THE BROTHERS GRIMM. BtVS Intertext/Allusion.
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm were nineteenth-century German scholars who specialized in linguistics, but the brothers were actually best known for their collection of fairy tales entitled Kinder & Hausmarchen (Children & Household Tales), which was first published in 1812. The Grimm’s Brothers fairy tales can be interpreted as a didactic tool utilized by generations of adults to induce the right behavior in the intended audience, children, as evinced by the timeless catchphrases of fairy tales, “once upon a time” and “happily ever after.” While the influence of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales is visible in more than one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because the series thrives on subversion, the influence is culturally modified.
Season 2’s “Killed By Death,” features a demon called by the German name of “Der Kinderstod” (“Child Death”), perhaps as an allusion to the Brothers Grimm. In the episode, children in a hospital ward are dying under mysterious circumstances. Although Buffy is afraid of hospitals, when she comes down with a severe case of the flu, she is admitted to one, she learning of the deaths. Only the sick children in the hospital are able to see Der Kinderstod, and the only way Buffy, a teenager, is able to see this demon is when she becomes more like one of the sick children, delirious with fever. As Sarah E. Skwire points out in her article “Whose Side Are You on, Anyway?: Children, Adults, and the Use of Fairy Tales in Buffy,” children’s near universal fear of hospitals may be the real source of Der Kinderstod. However, according to Skwire, on Buffy, the figurative becomes the literal. As Skwire states, in Buffy’s world, “Demons are demons. They may also stand for childhood fears or teenage angst or any number of other things, but they are first, foremost, and always demons” (Wilcox & Lavery 198). And on Buffy, in a defiant inversion of the Grimm Brother’s tradition, or as Skwire calls it, “the motif of ‘clueless adults’ and ‘wise children’” (Wilcox & Lavery 198), the children are the ones who possess the didactic knowledge, not the adults.
In addition to “Killed By Death,” one of the Brother Grimm’s most popular fairy tales, “Hansel & Gretel,” figures prominently in Season 3’s “Gingerbread.” (See also Hansel & Gretel).
Further reverence to the Brothers Grimm occurs in Season 3’s “Beauty & the Beasts.” In the episode, two unsolved murders lead Buffy to question a fellow Sunnydale high school student, Debbie, about the nature of her relationship with her abusive boyfriend, Pete. Buffy suggests that the couple is trying to live in the ignorance of a fairy tale while innocent people are being murdered.
The following dialogue from “Beauty & the Beasts” was taken from the Buffyverse Dialogue Database:
BUFFY: “So what, you two live out your Grimm fairy tale? Two people are dead. Who’s gonna be next?”
In Season 4’s “Hush,” although the Grimm Brothers are never mentioned by name, their fairy tales are paid an interesting homage. In “Hush,” fairy tale monsters comparable to those that would be featured in a Grimm’s tale invade Sunnydale. These monsters are known by the darkly ironic name of “the gentlemen,” a name which belies their savage nature. The gentlemen steal voices so no one can scream. After stripping Sunnydale’s citizens of their voices, the gentlemen proceed to cut out their victims’ still-beating hearts. These gentlemen’s actions are so frightening that they are expressed in an eerie children’s rhyme: “Can’t even shout, can’t even cry, the gentlemen are coming by. Looking in windows, knocking on doors, they need to take seven and they might take yours.” The only thing that can stop the gentlemen from gathering all seven hearts is the sound emitted by a real human voice. In the end of the episode, Buffy lets out a piercing scream, ending the gentlemen’s reign and saving the citizens of Sunnydale.