Fairy Tale and Film

6 Postmodern Revisions: New Tales for Old?
1. See Jackson (1981) for details of her dismissive view of fairy tales, which 
not only ignores revisions (both literary and cinematic) but suggests little 
familiarity with the genre, considering the fairy tale’s main impetus to be 
nostalgic and reassuring. Lucie Armitt draws attention to such shortcomings 
in her own study, 
Theorising the Fantastic
(1996), which admits the mutabil-
ity of fairy tales and their openness to revision and reinterpretation, as well 
as their ability to unsettle. Published a year before Bacchilega’s book, Armitt 
also asserts an interest in postmodernism. 
2. According to Jack Zipes, Erich Kaiser coined the term ‘de-Grimmed’ to 
describe rewritten Grimm tales, although it might equally be used where any 
‘classic’ fairy tale has been subject to revision (2002b: 245). 
3. The term ‘distanciation’ is generally used to describe a theatrical Brechtian 
device used to ‘break the fourth wall’ and thus involve the audience, with 
the aim of making them more critical and politically conscious. Techniques 
were adopted by film-makers such as Godard (with similar aims), yet have 
since been utilised more for stylistic effect. 

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Notes to Chapter 6 
191
4. For further information about the 
conteuses
, see Harries (2001) and Warner 
(1995). While Donald Haase, in his introduction to 
Fairy Tales and Feminism
(2004), commends them for initiating a new mode of ‘feminist’ inquiry in 
their fairy tales, Lewis C. Seifert (in an essay published in the same collection) 
refutes feminist praise on the grounds that the majority of their texts concern 
themselves with heterosexual desire and conclude with marriages – failing 
to note the fact that many are unhappy! Copious references to his main 
rival, Patricia Hannon (1998), seem to unwittingly bolster her claims for 
the 
conteuses
, noting how Marie Catherine D’Aulnoy’s female characters use 
shape-shifting to explore identities far removed from the domestic sphere. 
The predilection for mise-en-abyme – playful self-reflection in their tales – is 
further approved by Hannon as a way to repudiate convention and prompt 
listeners to reflect on their meaning – motifs that anticipate ‘postmodern’ 
traits in contemporary fairy tale films. (See Seifert, 2004.). 
5. Zipes, conversely, applauds the 
Shrek
films as a retort to Disney’s ideology, 
considering the first film especially ‘radical’ in making an ogre and ogress the 
heroes and thus rendering ‘Disney aesthetics concerning beauty and ugliness 
questionable’, affirming ‘the freakiness of Shrek is a delightful anticipation of 
a de-Disneyfied world’ (2011: 243, 244). 
6. I disagree that romance is necessarily part of a ‘patriarchal project’, and 
would reiterate the point made in Chapter 1’s discussion of rom-coms, that 
we need to consider feminism’s positive impact on this genre in terms of 
characterisation and aspiration (as well as acknowledging the potential for 
parody to undermine regressive stereotypes and extend feminist ideas, rather 
than simply co-opting them). The majority of contributors to 
Fairy Tale Films
make the same criticisms as Bacchilega and Reider, with romances – even 
comic romances – deemed ideologically suspect, while films in which female 
characters encounter tragedy, such as 
Pan’s Labyrinth,
The Company of Wolves
and 
The Juniper Tree
, are approved. Jack Zipes alludes to this dichotomy in 
his foreword to the collection, contending that the latter films ‘unnerve 
us because they destabilize our notion of the happy-ended and predictable 
fairy tale’ while ‘optimistic fairy tale films such as