FTTV
The first of four case study posts about my presentation for Western States Folklore Society’s Annual Meeting in April 2018. Introduced here, the presentation was titled Princess and the Letter P: Fairy Tales and Edutainment in Preschool Television. The other case studies can be found here. Sesame Street started in 1969 as one of the most …
Continue reading “Edutainment Strategies: Sesame Street’s Story Book Community School”
“Are there any men in this show?” my dad asked. He’d walked in on me watching a scene in season two of Once Upon A Time, where Emma, Snow White, Mulan, and Sleeping Beauty team up for adventures in the Enchanted Forest without a man in sight. I explained that yes, Snow White was married …
Continue reading “Fairy Tale Feminism: Bring Back the Knights in Shining Armor”
After stretching on for seven years, 155 episodes, and roughly 9% of our database entries, Once Upon A Time finally bade viewers farewell this year. Jennifer Morrison, who plays Emma Swan, jumped ship at the end of season six,though not before marrying longtime-lover Captain Hook and giving CaptainSwan fans some closure. Without Emma as the …
Continue reading “A Farewell to Charms: Looking Back from Once Upon A Time’s Final Season”
Come learn about and discuss unexpected fairy tales while savoring sweet donuts. Are superhero shows modern American fairy tales? How do advertisers use beloved, recognizable characters to sell us products in the breaks between television segments? Which darker fairy tales stay out of children’s TV, and where can we find them instead? Come learn …
The following is a guest post written by Erica Smith, who was enrolled in Dr. Rudy’s 394R class Winter Semester. This was a final writing assignment for Applied English Visualizing Wonder: Fairy Tales and Television. We hope you enjoy! When Lewis Carroll’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was published in 1865, it was received as …
Written by Erica Smith, one of our new team members! The traditional fairy tales which Once Upon A Time adapts often cast women in the role of damsel-in-distress. Since Once Upon A Time is structured around empowering the adult woman, Henry, a male child, steps in whenever the story calls for a “damsel” character. Targeted …
Last week, our Fairy Tale Research Team, led by Dr. Jill Rudy, joined forces with the cast of BYU’s production of Into the Woods. Fairy tale fans and theater aficionados alike turned out to compete in fairy tale trivia, play “Match the Emojis to the Tale,” watch fairy tale inspired music videos, and munch cream …
My last big project was about fairy tale mashup episodes in children’s television, and took a large-scale data approach. In choosing a new research topic, I remained interested in the phenomenon that, currently, fairy tales are marketed as “kid stuff.” If marketers want adults to watch their content, they usually sell it as either “gritty” …
Continue reading “Preschool Edutainment and Fairy Tales: The Groundwork”
Of all of children’s TV, my favorite show is Arthur, the adventures of that beloved, perpetually-eight-years-old aardvark and all of his friends and family that has been on the air since the year I was born, making it the second-longest running animated series in history. A season 5 episode of Arthur entitled “Just Desserts” (link …
The second week of April this year found the FTTV team in sunny Los Angeles, at the Otis College of Art and Design. Western States Folklore Society was having its 77th Annual Meeting, and we had been working on our panel for months. We applied as a complete panel, “Fantastic Realities of Fairy-Tale TV,” which …
Continue reading “FTTV Takes Western States Folklore Society: 2018 Edition”
