In the quaint room filled with Hogwarts-esque armchairs, Alice in Wonderland admirers gathered together to enjoy a smashing un-birthday party on January 27, Lewis Carroll’s 184th birthday.
Herbal tea, cocoa, and cookies were consumed while the FTTV project participants discussed all things Alice and presented the new database layout.
Preston presented on the evolution of Alice in Wonderland from Lewis Carroll’s oral story, to published book, to stage production, to screen.
He mentioned Disney’s capitalization on the psychedelic colors in their movie Alice in Wonderland that preempted the drug highs in the 1960s. The Disney movie was popular entertainment among drug hang-outs.
Preston noted that Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice sparked the revival of fairy tale live-action films where others had failed, grossing more box office money than all the previous live-action fairy tale films (including even the princess ones!). This tells us that the popularity of Alice adaptations transcends many other fairy tales. In our discussion of Tim Burton’s movie we wondered if the hit of his Alice had more to do with the stamp of Burton’s unique staging or the popularity of principle actors like Johnny Depp. Which do you think attracted more movie-goers?
Ariel showed us how to use the new and improved database.
She clarified some folklore terminology that was included on the old database and how the new database classifies fairy tales by their story names instead of ATU numbers. 
This makes it easier to search fairy tales by merely typing in “Alice in Wonderland” in the database’s search engine to find all the TV shows that employ this remarkable story. 
Ariel also gave examples of how the user-friendly FTTV database can help everyone write their own research papers on fairy tales.
Party-goers submitted questions based on their perusal of the new website, winning British cookies and printed fairy tales for prizes. Some of our future blog posts will focus on answering these questions about fairy tales and television. 
If you too would like to have your questions about fairy tales on television answered, please submit them on our Facebook page. If there is a TV episode that you notice is missing from our database, feel free to submit its information under the “Contribute to Our Database” tab on this blog. We would love to have all of our fairy tale friends in the database whether they attend Tea Parties or not!