scholarly journals The stereotypical representation of women in the classic fairy tales Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Anisa Dyah Berlianti

The stereotype that emerges from some classic fairy tales is a princess who has a beautiful face and an angelic heart, a prince on a white horse who is handsome and charming, and a happy ending forever. These three sweet things are generally always the main menu served in bedtime fairy tales, including the classic fairy tales Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. Besides sounding beautiful, the plot and characterization presented in the classic fairy tale represent a woman through feminine standards packaged through stereotypes. This research uses qualitative research methods and narrative analysis. The research results found details of the seven functional characters of the characters in the fairy tale. It can then be seen that various stereotypical representations aimed at women in the three tales, ranging from the obsession with natural beauty, misconceptions about the meaning of ambition, and marriage, are the solution for all the problems of a woman.

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 135-151
Author(s):  
Kamila Kowalczyk

Transformation of fairy tales patterns in children’s literature available on the contemporary publishing marketWhat the contemporary publishing market offers the youngest readers are texts that make various forms of fairy tale characters — a  strongly representative group among them consists of texts that are transformations of fairy tale patterns that are deeply rooted in the mass imaginations including children’s imagination, which promote a  new version of a  well-known story: fairy tale renarrations. Such texts not only constitute evidence of changes in the fairy tale genre, but also prove the continuous updates on fairy tales. The aim of the article is to present and discuss how the authors modify specific characteristics of the fairy tale and play with its tradition. The examples of recognizable fairy tale patterns that are deeply rooted in the culture Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella were used to present the primary mechanisms of use and modification of fairy tales in children’s literature on the post-2000 Polish publishing market.The description of intertextual relationships between the fairy tale patterns and their renarrations renarration mechanisms has been supplemented with an analysis of influence of popular culture on children’s literature interpenetrating of cultural and literary circulations and the fashion for fairy tales. The studied works include those that have been written with gender education in mind, promotion of knowledge on rights of a  child or the environment and those primary aim of which is to entertain the young audience through reading. The article is also an encouragement to reflection on the genealogy of contemporary fairy tales and the shape, in which the “children’s fabulous fairy-tale-sphere” functions, and the factors that influence it.


Wielogłos ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 151-181
Author(s):  
Maciej Skowera

[Model of a Film Fairy Tale in the Disney Golden Age (with Later Modifications)] The article attempts to determine the constitutive elements of a model film fairy tale in the so-called Disney Golden Age and to examine how it was used in later works, both these created by the studio and those by unrelated creators. After preliminary remarks, the author analyses three feature-length animated films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959). In these works, as he notes, one can notice a set of features that make up the classic Disney model of a film fairy tale. Next, the author discusses modifications applied to the pattern during the Disney Renaissance and Revival. Finally, he cites examples of cultural texts polemical to this paradigm which point to the cultural vitality and heterogeneity of the studio’s films.


Author(s):  
Courtney Lee Weida ◽  
Carlee Bradbury ◽  
Jaime Chris Weida

Abstract: In the following paper, the authors analyze the prevalence of princess culture in the literature, film, and visual culture of young people. An art educator, art historian, and professor of English literature, the authors propose creative interventions through alternative resources and readings. Focusing on foundations of media studies and literature of Fairy-Tale Studies and girlhood studies, this interdisciplinary collaboration investigates complex creative predicaments of girlhood and princess media. Utilizing Princess Aurora and Sleeping Beauty as a case study and focal point, the authors discuss their collaborative arts research intended to explore problems and possibilities of princess culture. Keywords: Art Education; Arts Research; Fairy Tales; Media Studies, Princesses.Résumé : Les auteurs analysent la prévalence de la culture des princesses dans la littérature, les films et la culture visuelle des jeunes. Les auteures, une éducatrice artistique, une historienne et une professeure de littérature anglaise, proposent des actions créatives par le biais de ressources et lectures alternatives. Axée sur les fondements de l’étude des médias et sur la littérature liée à l’étude des contes de fées et de la jeunesse féminine, cette collaboration interdisciplinaire se penche sur les difficultés créatrices complexes des histoires de jeunesse féminine et de princesses. À partir d’une étude de cas de la princesse Aurora et de la Belle au bois dormant, les auteurs utilisent leur recherche artistique concertée pour analyser les problèmes et les possibilités de cette culture des princesses.Mots-clés : éducation artistique ; recherche artistique ; contes de fées ; étude des médias, princesses.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zuzana Kvetanová ◽  
Jana Radošinská

The feature film Aquaman (2018, directed by James Wan) is the most commercially successful superhero movie belonging to the DC Extended Universe. Produced by DC Films and Warner Bros. Pictures, the motion picture portrays a rebellious superhero with an extraordinary physical presence. The paper aims to reflect on the movie Aquaman and its ability to function as a late modern fairy tale. Aquaman’s genre structure includes elements of fantasy, science-fiction and action film. However, the authors work with the assumption that the story is, in its nature, a fairy tale involving late modern means of expression. The first part of the text is largely theoretical, outlining the movie’s importance and defining the genre of a fairy tale in the context of late modern culture. Following the given line of thought, the second part of the paper presents a narrative analysis of the film in question, which is based on Propp’s morphology of fairy tales.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lisbet Rosa Dam

<p>Fairy tales are enduring cultural texts that have enjoyed wide appeal and the continuing popularity of the fairy tale can be seen in the recent proliferation of media employing fairy tale narratives. Fairy tales provide a site of meaning about femininity and masculinity and examining them over time identifies versions of gender that are prized or denigrated within specific social, historical moments. This project was interested in the continuities and divergences in these gendered discourses across time. Although there has been considerable academic interest in fairy tales and gender, few studies have approached the topic from a genealogical perspective. This research extends the current literature through a genealogical analysis of five Snow White films from 1916 to 2012 in addition to incorporating an analysis in relation to a contemporary postfeminist, neoliberal social climate. The research employed a feminist poststructuralist framework and utilised thematic and genealogical Foucauldian discourse analysis to analyse the data. Discursive analyses found enduring discourses of traditional femininity across the films which centrally organised around a binary construction of femininity as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ A moral discourse worked to construct ‘good’ femininity as prized and bad femininity as punished. Alongside persistent discourses of femininity, however, a newer postfeminist femininity was evident in recent versions of the fairy tale. Consistent with a postfeminist, neoliberal discourse that highlights the importance of the body, analyses found an increased emphasis on beauty and the vast effort required to maintain it. Another postfeminist shift in the tale was the invoking of a girl power discourse to construct Snow as a competent fighter and leader. However, the complex entanglement of discourses of femininity in contemporary society is highlighted by the co-existence of these newer versions of femininity with traditional goals such as achieving a ‘happily ever after.’ From the perspective of possibilities for subjectivity, these shifts in representation appear to offer a young female audience more empowered possibilities of femininity but such power is simultaneously constrained by a complex amalgamation with traditional ‘niceness’ and beauty.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-161
Author(s):  
Margreet Boomkamp

The interest in fairy tales grew strongly over the course of the nineteenth century, particularly in Germany, the birthplace of Frans Stracké (1820-1898). Renowned artists made illustrations for popular publications of fairy tales and in the middleof the century characters from fairy tales also appeared in paintings and sculptures. The sculptor Frans Stracké was inspired by this development and in the eighteen-sixties created a Sleeping Beauty and a Snow White. He may have chosen these designs because the sleeping figure offers greater sculptural possibilities, for example in funeral art. He showed Sleeping Beauty at the precise moment she falls asleep, after she had pricked her finger on a spindle. Stracké followed the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm from 1812, in which the ill-fated event was predicted during the celebration of Sleeping Beauty’s birth. Sleeping Beauty (also known as Briar Rose) was precisely the sort of subject Stracké preferred: he excelled in making genre-like sculpture of a very high standard. This was little appreciated in the Netherlands, whereas in France and Italy practitioners of this type of sculpture enjoyed considerable success. Stracké is credited with introducing contemporary developments in European sculpture into the Netherlands; Sleeping Beauty is a relatively early and typical example.


Author(s):  
Marina Warner

Princes and queens, palaces and castles dominate the foreground of a fairy tale, but through the gold and glitter, the depth of the scene is filled with vivid and familiar circumstances, as the fantastic faculties engage with the world of experience. ‘Potato soup: true stories/real life’ explains that the genre’s themes are real-life themes and the passions real-life passions. The situations in fairy tales also capture deep terrors of occurrences common and, mercifully, uncommon. Despite the historical origins behind stories such as Bluebeard and Snow White, fairy tales, in general, dramatize ordinary circumstances. They are messages of hope arising from desperate yet ordinary situations.


Author(s):  
Jill Coste

This chapter examines three Sleeping Beauty retellings to illustrate the way dystopian scenarios complicate traditional fairy tale tropes. Dystopian literature and fairy tale retellings often feature elements of embodiment, romance, and political activism, and this chapter uses these key notions to consider how the dystopian fairy tale deploys feminist empowerment. While YA dystopian fairy tales often highlight collective action and social activism to resist the status quo, others reproduce troubling representations of passive heroines. This chapter argues that the dystopian YA fairy tale is uniquely primed to address the potential and power of contemporary young women.


PMLA ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 85 (5) ◽  
pp. 1015-1022
Author(s):  
André S. Michalski

Despite the often praised realism of Rómulo Gallegos' major novel, some of its episodes are not very plausible, due not so much to an overriding allegorical symbolism as to still another narrative plane that has generally been neglected by criticism, that of folk mythology. Doña Bárbara is a legendary character introduced in a ritual style reminiscent of fairy tales. The entire novel is a retelling of a fairy tale, with Doña Bárbara as the evil sorceress, Marisela as the Sleeping Beauty, and Luzardo as Prince Charming. Doña Bárbara is called the “devourer of men,” an epithet that equates her with the flat grassland over which she reigns and identifies her as a type of nymph or siren who entices and destroys men. Inspired by both the European and American Indian legends, Gallegos endowed her with traits of European witches, as well as those typical of Indian shamans, especially nagualism. Thus, events hard to believe on the psychological plane of the narrative, such as the swift change in the character of the protagonist, appear logical on the mythical level, which is as important to the understanding of the novel as those of psychological realism and allegory. (In Spanish)


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