Downright Sincerity

Alexander Akeya (Aayanga) (Siberian Yupik, 1928-2011),

Visual reference:

Sabalan mountain, Ardabil

Masal, Guilan

Saravan forest park, Guilan

I'll try to list other provinces later but feel free to add your own

Uramanat, Kurdistan province

Sirvan lake, Kurdistan province

Saraab cave, Shar-e-Kurd

And a thing that's missed, while kid's abridged adaptations miss out on the rest of the point, is that the Ugly Duckling decides he can't live like this and leaves the farmyard; he goes into the wild himself. In the various passages in which people try to keep him as a pet, or a duck, it's hammered home again and again that this does not make a good pet. there is nothing in him that suits being a domestic animal.

one of the particular parts that makes you go "sweet jesus, hans christian andersen" is where the wild geese rock up and are nice to the young swan, not quite recognising him as a swan but saying they're pretty into whatever weird vibe he has (is this a sort of queer recognition thing? we are told, explicitly, that the wild geese are both male, and they definitely say "you're so ugly it's hot - come with us" - given HCA, it might be) and then they're, you know, instantly shot dead. Because that's what happens to wild geese. They like your vibe and try to take you with them, and even offer to teach you how to flirt - and then you see exactly what happens to them. And then every encounter from there, from the old woman who attempts to keep him - a very satirical and funny passage - to the young family who genuinely attempt to save his life (but he's too fundamentally panicked and awkward to reciprocate their kindness, and explodes out of their house in a social catastrophe) the story hammers in: not only are you a terrible duck, but you just aren't MEANT to live with people. You're closer to the things they kill than the things they keep.

but yeah, adaptations miss this often: you have to go out into the wild to save your own life. you may die in the wild, and you WILL die where you are. nobody comes to save you - and nobody really could have, when you were younger - but ultimately, mate, you just aren't a very good pet. Of the list of "attributes of a domestic animal" you really suck, in detail, at all of them.

so it's very telling to me that the good ending is the one where he is a wild animal - but more importantly, a WILD SWAN.

Not killed. (like a wild goose).

Not kept. (like a duck).

but a secret third thing, that swans - of few creatures - get. they get admired and they get paid and they get LEFT ALONE. they have a position in relation to humanity, and it is BEING A LOVELY SWAN OVER THERE.

The Ugly Duckling isn't a "fairy tale" or a fable. It didn't emerge from the collective unconscious - it didn't come from nowhere. It's an original work. Andersen wrote it in 1843. It didn't exist before he came up with it. the translation I linked above was translated in 1930.

like many HCA stories (The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen) it's out of copyright and has pretty images, so it gets mined frequently as a free text - you can always republish a cheap Ugly Duckling, and don't have to pay an author. So people tend to just read and remember the various abridged versions. as a result, they think about it like a fairy tale - a sort of ambiguous, detached, floating thing that belongs to everyone and can mean everything. fairy tales - loose cultural fragments - can be hammered to suit any moral, or handwaved to be about anything, and then when you get bored of them, you can "twist" them a different way. Maybe it's about this. maybe it's about that. I read it as being about beauty. I read it as being about me. I don't like the politics. Today King Arthur is going to be Roman. Tomorrow Sleeping Beauty will wake up by herself. it doesn't really matter. And that's grand! that's what fairy tales have become - they are the people's mental property - they're to be played with.

But The Ugly Duckling isn't a fairy tale. it's a single sad, weird queer guy from a while ago, trying to tell you something personal about himself. maybe he isn't communicating clearly, maybe he's too weird, maybe you don't like it, maybe it annoys you - but <TheUglyDuckling> DOES have meaning and intention.