It is fitting that Pauline Greenhill’s Reality, Magic, and Other Lies: Fairy-Tale Film Truths should be published in 2020, a dark time in human history, when fantasy seemed preferable to reality and dystopia felt like realism. Greenhill taps into the sense of unease that hovered over 2020 with her erudite discussion of films in which the fantastic interacts with the real. It is rarely a happy meeting and never a comfortable one.
Recently, there has been enormous interest in fairy tales and fairy tale films, and Greenhill is one of the major scholars of these phenomena. In this book, Greenhill deftly combines fairy tale film scholarship with critical race theory, feminist analysis, and queer theory. She focuses primarily on films made by little-known auteurs and independent filmmakers. In the introduction, Greenhill examines the relationship between fairy tales and reality in nuanced and intriguing ways: by looking at fairy tales as metaphors for real-world problems, as precursors to real-world technology, and as blueprints for alternative ways of living.
Most of the book is divided into two sections: Studio, Director, and Writer Oeuvres (chapters 2-4) and Themes and Issues from Three Fairy Tales (chapters 5-7). Chapter 2 examines four stop-motion films of LAIKA Entertainment: Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings. Chapter 3 focuses on the independent auteur Tarsem, providing a close examination of Tarsem’s use of time, space, and gaze and a trenchant political analysis of two films (The Fall and Mirror, Mirror) and one television series (Emerald City). Chapter 4 examines the work of Québecois artists Fred Pellerin and Luc Picard, whose magical films are set in an actual Québec village, the hometown of Pellerin. Greenhill also explores the fascinating phenomenon of ostension, in which the real villagers have begun to take on characteristics of the fictional stories and, in so doing, have made the village a tourist site.
Chapter 5 combines queer theory with an examination of films that reference or remake “Hansel and Gretel,” particularly in the science fiction and horror genres. Chapter 6 provides a feminist analysis of films that reference one of the grisliest of the Grimms’ tales, “The Juniper Tree” (ATU 720). Chapter 7 examines race, sex, gender, and class (among other things) in films based on what may be the most famous story of all, “Cinderella.”
The book’s reach is extremely broad, and part of the pleasure of reading it is discovering the many fairy tale films beyond the Hollywood mainstream. Yet the examination of any individual film is relatively short, usually no more than a few pages. Greenhill includes meticulous descriptions of both visual and sonic elements, yet this material highlights a fundamental problem in film studies: even the most exacting descriptions cannot really tell us what these films are like. The breadth of the book’s coverage and the sophistication of its theoretical discussion will limit its usefulness in the classroom, particularly at the undergraduate level. The ideal audience for this work may be other specialists in the field.
Greenhill relies heavily on the work of other scholars, sometimes at the expense of her own analysis. While it is well to acknowledge one’s intellectual forebears and to give credit where credit is due, Greenhill’s meticulous descriptions of other scholars’ arguments sometimes leave scant room for her own. In addition, her extensive use of quotations occasionally gives the writing a choppy feel. Also, I was startled when Greenhill referred to the biblical Elijah as a “Christian prophet” (97); Elijah appears centuries before the development of Christianity.
Greenhill mentions Donald Trump in the first and last paragraphs of her book and calls him “a caricature of a fairy-tale villain” (230). She does not offer a detailed analysis of Trump’s politics, but her disdain and anger are palpable. However, she ends the book on a note of hope, citing the work of Ernst Bloch and Jack Zipes. Greenhill reminds us that fairy tale films can be potentially progressive works of art. What, she asks, “might it mean to invest in a fairy tale not as a retreat from reality but as a way of facing it?” (231). It is a fascinating challenge.
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[Review length: 689 words • Review posted on April 1, 2023]