Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney - Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney

In 2011, after I had finished writing The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films , I realized just how much I still did not know about the cinematic adaptation of folktales and fairy tales worldwide, and how much I had not covered in that book. Since I had spent five years working on The Enchanted Screen , I had also become fully aware that I would not be able to write a second, more comprehensive, book on the filmic adaptation of folktales and fairy tales by myself. Fortunately, soon after the completion of The Enchanted Screen I was invited by Pauline Greenhill to join a research group based at the University of Winnipeg. Indeed, her invitation was a stroke of good luck because I quickly recognized that Pauline, who had recently co-edited Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity (Greenhill and Matrix 2010), was a dynamo and had gathered together a number of talented scholars of folktales and fairy tales, one of whom was Kendra Magnus-Johnston. After three days of presentations of projects and discussions at the first Winnipeg meeting, I knew I had to act and be opportunistic, not unlike the troubled and fortunate protagonists of fairy tales themselves. I asked Pauline and Kendra if they might join me and develop a second book dealing with fairy-tale films that would cover international developments and focus on cinematic adaptations of folktales and fairy tales in the latter part of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Their welcome response and effective work have led to the production of the present book.

Although there has been an awakening among scholars in the fields of folklore, fairy-tale studies, and cinema studies, who have produced numerous significant essays and a few books about fairy-tale films, this development is still limited to a small group of critics. The relative lack of attention to fairy-tale films is somewhat stunning, given the fact that the production of both Hollywood fairy-tale films, which tend to be global blockbusters, and the wealth of provocative, mainly independent fairy-tale films, have created what I call a cultural tsunami. What is even more astounding is that film critics seem to be puzzled by the attention filmmakers, producers, studios, and TV networks have been paying to fairy tales and folktales when these stories have provided the stuff of which all films are made from the 1890s to the present, beginning with the work of Georges Mlis.

I realize that this claim may seem a gross exaggeration; however, the history of folktales and fairy tales demonstrates the degree to which such narratives have pervaded cultural fields including theater, opera, radio plays, painting, vaudeville, musicals, comics, novels, and so on. Indeed, this cultural saturation demands that the motifs, themes, and structures of folktales and fairy tales must be studied if one wants to grasp the complex implications of the works produced in these respective fields. Yet, almost all the books that deal with the history of film and cinematic adaptation of literary works fail to cover or even mention the adaptation and use of folktales and fairy tales. The fairy-tale film seems to be a neglected or abused stepchild, especially in those cultural fields where one would expect better treatment.

In Simone Murrays recent pioneer study The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural Economy of Contemporary Literary Adaptation (2012), there is not one word about the adaptation of literary fairy tales or even about the prolific Disney adaptation industry. Murray states:

The Adaptation Industry is designed to showcase a broadly sociological approach to adaptation, foregrounding those issues usually pushed to the margins of adaptation studies work: the industrial structures, interdependent networks of agents, commercial contexts, and legal and policy regimes within which adaptations come to be. This economy-passing adaptation industry both constrains andcrucially enables adaptations in little-analysed ways. In particular, this study posits cultural and commercial concerns not as mutually antithetical or self-cancelling but as complexly interrelated.

(2012, 6)

This is all well and good, and Murrays book lays the groundwork for comprehensive sociological studies of the adaptation of literary works for the cinema. And yet, like other film historians and scholars, she neglects to include and analyze the adaptation of folktales and fairy tales. One would expect at least some remarks about the Disney industry and its socio-economic role in the development of literary adaptation not only in the United States, but in the world. Not a word. One would expect some mention of interrelated studies of fairy-tale films produced by folklorists and literary critics of fairy tales. Not a word.

Though our present book does not cover all the aspects of adaptation that Murray believes need to be addressed in her sociological approach, the writers speak to many facets she mentions and more. In keeping with what Cristina Bacchilega calls the fairy-tale web in her highly significant book, Fairy Tales Transformed? Twenty-First-Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder (2013), our contributors write about the development of fairy-tale films on six continents and discuss the interrelationships between local and global industries and the unique production of fairy-tale films in many different countries. While the essays in this collection examine and analyze films that have sought to transcend Disneys monopolistic network to produce highly experimental and innovative fairy-tale films, at the same time, we acknowledge the ongoing cultural legacies of Disney fairy-tale films as well as the potential that exists beyond them. As a result, I hope that this collaborative book will add to the growing interdisciplinary study of fairy-tale films and prompt more scholars to take fairy tales more seriously than they have in the past.

We all thank the contributors for their perseverance, and the editorial staff at Routledge, especially Erica Wetter, Simon Jacobs, and Emily How for their ongoing support. We gratefully acknowledge funding for the project, Fairy-Tale Films: Exploring Ethnographic Perspectives, from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [SSHRC] 20112015, and for Fairy-Tale Cultures and Media Today, 20142018, also from SSHRC, as well as the University of Winnipeg Research Office for a grant. We thank Victoria Brown for copyediting, and Kristy Stewart for doing the index. Once again, I want personally to thank the faerie powers who brought me together with Pauline and Kendra and provided us with the indefatigable Lauren Bosc, who has added a magic touch to our efforts.