Do you believe in fairies?
As a young girl, I knew fairies weren’t real, but it was fun to imagine what it would be like if they were.
I had a wild imagination and could create fantasy worlds and adventures for myself and my younger siblings in our imaginary games (the older ones, naturally, wanted to dictate what we would play instead).
I read Fairytale: A True Story, the novelization based on the movie, when I was in fourth grade. I didn’t remember the story, but the concept captured my imagination.
The story is based on two young cousins, Elsie and Frances, in 1917. They take pictures of “fairies” for their mother/aunt, who is grieving the loss of her son Joseph. The mother is looking for something to believe in, such as angels or fairies, to connect her to Joseph.
The film version has historical cameos from characters such as Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle is portrayed as one who believes in fairies, while Houdini, being an illusionist, sees through the girl’s ruse but doesn’t rat them out.
Throughout the story, there are hoards of people who want to believe in fairies because it gives them hope, especially in war times.
The film is based on the real story of two girls who took photographs with “fairies” and became famous for it. The photographs were found to be authentic, thus making people believe the fairies were real.
Yet, the girls did something simpler than faking a photograph- they used drawings of fairies from “Princess Mary’s Gift Book,” with hat pins to hold them up. They simply took pictures of themselves with the drawings.
The film asks whether it is moral to make others believe in something that isn’t real if it gives them hope. I enjoyed revisiting the story and history, but I do think the girls shouldn’t have let the hoax go so far. Hope, when rightly placed, is a good thing, but I think misplaced hope can be dangerous and lead to an endless wild goose chase, as it did for many in this film.
***Images from: https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/2018/09/20/the-legacy-of-cottingley/
Classic Reads 