watching her own films?

We haven't heard much of her lately - like Kirstie is she just trying to keep in the limelight?

PECS still sounds a bit OTT, surely all these topics are part of everyday conversation and behaviour and do not need to be tied to literature and studied as if the poor children were university students.

Female passivity was something I never came across as a topic until I was in my 30s, It wasn't present in my life as a child, nor in that of most of my friends and nobody ever suggested I should defer to a man, because he was male or not do anything because I was female. I would have argued about it and ignored it, if they had.

Not taking sweets or accepting lifts from strangers is just a life skill you bring all children up with, regardless of gender.

And what about the domestic servitude of Snow White?

Of course they're out if touch, some of those films are getting on for 100yrs old! They are from a bygone era.
Personally I found a lot of fairy tales quite unpleasant. And others? Well I loved Heidi, but always thought she'd been very badly/sadly treated before the book started, and during the book. Little Women? Jo was an early feminist, but some of the other characters of that era are like doormats.

Presumably Keira Knightley said this as one small part of her interview on Ellen?

This is another of those stories that's guaranteed to fire up people who believe that the phrase 'politically correct' actually has meaning.

KK isn't the first young woman to question the messages that traditional fairy stories send to children. We were doing that throughout the 70\s and 80's, when feminist re-telling of fairy stories was alive and well. The Grimms tales have nothing on those written by Hans Christian Anderson, they're very scary.

I loved fairy stories, my children and now my grandchildren love fairy stories, nursery rhymes and songs. I also love the newer children's books, particularly those where the family doesn't always have a mummy, a daddy a baby and grandparents. Those stories have a great place but so many children don't have what could be called traditional families and they need to be represented as well.

Fairy stories are brilliantly terrifying. They enable the truths of life to be told.

The newer Disney films like Frozen and Moana have stronger female leads. Even Disney may be influenced by positive feminism.

Really, all these adults overthinking everything. I read all the fairy tales and other stories where they all had happy endings when the hero married the heroine and so did my DC, but I cannot remember any of us ever taking any message from them, especially about the role of women in real life. They were stories, fantasies, nothing to do with our lives.

The only message I ever got from a book was from Swallows and Amazons and that was that sailing was great fun and I really would love a chance to do it. When I got to university, I promptly joined the sailing club and as I expected loved dinghy sailing.

As a child, I cannot ever remember reading a book that related even slightly to my life - and I was a voracious reader, not even Swallows and Amazons and I certainly did not use any of them as role models.

Where is the evidence that children's, or adults attitudes to the place of women, or men is affected by reading fairy tales or any other fiction?

Rather than banning her daughter from watching them altogether, I would have thought watching one occasionally together would open up opportunities for discussion with her DD.

This is interesting - KK tells the story of when they had a near miss in the car and Edie swore for the first time:
It was one of those country roads where it’s a blind corner, and suddenly there’s another car coming,” explains Knightley, 33. “The brakes got put on and there wasn’t a crash, but there was a silence just afterwards and this little voice went, ‘Daddy, is that when you say f—?’ “

I’m with M0nica - no work of fiction has ever affected my attitudes in real life. I’ve always known the difference.

I disagree about Swallows and Amazons, though. I thought those children were deadly dull, especially compared with the interesting children (mostly with theatrical ambitions) in the books of Noel Streatfeild. My brother loved the Arthur Ransome books and did become a very keen sailor. He was interested in the action and the technical knowledge, not the characters of the children.

Grandma70s I was like your brother, it was the sailing that interested me not the characters and I read the others in the series, again for the sailing.

As I said at the first opportunity I joined a sailing club and learnt to sail and was a keen sailor for a decade or more. Then family life intervened. Once children arrived I refused to be one of the wives watching the children and making the tea when I wanted to be out sailing and DH had started travelling a lot, which meant sailing was difficult for both of us, so it gradually dropped out of our lives.

I still hanker to get back into a boat and sail again. I am fit enough, but DH isn't.

If Keira stick to acting and Lilly Allen to singing it would be better all round.

I think they overestimate their own importance and Keira was frankly bitchy to Catherine.

I wish these bores would shut up

Another 'celeb' interferring unnecessarily. It's clearly to get her noticed - and sadly she has achieved this. Anyway, where would Snow White be now if the handsome prince hadn't kissed her?

Snow White would have been fine. Sleeping Beauty might have a problem.

Why are people so aggressive about one parent's choice to manage her child's reading/ viewing? KK was in an interview and made a response. She did not issue a press statement or demand everyone copy her! I agree with her view that Disney is often dreadful but I don't agree with banning them . Though my kids were not fed a Disney heavy diet.

well to be fair we all say stupid things as new parents I suppose.

My ds famously said toddler tantrums are due to bad parenting. He has a 2 year old now. He knows better.

Still I do dislike this trend of so called celebs pushing a baby out and 5 minutes later pontificating about their rules on motherhood.

Keira needs to understand that banning things for kids never works. I had several friends who banned sweets and chocs and of course once those kids were old enough to go to the shops by themselves spent all their spare cash on junk. They were all fat teens.

Her dd will just want lots of ‘play dates’ (horrible term) with friends who are allowed to watch Disney and watch it at their house instead.

ilovecheese

Oh dear ... kissing without permission ... take me away and lock me up forever. I kiss my DGC when I go up to check they are asleep as I did my own DC. I also say, 'I love you,' to which they often reply (in their sleep), 'I love you too.'