Friday, May 2, 2014

A quick note about Disney and fairy tales

One of the many things we discuss in my fairy tale class (which in its earlier iterations was called: "Happily Ever After? The Cultural Impact of European Fairy Tales" and is now simply titled German 231: Folk & Literary Fairy Tales) is how the Disney fairy tale/princess movies are a further step in the institutionalisation of the fairy tale genre.

It does seem to me though that the Disney versions of fairy tales take the popularizing moment that is inherent to the genre to a whole new level of commercialisation/commodification. Case in point: Disney's versus Hans Christian Andersen's versions of The Little Mermaid.  Or the Disney Princess media franchise.

I'm not exactly sure why (age? cultural background?) but I cannot for the life of me get really excited about any of the Disney films I've seen. That puts me at odds with a lot of my students, and probably always will,at least to a certain extent. (That and the fact that I've never set foot in any of the Disney theme parks).  This summer I will try and catch up on some of the Disney classics, and also the newer ones such as Brave and Frozen.


1 comment:

  1. I just wanted to clarify that I make a distinction between Disney movies and Pixar ones. I really liked quite a few of the Pixar movies including Toystory, Up, Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles.

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