The Emperor Has No Clothes . . . Now What?

There are no princesses in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” no mermaids or princes or witches or evil enchanters or talking animals. There’s no magic at all, in fact.

Rather, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is a morality tale about a ruler who has turned his subjects into such sycophants that he is susceptible to a breathtakingly bold swindle made possible by both his own self-delusion and the moral bankruptcy of his advisors. Two men posing as tailors offer to make the emperor a suit that possesses “the wonderful quality of being invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid.”[1] The “tailors” then pocket most of the country’s treasury as payment for supposedly exquisite fabrics and jewels which the emperor and his advisors all desperately pretend to be able to see. The story ends with the emperor processing through the streets in his purported new regalia, followed by servants so afraid of being deemed stupid that they pretend to carry his train. Finally, a child whispers[2], “But he’s got nothing on!” Soon the entire crowd takes up the cry on a gust of exuberant relief and the emperor finishes his walk both naked and ashamed.

This story has been evoked frequently in the past few years; I’ve been thinking about it somewhat obsessively for the last few days. As a scholar, reader, and writer of fairytales, I often find “aha” moments in the ways that fairy tales resonate today. I’ve written both short fiction and a novel that explore the ways we vilify women who say things men don’t want to hear, by incorporating the fairy tale trope of women literally spitting out snakes and spiders. At the moment, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” feels painfully relevant.

And yet when I try to superimpose real-world events onto the story, I end up awash in both creative and general despair. Because if we’re living a version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” we’re in one in which the small child’s whisper was shushed and the people who took it up were hustled out of the crowd. They were probably arrested and called “nasty” or “evil” by the Emperor. Some of them might have been fired from their jobs or told to leave the country. Meanwhile, the crowd that remained along the parade route would have heard—from the men carrying the Emperor’s “train,” from people weaving their way through the crowd—that not only was the Emperor wearing clothes, he was wearing the BEST clothes, and that anyone who said he wasn’t wearing clothes was stupid. Or lying. Probably a traitor. Or some combination of the three.

See what I mean? Despair.

Finally I realized that I’d been going about it all wrong, and in a way that perhaps helps those of us trying to be the voices who take up that whisper of truth and turn it into a shout that cannot be drowned out, silenced, or twisted.

Think about it: we’ve gotten pretty sophisticated and nuanced into our approach to fairy tales. We recognize that the very specific White femininity they idealize is a trap for all women; that while some wolves are literal, others are sexual predators in ordinary men’s clothing; and that stepmothers get a really bad rap. We play with the symbols, tropes, and lessons of these stories when they suit our purposes. Indeed, that’s how these stories are meant to work.

And yet I don’t think I’m the only person who has been stuck wanting the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” to just work, as-is, because the story is so damned appealing right now. Indeed, while it does not end with the line, and they all lived happily ever after, except for the Emperor, who resigned immediately and never showed his face again, it might as well—and wouldn’t that be amazing?

The yearning for the happily ever after of this story isn’t wrong, any more than the yearning for any happy ending is wrong. The thing I’ve realized is that in letting the story sit on the page and willing it to work, I’ve succumbed to a failure of imagination that I thought I’d overcome when I started retelling fairytales years ago. Because come on—we know better! We know that there isn’t a prince for every princess, or a happily ever after on the other side of every wedding. And we know, with painful currency, that right now no amount of whispering or even shrieking “but he’s got nothing on!” will bring the crowd to its senses or shame a vainglorious Emperor.

So I’ve come to terms with the fact that I can’t make this story work as-is. Just today, I’ve started to think about what we can do to make it do what we need it to do. It might need some women spitting out snakes and spiders. Perhaps a talking cat? (Definitely a talking cat.) The key is to remember that this story is just like every other fairy tale: a touchpoint, a framework, a place to start.

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[1] http://hca.gilead.org.il/emperor.html

[2] I am confident that this is the piercingly carrying whisper that small children use when asking their mothers, in the middle of Aldi, why all the people shopping here are so old.