The child predator relationship through visual representation : the acts of temptation and indulgence as reflected in fairy tales and folk tales

Abstract

The visual art project forming part of this dissertation was initiated with the intent to bring to light the child predator relationship which has been a taboo subject throughout history. Due to the flexibility of the global definition of a child and the variability of the classification of abuse, the visual language of fairy tales was chosen. Fairy tales and folk tales are reflections of past rituals and wisdom, where the predator and prey relationship remained consistently present in a select number of tales. Through the study of fairy tales and local folk tales, the acts of temptation and indulgence were visualised and better communicated with children universally. I hope that the enchantment and universality of these enchanting tales would spark discussions about the reality of the child predator relationship. This artistic project, inspired from personal experiences and grounded in the study of literature, engages with the acts of temptation and indulgence which are the initial phases of child abuse in fairy tales. Despite the centrality of fantasy in this dissertation, I wish to stay close to the reality behind the act of manipulation. Through the exploitation of fairy tales which are the visual language for children, I seek to tap into the perspective of the child prey and the mind of the predator. The amalgamation of fantasy and reality behind child abuse would bring to the forefront the ambiguous definitions of a predator and a prey. I aspire to achieve this through the engagement with literary and theoretical studies of fairy tales and folk tales namely: Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990), Jack Zipes (1937-), Maria Tatar (1945-) and Marina Warner (1946-). My aim is to engage with the local context to ground this project to a personal local folkloristic layer which I hope to achieve through the research of: Manwel Magri (1851-1907), Ġorġ Pisani (1909-1999), Ġużè Cassar Pullicino (1921-2005), Ġorġ Mifsud Chircop (1951-2007), and Ġużi Gatt (1955-). The analysation of historical visual depictions of fairy tales in my literature review is created with the aim to provide more clarity and feature debates on the terms predator and prey with the focus on temptation and indulgence. These will be divided thematically in my literature review by firstly providing an overview of visual representations of the aformentioned acts. This will be further discussed in my second chapter which will focus on the visualisation of beauty as an act of temptation through the lures of idyllia, innocence and utopia in order to attempt to better define temptation and further consolidate its characteristics. The third chapter will engage with the act of indulgence through the representations of carnivalesque passion as repercussion of the beauty of temptation discussed in the previous chapter. The aim of chapter four is to encapsulate the importance of fairy tales as a paradoxical journey between idyllic utopia and concrete reality, thus questioning the definitions of fairy tales and the predator and prey relationship inhabited within the fairy tale world by providing the context of its narration. Literature and artists of reference will enrich my project with the aim to spark a discussion about the child predator relationship by bridging reality to the fantastical world of fairy tales. Selected artists of reference will be placed in context of the predator and prey relationship through the amalgamation of fairy tales and their artistic and social context. This will develop my preliminary definition of temptation and indulgence and predator and prey which will be echoed in my visual project.