I found this incredible news item online about a “real life” sleeping beauty. A 15-year old girl in the UK was recently diagnosed with Kleine-Levin syndrome, which is an EXTREMELY rare neurological disorder that causes one to sleep for days without waking up. Only about 500 people in the world have it, and doctors do not know the cause of this condition. The only suggested treatment is familial support. The longest people with the disorder have been known to sleep without waking up is EIGHTY DAYS. Seriously, look this stuff up online, the numbers are crazy.
The girl featured in this particular video, Louisa Ball, has been asleep for as long as 13 days. When she wakes, she tries to eat and bathe herself, and she describes herself as generally being very “out of it”. Fox News has dubbed her as a real-life “sleeping beauty” and has slapped their name, “Sleeping Beauty Syndrome”, on the disorder.
I thought this article was relatable to class not only due to the headline of the story, but also due to the fact that this disorder is a serious medical condition that negatively affects one’s life and does not end with a handsome prince at one’s waking. Upon further research of this condition, it is widely recognized by those with this condition that sleeping for days (although it may seem appealing to college students) is a huge deterrent to a normal life. Men and women usually develop deep depression when they are awake, and many are only awake for a couple hours a day.
Giambattista Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia” is a version of Sleeping Beauty that brings reward to the protagonist. Perrault’s idyllic Sleeping Beauty in the Wood maps out a journey of sweet and true love. The Princess ends up with a perfect life with an honorable and valiant prince. Those diagnosed with Kleine-Levin syndrome will certainly not wake up to a fairytale ending. Huge chunks of one’s life will be missed due to sleep. Life around us does not halt as it does in some Sleeping Beauty tales.
A story like Louisa Ball’s is quite the opposite of a fairytale, yet both share the same story title. This only enforces the fantastic nature of fairytales and emphasizes why fairytales do not match up with real life. Are fairytales to blame for promoting far from real life scenarios? Of course not. But perhaps Fox News is to blame for choosing such an ironic headline.
http://news.yahoo.com/video/health-15749655/real-life-sleeping-beauty-tells-tale-18048539
This is pretty bizarre, but instead of blaming Fox for coming up with the title, maybe there's another alternative? It might seem unlikely, but perhaps the same syndrome existed (without a name) in Basile's time. He could have heard a rumor about a person sleeping for days (or even weeks, months) at a time, and this inspired Basile to write a story about a girl who falls into a deep, long-lasting sleep.
ReplyDeleteCall me crazy, but obviously lots of modern illnesses existed in the past but were not recognized as diseases, just bizarre occurrences, spells, religious omens, etc.
It's not entirely impossible, of course, that there is a real-life origin to many of the stranger elements found in fairy tales and folk tales. Can you imagine other sources for some of the fantastic things we've read about?
ReplyDeleteHopefully a source for the pig king wasn't an actual pigbaby that was born!
ReplyDeleteAlthough, baby pigs are cute...
http://dawnofanewera.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/baby-pig.jpg
Sorry, had to add it!