Focus 580; The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales: the Western Fairy Tale Tradition

Good morning and welcome to focus 580 This is our telephone talk program. My name's David Inge. Glad to have you with us this morning. In this first hour of focus we will be talking about fairy tales and our guest for the program is Jack Zipes. He is one of the country's leading folklore experts. He's been professor of German at the University of Minnesota since 1989 and he is the editor of The Oxford Companion to fairy tales published by the Oxford University Press a book that's come out fairly recently and it's an interesting book. It is arranged as a reference work but it's also the kind of book that one could dip into here and there for a little bit of reading. The articles are short and you can indeed look up something like Hans Christian Andersen for example. There are entries here on folktale collectors and creators. You can look up specific stories so you can look up all beauty in the beast. For example there's also information on composers

who have done work based on fairy tales on ballets on artists many many different interesting articles and if you're interested in things like where these stories come from how it is we have the versions that we have perhaps what it is they say about people of various places and times who have told these stories. This is a. That you can use to find answers to questions like that. Our guest is Jack Zipes has written a number of books himself on fairy tales. Just to mention a few fairy tales in the art of subversion. The complete fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm beauties beasts and enchantment classic French fairy tales and there are a number so if you're interested in this subject you can certainly head down to the library of the bookstore and look for his books and of course in the bookstore Now if you like to look at it is the Oxford Companion to fairy tales. The subtitle is The Western fairy tale tradition from Medieval to modern. As we talk this morning with Jack Zipes question certainly are

welcome and I know he will do his best to give you an answer. All you have to do is pick up the telephone and call here in Champaign Urbana number 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line and that one's good. Anywhere that you might be listening this morning and that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 again 3 3 3 W I L L and toll free 800 to 2 to WY a lot of those are the numbers and any point people can call and all we ask of callers is people just try to keep their questions comments brief just so we can keep our program moving along. Professor Zipes Hello. All right how are you. I'm fine thanks and thank you very much for talking with us. It's my pleasure. What is a fairy tale What qualifies. That's quite a difficult question to answer because the fairy tale itself is changed so much. From the time that the originated approximately we're talking about the

literary fairy tale in the 16th century to the present day I mean you can say for instance that that something like Harry Potter qualifies as a fairy tale today or a short fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm still qualifies as a fairy tale today. There are novels that qualify as fairy tales novel like possession by a by. It could be considered a fairy tale. Angela Carter is written some very feminist fairy tales that vary in length and complexity or Robert Coover a postmodern writer. But I would say that the there are some sort of conventional motifs and Tom poit that you will always find in fairy tales and the most important one of course is that there will be a type of magical transformation or

miraculous transformation that is central or key to the fairy tale. And it generally involves a hero or heroine who abandons home or is chased out of home or goes on a mission or is given an assignment and goes off into the world gently into the woods and experiences A types of conflicts or struggles that brings out the very best for the most part in the hero or heroine and the two a transformation and to a type of rise in social status or improvement so that the another sort of ke side to most fairy tales is. It's utopian quality that is the most fairy tales although there are today tragic fairy tales as well but most fairy tales have a sense that the

world can be changed for the better. That there are better worlds out there and that the hero or heroine winds up in the better world the utopian world. That's one definition. Well I think that that's okay because I know that it's easy straightforward questions to ask but that it isn't that it's not such a not such an easy and straightforward thing to define right it's changing for the better because it's just wonderful to see the types of innovations that particularly contemporary writers and musicians composers and artists have come up with. I mean also that there's a great tradition of fairy tale that was straight. I think it's I think it is also interesting to encourage people to think about this as a living form not just something that people did.

A long time ago maybe they have this idea of the story whoever did did sort of the first versions of these stories it was a long time ago. They continue to be told they were passed on through the oral tradition they have now been been popularized by first writer you know writers and illustrators and then once we get into things like motion pictures and animated cartoons and television they've continued to evolve and they use the same sorts of stories that people people told. But indeed it's not just something where we're continuing to reinterpret old text new texts are being created so it is it continues to be a living form. I'd agree with you completely. One of the most fascinating things is the way TV most TV commercials are based on fairy tales. You just have to watch it about an hour. Practically any TV station or TV programming and

during the when you have the publicity or or the commercials they generally involve you. You know if you use the right type of shampoo you will change from this beast into this very handsome and you'll be able to do many different things or if you wear some type of athletic shoes like Nike you'll be able to fly through the air like those of the seven seven league boots of course. So we use fairy toes practically every day and all eyes or they're represented are reflected in many different ways. When you and I know that one of the things that folklore is to do is that they look at they collect stories different kinds of stories and they look at what exactly are the essential stories and then. You make some effort to classify them and I get the idea there is perhaps to get at the question Are there some really basic sort of issues that people are

interested in and continue to tell stories about and mall and think about over time. So much to the extent that we can say if you look at fairy tales we can see there maybe are five or six or ten or something like that. Basic stories that people continue to tell maybe with small differences but they continue to tell. Is is that is that the case or how much is that the case. I think so I think that there are certain issues for instance that revolve around gender identity. Introduce. And because we have not resolved it on one of the questions that we do with regard to gender roles and what appropriate roles are and how to raise children with violence in our society. A lot of these

questions that fairytales introduce remain or remain relevant because we haven't resolved them and we keep revisiting them but to give you an example to be more concrete. I've studied and I've actually written a whole book on the Little Red Riding-Hood. And for me my interpretation is a little Red Riding-Hood is a tale of violation. Or to put it more blunt the tale of rape in which the young girl in the tale at least in the literary first literary tale is blamed for her own violation and the violation of the Granny. Now that small tale which is no longer than three or four pages depending on the print involves the questions of how male and female males and females deal with one

another around the question of desire. Should a little girl should a girl go into the woods. Is it permissible for a girl to go into the woods. Is it permissible for her to be adventurous. Or is she punished if she goes into the woods by her own as is her appropriate place in the home. Should she be domesticated. Are all males. Will they all predatory animals. These are the questions that a fairy tail can raise. And authors from going all the way back to the 17th century to the present have written and numerous thousands actually versions that talk about the relationship between the sexes and.

And for those foods for that reason for the for the very reason that we have not resolved in a satisfactory way how the sexes relate relate to one another. This tale this this very small town remains very pertinent today. I'd like to introduce at this point reintroduce our guest for this part of focus 580 We're speaking with Jack Zipes. He's professor of German at the University of Minnesota and one of the country's leading folklore experts. He's written a number of books on fairy tales and he's also the editor of the recently published Oxford Companion to fairy tales. It's quite an interesting book. Most of the interest in the subject. You might go out and take a look at it in the bookstore. Questions also welcome three three three. W I L L toll free 800 1:58 wy love. I want to tell now also people who are listening and who Professor Zipes that we just have gotten word within the last few minutes that maybe about 10:30 Governor Bush is going to make a statement about the current situation in Florida and we've decided that we'll carry that. So what.

But we don't sure when it's going to start. So you'll have to kind of bear with us. We expect that it will be relatively short so that means we'll take a little time out from the show when that happens. It it may happen kind of suddenly and it will do press or if you don't mind us we'll just put you on hold you can hang on and then when he's finished we'll continue. So just a heads up for you and people who are listening and my apologies for the interruption but we thought it was newsworthy so we we would go ahead and let people hear it. Let me I'm interested in going back just for a second to Red Riding Hood because as you say if you look at some of the older versions of the story clearly they seem to be cautionary tales and that woman are being warned about not their being weren't warned about wolves that go on to feed not on for and sort of the idea of the story as well. You get in bed with a wolf you get you know in a you can trouble you don't be surprised sex is a message a sexual implication because the

tail was of course written way back in the 17th century when the country orcas aside it was very very strong and the implication is that girls who go out into the woods and speak to Wolves deserve what they what they can get it's a type of idealized ideology that is with us today that there's an implication in that tale that I think is very negative with regard to the way we talk about. Well what happens when a young girl these seduced me. And that's why in fact a lot of feminist writers beginning with and Sexton and other writers like roommates or Angela Carter have rewritten the tale and have tried to show that there were other ways men and women are using the symbols of the of the girl in the world can relate to one another.

Well that that is the very question I was going for it and now I think that the version of the story now that seems to be most current the one that people would be familiar with is is different. It's it's a story that seems to show us the resourcefulness of Red Riding-Hood and in fact she manages to triumph in the end. The wolf is destroyed. How is it that we now have we've had a major switch here in the in the outcome and perhaps the point of the story. How did we go from that first version. Where were the moral as well. You take a chance like this you get what you deserve to this second version that where the heroine is sort of spunky and and resourceful and and manages to come out on top. Well I think that's thanks in part to the. Feminist movement you know from the late 1960s to the present although we've experienced a type of backlash and feminism in the last 10 10 15 years or so.

But nevertheless I think women and men think differently not not totally. What's fascinating about the fairy tale is that it represents a type of symbolical discourse through which we debate a lot of these very key issues in our society. And I agree with you that the paradigm has shifted quite a bit but nevertheless that old tale is still being republished and reprinted and a lot of people think that that the old tale the classical tale which is in quotes I think is sexist and and somewhat negative still circulates and is believed in an excess. To buy a great big would have I would say a majority of people but a good number of people still believe that and a good number of people now believe in the new version.

And so we have this struggle in our society that's reflected in these fairy tales and I think really livened or brings about a very productive discussion about the types of roles that boys and girls men and women should play in our society. For a long time the stories that we're talking about were stories that were part of the oral tradition they were passed on by people telling them. And that's the way you learned them or came across these stories if you heard it told. And they're one of the things that we know can happen is that each person can then in a sense own the story for himself or herself because if you're telling it you can introduce whatever sorts of details you like. I suppose you can't really depart. Maybe you feel you can't depart from the central idea of the story but in a sense you can and you can in some ways do you know manipulated the way that you

like when these stories move from the oral tradition to the written tradition and the text. It becomes fixed or at least there become fixed versions. Does that does that really stop the process of. Well I guess I guess we already know the answer because we've sort of talked about that. Does that does that stop the process or does it not stop the process of change. For that story and no not really I think the lot of people have argued that said you know once the text becomes fixed you know that's the end of it. It is the sort of definitive version or we can always go back to the text. What it does is it preserves the a particular version. You know by by that author who either spoke it or just wrote it down. The fascinating thing is that people read it and they like the story but they want to change it and so they take a printed version and will retell it in their own words. In fact I do it I'm

a. Among other things a storyteller and I work with with children and in elementary schools and if I find a story that I love that been written by either a living author or dead author I will appropriate it or expropriate it and retell it in my own words and sometimes even rewrite it for adapted and in a certain way and publish it or or or print it. And so we have this continuous. Almost dialectical exchange that goes on with almost every good story that's been told and it takes different forms sometimes printed forms or oral forms but it's a continuous process of retelling which again I think is very exciting and important because these retellings reflect changes in society

changes in our customs and our morals in our philosophies. And we can learn a great deal from from the reprinting we're studying as a lot of folklore is to study very carefully the background the so the socio cultural backgrounds of these stories. I'm sure that there are parts of the world where telling these kinds of stories it's still considered to be a form for everyone but that everyone can participate in in here and get something out of it. I think that for for us probably and in most of the industrial world at this point we have come to think of these stories as things that are for children and and also for that reason then. The stories have to have been changed in certain ways. Perhaps we think that children there are certain things that are too much for them that we don't want to expose them to. We think maybe there should

be a lot of violence where there shouldn't be difficult issues or things that are sort of unresolved. And for that reason then versions of these stories have been produced that I'm sure folklorist feel have had all the life drained out of them. You're exactly right. Fortunately we have this a I would call it a warped view with regard to what children can enjoy and understand and accept and we tend to categorise children almost in a very not almost but in a in a condescending way. And this of course did not occur even 100 or 200 years ago when the stories were told in front of children of every kind. Also with the scatological elements and in the stories and over the years. So we felt that we had to

protect children from these stories things or erotic 40 or evil or. Unchristian things that are or are in these tales and I think that's a mistake because children are very very intelligent and very alert and they also as we know from Child Psychology psychologists they experience violence from the day they're born in different ways and they learn to absorb and understand the world through conflict through conflict and struggle. And I think that the that we tend to be overly protective in our in our society today I don't mean that we think that children should be exposed to every everything is out there in the world. Certainly they're very sensitive and can be traumatized by different types of stories or images. But I do think that

with a parent an understanding parent or an adult next to the child telling a story I think you can practically tell almost any tale and tell it in the way that the child's eyes will be opened up to the world and learn a great deal. So I do think that one of the dangers paradoxically is that the more we seek to protect the children the more we harm them. Well we're at the midpoint of the program here. And let me again introduce our guest We're talking with Jack Zipes. He teaches German He's professor of German at University of Minnesota and he's been there since 1989 and has done a lot of writing on fairy tales. He's published a number of books dealing with fairy tales. So if you're interested you can certainly go to the library go to the bookstore look for some of his work. And also he is the editor of The Oxford Companion to fairy tales which has just recently

been published. And it makes interesting reading. It's published by the Oxford University Press and as I've mentioned it has information on various kinds of stories. You can look up and read about some of the classics like for example Red Riding Hood. There are also entries on people who have collected have composed and collected and passed on these stories. Artists who have been various kinds of artists who've been inspired by fairy tales. And it's the kind of book that is intended as a reference but it's also the kind of thing that every once in a while you can just pick it up and dip into it and find some interesting little details. We're also here expecting that sometime in the next half an hour we're going to have a statement from George W. Bush about what's been going on with the election in Florida and it's going to be live coverage going to be provided to us by National Public Radio. And we're going to carry that but we don't know exactly when. It's going to happen so

it might be an abrupt shift here and I will just do that will take a little time out and I think we're expecting probably it won't be more than maybe five or 10 minutes and then we'll continue with whatever time left we have. This part of focus 580 So stay with us. And of course questions are welcome 3 3 3 W while toll free 800 1:58 WLM. Just to pick up on the point you're talking about before I die there and there have been people who have been interested in folk tales and and fairy tales and looked at them with just this sort of issue in mind that is what sort of function they can have for children who are going through a lot of changes who are trying to adjust themselves to adult roles the challenges of adult life and and the fact that you maybe feel that you're a small person in a world of very big sometimes threatening persons and I guess the individual I think of most who wrote about this or perhaps in a form that was best known was Bruno

Bettelheim who wrote this book called The uses of enchantment. And yes he may. It's that. That argument is is that something that you feel makes some sense. Yes and No. I know the book quite well and I actually have written an essay about you know I've been a bit on Hines approach to fairy tales and I think there is one very very good point that he makes when he insists first of all what two two good points that for. First of all when he wrote the book there attended there was a tendency among parents to prevent the children from reading the original versions. Of the Brothers Grimm for instance in Cinderella the at the. And the two stepsisters have their eyes picked out and they were also

cut off parts of their feet to try and to try to have their feet fit the slipper and the Grimm's fairy tales and a lot of parents in the 60s and 70s were reluctant to read these original tales. They wanted the sanitized versions and Bruno Bettelheim argued that. These conflicts no matter how grotesque or how brutal violent some of the scenes might be represent certain conflicts that children go through even when they're infants and it's very very important that children be exposed to these fairy tales because they are not realistic for children. The enable children to understand the world by through symbols in other words that they can distance themselves

from these tales because they really don't directly reflect their own situation and yet have a bearing possibly on their situation. For instance if there is sibling rivalry or there's an Oedipal complex or problems with the parents these tales will therapeutically help children come to terms with some of the psychological problems that they have. And I think that there is a certain Schuth to what he says. But I stopped sure. That's what he said because he then goes on to interpret. Oh I think it was about 15 or so details in great detail in a very strict Floridian or Neal Freudian manner in which he's almost like imposes a imposes an interpretation on all of these tales. This is what they do.

It's almost as though if you read this tale to a child than the child like almost like a Pavlovian dog will respond to the tale in a certain prescribed Freud Ian way. And I think that his book tends to be somewhat Korda Craddick and or authoritarian. It's approach for Fritos which defeats the very very purpose of the book itself. So I have a critical. Take on what federal harm was trying to develop in his book. I do think it's an interesting book but it's to be I think read with great care when just going back to the sort of discussion we have about what the content of the stories and our Sometimes people's desire to drain out some of the more difficult problematic or violent

stuff when we present them to children and how perhaps that the story is really losing something and that the then the readers are actually losing something it is impossible to take it as sort of a case study a story that people might be familiar with and to talk about how it is that a popular children's version what the popular children's version is like. And then if you actually look at the essential parts of the of the story what sort of what sort of things get left out and why it is we should prefer one version over another. Yeah it certainly is. With almost any of the canonical fare what I call the canonical fairy tales we can do case studies and see to what extent changes have been made and have been left. Or certain things have been left and certain things have been left out and we can try to understand

the reasons for this again. And understand them with regard to what they mean for culture or for society or for particular cultures and societies and we give you an example of Puss in Boots since we haven't been we haven't talked about that particular fairy tale with the first. Actually the first literary version of Puss in Boots can be found in a book published by an Italian writer. His name is John Francesco striper and he wrote a collection of tales and fairy tales. 15:15 Cole. Night. And in this particular tale of Puss in Boots it's not actually called Puss in Boots. Another title altogether. It's called Fortunato. And in that particular tale the cat is actually a

female fairy who helps a bumbling peasant when the father dies and takes pity on him and manages to help him eventually marry the daughter of the king and he inherits a kingdom and is very very grateful. And. In that tale we have we see a female that is a faery female cat helping that and making this civilizing this young bumbling peasant and then in the next version a literary version that we know of is by another Italian by the name of John but the buzz of the book that was published in 16 34 a collection of fairy tales in and in that in that particular tale. Again we have a female cat and the pot varies

somewhat but this female cat cuddly Oh so. Changes. Again another bumbling peasant but then is ungrateful in the end then tries to kill the cat and the cat escapes. As in after the peasants become wealthy and says. This is the this is the gratitude that I get from such a bum living here I'm not going to stay around to be killed by you and runs off. And so you have a very problematic fairy tale but again it's due to the graces of it the female cat talking cat that this hero succeeds and then the next version which remains with us is by Charles Perowne 697 and the cat now becomes a male cat and the male cat is a very clever cunning and in fact a killer cat because it kills an ogre in the and and achieves status social status and

represents in my interpretation a the rise of the type of middle class or middle class individual who becomes this master cat. And from that point on this version of. Puss in Boots remains with us it remains the dominant version in the western world and these other two versions which are fascinating and really well written are up you skated because they really do not reinforce a certain pattern of behavior that becomes acceptable in in the western world. And if we use words if we study the different versions of Puss in Boots up to the present because of course there are numerous versions that that are different today. But if we study and look at the shifts we can learn a great deal again about it.

Gender roles about power about how one succeeds in success in society. The whole question of gratitude and the relationship between a master and and servant. All of these questions are raised by this wonderful fairy tale and these shifts the way the fairy tale has changed reveals a great deal about the way we behave in society today what becomes acceptable in terms of striving for power. We are here at the point where we're coming into a bought our last 10 or 12 minutes in this hour of focus 580 Our guest is Jack Zipes He's professor of German at the University of Minnesota and has written a good deal on fairy tales. He is also the editor of the recently published Oxford Companion to fairy tales the subtitle is The Western fairy tale tradition from Medieval to modern. We have a couple of callers here well let's see we get him in starting with a caller in Champaign County and.

Number one I wonder if the contemporary computer games are a substitute for fairy tales and that the participatory quality of those games lets the player be part author. Yes. Well it depends on the game of course. And two I'm not that familiar with all the games out there and I have not come across a type of. Fairy tale explicit let me put it that way the computer game which uses fairytales but certainly. Well it's a modern story that could be a fairy tale in itself not necessary retelling of something in the path.

Yes I agree with you there is something miraculous about the computer. Computer games and the technology today which by the way was anticipated by Hans Christian Andersen in many of its fairy tales in which he introduces talking objects and mechanical objects that do the same things. So even in the traditional classical fairy tale you think going back to the Arabian Nights flying carpets the fairy tale does anticipate what is going on in our world today. And I do think that the church these changes are being reflected in the types of games and also through the Internet. The way the fairy tale is going to be changed in the future it's anyone's guess. Let's turn this into an argument then and in this respect. OK if there are

if there are positive cycle the psychosocial aspects to the goriness of Graham and his successors. Then Are there positive psychosocial aspects to the computer games that we shouldn't attempt to squelch send and control. Yes you know I think that a lot. I'm not one of these. I'm a critic of children's literature but I certainly am very wary about censoring violence in the films and in the the stories that the children read. I think that it's very very important to see what is represented or reflected in films or in the games. As an indication of where society's at and the allow

children to come to terms with the problems that we should not there it's and adults are at the root of many of these problems. So I think the question is not so much. Should there be violence in. Should we conceal it censor films of stories that have violence in them. The question is do these stories actually reveal certain things that are going on in society that we can resolve. Can they help us resolve a lot of the problems that we face in our society. Do they conceal they aren't truthful. These are some of the questions I think that we should be asking. I appreciate the caller's question let's go to and somebody else here this is Urbana Lie number two. Hello. I have a question. How did the fairy tales change to adapt to to American culture when the old roles in European society

were different differentiated here in America. There's a lot more freedom and a lot less lords and ladies and things like that. The police didn't didn't I mean we have our own. We have a very strong Native American and African-American tradition that still continues. We have a lot of folk tales and fairy tales that have been written down and published that emanate from the tribal systems. But we also have a literary tradition that does take off from and reflected a definite Americanization. It begins of course with Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne's both who wrote fairy tales. That had a lot to do with the puritanical of the Dutch traditions and I rewrote certain tales or adapted tales that

had to do with the American experience. But of course the the two foremost writers of fairy tales particularly for children at the end of the 19th century were Frank Stockton who not too many people know but who wrote for The St. Nicholas magazine and published big collections of fairy tales in the 1890s. But the most eminent of course is L. Frank Baum with the Wizard of Oz which has become sort of our mythic American fairy tale. If you look at the first novel of the 40 novels that he wrote about was the wonderful wizard of oz. It's a pure and simple. The structure is pure and simple. European fairy tale but very American. I mean all the the content the characters and Driessen like experiences are all have to do with the

American society and I think that bomb of the popularity of his work and then later on with Johnny grew well and the Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy series they did. Those were the authors at the beginning of the 20th century that. Really grounded a type of what I would call an American fairy tale tradition that James Thurber continued in the in the 1930s to a certain extent and many write is continuing today. And it's interesting just not very long ago on the program we talked with a writer who has written a lot about bomb and who was the editor of. It's that that's the centennial edition of the book which is annotated which has just recently come out because it is it was in it was published in. 900 for the first time and that was one of the things that we talked about and in fact right on the very

first page or before that first book began to bomb actually says that he says that he created that because he felt the need for. What he what he called he called one way or another he called it a truly American kind of fairy tale something that he apparently thought was needed and was lacking and he had this idea that yes these European stories were for not quite right for the American context. That's true. What's fascinating also about is that we were just talking about violence. He was of more or less a pacifist and he refused. And in his fairy tales that there were a few scenes you know where where people die but they're always bike accidents and he was somebody who really found their way in all 14 of the novels to

talk about conflict and talk about it. A lot of social problems in a way that really do I think the the effect the negative effect that violent descriptions might have on children. One thing that that to me seemed to be noteworthy about the Wizard of Oz is that the hero of the story was a girl in one. When you look at fairy tales and when you look at the people who have the power in the stories how does this break down according to gender. And there he was he was really in many ways a great innovator and very radical. By introducing Dorothy as the heroine. That is it is very unusual particularly at the end of the 19th century

or beginning of the 20th century to have such a resourceful young heroine like Dorothy as a major figure in all of his works and of course he published these works of up until 1919. So he was ahead of his times in his thinking. A lot of people you know he had three sons and he'd always wanted to have a daughter and the kind of critics interpret is Introducing Dorothy as a heroine in his story as sort of his desire. Daughter or child is 3. Child. Whatever the case may be. And because that's something that's speculative. He was unusual. He was married to a daughter of one of the leading suffragette of the time so he may have consciously decided that he's going to

contribute to the suffragette movement by portraying a young girl as her when it fits very well. We've come to the point where we're going to have to stop and we managed to get through without any interruptions and barely Of course just scratched the surface of what is and enormous subject area. So first of all I would like to say presser thanks very much for talking with us. Oh thank you again for inviting me. Our guest Jack Zipes He's professor of German at the University of Minnesota has authored a number of books on fairy tales. If you're interested you can certainly look for them and also you might want to look at the book that we have mentioned here this morning it's the Oxford Companion to fairy tales edited by Jack Zipes and certainly with contributions by a lot of other writers and scholars. It's published by the Oxford University Press has come out fairly recently and back and actually back in the spring and will be out in bookstores. So you might want to take a look at.