Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)

STUDIES - András Tarnóc: "Who is Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" Reflections of Political Correctness in a Distorted Mirror.

Manichean perspective the Euro-American was singled out as the dreaded oppressor of ethnic minorities, women and the environment. Contemporary reality was polarized as a constant power struggle between whites and nonwhites, men and women and the oppressor and the oppressed. Consequently Gamer, with an obvious purpose of ridiculing the PC movement, refashioned these childhood favorites to reflect the abovementioned hostility patterns. Seven of the thirteen tales have female protagonists. The heroine in "little Red Riding Hood" in her confrontation with the wolf and the lumberjack represents the archetypal feminist gone amok. In "Rumpelstiltskin," Esmeralda, a victim of the partiarchal system, turns out to be the champion of women's reproductive freedom. The heroine of "Rapunzel" matures from a helpless child to a determined artist rejecting the restraints of the capitalist system. The title character of "Cinderella" leads a female revolt against the male-approved image of feminine beauty. In "Snow White" the protagonist forges an alliance with the evil queen to promote women's awareness. The princess in "The Frog Prince" dons the garb of an eco-warrior determined to save the planet from greedy real estate developers. All these six stories, as prescribed by predictive PC logic, depict women in a positive role. The only exception is the title character in "Goldilocks" who, as a greedy biologist, pays for her sins by being eaten by the bears. Two tales contain only animal characters. "The Three little Pigs" is altered to present a clash of Western and Non-Western cultures and "Chicken Little" highlights the anomalies of the American legal system. In "The Three Co-Dependent Goats Gruff' Garner offers a scathing criticism of PC's obsession with victimhood. "The Emperor's New Clothes" makes a farce of the very weapon PC afficionados rely on, euphemism. Finally "Jack and the Beanstalk" promotes the values of environmental awareness and "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is an acerbically prescient vision of the backlash against PC extremism. Whereas all these tales are rewritten to parodize different aspects of PC, there are two particular stories which depict a clear confrontation between characters representing different value systems. Both in TTLP and 128