CHL 427B The Americanization of Fairy Tales
Walt Disney cast a spell on the fairy tale, and he has held it captive ever since." Each reinvention, reinterpretation, and reimagining of these tales supposedly creates new stories to serve modern needs, but is this done at the expense of both the tales themselves, and the child audiences for whom they are intended? The purpose of this course is to examine various fairytale adaptations in an attempt to determine why these stories are such an inedible part of American childhood. Through examination of adaptations from Disney's The Little Mermaid to Jon Scieszka's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and Bill Willingham's Fables graphic novels this class will debate whether sanitizing these fairytales strips them of their moral and psychological complexity. We will ask ourselves what elements of these tales provide their staying power. Can there be fidelity to fairytales, and can we adapt them for modern times without destroying them in the process?