Feminist Empowerment in “Beauty and the Beast:” An Analysis of Beauty’s Feminist Qualities from 1740 to 2017

We’re pleased to have Abby Elkins brings us the guest post this week from Dr. Rudy’s Applied English class from Winter 2017. Please enjoy! Apart from the fairy tale tradition’s classic damsels in distress, shines Belle, or “the Beauty,” from the story of “Beauty and the Beast.” Critics have argued that the story of “Beauty and the Beast” follows the traditional captivity narrative of a female succumbing to a stronger male character, however I argue that Belle’s choice to sacrifice herself …

Do Blondes Really Have More Agency?: A Cinderella Case Study

The following is a guest post written by Hannah Earl, a freshman in the English Department. This was a final writing assignment for Dr. Rudy’s Late Summer Honors course entitled Agency, Media, and “Tale As Old As Time,” then was workshopped with the FTTV team for publication on the blog. We hope you enjoy! Blonde hair, blue eyes, a blue dress – these words describe millions of girls all over the world. This description also typically calls to mind the …

Cinderella’s Sidekicks and their Choices, or Lack Thereof

When Cinderella is adapted into other mediums, especially when these adaptations are intended for children or families, the animals barely in the original tale become sidekicks with a lot more screen-time. So what happens when you take a plot point and turn it into a character? You give it the ability to make choices within the story — you give it agency. Betty Boop’s Poor Cinderella is, for my purposes, the first time these animals are given any characterization. And …

Weight-Watching Fairy Tales

A new year means a new weight-loss goal, right? Many of us make resolutions to lose weight or get in shape because we know we’ll feel better when our bodies are functioning properly. We make plans to transform our bodies into a calorie-consuming furnace. With three fruits and two vegetables in our tummies, we hope to win money for our “Before” and “After” pictures in the next six weeks. Some of our favorite fairy tales sponsor programs to help us …

“Pan” Post-Mortem: A Peter Pan Story in Name Only

Sadly, the latest big-screen adaption of Peter Pan has failed in almost every way possible. From a business perspective, the film will end up costing Warner Bros., the studio that funded the project, a staggering $100 million or more. The film was made on a budget of $150 million and spent nearly the same amount on a global marketing campaign. That means that Pan would’ve needed to gross at least $300 million before it even became profitable for the studio. On …

La Llorona versus Appalachian Jack: Assigning ATU numbers to International folktales

All of the fairy tale references in television in this database are categorized by a number from the Aarne Thomspon Uther index. This is an extensive list of mostly European fairy tales. Categorizing tales using these numbers was essential for the software that would show us the prevalence of specific tale types, but it also presented an endless rabbit hole of interesting questions, most of them dealing with the very broad question of what a fairy tale really is. This post …