A Farewell to Charms: Looking Back from Once Upon A Time’s Final Season

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 main character, OUAT screenwriters had to restructure the show. The solution? Age up Emma’s son, Henry, and send him on adventures of his own. Writers …

Edutainment Strategies: Sesame Street’s Story Book Community School

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 groundbreaking shows in preschool television, originating the form of the pedagogical, publicly funded children’s show. The creators of Sesame Street had everything from a “pedagogical …

Preschool Edutainment and Fairy Tales: The Groundwork

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” or as nostalgic. TV uses fairy tales because the audience is familiar with the plots and motifs, but what about a child’s possibly first interaction …

FTTV Takes Western States Folklore Society: 2018 Edition

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 gave us the opportunity to synthesize a panel that gave a diverse look at many different research approaches to studying fairy tale television. We had …

Fairy Tale Group Accepted to Present at Western States Folklore Society

Come join us for a run-through of our panel we are preparing to present at Western States Folklore Society conference in LA next month. We are so excited to present all of our hard work and would love feedback as we prepare to present at the conference. Our panel is titled Fantastic Realities of Fairy-Tale TV B003 JFSB on April 6 from 3-5 pm Check out our abstracts below to get excited for what we are presenting about! The Princess and …

FTTV Visits Digital Humanities Utah

Two weeks ago, the FTTV team had the opportunity to attend DHU3, the Digital Humanities Utah conference. A quick trip up to Logan (even through the snow storm) was worth it to get to the conference generously hosted by Utah State University on February 23-24. It served as a great chance to meet people working in digital humanities, hear about their projects and ideas, and share about our own project. Our presentation format as a roundtable enabled all the members …

Unbirthday Tea Party: “We’re All Mad Here” Event Recap

Our 4th annual Unbirthday Tea Party brought in a wide variety of Alice fans and fairy tale fans alike. Everyone knows that our research team is mad about fairy tales, and we wanted to share that passion by discussing the portrayal of madness in Alice in Wonderland adaptations across time. As the audience enjoyed tea and cookies, Erica and Lauren tag-teamed their way through a discussion of the original novel and early film adaptations, then followed up with an overview …

UnBirthday Tea Party: “We’re All Mad Here”

Join us at 3pm on Friday, January 26th, for our Annual UnBirthday Tea Party! We are in our fourth consecutive year of UnBirthday Parties, and it’s one of our favorite events! Bring your own tea cup (or mug) to the FLAC in B003 JFSB to learn and chat about all things Alice related. We’ll supply the tea and cookies (no promises as to whether they make you grow or shrink). In the past, we’ve had presentations about large-scale live-action movie …

Prince Harry to Marry Former Sleeping Beauty

Five years before Prince Harry proposed, Meghan Markle was already a fairy tale princess. The American actress, best known for her role as Rachel Zane on the legal drama Suits, guest starred as Sleeping Beauty in a 2012 episode of the crime drama Castle. In the episode “Once Upon A Crime,” (season 4, episode 17), Markle’s character kills a man in a hit-and-run while leaving a fairy tale-themed costume party. She then kills two witnesses to her crime, leaving them …

Setting The Stage: Into the Woods Recap

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 puffs and bagel bites. Some lucky attendees walked away with free Into the Woods tickets after winning a raffle. With more than fifty in attendance, …