Fairy Tale Films
, written while completing
his own epic investigation,
The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of
Fairy-Tale Films
(2011), he notes the critical neglect the ‘fairy-tale film’
has had from film critics, regarding the lack of any entry under this
heading in
The Oxford History of World Cinema
(1996) as omitting what
he (in keeping with Greenhill and Matrix) clearly perceives as a genre
unto itself (2010: ix). However, different criteria are evidently being used
to assess films, and while I understand the intention behind construct-
ing a singular generic category, this is quite a recent endeavour, made by
folklorists rather than film scholars, and not necessarily the only way to
understand them.
Accordingly, a key aim here is to situate fairy tale motifs and their
cinematic examples within the different genres that are conventionally
used to make and market films, and the analysis is structured accord-
ingly: separating films discussed into recognisable groups such as rom-
coms, crime dramas, thrillers and horror. This approach endeavours to
widen our expectations about where fairy tale references are likely to be
found and also makes their breadth of influence on film clear. While
relating films to certain tale types is agreed to be a helpful means of
8
Fairy Tale and Film
identifying fairy tale associations, there is an additional benefit to
be had from assessing their wider generic features, as these crucially
shape the way stories are told and understood. In this regard, although
Greenhill and Matrix are right to defend fairy tales on screen as being
‘as much the genuine article as their telling in a bedtime story or an
anthology’ (2010: 3), the medium in which they are delivered is none-
theless of great significance. Films are an expensive business, and we
need to be mindful of the bearing this has on what gets made, which
stories are chosen and how they tend to be interpreted – just as their
need to market themselves to an audience plays a crucial part in their
formation and reception. Regarding them simply as a text – to be con-
sidered in like fashion to literary forms – misses this crucial economic
fact. It is because of their commercial draw, after all, that we are seeing
a surge of interest in big-budget remakes, a phenomenon we might refer
to as the
Alice
effect – hoping to match its billion-dollar box-office draw –
and although the resulting films are arguably some of the least inter-
esting endeavours discussed here, the motivations underlying them
remain an important point.
That is not to say that commercial imperatives are necessarily inimi-
cal to creativity, although it is academically unfashionable to say so,
and a further aim is to challenge the often quite negative conclusions
drawn by some critics. One of the most prominent and prolific fairy tale
scholars, Jack Zipes, has tended to be a little jaded in assessing cinema’s
relationship to fairy tales. Despite acknowledging progressive potential,
arguing that ‘we use the classical fairy tales in mutated forms through
new technologies to discuss and debate urgent issues that concern our
social lives’ (2006: xii–xiii), he is also wary of their ‘civilizing’ function,
shoring up conformist attitudes and ideologies via what he terms as the
culture industry. A similar ambivalence is apparent in
The Enchanted
Screen
(2011), which discusses early cinema, animation, and cinematic
examples from both East and West. While Zipes finds some interesting
cases of innovation, for the most part these are considered exceptions
to the rule, particularly where Hollywood cinema is concerned. The
varying treatments of ‘Cinderella’ offer a case in point. Said to be one
of the oldest tales in existence, and certainly one of the most appealing
for film-makers – with over 130 different cinematic adaptations to date
(2011: 174), the tale’s message (popularised by Perrault’s ‘Cendrillon’,
the Grimms’ ‘Aschenputtel’ and Disney’s film version) is considered to
be quite negative, essentially advising girls ‘to show off their beauty and
docility to win the appropriate mate’ (173). Few versions are deemed
to deviate from this imperative, although one that is particularly
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