Toddlers, Arise! Why Recipe for Disaster is a Recipe for Success

The queen of YouTube is a three year old girl who eats pink goop with an overgrown teddy bear. Masha and the Bear is a children’s TV show based on a Russian fairy tale of the same name. Masha has achieved a fair amount of success on streaming services, like Netflix, but she’s most successful on YouTube. Read more... “Toddlers, Arise! Why Recipe for Disaster is a Recipe for Success”

The Ugly Truth About Depictions of Cinderella’s Stepfamily

Cinderella is quite possibly the most popular story about a blended family in Western culture. Her ugly relationship with her stepfamily can provide an outlet for young viewers in messy or abusive step relationships. But stepmothers and their children have feelings just as real and complicated as the “Cinderellas” of the world and suffer from one-sided portrayals. Read more... “The Ugly Truth About Depictions of Cinderella’s Stepfamily”

Cinderella: the Modern Woman, 1922-1944

Classic. Old-fashioned. Anti-feminist. Cinderella seems to belong to a bygone world of ball gowns, but for the past century, she has been modernized at least once a decade by the magic of television.
Our oldest database entry, not just for Cinderella but any tale type, is a silent, black-and-white cartoon produced by Disney in 1922. Read more... “Cinderella: the Modern Woman, 1922-1944”