What Makes a Repulsive Frog So Appealing: Memetics and Fairy Tales

This essay explains why it is important to explore and to apply theories from the sciences and social sciences, such as biology, memetics, evolutionary psychology, and cultural anthropology, in order to grasp why tales from oral tradition are transformed and stick with us as memes. I have already discussed this topic in my book, Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre (2006), and here I endeavor to elaborate some of my theses in more detail, and, I hope, with greater clarity. I use the classical version of the Grimms’ “The Frog King” as an example of how a discourse about mating has been disseminated memetically and how this particular fairy tale enables us to grasp the mating strategies that different cultures have developed over several centuries. Folk and fairy tales are part of a civilizing process in all societies and evolve according to basic natural and cultural human needs and dispositions. “The Frog King,” more often referred to as “The Frog Prince,” provides an interesting case study of how people are attracted to and employ this tale to comment on the strategies of mating.