This Isn't a Fairytale

What if a police detective who sees humans shift into bizarre creatures from a fantastical universe is not actually insane, but is essential to keeping the world in balance? Well, that’s the story we’re told in Grimm, the TV series distantly linked to the Brothers Grimm Fairytales. Here is Nick in the first episode being told by his dying aunt about his special powers:

Marie: Just listen to me. There are things you don’t know. Things about your family.

Nick: My family? You are my family.

Marie: Have you been seeing strange things? Things that you can’t explain? ... Oh I knew it. This is all happening so much faster than I thought it would. When it happened to me it knocked me on my ass, I couldn’t move for a week.

Nick: What are you talking about?

Marie: The misfortune of our family is already passing to you. I’m so sorry.

Hmm. A mental health professional might read that as the definition of a family history of schizophrenia. No, this is not a family illness, but rather a set of supernatural powers to help keep the evil of the world in check.

Later in the episode while hunting for a missing girl, Nick hears a female, disembodied warning him,  

“You need to be careful. You’re vulnerable now. This isn’t a fairy tale.”

In what way is this not a fairy tale? In the sense that it isn’t the sanitized, modern version of the Brothers Grimm stories? Yes, but to what extent is this show an allegory for helping us to understand contemporary problems, particularly the problems of people who are “seeing strange things.”

Later in the pilot episode, Nick develops a connection with Monroe, a werewolf type creature appearing as human. Only this creature is in recovery…

Monroe: Look I don’t want any more trouble ok? I’m not that kind of Blutbad. I don’t kill anymore, I haven’t in years.
Nick: Wait what did you say you were?
Monroe: Blutbad ? Vulgarized by your ancestors as the big bad wolf. What did you just get the books tonight?
Nick: You know about the books?
Monroe: Of course I know about the books. We all know about the books. You people started profiling us over two hundred years ago. But as you can see I am not that big, and I am done with the bad thing.
Nick: Well how do you…
Monroe: How do I stay good? Through a strict regimen of diet, drugs and pilates. I’m a reformed Blutbad. A vita bluedbod. It’s a different church altogether.

Hmm, I wonder what drugs a werewolf (Blutbad), takes to keep him from eating people? Risperdal? Peyote? Maybe I should see if we can get some research funding for pilates as a treatment for aggression…

As the conversation continues, Nick begins to believe both his vision and his “crazy aunt.”

Nick: Then what she said is really happening to me. I have to stop it. How do I stop it?
Monroe: You can’t stop it. It’s who you are. 

This again sounds quite a bit like recovery speak, only this time Nick’s status as a Grimm is not just a burden, but also a force to be reckoned with.

As we learned quite well from the opening montage, not all creatures in this parallel universe are ready for a life in recovery. And as the series develops we learn more about the powerful and often sinister creatures, playing the part of benign, uncomplicated humans. Indeed, this isn’t a benign and uncomplicated story, a description that might fit our present day definition of “fairy tale.”

As with Nick, the story of mental illness is quite complicated, and one where things are rarely what they seem. Diagnoses originally intended to help patients end up harming. Psychiatric medications that appeared helpful with minimal side effects, wreak havoc on patients lives. What are considered symptoms turn out to be coping mechanisms, and sometimes even assets in difficult circumstance. Just as in “Grimm,” this shape-shifting can have life and death consequences. Fortunately, allegories like “Grimm” can help us to imagine alternate ways of seeing and responding to our existing world. Just as the content of the story is no fairytale, neither is the larger message.