The idea that “fairy tales are real” appears regularly in fairy-tale media, involving classic tales, contemporary pastiche (see Williams 2021), and adaptations. This topic readily comes up in any fairy-tale unit or course, so instructors now have this book full of insights and engaging analyses to share with students.
In two sections of three chapters each, Pauline Greenhill adeptly analyzes how fairy-tale media represent and actuate ways of knowing and encountering the world. The stated purpose is to study how “sometimes fairy-tale films engage with and challenge scientific or factual approaches to truth and reality” while asserting that “fairy-tale film magic also explores real-life issues and experiences” (14). Greenhill recognizes that the fairy-tale media she studies entertain audiences and, in “dystopian times,” afford ways of connecting reality and fantasy that require using sound judgment to navigate poignant issues of lies and truth (29).
In the opening section, Studio, Director, and Writer Oeuvres, Greenhill deftly analyzes seven fairy-tale films and one television show to explore ways the studio LAIKA’s stop-motion animation favors magic over science, ways the director Tarsem’s heterospatiality and heterotemporality create the coexistence of realities and unrealities that challenge despotic tendencies, and ways storyteller Fred Pellerin incorporates his hometown village of Saint-Élie-de-Caxton, and its characters and stories, into two films that encourage residents and tourists alike to create fantastical experiences of their own.
The even more ambitious second section, Themes and Issues from Three Fairy Tales, includes commentary on and insights into over twenty films and television shows. Here, Greenhill turns her keen observation on ways fairy-tale media of classic tales “Hansel and Gretel” (ATU 327A), “The Juniper Tree” (ATU 720), and “Cinderella” (ATU 510A) portray and work through real and concerning issues by addressing “queer, feminist, and intersectional theoretical concerns” (14). While readers may be surprised to recognize the tale types in some of the selected media, Greenhill convincingly connects fairy-tale possibilities and real-world issues such as queer failure as theorized by Lee Edelman and Jack (Judith) Halberstam, ambivalent motherhood, and intersectional justice.
With the important conceptual work of this book, Greenhill adds keenly observed analyses of lesser-known fairy-tale media. She analyzes recognizable mainstream titles such as Coraline (Henry Selick, 2008), ParaNorman (Chris Butler and Sam Fell, 2012), Mirror, Mirror (Tarsem, 2012), Emerald City (Tarsem, 2017), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Hansel and Gretel” (S3, E12, James Whitmore, Jr., 1999), and Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990). The book also features many more independent works such as Pellerin’s Babin (2008) and Ésimésac (2012), The Juniper Tree (Nietzchka Keene, 1990), Le piège d’Issoudun (Micheline Lanctôt, 2003), The Moth Diaries (Mary Harron, 2011), The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014), After the Ball (Sean Garrity, 2015), Celestial Clockwork (Mécaniques Célestes, Fina Torres, 1995), and Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Marston, 2004) among several others. This is a conceptual and methodological choice, as well as personal enthusiasm, on Greenhill’s part that also “helps further discussion on the international scope of fairy-tale media, beyond the usual suspects” (15). The lesser-known works also include several titles directed by women. Scholarship like Greenhill’s encourages wider viewership and distribution.
Greenhill provides methodological inventiveness along with the theoretical insights. She gives detailed descriptions of filmic and televisual moves, a difficult task, while also creating useful charts for tracking the relationship of reality and magic or context and narrative in some of the analyzed texts. Some chapters include interview transcripts from Greenhill’s discussions with the directors and creators of the fairy-tale media, especially focusing on Canadian filmmakers. The chapter on Pellerin’s films includes Greenhill’s delightful account of media tourism, where she and fellow traveler Chris Carton take photos and encounter fanciful figures from the stories, such as l’arbe à paparmanes (peppermint tree) and la traverse de lutins (elf or gnome crossing), re-created literally by residents (95, 120). Greenhill also occasionally “breaks the academic frame” to offer pointed commentary on the divisive “current politics of fairy tales and reality” (14), underscoring the timeliness and relevance of this book.
In addition to addressing head-on the crucial concepts of fairy-tale facts and magic, this book brings more direct attention to intersectionality and fairy-tale media than other works so far, along with fresh insights on queer and feminist approaches. This brings up a couple of wishes: that the chapter on “Hansel and Gretel” had a tad more theoretical depth and fewer texts to analyze, and that Cinderella Man (Ron Howard, 2005) had been mentioned in the Cinderfellas section. Such wishes might be extended to other texts by other readers only because we would want to see Greenhill play with related implications of fairy-tale media.
As suggested, the introduction, specific chapters, or the whole book will be useful in fairy-tale units, courses, or seminars at the undergraduate and graduate levels. All this points to the engaging and thought-provoking elements of Greenhill’s project and her book’s ambitious endeavor to recognize very practical possibilities of fairy-tale media—truths, lies, magic, and reality.
Work Cited
Williams, Christy. Mapping Fairy-Tale Space: Pastiche and Metafiction in Borderless Tales. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021.
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[Review length: 832 words • Review posted on May 20, 2021]