What's in a name? Not much if you're Prince Charming. While the erstwhile indistinctive princes and heroes of fairy tales have enjoyed a bit of the spotlight in modern television…
Abstract
What's in a name? Not much if you're Prince Charming. While the erstwhile indistinctive princes and heroes of fairy tales have enjoyed a bit of the spotlight in modern television and film narratives, this exposure has not extended, as much, to the academic study of fairy tale men.
This collection of chapters delves into the often-overlooked realm of contemporary male fairy tale characters, a domain that remains largely unexplored within academic circles. By drawing on diverse narratives from television, film, and literature, this interdisciplinary collection sheds light on the evolving representations of male characters in fairy tales and their intersections with broader socio-cultural themes.
Through an acknowledgement of the historical roots of the fairy tale genre, this collection explores how these characters have transcended their original contexts and infiltrated various fictional genres. By examining the thematic resonance of fairy tales in contemporary narratives, this collection underscores its enduring influence on modern storytelling.
This collection seeks to fill the scholarly void surrounding male fairy tale characters, particularly within the realms of queer studies, gender studies, and postcolonial studies. By including a range of academic approaches, from character analysis to fan studies to film and television studies, this collection enriches the understanding of the complex role of male characters in modern fairy tale discourse.
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Natalie Le Clue and Janelle Vermaak-Griessel
For every hero, there is a villain, and for every villain there should be a story. But, how much do we really know about the villain? Gender and Female Villains in 21st Century…
Abstract
For every hero, there is a villain, and for every villain there should be a story. But, how much do we really know about the villain? Gender and Female Villains in 21st Century Fairy Tale Narratives: From Evil Queens to Wicked Witches seeks to fill a gap in the field of gender representation and character evolution, with chapters centred on female villains in the fairy tale narratives of the twenty-first-century media.
This book aims to bring together a collection of interdisciplinary research on the evolution of female villains from television and film, the impact of these characters on filmmaking, storytelling, narrative structures and considerations with regard to gender representations.
Within the realm of fairy tale study, the characters of princesses, princes, heroes and the damsels-in-distress have been researched extensively. However, the female villain has rarely been the central focus of academic study. This book is the first collection of chapters based on female villains in the twenty-first century fairy tale narratives.
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The breadth of research and study on the topic of fairy tales is rich and abundant. However, there exists a gap in the research of the genre where it pertains to the meticulous…
Abstract
The breadth of research and study on the topic of fairy tales is rich and abundant. However, there exists a gap in the research of the genre where it pertains to the meticulous study of male fairy tale.
The character Hook has enjoyed some status in film including the notable portrayal by Dustin Hoffman in the 1991 film (Spielberg, 1991), this character relied heavily on traditional fairy tale tropes and depicted little in the way of character evolution or progression. Nevertheless, a more progressive and complex version of Hook was depicted in the Once Upon A Time series (2011–2018). This version of the character enjoys not only an extended and complex narrative journey but comprises several layers of nuanced character construction that implores a contemporary exploration thereof.
While Vladimir Propp's dramatis personae stands as, likely, the most prominent model for the study of fairy tales, its comprehensiveness can be called into question when applied to contemporary fairy tale characters. For example, whereas previously the female fairy tale character was confined to the role of damsel in distress, contemporary versions display substantial development in this area. And as illustrated through the complexity of Once Upon A Time's Captain Hook this is not, in contemporary times, confined only to the female character. Consequently, this chapter adapts the Looking Glass paradigm and utilises what the author has termed the Looking Glass Masculinity Matrix as an evaluative tool to unpack the contemporary representation, in line with current societal ideals and/or values.
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Most fairy tale narratives have a hero, a damsel in distress and the ever-present opposing villain. The villains, or antagonists, share several commonalities across the various…
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Most fairy tale narratives have a hero, a damsel in distress and the ever-present opposing villain. The villains, or antagonists, share several commonalities across the various narratives as well as one over-arching trait of evil. However, as television viewers have become more intuitive, and demand for more sophisticated narratives have increased, contemporary portrayals of villains, as in the television series Once Upon a Time (Horowitz & Kitsis, 2011–2018), have shifted away from presenting villains as one-dimensional and restricted characters.
Instead, the construct of evil is depicted as a multifaceted and evolutionary trait of the character. Whereas previously evil was the fundamental core of the character it is now presented as a fluid concept. This chapter investigates how the construct of evil, and therefore the villain, has been redefined through a contemporary television narrative.
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Natalie Le Clue and Janelle Vermaak-Griessel
A motif, as defined by Jean-Charles Seigneuret (1988, p. 17), is an ‘essential part of a contemporary academic discipline known as thematology or thematics’ and that ‘two factors…
Abstract
A motif, as defined by Jean-Charles Seigneuret (1988, p. 17), is an ‘essential part of a contemporary academic discipline known as thematology or thematics’ and that ‘two factors may explain the rise of the thematological method: its interpretive potentialities and its intrinsic congruency with the history of ideas’.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first introduced the story of Snow White and her evil stepmother the Queen in 1812. Decades later, the character of the Queen, who later becomes the Evil Queen, is depicted in copious narratives and several different mediums. A central parallel in most of the representations of this character is that she is presented as evil. As such, how the Evil Queen character is represented in media sees a congruence of specific aesthetical characteristics, which combines to symbolize a rhetorical motif for evil.
Some fairy tale characters have transcended their original fairy tale genre and their influence can be perceived in other fictional genres. One illustration of this is the…
Abstract
Some fairy tale characters have transcended their original fairy tale genre and their influence can be perceived in other fictional genres. One illustration of this is the character of Blue Beard. This story, written by Charles Perrault, was first published in 1697 (Hermansson, 2010, p. 2). It moved through several themes or topics from anxiety to money to the right of the husband and wives (Warner, 2014, p. 82). In Perrault's story, Blue Beard is conceived as a serial killer and a jealous husband. ‘Whatever the medium, whatever the date: in opera, cartoon, X-rated film or graphic novel, he is an archetypal serial murderer, terrifying and yet alluring’ (2015, p. 76).
The influence of this character and examples that carry, at the very least, remnants of Blue Beard can be clearly identified in several contemporary narratives. In the BBC television series The Fall (Cubitt, 2013), Jamie Dornan portrays a serial killer named Paul Spector. Alternatively known as the Belfast Strangler, Spector, like Blue Beard, has a wife and children who are unaware of his murderous spree. Another example of the attempted enforcement of extreme patriarchy can be seen in Cult, the seventh season of Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story anthology series. The season is dedicated to the 2016 US election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (Raddish, 2017). In this fictional narrative Kai Anderson (Evan Peters) symbolises toxic masculinity and models patriarchal archetypes to create a cult and become a senator.
Through a contextual post-structuralist analysis of the aforementioned characters, this chapter intends to examine the representation and evolution of male character under the umbrella of the fairy tale ‘man’.