Fairy Tale and Film

Peter Pan
that recasts Captain Hook 
as a detective in search of a child snatcher, ‘The Little Mermaid’ retold 
from the princess’s perspective, and a version of ‘The Pied Piper’ where 
a bullied schoolboy assumes the role of the mythical avenger. Methods 
aiming to invert our customary view of character and story may have 
been regarded as experimental once but are now largely routine, as 
Malefi cent
(Robert Stromberg, 2014), Disney’s new version (subver-
sion?) of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ affirms, granting the wicked fairy a sympa-
thetic backstory and additionally giving her top billing. Audacious as 
such rewrites may seem, it is time to ask whether such revisions are 

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Postmodern Revisions 
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evidence of increased cynicism and sophistication among audiences 
and film-makers, prompted by a desire to challenge and subvert our 
usual understanding of fairy tales, or whether a sense of playfulness 
has become increasingly adopted simply to imbue new life into old 
tales, with no greater ambition than seeking to invest familiar formulas 
with added appeal. What I refer to as ‘postmodern’ revisions involves a 
host of techniques that have started to typify cinematic treatments of 
fairy tales, and we might consequently ask whether ideas once deemed 
to be experimental and alternative have not only become quite com-
monplace, but potentially defy the spirit in which they were initially 
intended. Does the growing use of ‘postmodern’ motifs signal that ‘classic’ 
tales have become outmoded (in either their presumed ideology or their 
relevance to our lives) or is this simply a way to repackage fairy tales for 
the modern cinema-going audience? 
In her book 
Postmodern Fairy Tales
Bacchilega approves postmodern-
ism’s usefulness as a ‘deconstructive discursive tool’, highlighting a 
‘playfulness with regard to performance and gender stability’ as par-
ticularly appealing (1997: 19–20). Using the term ‘anti-tale’ to describe 
its oppositional nature, she contends that ‘the postmodern fairy tale’s 
dissemination of multiple possible versions is strangely powerful – all 
re-tellings, re-interpretations, and re-visions may appear to be equally 
authored as well as unauthorised’ (23). We might compare this point to 
Rosemary Jackson’s critical assessment of fairy tales as essentially con-
servative, asserting that, because they are set in the past and narrated 
anonymously, this precludes their ability to be used questioningly.
1
In 
fact, fairy tales have undergone a continuous process of revision and 
retelling, from their oral origins to the various writers and screen-writers 
who have sought to use fairy tale motifs in new ways: often updating 
events, using first-person narrators to enhance subjective interest, and 
situating characters in more complex scenarios to give stories greater 
social relevance. Far from being monolithic, unchanging and unques-
tioning, the very opposite seems to be the case. The critical power of 
‘de-Grimming’ fairy tales has been embraced by critics and writers alike, 
including what Steven Benson refers to as ‘the Angela Carter generation’ 
(2008: 8),
2
with authors such as Margaret Atwood and Gregory Maguire 
redeploying fairy tale motifs for the modern age. It is partly through 
this kind of rewriting that films have been inspired to adopt similar 
methods: employing framing devices that provide a contemporary 
context, presenting tales from the perspective of formerly marginalised 
(perhaps even villainised) characters, using strategies such as wry voice-
overs to disrupt the narrative flow or comment on the action, with 

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