NSFW 'Bedtime Stories'

By 06/11/2008
NSFW 'Bedtime Stories'

Having gone to a liberal arts college, I am quite familiar with the re-imagining of fairy tales in modern contexts, which is often thought provoking but occasionally vomit inducing (I was given a C on a paper sophomore year because my dislike for Angela Carter was too obvious, though I have since grown to like her).

Bedtime Stories, created for MyDamnChannel by Steve Kerper and starring Grace Helbig, presents it’s own foul-mouthed, testicle-injury obsessed, not-so-earnest brand of feminism.  Her version of Little Red Riding Hood is the most girl empowered:

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The gag, one I’m familiar with, is the contrast of perverted humor with cute drawings and Grace’s bedtime story reading voice, and is effective because the ideas are original and the drawings are authentic to children’s literature.  Grace is faithful to the tone and Steve adheres to the narrative strategies of fairy tales, while injecting his own modern sensibilities, which range from drug use and mock-gangster violence, to internet porn and an old woman’s genitalia, making it often NSFW enough to be censored by DailyMotion.

There are only a few “Look how stupid and illogical fairy tales are” jokes, which is good, because Steve’s creativity with bad words and gross sexual imagery is way more entertaining.  It makes Grace seem more interested in scatological humor than politics,  and doesn’t hit you on the head with feminist deconstructions of classic fairy tales.  You could find a feminist overtones, a product of the series’ complete dismissal of the allegorical nature of the original stories.  Bedtime Stories version of The Frog Prince re-imagines the frog as being not a prince in disguise, but simply a lecherous dude.

The series has been suspended in favor of her vlog, Daily Grace, but you can still get a weeks worth of bedtime stories to give you creepy dreams.

If Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm had been raised on the Simpsons, and educated at Bard College, children’s stories might be a bit more like Bedtime Stories.

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