Fairy Tales in Popular Culture

Fairy Tales in Popular Culture

Author: Martin Hallett

Publisher: Broadview Press

Published: 2014-08-05

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1554811449

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It wasn’t so long ago that the fairy tale was comfortably settled as an established and respectable part of children’s literature. Since the fairy tale has always been a mirror of its times, however, we should not be surprised that in the latter part of the twentieth century it turned dark and ambiguous; its categorical distinction between good and evil was increasingly at odds with the times. Yet whatever changes the fairy tale may have undergone, its cultural popularity has never been greater. Fairy Tales in Popular Culture sets out to show how the tale has been adapted to meet the needs of the contemporary world; how writers, film-makers, artists, and other communicators have found in its universality an ideal vehicle for speaking to the here-and-now; and how social media have created a participatory culture that has re-invented the fairy tale. A selection of recent retellings show how the tale is being recalibrated for the contemporary world, first through the word and then through the image. In addition to the introductions that precede each section, the anthology provides a selection of critical pieces that offer lively insight into various aspects of the fairy tale as popular culture.


The Fairy Tale and Its Uses in Contemporary New Media and Popular Culture

The Fairy Tale and Its Uses in Contemporary New Media and Popular Culture

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 9783038423010

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Ever since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the fairy tale has not only become a staple of the small and silver screen around the globe, it has also migrated into new media, overwhelming audiences with imaginative and spectacular retellings along the way. Indeed, modern fairy-tale adaptations, pervading contemporary popular culture, drastically subvert, shatter, and alter the public's understanding of the classic fairy tale. Because of the phenomenally increasing proliferation of fairy-tale transformations in today's “old” and “new” media, we must reflect upon the significance of the fairy tale for society and its social uses in a nuanced fashion. How, why, and for whom have fairy-tale narratives, characters, and motifs metamorphosed in recent decades? What significant intermedial and intertextual relationships exist nowadays in connection with the fairy tale? This Special Issue features eleven illuminating articles of thirteen scholars in the fields of folklore and fairy-tale studies, tackling these and other relevant questions.


Fairy Tales Transformed?

Fairy Tales Transformed?

Author: Cristina Bacchilega

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 081433928X

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Scholars of fairy-tale studies will enjoy Bacchilega's significant new study of contemporary adaptations.


Fairy Tales in Contemporary American Culture

Fairy Tales in Contemporary American Culture

Author: Kate Christine Moore Koppy

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-02-22

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1793612781

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In the twenty-first century, American culture is experiencing a profound shift toward pluralism and secularization. In Fairy Tales in Contemporary American Culture: How We Hate to Love Them, Kate Koppy argues that the increasing popularity and presence of fairy tales within American culture is both indicative of and contributing to this shift. By analyzing contemporary fairy tale texts as both new versions in a particular tale type and as wholly new fairy-tale pastiches, Koppy shows that fairy tales have become a key part of American secular scripture, a corpus of shared stories that work to maintain a sense of community among diverse audiences in the United States, as much as biblical scripture and associated texts used to.


The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures

The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures

Author: Pauline Greenhill

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-28

Total Pages: 858

ISBN-13: 1317368797

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From Cinderella to comic con to colonialism and more, this companion provides readers with a comprehensive and current guide to the fantastic, uncanny, and wonderful worlds of the fairy tale across media and cultures. It offers a clear, detailed, and expansive overview of contemporary themes and issues throughout the intersections of the fields of fairy-tale studies, media studies, and cultural studies, addressing, among others, issues of reception, audience cultures, ideology, remediation, and adaptation. Examples and case studies are drawn from a wide range of pertinent disciplines and settings, providing thorough, accessible treatment of central topics and specific media from around the globe.


Craving Supernatural Creatures

Craving Supernatural Creatures

Author: Claudia Schwabe

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2019-06-03

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0814341977

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Analyzes the portrayal of German fairy-tale figures in contemporary North American media adaptations. Craving Supernatural Creatures: German Fairy-Tale Figures in American Pop Culture analyzes supernatural creatures in order to demonstrate how German fairy tales treat difference, alterity, and Otherness with terror, distance, and negativity, whereas contemporary North American popular culture adaptations navigate diversity by humanizing and redeeming such figures. This trend of transformation reflects a greater tolerance of other marginalized groups (in regard to race, ethnicity, ability, age, gender, sexual orientation, social class, religion, etc.) and acceptance of diversity in society today. The fairy-tale adaptations examined here are more than just twists on old stories—they serve as the looking glasses of significant cultural trends, customs, and social challenges. Whereas the fairy-tale adaptations that Claudia Schwabe analyzes suggest that Otherness can and should be fully embraced, they also highlight the gap that still exists between the representation and the reality of embracing diversity wholeheartedly in twenty-first-century America. The book's four chapters are structured around different supernatural creatures, beginning in chapter 1 with Schwabe's examination of the automaton, the golem, and the doppelganger, which emerged as popular figures in Germany in the early nineteenth century, and how media, such as Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, dramatize, humanize, and infantilize these "uncanny" characters in multifaceted ways. Chapter 2 foregrounds the popular figures of the evil queen and witch in contemporary retellings of the Grimms' fairy tale "Snow White." Chapter 3 deconstructs the concept of the monstrous Other in fairy tales by scrutinizing the figure of the Big Bad Wolf in popular culture, including Once Upon a Timeand the Fables comic book series. In chapter 4, Schwabe explores the fairy-tale dwarf, claiming that adaptations today emphasize the diversity of dwarves' personalities and celebrate the potency of their physicality. Craving Supernatural Creaturesis a unique contribution to the field of fairy-tale studies and is essential reading for students, scholars, and pop-culture aficionados alike.


A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Modern Age

A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Modern Age

Author: Andrew Teverson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-07-15

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1350287598

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How have fairy tales from around the world changed over the centuries? What do they tell us about different cultures and societies? Drawing together contributions from an international range of scholars in history, literature, and cultural studies, this volume uniquely examines creative applications of fairy tales in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It explores how the fairy tale has become a genre that flourishes on film, on TV, and in digital media, as well as in the older technologies of print, performance, and the visual arts. An essential resource for researchers, scholars and students of literature, history, the visual arts and cultural studies, this book explores such themes and topics as: forms of the marvelous, adaptation, gender and sexuality, humans and non-humans, monsters and the monstrous, spaces, socialization, and power. A Cultural History of Fairy Tales (6-volume set) A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in Antiquity is also available as a part of a 6-volume set, A Cultural History of Fairy Tales, tracing fairy tales from antiquity to the present day, available in print, or within a fully-searchable digital library accessible through institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com). Individual volumes for academics and researchers interested in specific historical periods are also available digitally via www.bloomsburycollections.com.


The Folkloresque

The Folkloresque

Author: Michael Dylan Foster

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2015-11-02

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1457197464

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"This volume introduces a new concept to explore the dynamic relationship between folklore and popular culture: the “folkloresque.” With “folkloresque,” Foster and Tolbert name the product created when popular culture appropriates or reinvents folkloric themes, characters, and images. Such manufactured tropes are traditionally considered outside the purview of academic folklore study, but the folkloresque offers a frame for understanding them that is grounded in the discourse and theory of the discipline.Fantasy fiction, comic books, anime, video games, literature, professional storytelling and comedy, and even popular science writing all commonly incorporate elements from tradition or draw on basic folklore genres to inform their structure. Through three primary modes—integration, portrayal, and parody—the collection offers a set of heuristic tools for analysis of how folklore is increasingly used in these commercial and mass-market contexts.The Folkloresque challenges disciplinary and genre boundaries; suggests productive new approaches for interpreting folklore, popular culture, literature, film, and contemporary media; and encourages a rethinking of traditional works and older interpretive paradigms."


Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales

Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales

Author: Bronwyn Reddan

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2020-12

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1496223934

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Love is a key ingredient in the stereotypical fairy-tale ending in which everyone lives happily ever after. This romantic formula continues to influence contemporary ideas about love and marriage, but it ignores the history of love as an emotion that shapes and is shaped by hierarchies of power including gender, class, education, and social status. This interdisciplinary study questions the idealization of love as the ultimate happy ending by showing how the conteuses, the women writers who dominated the first French fairy-tale vogue in the 1690s, used the fairy-tale genre to critique the power dynamics of courtship and marriage. Their tales do not sit comfortably in the fairy-tale canon as they explore the good, the bad, and the ugly effects of love and marriage on the lives of their heroines. Bronwyn Reddan argues that the conteuses' scripts for love emphasize the importance of gender in determining the "right" way to love in seventeenth-century France. Their version of fairy-tale love is historical and contingent rather than universal and timeless. This conversation about love compels revision of the happily-ever-after narrative and offers incisive commentary on the gendered scripts for the performance of love in courtship and marriage in seventeenth-century France.