1st Edition
Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney International Perspectives
The fairy tale has become one of the dominant cultural forms and genres internationally, thanks in large part to its many manifestations on screen. Yet the history and relevance of the fairy-tale film have largely been neglected. In this follow-up to Jack Zipes’s award-winning book The Enchanted Screen (2011), Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney offers the first book-length multinational, multidisciplinary exploration of fairy-tale cinema. Bringing together twenty-three of the world’s top fairy-tale scholars to analyze the enormous scope of these films, Zipes and colleagues Pauline Greenhill and Kendra Magnus-Johnston present perspectives on film from every part of the globe, from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, to Jan Švankmajer’s Alice, to the transnational adaptations of 1001 Nights and Hans Christian Andersen.
Contributors explore filmic traditions in each area not only from their different cultural backgrounds, but from a range of academic fields, including criminal justice studies, education, film studies, folkloristics, gender studies, and literary studies. Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney offers readers an opportunity to explore the intersections, disparities, historical and national contexts of its subject, and to further appreciate what has become an undeniably global phenomenon.
Foreword and Acknowledgements Jack Zipes Preface: Traveling Beyond Disney Kendra Magnus-Johnston, Pauline Greenhill, and Lauren Bosc 1. The Great Cultural Tsunami of Fairy-Tale Films Jack Zipes 2. "My Life as a Fairy Tale": The Fairy Tale Author in Popular Cinema Kendra Magnus-Johnston 3. Spectacle of the Other: Recreating A Thousand and One Nights in Film Sofia Samatar 4. British Animation and the Fairy-Tale Tradition: Housetraining the Id Paul Wells 5. The Fairy-Tale Film in France: Postwar Reimaginings Anne Duggan 6. The Checkered Reception of Fairy-Tale Films in the Germany of the Brothers Grimm Jack Zipes 7. Fairy-Tale Films in Italy Cristina Bacchilega 8. The Fairy-Tale Film in Scandinavia Elisabeth Oxfeldt 9. "To Catch Up and Overtake Disney?" Soviet and Post-Soviet Fairy-Tale Films, Marina Balina and Birgit Beumers 10. The Czech and Slovak Fairy-Tale Film Peter Hames 11. Polish Fairy-Tale Film: 130 Years of Innovation and Counting Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Marek Oziewicz 12. Not Always Happily Ever After: Japanese Fairy Tales in Cinema and Animation, Susan Napier 13. The Love Story, Female Images, and Gender Politics: Folktale Films in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Jing Li 14. "It’s all a Fairy Tale": A Folklorist’s Reflection on Storytelling in Popular Hindi Cinema, Sadhana Naithani 15. The Fairy-Tale Film in Korea, Sung-Ae Lee 16. Stick Becoming Crocodile: African Fairy-Tale Film Jessica Tiffin 17. Australian Fairy Tale Films Elizabeth Bullen and Naarah Sawers 18. Fairy-Tale Films in Canada/Canadian Fairy-Tale Films Pauline Greenhill and Steven Kohm 19. The Fairy-Tale Film in Latin America Laura Hubner 20. Beyond Disney in the Twenty-First Century: Changing Aspects of Fairy-Tale Films in the American Film Industry Jack Zipes
Biography
Jack Zipes is Professor Emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota. In addition to his scholarly work, he is an active storyteller in public schools and has worked with children’s theaters in Europe and the United States. Most recently he has published The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films (2010), The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre (2012), and Grimm Legacies: The Magic Power of the Grimms’ Folk and Fairy Tales (2014).
Pauline Greenhill is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her recent books are Channeling Wonder: Fairy Tales on Television (co-edited with Jill Terry Rudy, 2014); Unsettling Assumptions: Tradition, Gender, Drag (co-edited with Diane Tye, 2014); Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms (co-edited with Kay Turner, 2012); Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity (co-edited with Sidney Eve Matrix, 2010); and Make the Night Hideous: Four English Canadian Charivaris, 1881-1940 (2010).
Kendra Magnus-Johnston is an Interdisciplinary Studies doctoral student at the University of Manitoba. She holds a masters degree in Cultural Studies and an undergraduate degree in Rhetoric and Communications from the University of Winnipeg. Apart from recent contributions to edited collections like Channeling Wonder and Unsettling Assumptions, her research can also be found in journals such as Marvels & Tales, Journal of Folklore Research, and Children's Literature Association Quarterly.
"Fairy tales, like the air we breathe, surround us constantly and, usually, transparently in contemporary media cultures. Zipes and his collaborators explore these narratives that we take for granted, exposing the inanity of most Hollywood productions and bringing to light the transgressive, creative cinemas of independent and international filmmakers. We'll never think 'happily ever after' again without a pause to reflect on the implications." —Donald Crafton, author of Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief, and World-Making in Animation
"Thinking globally and acting locally, Jack Zipes and his collaborators have produced a landmark volume that reveals how fairy-tale enchantments have worked their magic in cinematic productions the world over. The partnership between film and fairy tale, we suddenly discover, is exactly what the dream factory needs to create its coming attractions." —Maria Tatar, Harvard University, author of The Annotated Brothers Grimm
"This incomparable book of essays projects a panoramic view of fairy-tale films that is only possible when a multidisciplinary team of talented scholars collaborates. With its international scope and expert analyses, Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney lifts the curtain on spectacular realms from around the world." —Donald Haase, Professor of German and Senior Associate Dean at Wayne State University
"For academics, this book offers insightful analyses which can be cited individually as necessary, but I think many will enjoy reading through the book in its entirety simply for the joy of discovering a treasure trove of films and television unknown to them that can be sought out for the next film night at their house." —Rose Williamson, Grammayre, 2016
"This long-awaited volume brings together an international array of authors who explore national or regional fairy-tale film histories on every continent but Antarctica... The chapters convincingly demonstrate the vitality of fairy-tale films around the world and cite many that display more aesthetic experimentation and critical capacities than Disney productions do. In addition, readers are introduced to important authors, collectors, filmmakers, and their works." -Qimna Shen, Bryn Mawr College
